“We were saying the other day how very important it is to observe. It is quite an art to which one must give a great deal of attention. We only see very partially, we never see anything completely, with the totality of our mind, or with the fullness of our heart. And unless we learn this extraordinary art, it seems to me that we shall be functioning, living, through as very small part of our mind, through a small segment of the brain. We never see anything completely, for various reasons, because we are so concerned with our own problems, or we are so conditioned, so heavily burdened with belief, with tradition, with the past, that this actually prevents us from seeing or listening.
We never see a tree, we see the tree through the image that we have of it, the concept of the tree; but the concept, the knowledge, the experience, is entirely different from the actual tree. Here one is surrounded by a great many trees, fortunately, and if you look around you, as the speaker is going on with the subject of seeing, if you actually look at it, you will find how extraordinarily difficult it is to see it all, so that no image, no screen, comes between the seeing and the actual fact. Please do this, don’t watch me – look at the tree, find out whether you can see it completely. By completely I mean with the totality of your mind and heart, not a fragment of it …”
(http://www.theawakenedeye.com/art_of_seeing.htm)
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