Gestalt POV

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Gestalt POV

I want to begin this post with a definition of something nobody has ever needed to define before.

I've thought a lot about what to call it, and nothing I can think of really captures it very well, so I basically just chose the most appropriate option that wasn't so complicated as to be unwieldy.

I've dubbed it the "Gestalt POV."

Other options were the "Viewpoint Aspect" and the "Viewpoint Gestalt" and the "Perceptual Whole."

It's surprisingly difficult to convey. Simply put, the "Gestalt POV" is a person's view of reality, all their perceptions of it, at once, taken together. Then add in the concurrent sensation of being sure because of all of those things that you are indeed perceiving your real reality. The sense of sureness, if you will.

So your visual viewpoint along with sounds and all other sensory inputs that contribute to your 'view' from 'out of your head' of the surrounding world. Most prominent of all of course being the visual. So let's start there.

Imagine your view of the world. Wait a minute, no need to, just examine your actual visual perspective of your surroundings right now. The area in front of your head that is your field of view. A roughly oval shape aligned horizontally, a "bubble" (the word "bubble" just sounded on the television in the background as I was typing that word!) of vision that moves with your head (of course), your window of visual perception, oval due to our binocular vision.

Now add in whatever sounds you can perceive at the same time.

Whatever sensations your skin might be feeling. Moving air from the fan running in the background.

Whatever smells you might sense, if any... All of the sensory perceptions that tell you that you are awake and looking out of your head at your reality. Your one view of the world, which you rely on as being your one and only view of the world so much that you cannot possibly conceive of having two of them at the same time. I mean, it's the only one you've got, the only one that you've ever had for your entire life. You're pretty attached to it. It's practically part of you.

So why bother to name it?

(We're getting to that part)

Include also your own body sensations, your kinesthesia senses. So the feelings of the sides and back of your head as well, the parts of you that you cannot ever directly see. The feeling of your feet touching the floor.

The Gestalt Point-Of-View is both your view of what is outside of your body, recognizing that it is consistent and true, combined with your view of what is inside of your body and inside of your mind that confirms all of what is seen and sensed outside. It's the whole package.

This is a snapshot of your viewpoint of your reality in any given moment. Your Gestalt Point-Of-View. All of it together at once means "reality" to us.

So now that I think we've at least established the general meaning that I'm going for, let me tell you what happened last night:

I take my dose of salvia and then go to bed, staving off the onset of the 100X long enough to put the pipe away, shut the lights, and get into the bed and sit in a relaxed cross-legged position.

I sit with my eyes open, my normal Gestalt Reality POV like a clear glass bubble of vision of the room in front of me and to the sides. Normal. Like anybody else. My one single view of reality.

And then there were two of them. Two Gestalt Reality POV's at once. Like a *POP* and then there were two. It was like my head opened up down the middle like a book and another pair of eyes had sprouted.

Two bubbles, side-by-side. Equal in every single way. Not only the visual though, but all of it, all the senses. (refer to definition of Gestalt POV here)

And then there were three. Four. A row of them. The row becomes a spiral, a helix, with me at the center axis, looking out through many, many Gestalt POV's at once. Not merely the visual part, but all of it, and all equal.

I am very clear and relaxed. I can think in the moment. I am awestruck, literally awestruck. I clearly remember feeling grateful for that moment, thankful that I could see this, was here seeing this. Stunned by the grandeur of it.

Then I start to examine the situation that I found myself in. All of the Reality POV's are equally convincing, equally valid; I can no longer tell which is my original one.

All equally valid, and I was clear-minded enough to be testing them in any way that I could think of.

They are not merely visual. I can feel the many "backs-of-my-heads" that go along with them. And everything else. Even sounds. Each Reality POV is as complete and realistic and believable as my original, "normal-mind" one that I've had all my life.

Only problem is, there's an awful lot of them. All arranged in a helix spiralling around me. My core consciousness, the Observer in me, my "I AM," occupied the center axis of the helix.

How can you have even two of them? Much less a multitude, but even just two? How is that possible? Even when considering an hallucinogen, how does it accomplish that?

I soon closed my eyes, and then I saw my core (I AM) consciousness occupying a long, dark "tunnel" with all of those other realities surrounded that tunnel in a helical arrangement, budding off it.

The inside of the tunnel was corrugated with multiple pairs of the backs of my closed eyelids.

"I" could move up and down the tunnel, and any of the realities that interested me, that caught my interest, I could enter, and it would be my "normal" reality as surely as the one that I had left.

In the tunnel I could sense all these worlds, all these Reality POV's around me, with all my senses. Mostly the visual, since that's the most salient (and startling), but sound and all the rest as well.

The sound part interested me, so I focused on it. I heard an unusual amount of background noises. The fan creaking. My son in the other room stirring in his sleep, heard through the baby monitor.

Why does he always stir when I'm in trance state? In the tunnel the answer seemed obvious. I'm surrounded by worlds, and in one of them he stirs, and since I'm sensing many, many of them at once, I hear it regardless of whether he's doing it in my regular world or not. If I'm surrounded by hundreds of Reality POV's and in one of them my son stirs, I automatically focus on that one, the one in which he's stirring, and make it my own. I focus automatically on the one in which he's stirring due to the fact that I do not want him to awaken, and my focusing on it makes it my reality. It realizes that line in the story.

This is a strong example of how we can realize that which we fear as much or more often than we do that which we desire.

I meditated further on this in this unusual state, the state of me (my "I AM") being in the tunnel surrounded by multiple realities, multiple options, and I sense that all of those options are 'out there,' all exist at once, and at some level of consciousness, I can always sense them. I just don't normally realize that I can. This is how I move into the future, by constantly selecting the "Reality POV" that most conforms to my expectations out of many of them.

I cannot possibly convey the sense of wonder and strangeness that one feels when confronted by multiple Reality POV's. It's like suddenly having hundreds of heads, sort-of. And the sense of this being real, realer-than-regular-real, is so strong, like I've been let in on a Cosmic Secret. I am an atheist, and yet there is an almost religious feel to it, because after all, this is reality, and I have stuck my head behind the curtain.

And caught God with his pants down. Oops.