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96
HERMANN KUHN
SUTRAS
Many flashes of insight into advanced states of consciousness never reach this stage or take long time to be processed.40
Many other events also never reach this stage because we are conditioned to accept as perception merely those events and objects that proceed to conscious processing which happens only in stage 3 (evaluation) and 4 (consolidation and retention):
Unfortunately this (incomplete) concept of perception causes us to discard many ideas, inspirations and impulsive thoughts we regard as too weak to knight them with our attention. Yet we should never snub these subtle signals. It often pays to invest energy into vague ideas to raise them to a more conscious level of perception. Though the impulses might appear weak, they nevertheless provide access to more interesting and colorful experiences far beyond our present reality. - All great inventions and
ideas started out as this kind of subtle impulse. 3 - Evaluating the perception (avaya) - In this stage we ascertain details of the object. We confirm what exactly we perceived.
EXAMPLE: We observe the flapping of the wings and now know this is a swan and not a flag. 4 - Consolidating and storing the perception and its evaluation in
our memory (dharana) - Consolidating our perception means to connect it to previous experiences. We almost never store the entire object or event in our memory, but only those features that distinguish it from similar patterns already imprinted in our consciousness. While storing new patterns in our memory we always access past experiences.
Stored information supports a dimension of understanding that reaches far beyond the range of one single perception. By recalling previous perceptions from our memory we establish connec
40 It is possible to shorten this time significantly if we acquaint us with
the mechanisms of consciousness and its expansion.
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