HE EYE SEES ONLY WHAT THE MIND IS PREPARED TO COMPREHEND
The torrential rains that pelted down in the city last night, was the topic of discussion among the students at school. Nihal was upset about his family’s postponed camping trip, he also told his friends how he enjoyed the beauty of the rains from his lawn and how the pollution on the roads had receded. Binny had a stooping countenance and was hesitant to share his viewpoint. The situation behind the scene was that Binny’s home was completely flooded, as were most homes in the area where he lived. He, along with his family had to quickly move to a temporary shelter home which the government had arranged.
The inequalities between Nihal and Binny has made their outlook on a common rainfall starkly different. The minds of the two boys plays the major role in directing their thoughts about the rain, over and above their socio-economic position. While Nihal could watch the rain in awe, Binny could not afford to even sleep peacefully, being away from his inundated home. Because our eyes see only what our mind has prepared to comprehend, both of them have their perceptions based on their experiences.
What if we come to know that we are partially blind?
Though we think that we see everything in the world as they are, researchers have proved that human eyes have a blind spot called scotoma in the retina that is dark small area where there are no photoreceptors. So how is it that we don’t see any black area in our field of vision? The answer is that our brain guesses what should be there and fits it in, automatically.
We experience the phenomena without being actually aware and hence we go on desiring for things we would like to see, or situations we would like to be in, or wish for something to happen, by creating a virtual reality in our minds. Thus, it is an apparent perception that our eyes look at surroundings based on what is dictated by our mind.
Self-assessment based on our perceptions
We must have come across psychological games that give us a complex image with multiple angles, each giving a different way to perceive. Based on the sequence in which we find the hidden meanings or objects in the image, a report on analysis of our personality is generated. So, psychology also tries to establish a direct correlation of our mind and the things our eyes see.
Mahatma Gandhi’s way of looking at the world is a case in point as he spent his initial years in self-assessment, before being a part of Indian Freedom Movement, which he has recorded in his work — “My experiments with Truth”. His endeavor to establish a view on everything around him was about the truth in it that he literally relished the naked truth without attaching any veiled or unverified and pre-conceived judgements. He strived for truth, non-violence, secularism and abolishment of untouchability; and as his thoughts and understanding were lucid, his views about these were crystal clear, in tandem with his mind.
But we have also in history an opposite character who had an extremely narrow, one sided accentuated understanding of an entire community of people which is today called anti-Semitism. The man who made war with his hands, committed a genocide due to his hatred on the Jewish people as backstabbers who let the Germans down. His grasp on the issue was simply based on a myth that spread across the army in Germany. Hence, here the man of the moment, Hitler had a covert understanding that led him to outrageously and overtly murder the Jews.
As humans are the only life forms to have been discovered to possess the ability to think, coordinate and to put their thoughts to action, this can be both a gift and a curse for the mankind. As a gift we can genuinely attempt to better our views on the things around us as Gandhi did in, but at the same time we are vulnerable beings, tending to live in an illusion believing in something we feel is true and not the actual truth, like Hitler. Isn’t it absurd to live in a world where at least few of our understanding is miraged?
The dynamic mind and the dull outlook
Social media has played a pivotal role in our lives that the online mode of relationship has recorded more screen time than the people-to-people connections in real time. But the increasing dynamics in the media interface has been contributing directly and indirectly in sculpting a — One Dimensional man, as Herbert Marcuse names the contemporary humankind. Now this one dimension is curated by the social media’s working through which the individual users are fed with repetitive content based on their likes initially generated and stored. This is called the confirmative bias that social media has undertaken to primarily focus on attracting the masses with their expectations being met, which upon recurrence of recommendations continually, makes one believe and imbibe the content as reality.
This has thus single handedly ruined the opportunity that men and women are obliged to have in taking advantage of the developments without any predetermined outlay of their interests, which in turn also affects the privacy.
On a larger scale, the confirmative bias is also emulated across by the individuals in the society and other organisations in a state which deepen the gulf between diverse groups. Not all types of content on social media or the ideologies propagandized by some deviant groups are genuine, so the rhetoric is glorified in the process ignoring the possibility of something, being a false news.
Hence such starting points of biases originating in the internal apparatus of an individual completely transform their outlook on the world, which is a silent factor that encourage the unwanted and unity-disrupting forces like terrorism, insurgencies or regionalism. The impact of these prejudices can keep multiplying if they are not confronted with truth at the right time, which requires nothing more than a change of heart.
Heart sees what is even invisible to our eyes
The reason, we use the term heart instead of mind is because the emotions and feelings are often linked to our heart while mind is all about rationality. Despite heart being an organ that merely pumps blood we give it the high regard by attaching senses to it. However, the emotions and fervor of an individual plays a substantial role in determining their opinions which largely shape their view.
If there was an autistic person whom we happen to befriend, mostly our friendship would be in terms of the pity feeling in our heart. But just because they are disabled it doesn’t mean they want or expect for help. Sometimes all they want would be a mere friend to whom they can talk and crack jokes with. So, while they actually want to be treated as a normal person, our extra concern based on our understanding of their challenge might be a bad idea in the budding friendship. In such cases attaching meanings does more harm than good as we inculcate stereotyping, discriminatory and separationist attitudes.
However, our intuitions about what we see can sometimes be of great help to us. As we might sense a problem, say at a public park, if a women’s expression is trying to convey that she is in danger, we cannot afford to be apathetic here.
Therefore, the ball is in our court, as the capability to distinguish our perception-based understanding about situations lies within our discernment, so as to decide — in which direction to kick the ball.
Change the way you see, not just to see new but also to look new
“The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”, goes a saying which in its literal connotation tries to instil a change in perceptions. After all life is only 10% of what we make it, whereas the rest is about how we take it. Even the Bible says that, “The eye is the lamp of our body, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.”
Despite the oft-quoted fact that we should believe in what we see, I would like to also add that seeing is not enough, especially for developing a belief in something. Because there could always be a possibility that what we see and hear are lies, only a thorough and meticulous investigative research would be able to reveal truth at the minimum.
A famous dohe by saint Kabir on a sarcastic note, goes as the soil says to the potter that ‘perhaps today you might feel empowered to stand over me, put your feet over me, kick me and knead me, but one day you will be below me and it will be my time to knead your bones’. The takeaway point here is that as the opportunity to have dominion is a fluctuating phenomenon on which we should not rely too much. As the mind perceives oneself as superior to the other, the problems of untouchability and apartheid persisted in the past. But as Kabir says the roles could be reversed at any point and that is why it is always better to develop an empathetic outlook, that comprehends the issues of the world through our compassion filled eyes, by which we can attempt to resolve them. Or else we will only be setting ourself on the path to belittle one another based on our understanding of greatness.
Beauty lies in the Eyes of the Beholder
When we attempt to fill everything around us with the best food, top end cars, a bungalow with an inbuilt state-of-art technology and sophisticated furnishing etc, the ultimate transformation of the house to home will unfold only when our mind is satisfied. Not everything that glitters is gold. The least among the desires getting fulfilled could mean the most happiness to someone, while the greatest achievements could also not make one content.
Reality as multifarious as it is, the mind of an actor conveniently constructs and manipulates reality according to their own experiences and beliefs as we have seen in the examples of two extreme leaders. The tradition or culture or religion, we practice, could teach us what to look and what not to look at. But the onus is on us to teach ourself to tune our mind so as to not judge or to not have any preconceived notions whilst seeing and looking. Thus, being the designers of our reality, we can establish one of the strongest senses of human beings — vision, as the door to our mind’s wellbeing.
