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Perception is our interpretation of sensory stimuli based chiefly on memory

• Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment. Daniel Schacter
• Perception: Recognition and interpretation of sensory stimuli based chiefly on memory.  Oxford Dictionery
• Perception: The way that you notice or understand something using one of your senses.  Merriam-Webster
• Interpretation,  Observation,  Meaning,  Memory,  Belief,  Projection,  Attention,  The senses,  Awareness

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Perception is based on the senses

• All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.  Neil Gaiman
• The senses

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Perception is our mental lens

• Perception is the mental lens though which we perceive our experiences. It is the mind’s interpretation of the sensory stimuli we receive into our awareness, based on our memory and beliefs.   Anthony Lambert

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Our perceptions are shaped by our minds

• The world is nothing but my perception of it. I see only through myself. I hear only through the filter of my story. Byron Katie
• What you have carried in your mind about the world is what you will see around the world. What you carry in your mind about your life is what you will see in your life. Neale Donald Walsch
• The world we see merely reflects our own internal frame of reference – the dominant ideas, wishes and emotions in our minds. We look inside first, decide the kind of world we want to see and then project that world outside, making it the truth as we see it. We make it true by our interpretations of what it is we are seeing. A Course in Miracles
• The whole world is simply my story, projected back to me on the screen of my own perception. All of it. Byron Katie
• I have given this all the meaning it has for me. A Course in Miracles
• The mind

Our perceptions are shaped by our thoughts

• All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention. Rudolf Arnheim
• No two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is — in other words, not a thing, but a think.  Penelope Fitzgerald
• Seeing has very little to do with your eyes. David Eagleman
• Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see. It is with your thoughts, then, that we must work, if your perception of the world is to be changed. A Course in Miracles
• Thought creates things by slicing up reality into small bits that it can easily grasp. Thus when you are think-ing you are thing-ing. Thought does not report things, it distorts reality to create things, and as Bergson noted, “In so doing it allows what is the very essence of the real to escape.” Thus to the extent we actually imagine a world of discrete and separate things, conceptions have become perceptions, and we have in this manner populated our universe with nothing but ghosts. T. Suzuki
• There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of idle thoughts. What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle. Every thought we have either contributes to truth or to illusion. Gautama Buddha
• What you see reflects your thinking, and your thinking but reflects the choice of what you want to see. A Course In Miracles
• The interpretation of what we see changes with our conceptual notions. Amit Goswami
• What we’re seeing “out there” is the projection of where we’re at–the projection of the clingings of our minds.  Ram Dass
• Thinking

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Our perceptions are shaped by our beliefs…

• All you see in your world is the outcome of your idea about it. Neale Donald Walsch
• The way we view things is really only a reflection of our self-beliefs, and not necessarily ‘how it really is’. Byron Katie
• What we see depends on the theories we use to interpret our observations. Albert Enstein
• The private experience that you perceive forms your world, period. But which world do you inhabit? For if you altered your private sensations of reality, then that world, seemingly the only one, would also change. You do go through transformations of beliefs all the time, and your perception of the world is different. You seem to be, no longer, the person you that you were. You are quite correct — you are not the person that you were, and your world has changed, and not just symbolically. Jane Roberts
• Belief

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Our perceptions are shaped by our memories

• Q: Surely, perception is not imagination! M: What else? Perception is recognition, is it not? Something entirely unfamiliar can be sensed, but cannot be perceived. Perception involves memory.  Nisargadatta Maharaj
• That is the beauty of memory, isn’t it? Our reality is always clouded by our perceptions of truth. Sherrilyn Kenyon
• Memory

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Our perceptions are shaped by our emotions

• All perception is colored by emotion. Immanuel Kant
• Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings. “Things as they are” are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become “things as perceived by your wishes. Ayn Rand
• There’s no such thing as an immaculate perception” or conception (the cognitive, not sexual kind). All come bundled with feelings (feelings = biochemical judgments + attached stories. Robert Wright
• Emotion

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Our perceptions are shaped by our motives

• Motive shapes memory. Memory shapes perception. Perception is the process by which we edit and color what we imagine to be our experience, but it in fact is only a grossly inaccurate and incomplete mental/emotional version of it. Again, it is shaped by clinging to what we want (motive). Scott Morrisson
• Intention

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Our perceptions are shaped by our expectations

• Part of what restricts us seeing things is that we have an expectation about what we will see, and we are actually perceptually restricted by that expectation. In a sense, expectation is the lost cousin of attention: both serve to reduce what we need to process of the world “out there.” Attention is the more charismatic member, packaged and sold more effectively, but expectation is also a crucial part of what we see. Together they allow us to be functional, reducing the sensory chaos of the world into unbothersome and understandable units. Alexandra Horowitz
• Expectation

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Our perceptions are shaped by our language

• Language forces us to perceive the world as man presents it to us. Julia Penelope
• The more words I have, the more distinct, precise my perceptions become–and such lucidity is a form of joy. Eva Hoffman
• Language becomes an invisible, and therefore all the more powerful modifier of how we perceive the world around us. Roger Stephens
• Language is our primary sieve of perception. Maria Popova
• Finding the words is another step in learning to see. Robin Wall Kimmerer
• The only reality we can ever truly know is that of our perceptions, our own consciousness, while that consciousness, and thus our entire reality, is made of nothing but signs and symbols. Nothing but language. Alan Moore
• Does reality essentially remain outside language, separate, obdurate, alien, not susceptible to description? Is an accurate and vital correspondence between what is and our perception of it impossible? Harold Pinter
• Language

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We project our memories, thought and judgements onto the world and thus create it

• I create the world by imposing my beliefs, judgements, memories, and labels onto the world; what is essentially an unknowable mystery. This is influenced greatly by my state of consciousness. Anthony Lambert
• All this manifest, manifold world is projected by the imagination of the perceiver onto the eternal Sustaining Lord. Alma Bodha
• How we react depends upon the world we’re reacting to. Who we become, as well as what we see, is determined by perception—which can be said, simply, to create the world. David R. Hawkins
• What is world after all? A collection of memories. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• When you look at anything, it is the ultimate you see, but you imagine that you see a cloud or a tree. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• Q: Out of what do I create this world? M: Out of your own memories. As long as you are ignorant of yourself as the creator, your world is limited and repetitive. Once you go beyond your self-identification with your past, you are free to create a new world of harmony and beauty. Or you just remain — beyond being and non-being.  Nisargadatta Maharaj
• The mind creates the world. Pure sense perceptions arise in awareness and the mind then projects onto them beliefs, memories, labels, judgements, fears and desires. It filters what is there through a conceptual filter, like a distorting lens. Anthony Lambert
• I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me. A Course in Miracles
• There is no world outside. It is what we project outside.  Swami Turyananda
• In our lives we only encounter the projections of our own minds. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Every act of perception is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination. Oliver Sacks
• We occupy a space of our own creation-a collage compounded by bits and pieces of actuality arranged into a design determined by our internal perceptions, our hopes, our fears, our memories, and our anticipations. Willard Gaylin
• What we’re seeing “out there” is the projection of where we’re at–the projection of the clingings of our minds. Ram Dass
• Nothing you see means anything alone. A Course in Miracles
• You think that what upsets you is a frightening world, or a sad world, or a violent world, or an insane world. All these attributes are given it by you. The world is meaningless in itself. A Course in Miracles
• Projection,  Life is a process of creation, not discovery

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We perceive people and things not as they are, but as we are …

• We do not see things the way they are. We see things the way we are. The Talmud
• A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• I am not seeing things as they are… I am seeing things as I am.  Laurel Lee
• How things look on the outside of us depends on how things are on the inside of us.  Parks Cousins
• The world is as you are. David Lynch
• We see people and things not as they are, but as we are. Anthony de Mello
• Everything you see happening is the consequence of that which you are. David R. Hawkins
• When you possess light within, you see it externally.  Anaïs Nin
• I don’t see the world as it is. I see the world as I see myself.   Kevin Hall
• Everything you perceive, externally, is the manifestation of some internal part of you. If it was not, it would not be present in your perceived reality. Tony Warrick
• The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. As a man is, so he sees.  William Blake
• We see the world, not as it is, but as we are──or, as we are conditioned to see it. Stephen Covey

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… for the world is a great mirror and reflects back to us what we are inside

• The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving and friendly and helpful to you. The world is what you are. Thomas Dreier
• The world is only a mirror. You will only see in the world what you’re prepared to see in yourself– nothing more, nothing less.  Robert Holden
• The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion.  William Makepeace Thackeray
• Perception is but a mirror, not a fact. What I look on is my state of mind reflected outward. A Course in Miracles
• Life is like a mirror. Smile at it and it smiles back at you. Peace Pilgrim
• Life is a mirror. If you smile, it smiles back at you; if you frown, it frowns back. William P. Magee
• Life is a mirror

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The world we perceive is a reflection of our state of mind…

• The world that we perceive is a reflection of our own states of mind and reveals our own level of consciousness. The world is little more than a Rorschach blot in which we see our own desire systems projected. We see what we want to see. Prem Prakash
• Your self is the universe, and you perceive the universe through a state of mind. Frederick Lenz
• It is mind which gives to things their quality, their foundation and their being. Whoever speaks or acts with impure mind, him sorrow follows, as the wheel follows the steps of the ox that draws the cart. Dhammapada
• Having judged, we therefore see what we would look upon. A Course in Miracles
• Projection makes perception. The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you. The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition. As you think so do you perceive. So do not seek to change the world but choose to change your mind about the world’s reality. What you perceive is a result, not a cause… A Course in Miracles
• It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. Swami Vivekananda
• Let me look on the world I see as the representation of my own state of mind. A Course In Miracles
• The world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself. A Course in Miracles
• Everything begins as an internal reality and then is externalized through perception. Christopher Langan
• It is the bane and the balm of individual perception that ‘objective’ reality is seen through the filter of each person’s temperament. Leonard Shlain

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…a reflection of our attitude

• The attitude that I have toward any experience is a choice. I create my reality through the lens of my perception. Darren R. Weissman
• What is my prevailing attitude, and what programs are actually running my mind? David R. Hawkins
• It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. Swami Vivekananda
• Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us. John Mitchell
• The world is the mirror of your attitude towards it. Vadim Zeland
• The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. Oprah Winfrey
• Love life and life will love you back. Arthur Rubinstein
• If we look at the world with a love of life, the world will reveal its beauty to us. Daisaku Ikeda
• Attitude

