Half-seeing

Image: ©️Stephen Tanham

The spiritual teacher and philosopher Krishnamurti once wrote:

‘Recognition dulls the mind’.

When I first read it, years ago, I disagreed with his proposition. Surely, I reasoned, the act of recognition is a result of intelligence? We learn to recognise something as an act of shortening the ‘path-length’ of the brain’s logic, as it wrestles to categorise the seen thing.

Take a lighted candle, for example. We might enter a darkened room and have our attention drawn by one. At that stage we might only perceive a diffuse and gentle light coming from a height which is not the floor – but we recognise that ‘container’ of something of interest, even if we don’t have a name for it…

If we have further interest in the object, we might stay with our container and notice that the source of the light is a tall, white stick. The light source appears to be dancing upon it, as though it were alive. The light is not uniform in shape; what initially looked like a sphere of light is revealed as an oval with radiant ‘rays’ of light streaking from it and into our eyes. A voice may caution us that this streaking effect is a subjective illusion; but, in reality, everything in that narrowing-down sequence is an illusion.

This lightning-fast process is recognition. It’s purpose is to show us the familiar, so that we may be ready to use the object. It’s also vital to the ‘animal’ side of us to recognise that which may hurt us, so, after recognition, we can be prepared to be defensive.

We can, if we train our perception, see the stages above. If we do this, repeatedly, the act of detailed observation of something we think we know can open us up to new riches.

This is what Krishnamurti was talking about. He went on to say that the mind is a treasure-house of richness, dulled by the layers of containers that we wrap around perception in order to know and use its usefulness.

We cannot really know what the object is. Its dissection takes place in our minds. We first evaluate what type of object or effect we are looking at, then we look for detail. Finally, we look for purpose. When we have all of these, we ascribe knowledge to what we are looking at. Our primary purpose is to make it useful. We might have been searching for that lighted candle and are now in a position to put it to good use.

Or…

Or we might have deliberately set a candle in that darkened room so that we could ‘sneak up on it’ – determined to see it differently. Nothing would have changed, and yet everything would have changed. We wouldn’t be interfering with what was really ‘out there’. But we would be open to changes in the richness with which it is perceived… and if we let that flow, it might alter the out-there/in-here position?

Such a deliberate act of consciousness would have been rightly called magical in days gone by. Perhaps we could do with a bit of magic in our world today?

Perhaps this is why good art captivates us? We know it has no ‘usefulness’ other than to capture our eyes, then our minds and, sometimes, our hearts. That very thought should show us where in perception the higher octaves lie. The fact that we separate ‘things’ at all, rather than seeing them all as continuous shows us an important facet of human consciousness. But a deeper discussion of this should be the subject of a further piece.

Our candle offers no threat. It’s light, streaking into our eyes, has always been symbolic of a much deeper act of recognition.

©Stephen Tanham

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.

The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.