An Interesting Moment in 999 - Pondering on: The Nature of Perception

[DreamerRaven]

Before we go on, i want you to look at this picture:

What do you see? Take a moment, the time you need, to observe the frame and to formulate an answer, any answer. Don't worry about the details, just think of something. Alright, moving on:

So, in this game, "999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors", characters stumble upon a peculiar picture after gathering it's pieces across a room. After some examination, the characters start talking about the subject of "Morphic Resonance". A quick google search tell us the following:

[Morphic resonance is a hypothesis by biologist Rupert Sheldrake proposing that self-organizing systems inherit a "collective memory" from previous, similar systems. This memory is transmitted through morphic fields, which are unseen fields of influence that are not limited to the brain or genes. Through morphic resonance, the patterns of activity in self-organizing systems are influenced by similar patterns in the past, giving each species and each kind of self-organizing system a collective memory.]

In simple words: This theory imply that we have the capability of inheriting knowledge indirectly, without any prior experience or means of receiving the information as such. When it comes to magic, this phenomenon present itself in the ability to gain knowledge by simply intending to know something, either by direct event that reveals the subject of knowledge (Eg: I intend to know when a game next chapter releases, so a friend later on tell me about it without my intervention) or indirect "i just know" (Eg: Just intending to know what to do regarding something. "I just know", it simply appears as "the experience of knowing").

I mention that before hand, because even if is not related that much to the actual point of this post, it gives some context, as here's the key subject here: Knowledge.

Continuing with this scene, the characters look upon the picture, and one of them straight ask "What do you see?", Santa says at first "It's just black and white scribbles. There's no meaning here. That's it." , and then you got the chance to answer.

The picture above is: A picture of a dog.

After it, it then reveals the trick behind the picture. Here's excerpts of dialogue:

Lotus: "A TV show from great britain did an experiment once. They took two similar pictures. Both of them were difficult to identify, initially... But once you figured out the answer, you couldn't see it as anything else. These two pictures: The first was a woman wearing a hat, the other one... well, to make it easier... Lets just say that it was this picture of a dog. So, their experiment: First, they sent the pictures to other parts of the world outside of the reach of British airwaves. To ireland, the US, Europe, etc. Then, in each country, they gathered a number of test subjects. Roughly 1,000 people. They were shown the 2 pictures, and asked What does this picture look like to you?. The results weren't really interesting on their own... 9.2% of the people saw the lady in the lady picture, 3.9% saw the dog in the dog picture. Then... two days later, they aired a new program on their show. During the 30 minutes show, they broadcast the dog picture and it's solution. The audience was estimated to be 200k people. After the broadcast, it was a safe bet that the number of people who knew the solution to the dog picture was at least that many. After another 2 days passed, they gathered more research subjects from areas outside the reach of British TV and radio. This time, they only found a sample of roughly 850 people. Naturally, none of them had participated in the 1st test. They were, however, given the the same test, and the same 2 pictures. The results... were startling: 10% of the people saw the lady in the lady picture. The previous test sat at a 9.2% success rate. Not much of a change statistically. The dog picture, however, produced a very different result. The percentage of people able to successfuly find the dog...It went from 3.9% to 6.8%. A very significant increase...

[...] Lotus: There was no way the second group could have seen the picture. They lived far away from britain, and couldn't have seen it. But even so, it was only the sucess rate for the dog picture that went up. Why? How did that happen? What does it mean?

(PD: Iirc, its also revealed that both the picture of the dog and the lady with a hat, were one and the same, but rotated and altered. But correct me if im wrong. In that case, it's also relevant to the following remarks about perception.)

Now, if you responded anything but "a dog", take a look again to the picture above. Didn't it happened to be one of those moments of "Once you see it, you can't unsee it" for you? It would take to deliberately altering the contour, but as it stands, once you "step back and take a view of the full picture" having knowledge of it's true nature, it's hard to unsee it. It's like: an airtight hide and seek game.

But there's more.

Lotus: Well, i mean, the things i just told you about are true. They really did happen. But the results of that experiment aren't anything to go by. They could have easily falsified them.

We tend to ear stories of any kind, even mundane ones that we take for granted in order to stablish our worldview and our notion of "how the universe works". But how many of them are solid assements based on prior experiences throught deep reflection and personal experimentation, and what others are based upon "something just believed in and then acted upon"?

"You don’t know anything about your world except a story inside your head telling you what’s going on. Even if you cut your finger, you couldn’t know anything about a cut finger without a thought in your head telling you about it and what it is." - John Paolucci

Knowledge have organizing power

"When what you know changes, you act on what you know, then what you do changes. When what you do changes, you get different results in life." - John Paolucci

Having prior knowledge of your own innate magical capacities, as well as of the implications of magic existing in your world, how did that affect the way you see the world? Were you making out "scribbles" across your perception of life, until you expanded and were able to see "the dog"? The greater truth? Considering how prominent the materialistic conditioning it's across our world, as well as all kind of dogmas, how did it all that recontextualized upon higher knowledge? In what you can trust? Or rather, in who you can trust? It's any experience, or further, our perception across the field of change, something trusthworthy? Or, does it serve us to realize something greater?

The true function of perception
Here's another example provided by John Paolucci on perception:

Here’s an example of how only a small amount of information needs to be injected to completely alter a conclusion. It’s the same for the identify-sense, intellect, and mind planes as it is for the physical – just a higher rate of vibration. The photograph on the top is obviously black and white. At first glance, it seems the lower photograph is color. But look closely. The bottom photo is also black and white but with colored lines overlaid on top of it. Your brain colorizes it. = Look, see? I’m not LK right here! You may have noticed that only a tiny amount of information in your attention (compared to the glut of info going on around you) changed you acting on the Fact that you’re LK right here.

Conclusion is command. As

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ready to come into experience through

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and intent. What we make of this world is, as every person is right about their reality.