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The world we see is a reflection of our level of consciousness

• Enlightenment is seeing the same world, but in a different light. It is not seeing different things so much as seeing things differently. Peter Russell
• You attract and manifest whatever corresponds to your inner state. Eckhart Tolle
• Remember that your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness. You are not separate from it, and there is no objective world out there. Every moment, your consciousness creates the world that you inhabit. Eckhart Tolle
• Affairs of the world are perceived and interpreted in accordance with one’s level of consciousness. Therefore, the world may appear to be tragic, sad, miserable, or fearful, or it may, on the contrary, seem tempting, exciting, and challenging. In the high 500s, it is viewed with compassion and seen as beauty. In the 600s, it is seen as peaceful, and then, in the 700s, as Ramana Maharshi said, “The world you ‘see’ (i.e., perception) does not even exist; therefore, surrender it to God.” David R. Hawkins
• The world that we perceive is a reflection of our own states of mind and reveals our own level of consciousness. The world is little more than a Rorschach blot in which we see our own desire systems projected. We see what we want to see. Prem Prakash
• Consciousness

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What we look for in life – be it the positive or negative – is what we will see

• How you perceive creates what you believe to be true. You see what you are looking for. Story Waters
• It’s not what you look at that matters… it’s what you see. Henry David Thoreau
• People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for.  Harper Lee
• The truth is, we see in life what we want to see. If you search for ugliness, you’ll find plenty of it. If you want to find fault with other people, your career, or the world in general, you’ll certainly be able to do so. But the opposite is also true. If you look for the extraordinary in the ordinary, you can train yourself to see it.  Richard Carlson
• What we see depends mainly on what we look for. John Lubbock
• Life is how you perceive it. The meaning of it is what you project out there. In and of itself, it doesn’t mean anything.  David R. Hawkins
• Positivity,  Negativity

We will only see what we are willing to see

• People only see what they are prepared to see. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.  Robertson Davies
• Humans see what they want to see.   Rick Riordan
• We hear and apprehend only what we already half know. Henry David Thoreau
• Life has everything in it. But you only see what your perception allows you to see. Bruce H. Lipton

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Your perceptions are specific to you and only you

• What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are.  C. S. Lewis
• No two people see the external world in exactly the same way. Penelope Fitzgerald
• Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes.  Virginia Woolf
• Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you. Douglas Adams

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Our perceptions make us what we are…

• A verse from the Veda says, ‘What you see, you become.’ In other words, just the experience of perceiving the world makes you what you are. This is a quite literal statement. Deepak Chopra
• What you see, you become. The Vedas
• Perception is, in essence, who we are. We are what we perceive. What we perceive defines who we are. Frederick Lenz

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… and who we are, in turn, shapes our perceptions

• We do not see things the way they are. We see things the way we are. The Talmud
• We see people and things not as they are, but as we are. Anthony de Mello

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Our perceptions lay the basis of our knowledge

• All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.  Leonardo da Vinci
• Knowledge

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Our perceptions lay the basis of our understanding

• Nothing is in the understanding, which was not first perceived by some of the senses.  John Locke
• Our understanding is correlative to our perception. – Robert Delaunay
• Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly. Richard Bach
• Understanding like the eye; whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own subject. John Locke
• Understanding

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Our perceptions lay the basis of our beliefs

• Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they show how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.   Thomas Reid
• What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality. Gary Zukav
• Belief

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Truth is universal but perception of truth is not

• Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view. Obi-Wan Kenobi
• People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth.  Roberto Bolaño
• Our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the world. When such a model is successful at explaining events, we tend to attribute to it, and to the elements and concepts that constitute it, the quality of reality or absolute truth. But there may be different ways in which one could model the same physical situation, with each employing different fundamental elements and concepts. If two such physical theories or models accurately predict the same events, one cannot be said to be more real than the other; rather, we are free to use whichever model is most convenient.  Tephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow
• People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true. Robert Ringer
• Perception is real, truth is not. Imelda Marcos
• This does not make the authors of those narratives liars; it makes them servants of fallible human memory and perception. Tom Bissell
• Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator. Wendell Phillips
• In fact, one big lesson from Buddhism is to be suspicious of the intuition that your ordinary way of perceiving the world brings you the truth about it. Robert Wright
• This is a reminder that natural selection didn’t design your mind to see the world clearly; it designed your mind to have perceptions and beliefs that would help take care of your genes. Robert Wright
• With spiritual work, the terms ‘is’ or ‘are’ become progressively replaced by the term ‘seems to’, which is due to the increasing realization of the degree to which perception is the mask that hinders truth. David R. Hawkins
• Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. Marcus Aurelius
• When one looks at the ocean, they can only see that part of it which comes within their range of vision; so it is with the truth. Hazrat Inayat Khan
• All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy. Henry David Thoreau
• Truth is never negative. Only one’s perception of it is. Joseph Curiale
• My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes – many times – my feelings are out of sync with the truth. John Piper
• Our perceptions of truth are built around what is practical, not what is true. Even the smartest human brain doesn’t have the capacity for discerning true facts. That’s why so many of us settle for scientific facts. It’s the best we can do. Scott Adams
• The truth is paradoxical to the extent of being exactly contrary to the usual perception. Georges Bataille
• Everything we see is an illusion. Even our perceptions of truth are illusory, illusory in the sense they’re not complete. Frederick Lenz
• There are many realities. There are many versions of what may appear obvious. Whatever appears as the unshakeable truth, its exact opposite may also be true in another context. After all, one’s reality is but perception, viewed through various prisms of context. Amish Tripathi
• All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. Friedrich Nietzsche
• Truth

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Our perceptions become our truth

• Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view. Obi-Wan Kenobi
• There is no truth. There is only perception.  Gustave Flaubert
• People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth.  Roberto Bolaño
• There is no truth. Only points of view. Dame Edith Sitwell
• In this treacherous world Nothing is the truth nor a lie. Everything depends on the color of the crystal through which one sees it Pedro Calderon de la Barca
• A lot of what we’re doing here deals with perception rather than truth. Many would argue that reality depends more on the former than the latter. Carrie Vaughn
• There is no reality, only perception. Phil McGraw
• Truth

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Our perceptions create the world we see and become our reality

• All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions. Leonardo da Vinci
• Every kind of ignorance in the world all results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles. We believe what we see and then we believe our interpretation of it, we don’t even know we are making an interpretation most of the time. We think this is reality. Robert Anton Wilson
• Everything is perception. A hallucination is a perception of a certain reality. It is a perception of a certain state of mind. Frederick Lenz
• It is our perceptions that create our very sense of reality, no matter how distorted they may be. Anthony Lambert
• Man does not see reality as it is, but only as he perceives it, and his perception may be mistaken or biased. Rudolf Dreikurs
• No matter how people try to dispute it, perception is reality. Its what you choose to believe that makes you the person you are. Karen Marie Moning
• No one is having an experience of the objective reality that really exists; each creature perceives only what it has evolved to perceive. David Eagleman
• One’s reality is but perception, viewed through various prisms of context. Amish Tripathi
• Our very awareness is the window upon which reality presents itself. Frederick Lenz
• People’s realities are the result of their perceptions. Karen Wojcik Berner
• Perception defines everything. Frederick Lenz
• Perception is a prism, and reality is like shot silk – depends where the light hits. Jennifer Stone
• Perception is everything and that becomes the reality. Carly Fiorina
• Perception is merely reality filtered through the prism of your soul. Christopher A. Ray
• Perception is reality to the one in the experience. Danielle Bernock
• Perception is reality, but it may not be actuality, and you have got to be able to keep the difference between that. Bill Cowher
• Perception is reality. If you are perceived to be something, you might as well be it because that’s the truth in people’s minds. Steve Young
• Perception is transformed, and a new reality is born. Dan Brown
• Perception precedes reality. Andy Warhol
• Perception selects and makes the world you see. A Course in Miracles
• Reality is a background so painted over by our own perceptions that every eye sees the world differently. Richelle E. Goodrich
• Reality is based on perception. Geoff Thompson
• Reality is irrelevant; Perception is everything. Terry Goodkind
• Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one. Albert Einstein
• Reality is myself, reality is only the perception of this instant… Gao Xingjian
• Reality is ultimately a selective act of perception and interpretation. A shift in our perception and interpretation enables us to break old habits and awaken new possibilities for balance, healing, and transformation. David Simon
• Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality. Gary Zukav
• So we are perceiving life through the ego, then through the intelligence and then through the five senses. And our particular understanding of reality is according to that perception.  Radhanath Swami
• So, we, as human beings, live in a very imprecise world. A world where our perceptions of reality are far more important than actual reality. Daniel Keys Moran
• The attitude that I have toward any experience is a choice. I create my reality through the lens of my perception. Darren R. Weissman
• The dream you are living is your creation. It is your perception of reality that you can change at any time. Miguel Angel Ruiz
• The optimist is right. The pessimist is right. Point of view is the determining factor in the life of each. Ralph Waldo Trine
• There is no reality, only perception. Phil McGraw
• We don’t live in a world of reality, we live in a world of perceptions. Bill Blass
• Reality

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… even though reality may be nothing like what we perceive

• Every one of the five senses can be twisted to deliver a completely different picture of the world. If by picture we mean sight, sound , smell, taste and texture of things, a troubling conclusion looms. Apart from the very unreliable picture running inside the brain, we have no proof that reality is anything like what we see.  Deepak Chopra
• We limit our success when we mistake the limits of our perception for reality. Bill Crawford
• The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. Since, however, sense perception only gives information of this external world or of “physical reality” indirectly, we can only grasp the latter by speculative means. It follows from this that our notions of physical reality can never be final. We must always be ready to change these notions – that is to say, the axiomatic basis of physics – in order to do justice to perceived facts in the most perfect way. Albert Einstein
• Our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the world. When such a model is successful at explaining events, we tend to attribute to it, and to the elements and concepts that constitute it, the quality of reality or absolute truth. But there may be different ways in which one could model the same physical situation, with each employing different fundamental elements and concepts. If two such physical theories or models accurately predict the same events, one cannot be said to be more real than the other; rather, we are free to use whichever model is most convenient.  Tephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow
• Your perception of the world around you is not necessarily the same as what is actually occurring. Peter Ralston
• What you perceive through the five senses isn’t the same as reality. Go beyond the shadow play of appearances, and reality will greet you. Deepak Chopra
• People’s perceptions of me have nothing to do with reality. Art Alexakis

