SELECTIVE PERCEPTION

SELECTIVE PERCEPTION IS THE BANE OF MAN, FORCING HIM TO LIVE A LIFE BASED UPON THE ILLUSION THAT HE KNOWS HIMSELF.

This idea was proffered by one who spent most of his life stalking Truth. Its essential meaning harks back to the writings of a Russian man called Gurdjieff, who spent most of his life questioning deeply the status quo in which humanity at large is immersed. Gurdjieff was a man on fire, with a sharp and penetrative mind. He was determined to expose the many fallacies under which humanity lives. Unconcerned by the opinions of others, he lived his life in search of Truth and nothing but the Truth.

There was an inner strength in Gurdjieff that is not commonly seen in people today, and a spirit of independence which led him during his lifetime to those books, people, and places in the world which reveal eternal Truths that can set a man free, if he so chooses.

In one of his books: ‘Beezlebub’s Tale to his Grandson’, Gurdjieff alludes to his very old and wise grandmother. On her death bed she calls the young Gurdjieff to her bedside and whispers quietly in his ear: “Eldest of my grandsons! Listen carefully and remember always my strict injunction to you: In life, never do as others do. Either do nothing at all or do something that nobody else does.” Grandmama warned Gurdjieff before she passed over to the other side to seek truth in opposition to public opinion, and to this injunction he kept faithfully throughout his life. I have found in my own humble experience that this guidance given to the young Gurdjieff is, indeed, excellent advice.

The plot of Beelzebub’s Tale revolves around the exploits of an extraterrestrial being known as “Beelzebub” and his grandson Hassein, as they travel through space towards Beelzebub’s home planet “Karatas” on the spaceship Karnak. The story recounts the adventures and travails of Beelzebub amongst the ‘three-brained beings’ (humans) of the planet Earth. Beelzebub describes to his grandson the entire history of these beings and their strange behaviors and customs. He gives invaluable insight into the glamorous cacophony of selective perception so imbued in the human psyche!

The short excerpt below was written by Gurdjieff some years ago and explains briefly the concept of selective perception which is induced by collective psychological sleep.

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“There are a thousand things which prevent a man from awakening, which keep him in the power of his dreams. In order to act consciously with the intention of awakening, it is necessary to know the nature of the forces which keep man in a state of sleep. First of all it must be realised that the sleep in which man exists is not normal but hypnotic sleep. Man is hypnotised and this hypnotic state is continually maintained and strengthened in him. One would think that there are forces for whom it is useful and profitable to keep man in a hypnotic state and prevent him from seeing the truth and understanding his position.”

Waking up to the hypnotic forces of glamour and illusion as they exist in our everyday world of daily living is the only way to securing our freedom.

It is the relentless conditioning we receive from day one which keeps us in an hypnotic state, oblivious of reality and of our true purpose for being here. To put it simply . . . we’ve been duped. Having spent our entire lives constructing personal paradigms in accordance with the collective overview, we then defend, at every turn, these selected perceptions which we believe constitute our main purpose for living.

It is this very mind-set which keeps us confined within the limiting ring-pass-not of our small view of the world, and which makes it so very difficult indeed to wake up. It’s a bit like trying to free oneself from a compelling dream in which we are caught while sleeping: we know it isn’t real but the feelings that are running within the dream give it such an urgent sense of reality that we just can’t wake up. Have you ever experienced this?

To disrupt our carefully selected paradigms requires that we SHIFT OUR FOCUS of perception. Yet this is easier said than done for we have staked our entire existence on our present point of view. It takes enormous courage and intelligence to shift the familiar mind-set and stalk Truth until we find it. By not shifting our focus to what is REAL, we remain bound by our own self-limiting definition of the known: our selective perception of the world and who we think we are.

The most exciting thing we will ever do in the little time that we are given, lies in the decision to shift the focus from what we mechanically hold on to. As we expand our perception of the world and who we truly are, we begin to expose the mechanical forces which ever seek to bind us to the collective consciousness and its chain of illusion.

POWER IS THE PRODUCT OF RIGHT PERCEPTION.

What prevents us from understanding our true purpose and from claiming our personal power is the habit of selective perception, propagated by commonly accepted beliefs and strengthened by vanity, pride, and fear.

Are we willing to stalk our current view of the world and shift our long-held crystallised beliefs?