What You See Is (Just a Hint of) What You Get

I recently watched a short clip of Oprah describing a magical moment in her redwood grove. She had visited this place in her garden a hundred times before, but this day was different. On this day she released the word "tree" from her mind and entered the grove with full attention, endeavoring to truly experience the essence of this majestic setting. She noticed something she had never noticed before - a vibrant, pulsating field of energy, as if the space was alive and conscious, and she was at once connected to and non-different from it.

Oprah's experience was not an anomaly, but an example of the capacity for higher human perception. While our world might appear full of familiar objects - the cars we drive, the food we eat, the bodies we inhabit - science tells us these are 90% empty space, swirling clouds of electrons and other particles vibrating at rates beyond the ability of the human eye to register. The world we occupy is actually a vast, energetic, vibratory field where boundaries are far more fluid than they appear. It is a subtle world of energy, light, sound, and thought just as real as the gross physical perception logged by our senses.

Yet so few of us experience this expanded reality on a consistent basis...why?

We have created shorthand of words and symbols to simplify our experience. We use labels like "redwood tree" or "coffee cup" as proxies for vibrant energetic systems. While imprecise, this shorthand is useful. As a colleague of mine said recently, "Life would get far too complicated if we described drinking our morning latte out of an 'interactive, vibrational field shaped like a cylinder and designed to hold hot liquid'."

However, using shorthand has a downside -- we often forget the deeper truth of our reality as we slip into the habit of using labels. Rather than staying tuned to the vital essence of our experience, we default to past memory or preconceived notions about how things will be. Our words and labels tether our mind to the historical. Our labels freeze reality. Instead of remaining alert in each moment, listening and seeing intently, we numb the intensity of our experience with comfortable ideas about what we think we understand...what we think we've already figured out.

Philosopher J. Krishnamurthy claims we never actually see or listen to anything "because our mind is not free; our ears are stuffed up with those things that we already know...if one can listen to something with all of one's being, with vigor, with vitality, then the very act of listening is liberation."

Oprah's visit to her redwood grove could have been an unremarkable replay of her many past visits but, on that day, she was open to seeing and listening in a different way. She brought a beginner's mind free of labels. She brought her full attention without prejudice. As a result, she experienced the raw energy and intelligence of the space which immediately transformed her perception.

My spiritual teacher Dattatreya Siva Baba puts it this way, "When you look at an object without words or thoughts, you will understand it in a completely different way. You will simultaneously lose all knowledge and all ignorance...but you will gain omniscience."

Just as a map can never convey the true essence of the territory, our shorthand descriptions can never capture the deepest essence of the world around us. In order to know the richness, aliveness, and creative pulsation that animates all things, we must look beyond seeing. Listen beyond hearing. Experience beyond words.

Comments

[lehrbob007]

The only real time I sense without thought is when an unplanned gap occurs in my conciousness and I get a spark that fires my soul and cannot be recaptured or re-invented.

[mamacat]

My two cents worth: there is actually a lot of merit to this discussion. Ancient philosophy was not influenced by the scientific discoveries of recent history. We can bring to our consciousness of self and to our realisation of understanding, the ideas of how are bodies interact with our environment on macro and micro levels. By being aware of our environment with the most modern of scientific understandings, which by the way are not entirely contraposed with some of mankind's ancient religious and philosophical precepts, we stand a chance of seeing, understanding, and experiencing our lives more gratifyingly.
Ok, I realise that what I just said can sound like a load of crap to some, but how we think about our environment , while we are trying to become aware of it, can influence our eventual perceptions and understandings. Thus, efforts to change the experience of perception can have signifigant results. Whether we choose to study with colleagues and friends in universities, or to munch on peyote and smoke grass in teepees, anything that alters our perceptions alters our very understanding of self and universe.

[SneathLane]

Oh that Dattatreya! He's got you pegged. "You want omniscience, Stacy? I can tell you how to get it - here, just spend a few years trying to looking at stuff with no thoughts and no words in your head"


I do hope you succeed.


Why aren't you content to feel the warmth of the sun on your skin as the warmth of the sun on your skin? Or a breeze blowing through your blouse on a summer day as flapping fabric and a breeze against your skin? Have you not noticed what they are? They are the warmth of the sun and flapping fabric and a breeze against your skin - in what way is this not good enough for you?


If you look beyond seeing, you see nothing but the images in your head; if you listen beyond hearing you hear nothing but the stories in your head. And from your post, it's clear you haven't yet succeeded in experiencing much beyond words, lots and lots of words.

[Blefuscu]

the only journey Oprah needs to take is to a real science class

[NYCBear]

HuffPost's Pick

"Yet so few of us experience this expanded reality on a consistent basis...wh­y?"

Well - the main reason is that our senses are not capable of detecting events at the atomic level. Sure, there are photons hitting the rods and cones in our eyes and the skin on the backs of our hands right now - but what reaches our brain is a summary of the effect of billions of photons.

Our bodies don't have the physical equipment to detect the "vast, energetic, vibratory field" described by quantum mechanics. If you think your perceptions of quantum mechanical events are real - you've been caught by maya, you've been fooled by your own mind. You are certainly not looking at the world "without words or thoughts", which is an entirely different experience, and very useful indeed.

Oprah's experience was interesting and useful for her - but it was most definitely guided by her prior assumptions about the nature of the world, and informed by current pseudo-scientific talk about "life forces" and "energy fields" and pop culture confusions of quantum events with human-sized events.

It was not raw experiencing - like always, her raw sensory information went through the parts of her brain that make sense out of things. That day she had decided to make a different kind of sense out of her trees, and her brain obliged - but it wasn't a more "real" kind of sense.