Perception presupposes a subject that perceives and an object that is perceived. In human relations the subject that perceives is the individual human being, more exactly his consciousness, and the object perceived is the outer material world.
It is of the greatest importance to be aware of the fundamental fact that the outer world consists objectively of nothing more than matter and energy.
In order to make conspicuous the mechanism of our experiencing reality, I have chosen a metaphor from television. The material world functions as transmitter, emanates optical, acoustical, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile signals that are received by the antennae, by our sensory organs, eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and skin and are conducted from there to the corresponding center in the brain to the receiver. There these energetic and material signals are transformed into the spiritual phenomena of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. One does not know how this transformation of material and energetic impulses into the psychic dimension of perception takes place. It includes the mystery of the connection between the material and the spiritual world.
Consciousness defies a scientific definition and explanation; for it is what is needed to contemplate what consciousness is. It can only be circumscribed as being the receptive and creative center of the spiritual ego, which has the faculties of perceiving, thinking, and feeling, and which is the seat of memory.
It is of fundamental importance to be aware of how consciousness originates and develops.
The newborn human possesses solely the faculty of perceiving -- possesses, or more correctly, is this mystic nucleus of life. He owns -- to use again the metaphor of television -- a blank videocassette, where the incoming stimuli from the outer world are transformed into images and sensations that can then be stored in the memory, providing the groundwork for thinking. Without these signals from outside, no consciousness could develop.
There is common consent that the evolution of mankind is paralleled by the increase and expansion of consciousness. From the described process of how consciousness originates and develops, it becomes evident that its growth depends on its faculty of perception.
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Fundamentalismist
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