PERCEPTION - CONTROLLER OF OUR DESTINY

“We are creator or destroyer of our own destiny,” the common phrase found in most books on Self-Development. It views humans as an active agent of his life and capable of constructing his own experiences out of external real-life experiences. Earthly experiences can be considered as an unprocessed sender of data but humans are active, process-abled recipients of the data. It means that world experiences before reaching us may be either positive or negative, but, once it reaches us, we have ultimate ‘decision making power’ to allow the influence to impinge us positively or negatively. Thus, the phrase “we are the creator or destroyer of our own destiny” validates itself.

This is not a human formulated principle. It is innate, natural, universal phenomenon of human science. Ancient Indian Rishis and Gurus have recognized this super-competence of humans and reflected it in their writings. Recently, Psychologists acknowledging the above concept have described the complex phenomenon in terms of “Perception.” They portray Perception process into various stages as step-wise process.

Human Perceptual Experience can be divided into three stages: 1. Sensation Stage, 2. Attention Stage, and 3. Perception Stage. Each stage performs specific functions and the external experience (data) reaches our consciousness after traversing through the three stages in an orderly manner. The data flowing through ‘mental medium’ is considered as a complex mixture of the basic forms like visual images, sounds, taste, feelings, smell, etc. These basic constituents form a complex aggregation called Gestalt in our consciousness, thus creating complete, real world experience. (E.g. Reading – visual images of letters, Success – sound of appreciation and images as our status in ranking list)

External world experiences (i.e. Data) reaches our sense organs in an uncontrolled manner forming the Sensation Stage Process. The basic sensory receivers represent our sense of vision, smell, taste, sound, etc.

The Attention Stage, second stage of processing, can be compared with “Control Valve” in mechanical terms. Even though, we have the ability to control the valve, the control is partial and many times captivating data easily passes through the control valve to reach third stage. In reality, hundreds of data reach our senses every second, but, attention process limit the number of data to flow to next stage.

The third stage of human perception, the Perception Stage is a complex process, and it is a prerogative of individual. It is the most important stage that distinguishes Humans from other animals. The Perception process invoke our intelligence, our memory, our learning, our motivation, our attitude, values, beliefs, etc, stored in our Brain and act on the incoming data to form “well processed information.” This processed information in our conscious mind represents our understanding of our world.

Since, intelligence, memory, learning and motivation differ in quantity and quality across individuals, the interpretation of incoming data varies across individuals in quantity and quality wise. Because of highly subjective perception process, two individual encountering similar life experiences view it differently. For example, a person with pure knowledge, positive attitude, and purified memory, views even a negative experience in a positive manner.

Thus, our memory, our intelligence, our learning, our motivation, our attitudes, our values, etc, has to be enriched with positive principles based on pure knowledge. For this, initially, we have to control the basic elements of sensual inputs i.e. images, sounds, smell, feelings, etc. Later, our brain can be enriched by reading books with positive outlook on life, avoiding captivating images and sounds, meditation (which helps easier control of senses), relationship with noble people and minds, etc.

With this knowledge, we could assert intelligently that “We are the creator or destroyer of our own destiny. Since the prerogative of selection exist in my mind.”