Focus point

What would a world look like without the focal point of a lens? Our eyes have a lens that focuses light onto a plane, allowing the retina to capture this focused image—an image on a single plane. Light rays are captured by receptors and sent to the brain. This vibration of nerve cells is transcribed into another vibration: that of consciousness. This principle has been copied in the camera obscura and the cinematographer, forming the basis of classic photography and film/video recordings.

What would a world look like if perceived by a consciousness without a lens filtering visual perception? Space would be flooded with light, colors would likely be visible, but there would be no spatial depth, no objects. How would consciousness orient itself within it?

Senses

A newborn baby's eyes are still closed for the first few days. First of all, it has to become aware of its own body, gross and fine motor skills, hunger, pain, tiredness. All this comes first. The senses of sight, touch and hearing come later. The boundaries between one's own body and the outside world must be explored. Is the object in your hand part of your own body or not? How does the feeling of hunger relate to the milk bottle? All these perceptions are possible without visual representation. Object recognition is largely based on motor skills, taste and touch. In other words, very direct.

The perception of what is not in direct physical contact comes later via smell, sight and hearing. That which is far away must somehow present itself to me. The contact is physical, light waves, sound waves, odors. They arrive at the sensory organs at different speeds and leave an impression there, they inscribe themselves in the senses, a resonance, a rhythm, a fusion or intermission takes place. In the case of smell and hearing, the senses are directly exposed to the vibrations. Although the sense of hearing, the sense of smell and the sense of taste are quite complex, as the perceived vibrations have to be processed by the brain, none of these organs are as complicated as the eye.

Are the problems of Western philosophy retinal?

The eye therefore creates an image. This is the root of representation. Which of these representations are physical reality, the living world, art? It seems to me that most questions in philosophy arise from this retinal process. The question of representation is therefore at the center of Western aesthetics. Attempts to understand representation as the basis of aesthetic and epistemological philosophy lead down all kinds of wrong paths. They lead to a philosophy that understands the world as objects that are presented to us. This has consequences not only for art, but also for economics, politics, society, science...

In Indian aesthetics, it is rasa, a completely different approach. It is about a state of consciousness that is facilitated by sensory stimuli. The aim of art is to enter and remain in this state. Art opens a gateway to higher consciousness - Satchitananda. The origin lies in the Vedas. Rasa is the taste, rasa is not retinal. Rasa is the essence.

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