Is there a world out there?

When we perceive something, anything, it appears against a totalistic background, the entire sensorium. In spotting a duck in the water, we are not generally conscious of the water, the visible background, the colors in the leaves behind the duck in the trees and numerous other "things" that are called into play when we spot a duck. More often than not, we do not focus on the living context--be it visible, aural, tactile, etc.--that is a necessary condition for anything to be perceived. This evanescent, living context is what many refer to as the background or "world." It arises so quickly that we are seduced into a primordial belief that it exists as a static world outside of perceived experience. It seems as though the world is already there. It seems as though when coming upon the duck, we have "picked" it out of the world. This is how fast experience takes place, i.e., embodied and ambient awareness. Experience moves faster than cognition. Our bodies are faster than our minds.

There is a sense in which we can say the world is something like a garden of Eden and we feel we are placed in it. However, being outcasts, like Adam and Eve, we may become aware of our beatific gardens of Eden and, through no small effort with few exceptions, suddenly find ourselves in the garden; or, should we say we are in the garden without finding ourselves at all. We may then find a garden view having abandoned the myopia of selfhood with its attendant cravings.

Yes, the world--as we are wont to call it--then takes on the face of pure experience. The world is no longer out there, but the outside has become the "objective" inside, i.e., inside of experience.