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Our ability to perceive gives us our very sense of existence

• The continuity of awareness is your perceptual field. Existence only occurs through the act of perception. Frederick Lenz
• Our awareness creates life. Life does not exist independently of perception. Frederick Lenz
• Life is perception. We perceive through different parts of the body of the universe. Frederick Lenz
• Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. Thomas Reid
• Perception not only defines existence, but it creates existence. It gives it form. Without perception there is no existence. Frederick Lenz
• Self is the perception of perception. Beyond self there’s no perception of perception. Frederick Lenz
• Even if I happen to be a brain in a vat at this moment—and all my memories are false, and all my perceptions are of a world that does not exist—the fact that I am having an experience is indisputable (to me, at least). Sam Harris
• Can there be perception, experience without you? An experience must ‘belong’. Somebody must come and declare it as his own. Without an experiencer, the experience is not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience. An experience which you cannot have, of what value is it to you? Nisargadatta Maharaj
• We are perceivers. We are an awareness; we are not objects; we have no solidity.  We are boundless.  The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. Michael Talbot

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What we perceive to be ourselves is nothing but a bundle of perceptions…

• I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. David Hume
• Perception is the ability to be conscious of self and that which is other than self. Without thinking about it, a distinction is made between who we are and what we perceive. Frederick Lenz
• There is no body as such. There is a series of sensations and perceptions appearing in Consciousness. Rupert Spira
• The body is nothing but sensations and visual perceptions arising in consciousness. Rupert Spira
• What is the body? A cluster of sensations and perceptions. But a sensation cannot be aware. Therefore, I cannot be that. I am what is aware of sensations and perceptions. Rupert Spira

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…arising in the awareness that we are

• Underneath the world of sense perceptions and the world of mind activity, there is the vastness of being. There’s a vast spaciousness. There’s a vast stillness and there’s a little ripple activity on the surface, which isn’t separate, just like the ripples are not separate from the ocean. Eckhart Tolle
• I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am. Eckhart Tolle
• Memories, perceptions, attitudes, desires—these are appearances in consciousness. Sam Harris
• Apart from the objects of perception, what also is there? You! The presence of you. Awareness itself.  Eckhart Tolle
• Underlying the sense-perceived universe there is the un-manifested life: the eternal one consciousness out of which every life form emerges. And you are that. Adyashanti

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The act of perception is indisputably real even if what we perceive is not reality

• Perception is real even when it is not reality.  Edward de Bono
• Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.  Albert Einstein
• Stick with your own perception of yourself—living in your own world—and letting your reality, not the reality presented by other people or particular situations, control your performance. John Eliot, Ph.D.
• Perception is reality to the one in the experience. Danielle Bernock
• There are no facts, only interpretations.  Friedrich Nietzsche
• Perception is reality, but it may not be actuality, and you have got to be able to keep the difference between that. Bill Cowher

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The human mind constantly interprets experiences …

• There is such dissociation between what the eyes see and what the mind envisions. The final thought is just a matter of interpretation, coloured by our experiences. Anirban Bose
• It’s not what you look at that matters… it’s what you see. Henry David Thoreau
• There are no facts, only interpretations. Friedrich Nietzsche
• The narrating self uses our experiences as important (but not exclusive) raw materials for its stories. These stories, in turn, shape what the experiencing self actually feels. Yuval Noah Harari
• Few facts in consciousness seem to be merely given. Most facts in consciousness seem to be partly made. A report is the joint product of the knower and known, in which the role of the observer is always selective and usually creative. The facts we see depend on where we are placed, and the habits of our eyes. Walter Lippmann
• Not people or events, but the beholding mind, is the sovereign agent in all human experience. See this until it becomes an absolute with you, and then you will have power—you will not give your power away to people and events and things. Ervin Seale
• Interpretation,  Experience

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… based on past experiences …

• Obviously, the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts. Philip Roth
• We do not experience reality directly. No one experiences reality directly. We all experience reality through our perceptual filters. We assign meaning to our experiences as they happen, and the meanings we give to our experiences are influenced by our attitudes and past experiences. Mandy Kloppers

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… greatly adding to the diversity of experience through the human form …

• Human perception, the way we mentally interpret what we sense, means you and I can share the same sensory experience, yet experience it very differently. It adds tremendous diversity to human experience.  Anthony Lambert
• Every person perceives the world differently. So essentially, there are six billion human versions of reality on this planet, each perceiving its own truth. Bruce H. Lipton
• Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you. Douglas Adams
• No two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is — in other words, not a thing, but a think. Penelope Fitzgerald
• No two persons can have the same experience, though they may express it in the same words. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• What makes reality personal is the unique way you mix and match qualia. No two people do this in exactly the same way. Take a common experience: You are walking down the street, and a big black dog suddenly runs in your direction. For person A this isn’t the same experience as for person B. Here are two possibilities. Person A was once bitten by a dog, remembers the pain of being bitten, avoids dogs, hears the black dog’s bark as threatening, and sees its open mouth as a weapon of attack. Person B is the dog’s owner, loves it, feels relieved that her missing dog has returned, hears its bark as a greeting, and sees its open mouth as a smile. Two different realities, each depending on the qualia that are made to fit like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Deepak Chopra
• In earlier chapters, we considered our construction of reality in terms of our sensory perception—the sounds, colors, and sensations we experience. The way in which we produce this picture of the world is more or less hard-wired into the brain. How we interpret this picture, however, varies considerably. You and I may assess a person’s actions in very different ways. We may read very different meanings into a news story, or see a situation at work in different lights. These varying interpretations stem from the beliefs, assumptions, and expectations we bring to the situation— what psychologists call our mind-sets.  Peter Russell
• We can all look at the same thing, yet see it differently. In this way, perception contributes to an enormous diversity in experience.  It is as if we all live in a separate world of our own.  Anthony Lambert
• Experience is subjective. No two persons can have the same experience, though they may express it in the same words. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world. Tony Robbins
• There is no fixed physical reality, no single perception of the world, just numerous ways of interpreting world. Deepak Chopra
• Diversity

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… greatly shaping and impacting the experiences themselves

• Experience is shaped by belief and belief is shaped by experience. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• Not people or events, but the beholding mind, is the sovereign agent in all human experience. Ervin Seale
• Perceptions, shaped by past experiences, shape present experiences. Anthony Lambert
• If the burn of lifting weights was a symptom of a disease, it would be intolerable. But because it is happening in the context of strenuous exercise and the progress it brings, it is enjoyed. The perceptual lens through which we view even intense experience changes the character of experience. Sam Harris

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The way we perceive things will greatly influence our experience of life

• The character of our life is based upon how we perceive it. Bruce H. Lipton
• Just like a single cell, the character of our lives is determined not by our genes but by our responses to the environmental signals that propel life. Bruce H. Lipton
• The way to reduce the pain which you associate with earthly experiences and events—both yours and those of others—is to change the way you behold them.  Neale Donald Walsch
• Where would I possibly find enough leather with which to cover the surface of the earth? Yet wearing leather just on the soles of my shoes Is equivalent to covering the earth with it. Shantideva
• We can control our lives by controlling our perceptions. Bruce H. Lipton
• Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it. Irving Berlin
• You respond to what you perceive, and as you perceive so shall you behave. A Course in Miracles
• Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one’s head. Mark Twain
• Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens. Khalil Gibran
• The life you are living is your creation, your perception of reality that you can change at any time. Dawn Abraham

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Almost all your happiness and unhappiness is determined by your perception of events, rather than the events themselves

• 95 percent of unhappiness is caused not by experiences but what your mind says about them Eckhart Tolle
• Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them. Leo Tolstoy
• How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depend directly on how to the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• I am never upset for the reason I think. A Course in Miracles
• I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them. Baruch Spinoza
• It is not the experiences of your life that determine your outcome. It is the meaning you attach to each experience. Jim Hartness
• It isn’t life’s events, but how one reacts to them and the attitude that one has about them, that determines whether such events have a positive or negative effect on one’s life, whether they’re experienced as opportunity or as stress. David R. Hawkins
• It’s not the events that shape my life that determine how I feel and act, but, rather, it’s the way I interpret and evaluate my life experiences. Tony Robbins
• Ninety-five percent of your emotions are determined by how you interpret events to yourself. Brian Tracy
• Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be. Wayne Dyer
• People are disturbed not by things, but the view they take of them. Epictetus
• The ego cannot distinguish between a situation and its interpretation of and reaction to that situation. You might say, “What a dreadful day,” without realizing that the cold, the wind, and the rain or whatever condition you react to are not dreadful. They are as they are. What is dreadful is your reaction, your inner resistance to it, and the emotion that is created by That resistance. In Shakespeare’s words, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” What is more, suffering or negativity is often misperceived by the ego as pleasure because… the ego strengthens itself through it.  Eckhart Tolle
• The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it. Elbert Hubbard
• The happiness you are seeking is not to be found in the flow of life, but in your attitude toward whatever life brings. Ramesh S Balsekar
• The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Eckhart Tolle
• The relish of good and evil depends in a great measure upon the opinion we have of them. Michel Eyquem de Michel de Montaigne
• There is such dissociation between what the eyes see and what the mind envisions. The final thought is just a matter of interpretation, coloured by our experiences. Anirban Bose
• Whether the events in our life are good or bad, greatly depends on the way we perceive them. Michel de Montaigne
• Happiness,  Well-being,  Unhappiness,  Suffering

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Most of your stress has its origins in your perceptions

• How we perceive a situation and how we react to it is the basis of our stress. If you focus on the negative in any situation, you can expect high stress levels. However, if you try and see the good in the situation, your stress levels will greatly diminish.  Catherine Pulsifer
• No one can create anger or stress within you. Only you can do that by virtue of how you process your world. Wayne Dyer
• It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.  Pema Chodron
• There are only two ways to handle tense situations: you can change them, or you can change the way you look at them.  Paul Wilson
• Although many situations and encounters can be distressing or anxiety- producing, it is important to reemphasize that the way we interpret these events or situations is the crux of the problem. What we tell ourselves about the event, about ourselves, and about the other person or people involved is far more crucial in determining our feelings and our state of mind than the event itself. Robert W. Firestone
• How we perceive a situation and how we react to it is the basis of our stress. If you focus on the negative in any situation, you can expect high stress levels. However, if you try and see the good in the situation, your stress levels will greatly diminish. Catherine Pulsifer
• The difference between a mountain and a molehill is your perspective. Al Neuharth
• Stress

