Our capacity for perception is given based on our capability to learn, organize and discriminate truth from the untruth. Perception can come from the senses or through subtle revelation.
Your perception opens a reality for you to dwell in. If you perceive life as suffering, you will consciously or unconsciously create an atmosphere where you see suffering everywhere, where you try to avoid suffering, to receive suffering, and to make others suffer.
Your perception is a powerful constructor of your reality. Once the reality has been constructed, you will wish to inhabit it, to become part of it, to protect it and to defend it. It does not matter how painful your constructed reality is; its very core is formed by the way that you perceive yourself and your life. You treat your constructed reality like a love relationship, which you are attached to and that you see no way out of.
As your perception changes, you change your chemistry, your outlook, your projection and mostly, the world that you inhabit. One aspect of the alchemy of the seeker is to be able to recognize the perception that is shaping the reality that they inhabit, and, through a change in perception, to make a complete and total modification of their reality.
The Stages of Perception:
- The Mechanical Self: In this plane of existence, you respond to external influences without really questioning your reality. You follow the masses and your actions are directed toward pleasing the masses, exploiting the masses or rebelling against the masses. You find comfort in being like everyone else and you believe that your existence is the correct reality, where others either approve or disapprove of you. Your aim in life is to work, to survive, to produce as you are told to and to deny your own rights and feelings. You are conformist and complacent..
- The Human Self: On the human plane, you are guided by the limitations of your deformed ego (the individual self). You suffer from duality, or the constant pull and push of right and wrong. You are driven by a thirst for power, and you are attached to what you have, what you know or what you do. You are in conflict and your experiences become loops without any real solutions. You try your best to go out of your suffering through effort, interventions and a constant drive towards perfection.
The plane of the human self is created when we believe that we can control the many modifications that our consciousness will naturally undergo.) Our sense of effort creates inner agendas and divorces you from you natural self.
The plane of the human self does not really possess any divine alchemy, but simply repeats the same patterns of response in different fields. Actions (karma) create more actions and exhaust our true potential for alchemy. At this level, you still perceive your reality as the consequence of external influences.
The bright side of human plane is that our pain here can be so intense that you have the opportunity to see that it’s not you, but a game of the identified mind. You have the opportunity to liberate yourself from pain and to obtain a perception that you are not your experiences or consequences of the past.
Both the mechanical and the human stage of perception are in the state of energetic subdivision. They do not generate a life force of their own, but are like hungry ghosts seeking the forces of life and love. The only way out of these stages is by inquiring into the nature of pain and reality. This inquiry has to be sustained by a commitment toward being lucid and toward providing the self with the proper frame of life.
- The Semi-God Plane: In this plane of reality you make the great step to be in-charge of your reality. You don’t blame anyone for your misery, your happiness and your experiences. You maneuver your experiences with dexterity, security and take the safe and proper steps to liberate yourself from your human pool. In this plane of existence you have turn your experiences into wisdom and you self-direct yourself from a place of inner knowing and a truth based in facts instead of imagination. Your mind is less deluded and a wind of fresh air gives you equanimity, freedom from worries, from quilt and assumptions. You are sensitive to the real needs of your life and you obey beyond likes and dislikes. You had overcome biological attachments and your chakra system uses certain amount of alchemy to manifest your potentials and capabilities. You learn to apply in the right field effort and effortless. The semi-god is partially aware of his power of creation.
- The God Plane: In this plane of perception, you truly abandon all other planes and direct yourself towards the consecration of your life. At the level of Earth, your skills become specialized and you are unattached to earthly outcomes. You relate to infinity as your source, and you communicate in a steady and constant way.
In the God plane, your communication and perception is paradoxical instead of polarized. You don’t feel obliged to respond to human dynamics and you preserve your divine nature. Your level of alchemy increases, as you are able to regenerate your body and to purify others through your very presence. The creative force of the source is present in any field that you touch and the irrational mind becomes calm, centered and knowing.
This state of perception is characterized by surrender, detachment from identity and the abandonment of control. Desirelessness and effortlessness are the forms of its purity. The god plane arrives out of humbleness, usually after the confrontation and abandonment of pride.
- The Mastery Plane: Perception at this level is of no perception. The manifest and the un-manifest universe are witnessed and there is no definition of reality being entertained. Form, non-form and all dimensions are in a state of belonging. You are everywhere and in everyone and you are undivided to all. Your infinity is firmly established in the macro and micro aspects of creation.
In the mastery stage of perception, you are like a witness but without any real organ of perception. You are both in tremendous stillness and in infinite movement. All stages of consciousness are born from you, you are in all of them, you are the mother of all of them and you rejoice in this diversity.
Divine alchemy “uses” your existence to recreate itself, to destroy itself and to preserve itself. You are one with existence and you have no interest in perceiving it self . Just as a child is not interested in declaring itself as a child, you live as an innocent expression of the eternal probabilities within all existing beings.
The plane of mastery is the universe itself beyond the expression of limits, beyond life or death, beyond gunas, accidents, intentions or credit. The perception of the master transcends life and death. The flesh of the master can die, but the force of his energetic field transcends form and can take form in another time and place without losing its perception and divine union. In that way the master is alive eternally and available to those who know how to tune in with that living field. The eternal life of the master is undivided by time, space or movement.
When we understand that there is a natural movement toward the maturity of our perception through different stages, we can have patience and can even direct ourselves toward our desired destination. Perception is given in a certain progression, and that progression determines the amount of alchemy available to us.
Each time we move from one stage of perception to another, we go through a simultaneous process of transformation (reclaiming our rights and functions under self-responsibility) and transfiguration (modifying our energy field to suit the altitude of our new perception). Transfiguration recharges life in every step and allows our heart to face the source (essence) as a place of dwelling and belonging.
We also need to realize that our heart is our source of right perception, and not the mind. The mind may understand the laws and the order of consciousness, but it can only be spoken, expressed and dispersed when the heart relates directly to non-logical understanding. The perception of the heart establishes the self in eternal love and life.