On Pure Perception

Roger Thisdell

The insight is that our visual field is intimately coupled with somatic sensations most of the time, and more specifically with sensations in our face, which add to the impression that we see from our face. If there is a large curved object just in front of you and to the right, you will actually feel curved sensations in the right side of your face and those sensations’ size and shape will correspond to the perceived size and shape of the visual object. Behind even really distant visual objects are quaint somatic sensations, most likely somewhere on the face. With incredibly fast notings per second one could pick apart seeing from feeling and isolate those parts of qualia, however that level of understanding of experience is not happening at the ‘quotidian’ level.

Most people won’t ever have the experience of seeing without there being some somatic thickness not being a part of that experience of seeing, but 5-meo seems to offer a possibility for pure seeing to those whose notings per second aren’t as fast, while maintaining levels of perception within the realm of ‘dry sized goods’ (trees, chairs, squirrels etc.).

While sober, if I am fast, I can have very slight moments of pure seeing but within an incredibly small area of what is on offer in the visual field – literally just qualia particles, and it comes at the cost of perceiving a lot the greater context of my experience. 5-MeO extends the breadth and duration and object permanence of what can be purely seen.

By retaining visual stimuli (eyes open) and radically defabricating facial feelings, the world becomes very clear, beautiful and has a sense of the mystical – I suspect a lot of those attributes come from a surprise and awe of visual stimuli taking new levels of prioritising in consciousness and being ‘unmuddied’ by somatic feeling for the first time in one’s life. I imagine that the mystical awe may wane as one becomes accustomed to pure seeing more and more.

Related material on these phenomena:

Below, artistic representation of the phenomenon of ‘standard’ seeing – not pure seeing:

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APA

Thisdell (2023, September 30). On Pure Perception. https://heart.qri.org/retreats/2023-canada/roger-thisdell/on-pure-perception.html

BibTeX

@misc{thisdell2023pure,
  author = {Thisdell, Roger},
  title = {On Pure Perception},
  url = {https://heart.qri.org/retreats/2023-canada/roger-thisdell/on-pure-perception.html},
  year = {2023}
}

On Pure Perception

Table of contents

At the mundane level of fabrication and perception

Citation

APA

BibTeX