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Most of your suffering has its origins in your perceptions

• If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.  Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
• To perceive is to suffer. Aristotle
• Suffering is not caused by the presence of certain circumstances or experiences, but by the mind’s interpretation of them. Suzanne Segal
• If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. Marcus Aurelius
• If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Suffering

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You can reduce the pain of an event by changing the way you perceive it

• Sometimes letting go is simply changing the labels you place on an event. Looking at the same event with fresh eyes. Steve Maraboli
• The way to reduce the pain which you associate with earthly experiences and events—both yours and those of others—is to change the way you behold them.  Neale Donald Walsch
• If you are troubled by external circumstances, it is not the circumstances that trouble you, but your own perception of them – and they are in your power to change at any time. Marcus Aurelius
• Within each experience of pain or negativity is the opportunity to challenge the perception that lies behind it, the fear that lies behind it, and choose to learn with wisdom. The fear will not vanish immediately, but it will disintegrate as you work with courage. When fear ceases to scare you, it cannot stay. When you choose to learn through wisdom, to evolve consciously, your fears surface one at a time in order for you to exorcise them with inner faith. This is how it happens. You exorcise your own demons. Gary Zukav
• Pain

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You can heal yourself by healing your perceptions

• Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal. A Course in Miracles
• Lipton’s research illustrates that by changing your perception, your mind can alter the activity of your genes and create over thirty thousand variations of products from each gene. He gives more detail by saying that the gene programs are contained within the nucleus of the cell, and you can rewrite those genetic programs through changing your blood chemistry. Bruce Lipton
• The moment you change your perception is the moment you rewrite the chemistry of your body. Bruce H. Lipton
• Oh my God. Lift me up out of this illusion, Lord. Heal my perception that I might know only reality and only you. Bill Hicks
• The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception. It will not endure. But for the time it lasts it comes to heal. For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. A Course in Miracles
• Healing,  Health

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You can change the past by perceiving it differently

• While you can’t change the past, you can change how you perceive it and what it means to you. Anthony Lambert
• No matter what has happened in your life, you have the power to change what that event means to you and thus, change your experience, both emotionally and physically. Therein lies your power to heal. Christiane Northrup
• Sometimes letting go is simply changing the labels you place on an event. Looking at the same event with fresh eyes. Steve Maraboli
• We cannot change past events, no matter how painful, but we can always intend how we ‘feel’ about them and heal ourselves. Robert Anthony
• The way to reduce the pain which you associate with earthly experiences and events—both yours and those of others—is to change the way you behold them. Neale Donald Walsch
• The past

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Recognise your power to interpret experiences in a more positive light

• If we perceive things from the perspective that everything we know is a construct of consciousness, everything changes. With this shift, whether or not we are at peace is no longer determined by what we have or do in the material world. We created our perception of the world. We have given it all the meaning and value it has for us. And, we are free to see it differently.  Peter Russell
• Sometimes, however, I recognize there could be another way of seeing things, but I don’t know what it is. I can’t make the shift on my own; I need help. But where do I go for help? Other people are as likely to be caught in this thought system as I am. The place to go for help is deep within, to that level of consciousness that lies beyond the materialistic mind-set — to the God within. I have to ask God for help. I have to pray. When I pray in this way, I am not asking for divine intervention by an external God. I am praying to the divine presence within, to my true self. Moreover, I am not praying for the world to be different than it is. I am praying for a different perception of the world. I am asking for divine intervention where it really counts—in the mindsets that govern my thinking. Peter Russell
• Best keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you see the world. George Bernard Shaw
• It is not the universe that needs improving, but your way of looking. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• Some trees grow straight, while others grow gnarled and twisted. Yet none are imperfect. Perfection is merely a perception. Donald L. Hicks
• A miracle is a shift in perception. A Course in Miracles
• Interpretation,  Positivity

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To change your world, change the projector (your mind), not the screen (the world out there)

• It’s impossible to even try to control everything in the world around us. Contrast this with the more manageable alternative of controlling the way we experience the world. David Michie
• Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to change the world so that they can be happy. This hasn’t ever worked, because it approaches the problem backward. What The Work gives us is a way to change the projector—mind—rather than the projected. It’s like when there’s a piece of lint on a projector’s lens. We think there’s a flaw on the screen, and we try to change this person and that person, whomever the flaw appears on next. But it’s futile to try to change the projected images. Once we realize where the lint is, we can clear the lens itself. This is the end of suffering, and the beginning of a little joy in paradise. Byron Katie
• Our minds project our memories, beliefs, thoughts, judgements, fears and desires onto the world. To change the world, change the projector, not the screen.  Anthony Lambert
• It is neither necessary, nor possible to change others. But if you can change yourself you will find that no other change is needed. To change the picture you merely change the film, you do not attack the cinema screen! Nisargadatta Maharaj
• These are all just thoughts. ‘Your’ complaints have nothing to do with reality. ‘Your’ complaints make up the story of ‘you.’ This story is projected outwards, just as a movie projector projects a movie onto a blank screen. Scott Kiloby
• The mechanism of perception is like a movie theater where the projector is consciousness itself. The forms on the film are the attractor energy patterns, and the moving pictures on the screen are the world that we perceive and call “reality.” We could say that the configurations on the film are the ABC attractor fields in mind and the moving picture on the screen is the A→B→C observed as the phenomenal world.   Because the world routinely applies its efforts to the screen of life at the level of A→B→C, these endeavors are ineffectual and costly.   David R. Hawkins
• Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see. A Course in Miracles
• It is not necessary to withdraw from the world but instead to recontextualize it. David R. Hawkins

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When you change the way you perceive the world, the world changes for you

• One has not only an ability to perceive the world but an ability to alter one’s perception of it; more simply, one can change things by the manner in which one looks at them.  Tom Robbins
• Things don’t change, only the way you look at them. Carlos Castaneda
• When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Wayne Dyer
• Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us. John Mitchell
• Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change along with it.  Steve Maraboli
• Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see. A Course in Miracles
• To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions. Stephen Covey
• If you can’t change reality, change your perceptions of it. Audre Lorde
• Transformation,  Change

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Life becomes so much easier if you choose to perceive it in a loving, positive light

• Love life and life will love you back. Arthur Rubinstein
• If we look at the world with a love of life, the world will reveal its beauty to us.  Daisaku Ikeda
• Life is like a mirror. Smile at it and it smiles back at you.   Peace Pilgrim
• The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.  Oprah Winfrey
• Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us. John Mitchell
• Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.   Wayne Dyer
• Peace in ourselves, peace in the world. Thich Nhat Hanh
• Love

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You are the window through which you see the world

• Best keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you see the world.  George Bernard Shaw
• If the windows of your spirit are dirty, and streaked, covered with matter foreign to them, then the world as you look out of them will be dirty and streaked and out of order. Go wash your windows.  Ralph Waldo Trine

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Examine the lens through which you see the world

• We must look at the lens through we see the world, as well as the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world. Stephen Covey
• Talking perceptions, people. Do we really see each other for what we really are, or do we just see what we want to see, the image distorted by our own personal lenses? Jeff Melvoin
• You have shit on your glasses. Seriously, those things are caked. Now, I’m not saying it to be mean or anything, I mean, I have shit on my glasses too, we all do.  Reality and perception are two completely different things, and your perception is distorted by the bullshit you consciously and subconsciously believe about what it is and what it should be.  Chris McCombs

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How you perceive an event is something you have conscious control over

• If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.  Marcus Aurelius
• By bringing about a change in our outlook toward things and events, all phenomena can become sources of happiness. The Dalai Lama
• As you inquire into issues and turn judgments around, you come to see that every perceived problem appearing ‘out there’ is really nothing more than a misperception within your own thinking. Byron Katie
• Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see. A Course in Miracles
• You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.  Maya Angelou
• The art of seeing has to be learned. Marguerite Duras
• To see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. Georgia O’Keeffe
• We made the world we’re living in and we have to make it over. James Baldwin
• Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas. Edward de Bono
• One has not only an ability to perceive the world but an ability to alter one’s perception of it; more simply, one can change things by the manner in which one looks at them.  Tom Robbins
• Perception is a powerful tool. Shannon Lee
• Living consciously,  Interpretation

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Perceive consciously in a state of awareness

• We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception.  Vernon Howard
• Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.  James Thurber
• Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. Bruce Lee
• Awareness

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Take responsibility for your perceptions

• What I had to learn was, that I’m responsible for my perception of things. Chris Robinson
• Responsibility

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Choose to perceive things in a way that empowers you, not weakens you

• It’s all invented anyway, so we might as well invent a story or a framework of meaning that enhances our quality of life and the life of those around us. Roz & Ben Zander
• Life is determined by how we interpret things so… we might as well choose the most empowering interpretation. Brian Johnson
• Here is an interesting exercise to help you become more aware of how you assign meaning. Whenever you feel unhappy or distressed, ask yourself what meaning you’ve placed on what seems to be causing your suffering. Consider what other meanings you could give this situation that would allow you to be happy… The meanings you give to things have consequences, so choose wisely. Bill Harris
• Once we see that everything is empty, we can choose to see the “hidden potential” in it—the “highest nature that a thing can have.” That’s a super powerful place to be.  Brian Johnson
• Make a game of finding something positive in every situation. Ninety-five percent of your emotions are determined by how you interpret events to yourself.  Brian Tracy
• The unhappiness we experience is not so much a result of the difficulties encountered along our journey as it is of our misperception of how life instructs us.  We may see a failed relationship as an indictment of our self- worth when it is really a lesson in using better judgment, in valuing ourselves more, in expressing greater appreciation for our partner– lessons to prepare us for a more loving and fulfilling union.  If we are passed over for a much- anticipated promotion, it may be just the push we need to get more training or to venture out on our own as an entrepreneur.  As we rise to meet the challenges that are a natural part of living, we awaken to our many undiscovered gifts, to our inner power and our purpose. Susan L. Taylor

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In your perceiving, don’t jump to conclusions for this blinds you to what is

