The Doors of Perception

A few days ago, I was on a long needed vacation with my family in Mahabaleshwar. On the 2nd day, we went pedal-boating in the serene Venna Lake. The clouds were lightly scattered around the panorama of the sky and the Sun hung mighty up top, in all its pride. I was looking at the Sun through my sunglasses and what I saw was simple, but it truly amazed me. The Sun was like a multicoloured disc in the sky changing from orange to purple through a palette of bizarre colours. The gentle swaying of the boat had made the Sun appear almost magical through my goggles. It led me to think about this phenomenon for a very long time, and then like a surge of lightning, it suddenly hit me. The Sun was always the same, it was my tints of view that made it seem that way.

The same idea transcends to a much larger level. Our perceptions and points of view make us see the world in the way that we do. When a baby sees a person stealing, it doesn't see the person as a thief. When we see a weakness in a person, it's only because our own weaknesses are reflected in that person. All the things that we are upset or disappointed by are in fact just reflections of our thoughts.

Now what are the factors that have made my perception what it is today? First and foremost are my sense organs. My eyes make up my visual perception, my ears my sound perception and so on. I see what my eyes enable me to see, I hear what my ears enable me to hear. Music sounds melodious to us because waves of different frequencies add up and sound good together. Now if our ears could only register waves of a different frequency range, does that mean that this music doesn't exist? I feel that our immense faith in our 'discovered' and 'identified' senses is a major crutch, hindering us from discovering the world in its totality. Secondly, my attachment to things is another major obstacle. It makes me see certain things in good light and certain things in bad light.

Good and Bad is often treated as the ultimate duality of our universe. But isn't bad just the absence of good? Isn't darkness just the absence of light? So in the end, they are all one. But our perception enables us to see it in one way or the other. Violence is looked down upon in today's society. But it was the same quality that was a major help in humans becoming the most dominant species on Earth. How can something so good at some time become so bad now? The truth is it has always been the same. It's just that the situation has changed. And the situation has changed our perception.

We see the world today through this myriad of tints, which we ourselves have put on our windows. Each weakness, each attachment, lending its own hues to our view. And with each hue, we make our world appear even more miserable. The world will always be a garbage dump, viewed through dirty windows. If we strive to remove these tints from our self, one by one, film by film, we might finally be able to see the world as it is — Infinite. The moment it is realised that the world is a reflection of your thoughts, the feeling of inner strength, and finally a sense of prolonged happiness comes on.

As William Blake wrote: When the Doors of Perception were cleansed The world would appear to man as it is Infinite.