So, people “see something,” either literally, or figuratively. They think that the way they see it is the only real way to see it, the “true” way to see it (whether it be an “object” or a “situation”). This is what the idealists are talking about when they say that the world exists in our minds, because we can only see the world the way we see it; thus, a thing is, to the idealist, the way he sees it, for how could it be any other way?
One problem with this way of thought is that it is closed off to the reality of process, of change, of the fact that there is, always, another way of perceiving it, so the way you see something now is not necessarily going to be the way you see it later. It also ignores that another person sees the same thing we see, but in a different way, almost as something else. This is the problem with taking idealism further than where its value and truth lies. It is not that the mind determines whether or not something exists, the mind simply determines how we see it, and “subsequently,” how we process it, understand it, and experience it. Though, most people mistake that for what the thing is.
So, people “see something;” but what they are really “seeing” is their perception of the thing, not necessarily the thing itself as it really is (they see an illusion in the place of its reality).
What is it that is causing us to see things in a distorted way? Why (or, how) do we not see things as they really are? Is it that we can’t, or rather that we can, but don’t? Is it even possible for us to see undistorted?
These are not easy or simple questions to answer, but one of the main culprits in it all has to be what we call the ego (otherwise known as the self). What is the ego? Is there really such thing as (the) ego—that it is a something, not just a name we assign to a process? Is the ego a thing, like a filter, or a pair of colored contact lenses, through which we see the world and can not (or perhaps do not) see without it? Or is the ego rather our clung-to perceptions of ourselves, by which our perceptions of everything else are tinted? Perhaps Kant’s notion of mind is not a “mind,” but rather this other conceptualization of ego, that it is our perceptions of ourselves, of whatever and whoever we think we are, in which Kant’s a priori concepts lie, that it is the ego which is the processor of sensory data.
The idea here is that if this is the case, if the ego is a process of how we perceive ourselves which colors how we see (what we see as) everything else, then if one is able to change his perceivings of himself, of who or what he is, then he will be able to change the way his perceivings of the world are colored. And this idea implies that it may be possible to see ourselves in such a clear way that the idea of ego—or mind, or self—is itself revealed to be an illusion as well; a distortion of the reality it distorts: that there is really no such thing as self; that it, as well, is a concept that we have perceived and have been conditioned to accept as fact.
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From my personal notes, 11/15/99.