• Preconception: An idea or opinion formed before enough information is available to form it correctly. Cambridge Dictionary
• Preconception: To form (an opinion) prior to actual knowledge or experience.  Merriam Webster
• We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception. Walter Lippmann
• Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom. Merry Browne
• Each thing we preconceive blinds us to what actually is — a tendency that, when it rises to the level of social perception in the form of stereotypes, metastasizes into a status quo that makes the powerful all the more powerful and the power-poor all the poorer. Maria Popova
• For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture. Walter Lippmann
• The subtlest and most pervasive of all influences are those which create and maintain the repertory of stereotypes. We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception. Walter Lippmann

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Be aware of the limits of your perception

• It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive. C. W. Leadbeater
• The new limitations are the human ones of perception. Milton Babbitt
• Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. Arthur Schopenhauer
• What you perceive through the five senses isn’t the same as reality. Go beyond the shadow play of appearances, and reality will greet you. Deepak Chopra
• Limitation

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Our perception is a kind of filter…

• Without a filter, a man is just chaos walking. Patrick Ness
• Try to be a filter, not a sponge. Stephen Chbosky
• We can only see what our brain’s filter allows through. Eben Alexander
• Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that. Alexandra Horowitz

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…which only allows in a small percentage of what is there

• The majority of human beings live their whole lives unaware that they are only seeing a limited cone of vision at any moment. David Eagleman
• We’re trapped on this very thin slice of perception … But even at that slice of reality that we call home, we’re not seeing most of what’s going on. David Eagleman
• The visible spectrum, from violet to red, that we can see with our eyes is a small part of a much bigger electromagnetic spectrum that we don’t perceive. Imagine the visible spectrum as one octave on a piano keyboard that represents the whole electromagnetic spectrum. How big do you think the keyboard would be? Think big. Think very big, because the keyboard would be hundreds of thousands of miles long. And all we see would be just one octave on it! Tim Freke
• It is one of the commonest of our mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all that there is to perceive. Charles Webster Leadbeater
• It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware. Albert Einstein
• Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. Our hearing extends to a small distance. Our sight is impeded by intervening bodies and shadows. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions. We must transmit our intelligence, travel, transport the materials and transfer the energies necessary for our existence. Nikola Tesla
• Perception is one millionth of one percent reality… Buckminster Fuller
• I am telling you that your perception of ultimate reality is more limited than you thought, and that Truth is more unlimited than you can imagine. Neale Donald Walsch
• The reality of you lies much beyond your sensory perceptions and boundaries. Amit Ray
• Right now, you are missing the vast majority of what is happening around you. You are missing the events unfolding in your body, in the distance, and right in front of you. Alexandra Horowitz
• I would find myself at once alarmed, delighted, and humbled at the limitations of my ordinary looking. My consolation is that this deficiency of mine is quite human. We see, but we do not see: we use our eyes, but our gaze is glancing, frivolously considering its object. We see the signs, but not their meanings. We are not blinded, but we have blinders. Alexandra Horowitz

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Don’t be ruled by the perceptions of others, even if they are commonly held

• Stick with your own perception of yourself—living in your own world—and letting your reality, not the reality presented by other people or particular situations, control your performance. John Eliot, Ph.D.
• No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit. Ansel Adams
• We are selling ourselves very short by funneling our energies into what the traditional perception is of academic and monetary success. Gunter Pauli
• Too often we colour our perception with other people’s pencils.  Tim Winter
• Approval seeking,  Conformity

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Problems are often simply misperceptions

• As you inquire into issues and turn judgments around, you come to see that every perceived problem appearing “out there” is really nothing more than a misperception within your own thinking. Byron Katie
• If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.  Abraham H. Maslow
• Problem solving

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Allow your perceptions to keep changing as you keep learning

• If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live and you’ll have a wonderful time doing it.  Eleanor Roosevelt
• The man who views the world at fifty, the same as he did at twenty, has wasted thirty years of his life.  Muhammed Ali
• Learning,  Open-mindedness

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Hold your perceptions lightly

• In Zen Buddhism, the greater your doubt, the greater will be your enlightenment. That is why doubt can be a good thing. If you are too sure, if you always have conviction, then you may be caught in your wrong perception for a long time. Thich Nhat Hanh

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Don’t confuse your perceptions with “facts” or “truth.”

• Your opinion is your opinion, your perception is your perception–do not confuse them with “facts” or “truth”. Wars have been fought and millions have been killed because of the inability of men to understand the idea that EVERYBODY has a different viewpoint. John Moore
• Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.  Albert Einstein
• There is no truth. There is only perception.  Gustave Flaubert
• People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth.  Roberto Bolaño
• Truth is universal. Perception of truth is not.
• There are no facts, only interpretations.  Friedrich Nietzsche
• There is no truth. Only points of view. Dame Edith Sitwell
• Your perception of the world around you is not necessarily the same as what is actually occurring. Peter Ralston
• Facts,  Truth,  Opinion

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Challenge and question your perceptions …

• I see the same sadness in the eyes of conformists as I do in the eyes of those convulsing radically in opposition. I talk to people that aren’t like me, individually, thoughtfully. And I listen. If I walk away from a conversation thinking differently than before I entered into it, I have succeeded in doing something that doesn’t compute. If I haven’t interacted and challenged what I know, resulting in a change of perception, I am still running my own set of stupid old programs.  Paul J. Schrag
• Within each experience of pain or negativity is the opportunity to challenge the perception that lies behind it, the fear that lies behind it, and choose to learn with wisdom. The fear will not vanish immediately, but it will disintegrate as you work with courage. Gary Zukav
• Question Your Paradigms, your perceptions of reality. Daniel N. Robinson
• Have you ever considered that your perception of reality could be wrong? If you haven’t, this is a pretty good sign that it is. Ernie J Zelinski
• We need continued new experiences throughout our life in order to develop a broader perspective. The world is constantly changing and how we see the world should also be changing. Our perceptions can sometimes stop us from moving forward, so they need to be challenged and changed if necessary. Phyllis Reardon
• Assumption,  Questions

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… by tearing down your assumptions, presumptions and defences

• Do you wish to see (perceive) nothing, or do you want to see things as they really are?  It is not hard to see things as they really are, it is simply a matter of tearing down walls, ridding oneself of defenses and presumption, rendering oneself vulnerable, an idiot, a fool. But it is not easy to see things as they really are, because it is painful, it is real, it requires response, it’s an incredible commitment. To go nine-tenths of the way is to suffer at every moment utter madness.  To go all the way is to become sane.  Most people prefer blindness. But most people are a dying race. Paul Williams

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Cleanse your perception …

• If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern. William Blake
• For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.  Thich Nhat Hanh
• Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world. George Bernard Shaw

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… especially through learning to still your mind …

• Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world. Hans Margolis
• Stillness

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… freeing your mind of excessive thought, conceptualisation and labels…

• There is an art of seeing things as they are: without naming, without being caught in a network of words, without thinking interfering with perception. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Once there is a distance between you and your thought process, a new freedom is born. With this freedom, a new perception arises. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
• But when we perceive without interpreting or mental labeling, which means without adding thought to our perceptions, we can actually still sense the deeper connectedness underneath our perception of seemingly separate things. Eckhart Tolle
• The more you perceive life through a mental screen of abstraction and conceptualization, the more lifeless and flat the world around you becomes. Eckhart Tolle
• Our ego uses concepts as filters to screen us from a direct perception of what is.  Chogyam Trungpa
• Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sound or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is. The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.  Eckhart Tolle
• In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better.  Edward de Bono
• As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind. Anthony de Mello
• Those who are highly evolved, maintain an undiscriminating perception.  Seeing everything, labeling nothing, they maintain their awareness of the Great Oneness.  Thus they are supported by it.  Lao Tzu
• Can you take the thinking out of the perceiving? Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out? Eckhart Tolle
• Here is the Source of light; nothing perceived, forgiven nor transformed. But merely known. A Course in Miracles
• The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you. Eckhart Tolle
• People don’t use their eyes. They never see a bird, they see a sparrow. They never see a tree, they see a birch. They see concepts. Joyce Cary
• Perception through emptiness is existential, as the transience of all phenomena affirms the indivisibility of existence itself, before, within and behind all manifestation. Georgi Y. Johnson
• Perception without the word, which is without thought, is one of the strangest phenomena. Then the perception is much more acute, not only with the brain, but also with all the senses. Such perception is not the fragmentary perception of the intellect nor the affair of the emotions. It can be called a total perception, and it is part of meditation. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Do you really need to mentally label every sense perception and experience? Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life where you are in almost continuous conflict with situations and people? Or is that just a deep-seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but by allowing this moment to be as it is. Eckhart Tolle
• To perceive is to categorize, to conceptualize is to categorize, to learn is to form categories, to make decisions is to categorize. Jerome
• Let go of the need to label and name

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… and freeing your mind of the need to constantly judge and evaluate

• We speak about what the Buddhists have always called ‘emptiness.’ We see, clearly, that nothing that ever happens to us is a good thing or a bad thing from its own side, because—if it were—then everyone else would experience it that way as well.  Geshe Michael Roach
• Let go of judgement,  Let go of the need to evaluate everything

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Strengthen your power of perception by being present in the moment

• The habit of ignoring our present moments in favor of others yet to come leads directly to a pervasive lack of awareness of the web of life in which we are embedded. This includes a lack of awareness and understanding of our own mind and how it influences our perceptions and our actions. It severely limits our perspective on what it means to be a person and how we are connected to each other and the world around us.   Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Presence,  Live in the present

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Consciously perceive things in a fresh, new way

• One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things. Henry Miller
• There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were and ask why not? Robert Kennedy
• The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.  Marcel Proust
• Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.  Albert Szent- Gyorgyi
• A great thought begins by seeing something differently, with a shift of the mind’s eye. Albert Einstein
• ..means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.  William James
• Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.  Edward de Bono
• One new perception, one fresh thought, one act of surrender, one change of heart, one leap of faith, can change your life forever. Robert Holden

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Perceive things as if perceiving them for the first time

• Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first time or last time. Then your time on Earth will be filled with joy. Betty Smith
• Do it like it’s the first time. A beginner’s mind is open and an open mind innovates. Danielle LaPorte
• Cultivate a beginner’s mind moment to moment. Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one’s consciousness, making of every image a privileged place. Albert Camus
• Begin to see what is in front of you, rather than what you learned is there. Stephen C. Paul
• Together, my dog and I became investigators of the ordinary, considering the block — the street and everything on it—as a living being that could be observed. In this way, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, and the old the new. Alexandra Horowitz
• Explore the familiar with new eyes

