Part 2: Learning to Experience the Outer Light: Perception and Feeling At this point in your journey, you've learned a little about the inner and Outer Light. But you may be wondering: How do the instructors and network leaders distinguish between these two sources of brilliance? How can one ever aspire to this level of scientific discernment to master this system? What are the next steps forward on the Course?
Do not despair! Although the way is not always clear in your initial steps, as you move forward the course will brighten considerably. Think of the example of the railroad. When a train first leaves the station, the ties and rails can be difficult to discern. The conductor and engineer must spend the first several miles determining the depth and directions of the tracks. Just imagine the havoc if the transportation scientists did not fulfill these important duties! While the rails are always ill-defined at first, as the trains gain speed, momentum, and (yes of course!) distance, the train will itself know its own direction, leaving the engineer the time and energy to focus only on the task of perceiving. And this is the crucial lesson that we will now discuss: the importance of perception and feeling in the traversal of the Course.
To experience the Outer Light, we must both perceive and feel! (By now, careful readers may have noticed that the text has not yet mentioned how to experience the inner Light. This is an important observation that indicates how this scientific learning program has already attuned you to the “rails” of the pathway. The modes of experience for the inner Light will be covered in Part 3 of this program).
To fully comprehend our experience of the Outer Light, we must then define perception and feeling. But what exactly is perception? And what about feeling? What exactly is that?
As every child knows, perception is primary defined as the attunement between the perceptual organs of exteriority and the exterior world, as such. When the organ of exteriority reach a state of equilibrium with that which is without, then the act of perception has occurred. Perception can never be fully instantaneous as a moment of experience, but can only be recognized in the moment after perceiving has expired. That which is perceived is the inherent frequency of the exterior world upon the body's organs of exteriority. This is the “common sense” understanding of perception and experience, which in fact wholly describes how we perceive the outer light! The organ of exteriority responds to the frequency of the outer light, leading the pursuant forward along the path. This is what it means to “calibrate the compass.” Be careful to realize that this in fact not a metaphor, but is a literal calibration of the inner compass that happens in the act of perception.
Unlike perception, feeling is the assimilation of the organ of interiority with the frequency of the exterior world. Some (see later Lessons in the Program) have made grave mistakes in assuming that the organ of interiority corresponds to the interior world, just as the organ of exteriority corresponds to the exterior world. But the Light Science of the New Friends has conclusively shown in repeated empirical demonstrations that there is in fact NO interior, as such. The reflection of the outer world on the organ of interiority can be mis-perceived in a moment of false perception as the interior. But, as we have already shown, the organ of exteriority (which is of course the necessary for perception) can perceive only the exterior world. This raises the question of how the interior can ever be perceived in itself. And the answer is obvious: It cannot be perceived! As we will cover in the next section on the inner light, there are indeed certain phenomena of interiority that are the sources of both un-True-th (and True-th). But feeling is in fact the organ of interiority becoming attuned to the frequency of the outer light.
In a nutshell, these are the basic characteristics of perception and feeling necessary for the continuation upon the psychic railway that is the TRUE COURSE!
(Spend 5-10 per prompt)