The way I see it, the mystery is always being revealed. The transformation is always happening. What you perceive is a matter of the lens through which you look at reality. Some lenses disclose just a slice of reality while others expose several slices, and there are those lenses that see telescopically, revealing reality all the way through. So it depends with which lens you look. It’s not that the world we see, the physical world, completely doesn't exist. The world exists, but as one dimension of seeing things. The world is far too wonderful and rich to be just one thing.

So the moment you have a theory about anything, your theory is basically a story. Whenever you have a system, whenever you have an approach, whenever you have a terminology, whenever you have a science, it's a story that is being generated. There’s no ultimate truth other than what’s happening right now. You could say this is a school, we do work, people learn to develop themselves and be free and realize who they are and all that. We could say that and that's a good theory but it's a story. Other people could have different stories. That this is some kind of cult with a secret force that pulls all these people together toward some secret purpose that will not appear until later. Neither story is accurate. The accurate perception is that this is the pattern in which reality emerges right now.

There is a possibility of a certain perception, a certain way of living that is not based on anything in the personality -- not on desire, effort, conflict, hope, search, past, future, any of that -- but is a purely motiveless interest in the truth. That motiveless interest in the truth can be quite a relief.

So in some sense you could say that our life and our action is a matter of perceiving ourselves into reality. We perceive ourselves into existence. The perceiving generates and creates the being. No separation exists between perceiving and creating. As you perceive your hand, your hand is being created. Perception and creation are identical. If you think that you move your hand and that your hand is bigger now than it was when you were two years old, those thoughts are what is being generated. So you're not wrong and you're not right. You're simply being generated. No one is ever right or wrong. No one is ever good or bad. The only thing that ever happens is instantaneous manifestation. And it is actually not even a happening, for happening implies time, while this has no time in it.

Objective perception requires that we apprehend or perceive without the usual filters, without the projections of the past onto the present. What is, obviously must be in the moment – now, because only now exists. Only this very moment exists. You can see that logically for yourself. I’m not saying anything esoteric here; what exists is now. The past reality is not here. The future hasn’t come yet. To see what is means to see the now, as it is. But to see the now as it is means to see without the influence of the past.

The world is, of course, a multitude of things. But the world as we perceive it is primarily made up of mental thoughts and images, emotions, and sensations. Everything that you know about the world and yourself depends on thoughts, images, emotions and sensations. Why else do you know? Ultimately, the world as you perceive it comes down to your sensations of the world, your emotions about it, and the mental images and thoughts you have.

There are other capacities for subtle perception, such as smelling and hearing, but here we are giving examples only for general illustration. Connecting these various capacities with different energetic centers does not mean that it is only in those locations that the capacities are exercised. In fact, such capacities can be exercised, when developed, at any location in the body; indeed, they overlap. Texture can be discriminated by taste, even by seeing, as can density and viscosity. This is also true for the physical senses. However, here the phenomenon points to a very deep truth, that of the unity of the senses, or capacities of perception. At the deeper dimension of Essence, the centers lose their importance. They are important only at the start, as points of orientation or origination. Later, we see that these capacities are part of the Essence itself, that Essence itself has the capacity for touch, taste, seeing, hearing, smelling, intuition, knowing, and soon. In other words, the Essence is the organ of perception. On this level of realization, all of the capacities are one capacity. It is one act of Essence. It is possible to say that Essence is consciousness, pure consciousness.