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New experiences can help you do this

• We need continued new experiences throughout our life in order to develop a broader perspective.  The world is constantly changing and how we see the world should also be changing. Our perceptions can sometimes stop us from moving forward, so they need to be challenged and changed if necessary.  Phyllis Reardon
• Embrace new experiences

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Art can help you to do this

• It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.  Anais Nin
• Through the experience of art, the powers of perception and transformation can be awakened, in both those who create it and those who re-perceive it. John Paul Caponigro
• Art brings a message into a room. It should make us perceive in a new way – either through color, form or narrative content – something we had not perceived before… and perhaps reveal something to you about yourself. Gloria Vanderbilt
• Art

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Humour can help you do this

• What the joke displays is a switch in perception. This is important in changing the way we think. Edward de Bono
• Humour,  Laughter

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Try to perceive things through another’s eyes …

• My third piece of advice is to cultivate a sense of empathy – to put yourself in other people’s shoes – to see the world from their eyes. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world. Barack Obama
• Seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another. Alfred Adler
• If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own. Henry Ford
• Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eye for an instant?  Henry David Thoreau
• I have wanted you to see out of my eyes so many times.  Elizabeth Berg
• Put yourself in the other man’s place and then you will know why he thinks certain things and does certain deeds.  Elbert Hubbard
• Seek to understand the other person, whether you or the other person is bringing the conflict to light. How do their personal energies and styles differ from yours?  What are their perspectives? What are their perceptions?   Gail Zack Anderson
• Empathy,  Compassion

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… but realise this is a challenging thing to do

• Anybody who’s ever gone through a hard time – any outsider’s perception, no matter how much information they’re given, they have no idea what the person’s life is like.  Amy Grant

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Open your eyes to possibilities

• Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities – always see them, for they’re always there. Norman Vincent Peale
• Do not say,”it is morning,” and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.  Rabindranath Tagore
• Possibility

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Open your eyes to the positive

• Whatever we focus on is bound to expand. Where we see the negative, we call forth more negative. And where we see the positive, we call forth more positive. Having loved and lost, I now love more passionately. Having won and lost, I now win more soberly. Having tasted the bitter, I now savor the sweet. Marianne Williamson
• Positivity,  Optimism

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Open your eyes to your own potential

• Genuine confidence is a way of thinking about yourself and your abilities. Confidence is your perception of your own potential; it’s a kind of long-term thinking that powers you through the obstacles and tough times, helping you solve problems and putting you in the way of success. Your confidence is quite a separate matter from your social skills. John Eliot, Ph.D.
• Potential

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Open your eyes to miracles, magic and wonder

• Miracles happen everyday, change your perception of what a miracle is and you’ll see them all around you. Jon Bon Jovi
• The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper. W.B. Yeats
• Miracles seem to rest, not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from far off, but upon our perceptions being made finer so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear that which is about us always. Willa Cather
• The appearance of things change according to the emotions and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.  Kahlil Gilbran
• Magic,  Wonder,  Life is a miracle

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Science is perception

• Science is nothing but perception. Plato
• Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated. George Santayana
• One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. Albert Einstein
• Every creative act – in science, art, or religion – involves a regression to a more primitive level, a new innocence of perception liberated from the cataract of accepted beliefs. Arthur Koestler
• True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion. Leo Tolstoy
• For in the immediate world, everything is to be discerned, for him who can discern it, and central and simply, without either dissection into science, or digestion into art, but with the whole of consciousness, seeking to perceive it as it stands: so that the aspect of a street in sunlight can roar in the heart of itself as a symphony, perhaps as no symphony can: and all of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiation of what is. James Agee
• Science

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Art is perceiving and revealing

• The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see. Edgar Degas
• Art is first a seeing and then a revealing. Sheldon Vanauken
• The painter who strives to represent reality must transcend his own perception. He must ignore or override the very mechanismsin his mind that create objects out of images(symbols)… The artist, like the eye, must provide true images and the clues of distance to tell his magic lies. Colin Blakemore
• An artist is a prophet and seer, not a paint craftsman or design maker, or reporter or entertainer… the artist has the superiorly searching perception with which that world outside of man’s contamination can be penetrated and the truth drawn out from it. Morris Graves
• Art is a conduit toward human needs and perception. John Maeda
• Art is really about perception, and mine have been changed through visiting other realities. Fred Tomaselli
• A work of art doesn’t exist outside the perception of the audience. Abbas Kiarostami
• Art reminds us that in fact the world always exceeds our grasp and perception. Jeremy Begbie
• One can re-create what was in the mind of a mathematician a thousand years ago, recapture the truth of the intellect wherever it may have once come to light; but the image of art, that infinite variable of perception and expression in the individual, – that is not easily re-created, at least, not with certainty and in its original fulness. George Edward Woodberry
• It’s not the medium, but the quality of perception and expression, that determines the significance of art. Bill Watterson
• Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist. Ned Rorem
• What we call art would seem to be specialist artifacts for enhancing human perception. Marshall McLuhan
• A blind man can make art if what is in his mind can be passed to another mind in some tangible form. Sol LeWitt
• The stuff of thought is the seed of the artist. Dreams form the bristles of the artist’s brush. As the eye functions as the brain’s sentry, I communicate my innermost perceptions through the art, my worldview. Arshile Gorky
• To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large-This is the experience of inestimable value to everyone. Aldous Huxley
• The artist’s mission is to make the soul perceptible. Our scientific, materialist culture trains us to develop the eyes of outer perception. Visionary art encourages the development of our inner sight. To find the visionary realm, we use the intuitive inner eye: The eye of contemplation; the eye of the soul. All the inspiring ideas we have as artists originate here. Alex Grey
• Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes… Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into unknown areas. Arshile Gorky
• Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‘the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.’ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‘Artist.’ Edgar Allan Poe
• That is what the title of artist means: one who perceives more than his fellows, and who records more than he has seen. Edward Gordon Craig
• If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul. Paul Cezanne
• I communicate my innermost perceptions through art. Arshile Gorky
• The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is disdained because it is not assumed to involve thought. Rudolf Arnheim
• Art

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…through radical observing and seeing…

• Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it ‘creative observation.’ Creative viewing. William S. Burroughs
• Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and the man of talent sees two or three, plus the ability to register that multiple perception in the material of his art. Ezra Pound
• It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. Henry David Thoreau
• In my art, I deconstruct and then I reconstruct, so visual perception is one of my primary interests. Chuck Close
• It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that the artist can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out. Lucian Freud
• The locus of the human mystery is perception of this world. From it proceeds every thought, every art. Marilynne Robinson
• Art doesn’t begin with a brush and a palette, but with the artist’s ability to perceive life. You have to learn how to live before you can learn how to paint. Dean Mitchell
• Observation

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…through organising and ordering perception

• Organized perception is what art is all about. – Roy Lichtenstein
• Chaos in nature is immediately challenging and forces a good artist to impose some type of order on his or her perception of a site. Wolf Kahn
• Order

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Art awakens, renew and deepens the perception of those who create it and experience it…

• Through the experience of art, the powers of perception and transformation can be awakened, in both those who create it and those who re-perceive it. John Paul Caponigro
• It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.  Anais Nin
• Art’s effect is due to the tension resulting from the clash of the collocation of elements of two (or more) systems of interpretation. This conflict has the function of breaking down automatism of perception and occurs simultaneously on the many levels of a work of art … All levels may carry meaning. Yuri Lotman
• Art is a tool by which society extends its perception. Arne Glimcher
• What we call art would seem to be specialist artifacts for enhancing human perception. Marshall McLuhan
• A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment. Beverly Sills
• All art is fundamentally subversive, because it upsets people’s perceptions, their notions about society. Therefore, art is dangerous, but good art is always making us reassess our thoughts and feelings about how we relate to other people. There are always people who fear that and want to suppress that. John Boorman
• Art brings a message into a room. It should make us perceive in a new way – either through color, form or narrative content – something we had not perceived before… and perhaps reveal something to you about yourself. Gloria Vanderbilt
• A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips and teaches us to perceive reality differently. John Edgar Wideman
• One begins to realize that art… in setting out to express nature with ever growing accuracy, teaches us to look, to perceive, to feel. The stone itself becomes an organic substance, and one can feel it being transformed as one moment in its life succeeds another. Georges Clemenceau
• … what is important is not so much what people see in the gallery or the museum, but what people see after looking at these things, how they confront reality again. Really great art regenerates the perception of reality; the reality becomes richer, better or not, just different. Gabriel Orozco

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…penetrating into the reality of things

• Only art penetrates … the seeming realities of this world. Saul Bellow
• There is another reality, the genuine one, which we lose sight of. This other reality is always sending us hints, which without art, we can’t receive. Pablo Neruda
• Reality,  Truth

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… by making us think and feel

• Tolstoy’s definition of art is the inverse of the truth; the task of art is to transform not perception into feeling, but feeling into perception. Raphael Soyer
• Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man’s reasonable perception into feeling. Leo Tolstoy
• A work of art is finished, from the point of view of the artist, when feeling and perception have resulted in a spiritual synthesis. Hans Hofmann
• What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes of perception and making whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel; art that isn’t merely sensational, that doesn’t get its message across in ten seconds, that isn’t falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep-running in our natures. In a word, art that is the very opposite of mass media. Robert Hughes
• Art grows out of modes of perception that make you feel and think…that hooks on to something deep-running in our natures. Robert Hughes
• A work of visionary art can shock a person out of their normal thinking patterns and help them to see the world in a new way, helping them to transfigure their perception of reality. Obviously, it’s only one of many potential catalysts to healing and transformation, but I think it can be a significant one. Alex Grey
• In our age the common religious perception of men is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man – we know that the well-being of man lies in the union with his fellow men. True science should indicate the various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should transform this perception into feeling. Leo Tolstoy
• Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen. Pablo Picasso

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Photography is about perception

• A photographer’s art is more in his perceptions than his execution. In a painter, I think the perception is only the first step, and then you have a kind of hard road of execution. Jay Maisel
• Neither camera, nor lens, nor film determine the quality of pictures; it is the visual perception of the man behind the mechanism which brings them to life. Art contains the allied ideas of making and begetting, of being master of one’s craft and able to create. Without these properties no art exists and no photographic art can come into being. Helmu Gernsheim
• We perceive and interpret the outer world through a set of incredibly fine internal receptors. But we are incapable, by ourselves, of grasping or tweezing out any permanent, sharable figment of it. Practically speaking, we ritually verify what is there, and are disposed to call it reality. But, with photographs, we have concrete proof that we have not been hallucinating all our lives. Max Kozloff
• Photography

