A Quote by Samuel Alexander
What is the meaning of the togetherness of the perceiving mind, in that peculiar modification of perceiving which makes it perceive not a star but a tree, and the tree itself, is a problem for philosophy.
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What is the meaning of the togetherness of the perceiving mind, in that peculiar modification of perceiving which makes it perceive not a star but a tree, and the tree itself, is a problem for philosophy
Dimensionality only exists because the mind can perceive life that way, but that's only one simple method that the mind has for perceiving itself, for perceiving life.
Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, `That is an oak tree', or `that is a banyan tree', the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it.
In the perception of a tree we can distinguish the act of experiencing, or perceiving, from the thing experienced, or perceived.
Imagination is a tree. It has the integrative virtues of a tree. It is root and boughs. It lives between earth and sky. It lives in the earth and the wind. The imagined tree imperceptibly becomes a cosmological tree, the tree which epitomises a universe, which makes a universe.
When you're talking to a person, it only matters what they are perceiving. You only need them to perceive you as a loving husband. You don't necessarily need to be one. That's always a good road, if you actually are one. But what people are perceiving will dictate what their life is, and ultimately what your interaction is.
Dreams and waking life are both the same kinds of things. The difference is that dreaming is perceiving free of external constraints, whereas perceiving otherwise is dreaming true. Meaning what you dream about actually happens.
There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky.
When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.
The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as where? — how far? — how situated in relation to what? In the mescaline experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern.
You´re not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you.
But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. . . . Does the tree then have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself.
There are two distinctive peculiarities by reference to which we characterize the soul (1) local movement and (2) thinking, discriminating, and perceiving. Thinking both speculative and practical is regarded as akin to a form of perceiving; for in the one as well as the other the soul discriminates and is cognizant of something which is.
How much I can learn from a tree! The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer.
There's a depth of meaning all on its own in awareness being gentled. From within the subtlety of being gentled, the level of perception changes. Instead of perceiving the obviousness of experience, you're able as awareness to perceive most subtle meaning.
You get to choose how you perceive your reality. So why, when it comes to perceiving yourself, would you choose to see anything other than a super-huge rock star of a creature?
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