Developing a Power to Perceive and Understand Ourselves and Our World By Minimizing the Distortions and Biases That Are Inherent in Our Human Instrumentation and Process

Whenever we try to understand something, we are met with various types of inherent biases that skew the determinations we make. Not only are our senses, our perceptions and our thoughts subject to various forms of filtering, but they are also skewed by our past experience, the fact that our minds “fill in” missing data based on what we expect to see, and we interpret everything through the filter of our memories, our emotional framework and our contextual relationship to what is being perceived. In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle adds another layer to the entire process, even beyond our own inherent biases; namely, that the very fact of observation changes what is being observed.

In order to reach the truth of anything, we therefore need to undertake considerable efforts to first, understand what kind of biases and filters we are employing in our perception, and second, work to minimize their impact on the resulting analysis and conclusions we draw.

For instance, if we desire a certain outcome, or adhere to a certain point of view, we will tend to interpret what we see based on those filters. We either get a confirmation of what we already believe, or we get the opposite of it and we then react with a rejection, an interpretation that fits our pre-conceived notions.

Our senses are subject to being misled. What we see, what we hear, what we feel are all partial and are also subject to manipulation based both on our position as an observer in relation to the object of our perception, as well as through careful tailoring of information by those seeking to influence our perceptions, or due to innocent, but nevertheless inaccurate factual data.

It is not just a matter of “factual data” however. We have our own expectations, ideas, and preconceived notions that go into how we interpret and respond to things. Then we overlay our mental process, our emotional needs, our experience and memory, and our training and education over the perceptions. Desires play a rather large role in how we respond to things, whether we are attracted or repulsed, whether we are responding out of fear or antipathy, or some kind of ‘chemistry’ of attraction.

The idea then, in order to approach a more unbiased view of the world and the situations that we experience, is to find ways to systematically abstract ourselves from this entire baggage of the exte
al ego-personality and the limitations of the exte
al physical, vital, emotional and mental being. The practice of shifting to the standpoint of the witness consciousness is an important part of this process so that we can identify and minimize the influence of these factors on our perception of the reality that we interact with.

The Mother notes: “To be perfectly sincere it is indispensable not to have any preference, any desire, any attraction, any dislike, any sympathy or antipathy, any attachment, any repulsion. One must have a total, integral vision of things, in which everything is in its place and one has the same attitude towards all things: the attitude of true vision. This programme is obviously very difficult for a human being to realise. Unless he has decided to divinise himself, it seems almost impossible that he could be free from all these contraries within him. And yet, so long as one carries them in himself, one cannot be perfectly sincere. Automatically the mental, the vital and even the physical working is falsified. I am emphasising the physical, for even the working of the senses is warped: one does not see, hear, taste, feel things as they are in reality as long as one has a preference. So long as there are things which please you and others which don’t, so long as you are attracted by certain things, and repulsed by others, you cannot see things in their reality; you see them through your reaction, your preference or your repulsion. The senses are instruments which get out of order, in the same as sensations, feelings and thoughts. Therefore, to be sure of what you see, what you feel, what you experience and think, you must have a complete detachment; and this is obviously not an easy task. But until then your perception cannot be wholly true, and so it is not sincere.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pp. 149-150