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We perceive the world though our senses, never directly

• Sense-perceptions can only be indirect knowledge, and not direct knowledge. Only one’s own awareness is direct knowledge. Ramana Maharshi
• Perception is like painting a scenery – no matter how beautifully you paint, it will still be a painting of the scenery, not the scenery itself. Abhijit Naskar
• One of the most pervasive mistakes is to believe that our visual system gives a faithful representation of what is “out there” in the same way that a movie camera would. David Eagleman
• We assume that the representation that we experience is much like the world “out there,” what Kant called the “thing in itself.” But it turns out that the two are totally different. Take the color green, for example. In the physical world there is light of a particular frequency, but the light itself is not green. Nor are the electrical impulses that travel from the eye to the brain. The green you see is merely the representation that appears in consciousness. There is no green “out there.” The same is true of our other senses—hearing, smell, taste, touch. The phenomena we experience do not exist in the world out there. They exist only in awareness. I’m not suggesting that the physical world does not exist, only that it is very different from our experience of it. We mistake the representation for reality. Peter Russell
• Without consciousness, there exists no colour, no brightness, no sound, no taste, no smell… no hot nor cold, no smooth nor rough. So what is physical reality without consciousness? What is it, without a mind to perceive it? Since a physical universe doesn’t actually have any of the properties we perceive, and all those properties exist only in our mind, what sense does it even make to say the physical universe existed and evolved before there was any mind? Scott Owen
• For most people, it is simply taken for granted that our perceptions of colour, brightness, tone, volume, taste, smell and touch are actual attributes of the world around us, when in fact they are all mental overlays.  Scott Owen
• Green, screeching, bitter, pungent, hot: none of these are actual attributes of anything physical, they are all experiences created entirely by our mind. Scott Owen
• Every bit of our body is experienced — sensed — by our mind in the same way we sense everything outside our skin, namely entirely a perception in our mind. Scott Owen
• If all that we see ‘out there’ is just electromagnetic radiation, with no colour or brightness, why do we see that image out there? That is to say, why aren’t we aware of the fact that the actual image which our mind created is in our mind? Since the image is created in our mind, why don’t we see it like a projection on a screen in a cinema within the mind? Somehow our mind is very adept at creating the illusion that the overlay is outside itself. Scott Owen
• At best we can say that what we see ‘out there’ is a mental overlay we create to make sense of an entirely ‘dark’ reality filled with electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths. The picture as we see it exists only in our mind. Indeed, the picture we see doesn’t even exist in our brain — if you cut open a brain you will find no ‘screen’, no picture, no place where that image exists in its entirety, not even individual coloured pixels scattered about. Without consciousness, there is no picture. The picture is a purely conceptual interpretation of entirely ‘dark’ radiation. Who is doing the conceptual interpretation — the viewing — of that image, and where is it? Scott Owen
• The reality we perceive through the senses is very limited. Our senses can only perceive a tiny band of the spectrum of vibrating energies within which we exist like fish in the sea. In our day-to-day, sense-revealed existence, we are mostly blind. We cannot sensorily perceive the sea of energy interpenetrating our physical bodies that connects us to everything. Joseph Selbie
• Our entire perception of a physical reality is an illusion — none of the physical things we see, hear, feel, taste, smell actually has those qualities our mind gives them. Nothing has that colour green we see, nothing has that sound we hear. Underneath it all, even knowing that our mind creates elaborate overlays in order to navigate reality. Scott Owen
• The world is not just a bit different from what we perceive, it is actually totally and fundamentally otherwise. Scott Owen
• We are accustomed to referring to sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch as “senses”. But in reality we don’t sense what is ‘out there’, we quite literally make sense of it. We create qualities in our mind which are not actually ‘out there’ — outside our mind. We are so accustomed to our perceptions that it can be very difficult at first to separate them from the reality of what we are perceiving. For most people, it is simply taken for granted that our perceptions of colour, brightness, tone, volume, taste, smell and touch are actual attributes of the things themselves, when in fact they are all mental overlays. Scott Owen
• The mind constructs our reality. It interprets what is our there into experiences. What is out there?  Electro-Magnetic radiation and elementary particles. Sound waves.  Scott Owen
• We open our eyes and we think we’re seeing the whole world out there. But what has become clear—and really just in the last few centuries—is that when you look at the electro-magnetic spectrum we are seeing less than 1/10 Billionth of the information that’s riding on there. So we call that visible light. But everything else passing through our bodies is completely invisible to us. Even though we accept the reality that’s presented to us, we’re really only seeing a little window of what’s happening. David Eagleman
• The first lesson about trusting your senses is: don’t. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it’s true, that doesn’t mean it is true. David Eagleman
• We must remember that we do not observe nature as it actually exists, but nature exposed to our methods of perception. The theories determine what we can or cannot observe…Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one. Albert Einstein
• If you assert that the world exists, it is your burden to prove that it does. The opponent has only to deny it, until the existence is proved beyond doubt. Ultimately, even if you give up all argument and say ‘I know the world and so it must exist’, that also cannot hold good, because you cannot know any object except through one of the sense organs. When this is so, it proves again that it is that sense perception or sense alone that is known, and not the object nor the world. Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon
• We never directly experience the world around us. All we ever know are the contents of consciousness, the thoughts, feelings, perceptions and sensations that appear in the mind. Peter Russell
• The senses,  Exploring the nature of the world I experience

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The world we perceive is constructed by our brains…

• Even though it is common knowledge in our field of Neuroscience, I take immense pleasure every time I realize that our perception of the whole universe emerges from the activity of the little specks of jelly inside our skull. Abhijit Naskar
• The concern of your brain is not to see the actual nature of reality, but to represent the reality to you in such a way that suits your needs. Abhijit Naskar
• What if I told you that the world around you, with its rich colors, textures, sounds, and scents is an illusion, a show put on for you by your brain? If you could perceive reality as it is, you would be shocked by its colorless, odorless, tasteless silence. Outside your brain, there is just energy and matter. David Eagleman
• The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants. Daniel Gilbert
• If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. The Matrix
• Our experience of the world is a representation of reality created by the brain. In essence, the senses respond to stimuli in their environment, passing that information along to the brain, where it is analyzed and processed, and a model constructed of the world “out there.” This representation of reality then appears in conscious experience as the 3-D, full-color, surround-sound, touchy-feely world that we know. Peter Russell
• We live in a world our minds build rather than actually perceiving the endless details of what is happening. Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson
• Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality. Anil Seth
• You´re not perceiving what’s out there. You’re perceiving whatever your brain tells you. David Eagleman
• Constant reminding ourselves that we not see with our eyes but with our synergetic eye-brain system working as a whole will produce constant astonishment as we notice, more and more often, how much of our perceptions emerge from our preconceptions. David Eagleman
• Our reality depends on what our biology is up to. David Eagleman
• The mind is the seat of perception of the things we see, hear, and feel. It is through the mind that we see the beauties of the earth and sky, or music, of art, in fact, of everything. That silent shuttle of thought working in and out through cell and nerve weaves into one harmonious whole the myriad moods of mind, and we call it life. Charles Fillmore
• The brain is the citadel of sense perception. Pliny the Elder
• All that I perceive—everything I see, hear, taste, touch, and smell—has been reconstructed from sensory data. I think I am perceiving the world around me, but all that I am directly aware of are the colours, shapes, sounds, and smells that appear in the mind. Peter Russell
• All that you experience (perceive) “out there” is not out there but in your head. All is an interpretation of the brain in your head that puts it all together. Out there might as well not even be there. Scott Kiloby
• Our image of reality is more than physical reality in that it contains many qualities not present in physical reality. The green we see is a quality created in consciousness. It exists only as a subjective experience in the mind.  There is no sound in the physical reality, simply pressure waves in the air. Sound exists only as an experience in the mind of a perceiver.  Peter Russell

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… and is made entirely of perception (mind-stuff), not matter

• We know only our perceptions. Robert Lanza
• Nothing is perceived except perceptions themselves, and nothing exists outside of consciousness. Robert Lanza
• Our objective experience consists of thoughts and images, which we call the mind; sensations, which we call the body; and sense perceptions, which we call the world. In fact, we do not experience a mind, a body or a world. We experience thinking, sensing and perceiving. All that we perceive are our perceptions. We have no evidence that a world exists outside our perception of it. We do not perceive a world ‘out there’. We perceive our perception of the world, and all perception takes place in Consciousness.  Rupert Spira
• Sensations and perceptions are made out of mind – that is, they are made out of sensing and perceiving. There is no other substance to them than sensing and perceiving.  Rupert Spira
• We do not perceive a world outside Consciousness. The world is our perception of the world. There is no evidence that there is a world outside the perception of it, outside Consciousness. Rupert Spira
• We never experience a world made of matter. Our experience of the world is always made entirely of perception.  Anthony Lambert
• We never perceive the world – we perceive perception. The world is apparent. No independent world comes into existence. Rupert Spira
• We think the world we see around us is composed of matter. As far as the actual physical reality is concerned, this may be so—uncertain though we may be as to the ultimate nature of this matter. But the world we perceive around us is not the physical world. The world we actually know is the world that takes form in our minds; this world is not made of matter, but of mind stuff. Everything we know, perceive, and imagine, every colour, sound, sensation, thought, and feeling, is a form that consciousness has taken on. As far as this world is concerned, everything is structured in consciousness.  Peter Russell
• When we say that we perceive an object, we mean that that object appears in Consciousness. It is a perception appearing in Consciousness. Rupert Spira

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The world we perceive is as much a creation of the mind as our dreams are

• Waking perceptions are on a par with dream perceptions. Sri Satchidanandrenda
• Our perception of the world has the very convincing appearance of being “out there” around us, but it is no more “out there” than are our nightly dreams. In our dreams we are aware of sights, sounds and sensations happening around us. We are aware of our bodies. We think and reason. We feel fear, anger, pleasure and love. We experience other people as separate individuals, speaking and interacting with us. The dream appears to be happening “out there” in the world around us. Only when we awaken do we realize that it was all just a dream–a creation in the mind. When we say “it was all just a dream” we are referring to the fact that the experience was not based on physical reality. It was created from memories, hopes, fears, and other factors. In the waking state, our image of the world is based on sensory information drawn from our physical surroundings. This gives our waking experience a consistency and sense of reality not found in dreams. But the truth is, it is as much a creation of our minds as are our dreams.  Peter Russell
• Dreams,  Life is God’s dream

