Learning Experience
THE MAGIC TERRACE

The original German text is here

Summer nights, sitting on the terrace, and frequently, i only needed to look for a few seconds and the visual panoramic experience was there, without even trying. It's an ideal situation. So then i had a visitor...

Visit to Robin
During an evening visit to Robin, he enthused about his "magic terrace" – a new discovery of his. I had to experience it.

I was invited to sit on his chair at his regular place by the round table and followed the instructions.

From this place there were three illuminated fixed points – two wall lamps above on the right and left and a ceiling light. Down at the extreme right edge of the field of vision, a chair and on the left side a blue box.

(Notes: this panoramic picture shows only the upper two thirds of the field of vision and the picture is distorted, the terrace is 12ft. square. When sitting in the back corner the wall lights are 15° above the horizontal eye level. The blue case and the brown chair are about 70° below the wall lights, so altogether it's an almost perfect pentagon. This terrace is a good example of no 3 warm up exercise, at night.)

Keeping all these fixed points in view – or as it felt to me, using them as anchors – I directed my gaze forward to the white pillar opposite me while Robin told me about the entertaining show I was about to experience: the chaotic and unpredictable flight of flies, mosquitoes, moths and other insects that crossed my field of vision and to which my attention was to be directed without focusing.

According to Robin, humans always move logically and linear from A to B; even birds and land animals curve around in a rather predictable way. The geniality of this terrace at night lay in the irrational dancing of these insects.

I felt as if I took a step back and pulled a sheet across between the anchor points at the periphery of the field of vision, where my subjective consciousness spread out. The act of seeing was not happening with my eyes, but rather on this sheet spread out in front of me, which now feels like the extension of my head. I, my head, my field of vision had expanded.

The whole space on this sheet felt like the inside of my field of vision. There was no inside and no outside and my subjective self had become part of this field of observation and perception.

I look at this overall picture as if through a new window.

Sitting there in eager anticipation, I noticed an unknown joy rising in me, which I later attributed to the fact that the experience I was having was a completely new experience for me.

The feeling of expansion, the state of perception was detached from the familiar subject-object relationship. I wasn't actively or passively involved in anything. Only the awareness happened!

Behrang Keshavarz – 3. September 2023

My Notes
I find it fascinating how Behrang saw everything as nouns, subjects, 'a substantive', things just being. I usually express it all as verbs just doing. I think i am influenced by too much normal Eastern philosophy, Behrang's naive interpretation is probably more accurate.

Compare Behrang's sheet to my "instead of looking at the world like a T.V. screen, it feels as though i'm right up inside the screen".

My notes on Happiness.

Practical Notes
Lights on the periphery subliminally stimulate the panorama.

It's a shame that it's like a pentagon – people so easily start making associations with pentagrams and mystical stuff... a far easier idea to try, would be a triangle with one light above and two candles on the floor... or a square...

Battery tea lights might be a good idea to use. Fixing them with adhesive tape to the walls or trees. I sometimes use two candles on the case and chair. But, i don't really know if it's better to have some lights, and some fixed points which you have to mentally 'reach out' for.

The Priority Pages continue with A New Beginning.

Back to Chapter One : The Animal Teachings
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