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The existence of a world independent of our perceptions is an assumption, not an indisputable reality

• It seems that men are carried by a natural instinct or prepossession to repose faith in their senses, and that without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external universe which depends not on our perception but would exist though we and every creature were absent or annihilated. David Hume
• There is no proof of a world independent of perception. Yet me assume it is there. Rupert Spira
• To the ordinary man, the only evidence available regarding the existence of the world is the evidence offered by the five sense organs. It is ‘evidence’ that is taken up here, and examined to show that it does not prove the world at all. But it proves only sense perceptions, or the senses themselves. In other words, the evidence proves nothing but the evidence. Therefore, it is no evidence at all, as far as the fact to be proved is concerned. Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon
• We believe that objects exist independently of their being perceived, that Consciousness is personal and limited, that it is a by-product of the mind and that the mind is a by-product of the body. These and many other such beliefs are considered to be so obviously true that they are beyond the need of questioning. They amount to a religion of materialism to which the vast majority of humanity subscribes. Rupert Spira

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Some even argue the wold does not exist independently of our perception of it

• To be is to be perceived. George Berkeley
• Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes.  Marianne Williamson
• The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. Since, however, sense perception only gives information of this external world or of “physical reality” indirectly, we can only grasp the latter by speculative means. It follows from this that our notions of physical reality can never be final. We must always be ready to change these notions – that is to say, the axiomatic basis of physics – in order to do justice to perceived facts in the most perfect way. Albert Einstein
• If all that we ever know are the sensory images that appear in our minds, how can we be sure there is a physical reality behind our perceptions? Is it not just an assumption? Peter Russell
• Nothing you perceive around you—not this page, not this room, not this house—has any reality except through you. Deepak Chopra
• Without any organism, what if anything is really there? Existence must begin with life and perception.  Indeed, what could existence mean, absent consciousness of any kind?  Robert Lanza
• Without perception, there can be no reality. Robert Lanza
• Consciousness

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They argue that even time and space and time exist only as perceptions

• In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them. They are modes of perception, but they are not the only ones. Time and space are like words written on paper; the paper is real, the words merely a convention. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• We find that space means nothing apart from our perception of objects, and time means nothing apart from our experience of events. Space begins to appear merely as a fiction created by our own minds. Sir James Jeans

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Expanded perception is perception through the soul

• Just as in the body, eye and ear develop as organs of perception, as senses for bodily processes, so does a man develop in himself soul and spiritual organs of perception through which the soul and spiritual worlds are opened to him. For those who do not have such higher senses, these worlds are dark and silent, just as the bodily world is dark and silent for a being without eyes and ears. Rudolf Steiner
• It is not the eye that sees the beauty of the heaven, nor the ear that hears the sweetness of music or the glad tidings of a prosperous occurrence, but the soul, that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions. Jeremy Taylor
• The soul

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Higher states of consciousness lead to expanded perception

• Pure consciousness is life before it comes into manifestation and that life looks at the world of form through your eyes because consciousness is who you are. When you know yourself as that, then you recognize yourself in everything. It is a state of complete clarity of perception. You are no longer an entity with a heavy past that becomes a screen of concepts through which every experience is interpreted. When you perceive without interpretation, you can then sense what it is that is perceiving. The most we can say in language is that there is a field of alert stillness in which the perception happens. Through you, formless consciousness has become aware of itself. Eckhart Tolle
• The fluent, liberating, creative, healing attributes of the altered states can be incorporated into consciousness. We are just beginning to realize that we can truly open the doors of perception and creep out of the cavern. Marilyn Ferguson
• Consciousness

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The arising of intuition is expanded perception

• Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality. Alexis Carrel
• Always let intuitive perception precede analysis. Walter Darby Bannard
• The artist’s mission is to make the soul perceptible. Our scientific, materialist culture trains us to develop the eyes of outer perception. Visionary art encourages the development of our inner sight. To find the visionary realm, we use the intuitive inner eye: The eye of contemplation; the eye of the soul. All the inspiring ideas we have as artists originate here. Alex Grey
• Perceive that which cannot be seen with the eye. Miyamoto Musashi
• Intuition

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The arising of insight is a form of expanded perception

• The highest exercise of imagination is not to devise what has no existence, but rather to perceive what really exists, though unseen by the outward eye–not creation, but insight. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• If you have insight, you use your inner eye, your inner ear, to pierce to the heart of things, and have no need of intellectual knowledge. Zhuangzi
• Anytime new insight replaces an old assumption or a fossilized perception is the spring. New understandings sprout, new tolerances appear, and new curiosity draws you to previously dark places. Gary Zukav
• Insights and perceptions pass through the mind like fleet fireflies. Lit for an instant, then gone back into the dark. Leonard Bishop
• Multi-sensory perception is also the ability to see meaning in everyday experiences…You have non-physical guides and teachers. You access them through your intuition. You hear them ‘so to speak’ through your insights, inspirations, and clarity. Non-physical teachers cannot control you. You must always decide for yourself how you will use your energy, what you will create. They will assist you to see your choices and the consequences of each. They will guide you to the full scope and depth of your power. How you use your power is up to you. Gary Zukav
• What sets you apart from the rest of humanity is your ability to give visual form to an idea – the skill to transform it into something more than merely the insight or perception alone. Richard Schmid
• It takes mystical insight to see the beauty and innocence in each other, even when that is not what we are showing to the world. That is why God is needed in intimate relationships, to move us beyond the perceptions that can so often poison love. Marianne Williamson
• Science corrects the old creeds, sweeps away, with every new perception, our infantile catechisms, and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses yet it does not surprise the moral sentiment that was older and awaited expectant these larger insights. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Insight

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The arising and recognition of wisdom is a form of expanded perception

• It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is unobstructive: without the latter it is deceptive. Richard Whately
• Knowledge builds on the past and has its place. Wisdom is beyond time. It’s the direct perception of reality as it is. And in this direct seeing of what is lies the potential of transformation-a transformation that is not merely a redecoration of the past but a transformation of humanity that embodies the eternally new. E Davey
• Clarity is the perception of wisdom and the ability to see the soul in action in the physical world. It turns pain into suffering and evaporates fear. Clarity allows you to see the world of physical matter for what it is, a learning experience that is created jointly by the intentions of the souls that share it. Gary Zukav
• Wisdom

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The perception of truth is a form of expanded perception

• In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin. Henry David Thoreau
• No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• I never can feel certain of any truth, but from a clear perception of its beauty. John Keats
• There’s a truth deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. Gregory David Roberts
• Religious truth is reached, not by reasoning, but by an inward perception. Anyone can reason; only disciplined, educated, formed minds can perceive. John Henry Newman
• Truth travels down from the heights of philosophy to the humblest walks of life, and up from the simplest perceptions of an awakened intellect to the discoveries which almost change the face of the world. At every stage of its progress it is genial, luminous, creative. Edward Everett
• You must have absolute faith in your own perceptions of truth. Never act in haste or hurry; be deliberated in everything; wait until you know the true way. Wallace D. Wattles
• At times the truth shines so brilliantly that we perceive it as clear as day. Our nature and habit then draw a veil over our perception, and we return to a darkness almost as dense as before. We are like those who, though beholding frequent flashes of lightning, still find themselves in the thickest darkness of the night. Maimonides
• Truth

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A sense of beauty is a form of expanded perception

• Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing. Camille Pissarro
• The perception of beauty is a moral test. Henry David Thoreau
• The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this. William Wordsworth
• To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe — to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it — is a wonder beyond words. Joanna Macy
• It is that faculty by which we discover and enjoy the beautiful, the picturesque, and the sublime in literature, art, and nature; which recognizes a noble thought, as a virtuous mind welcomeffs a pure sentiment by a involuntary glow of satisfaction. But while the principle of perception is inherent in the soul, it requires a certain amount of knowledge to draw out and direct it. Robert Aris Willmott
• The power of admiring whatever is deserving of admiration, the nice and quick perception of the beautiful and the true, is one of the highest and noblest of our faculties, born of taste, and knowledge, and wisdom, or rather it is taste, and wisdom, and knowledge, in one rare and great combination. Mary Russell Mitford
• Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. Aldo Leopold
• The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way… As a man is, so he sees. William Blake
• Beauty

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A sense of awe and reverence is a form of expanded perception

• Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine. … to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. Abraham Joshua Heschel
• Reverence is a perception of the soul. Gary Zukov
• Awe,  Perseverance

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A sense of oneness is a form of expanded perception

• People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one’s perception of reality. Nhat Hanh
• There are sacred moments in life when we experience in rational and very direct ways that separation, the boundary between ourselves and other people and between ourselves and Nature, is illusion. Oneness is reality. We can experience that stasis is illusory and that reality is continual flux and change on very subtle and also on gross levels of perception . . . When people bother you in any way, it is because their souls are trying to get your divine attention and your blessing. Catherine Ponder
• Oneness

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The arising of love is a form of expanded perception

• Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality. Iris Murdoch
• Love

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Perceiving ourselves and others clearly is a form of expanded perception

• How you perceive yourself is how others will see you.  Paul Arden
• To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves. Aldous Huxley
• You should look out from the perception of your own holiness to the holiness of others. A Course in Miracles
• No one but yourself knows whether you are cowardly and cruel, or loyal and devout; others do not see you; they surmise you by uncertain conjectures; they perceive not so much your nature as your art. Michel de Montaigne

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Multi-sensory perception is expanded perception

• As you begin to feel this enormous shift of consciousness, called multisensory perception, emerging in your awareness, you begin to reorient yourself. It’s a reorientation that occurs toward yourself as more than a mind and a body; it’s a reorientation that occurs toward others; toward your life as meaningful, rather than predetermined. It’s a reorientation that occurs toward the universe as alive, wise and compassionate, instead of inert (which means dead) and random. Gary Zukov
• There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago. Robert Oppenheimer

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• Too often we colour our perception with other people’s pencils.  Tim Winter
• I don’t have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.

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