Being Heard, Being Seen: The Prenate’s Sensory World

Focusing on auditory and visual development, this lesson explores how prenates hear maternal voices, music, and external sounds, and how they begin perceiving light and shadow. It examines how sensory input may create memory, preference, and expectation. The psychological implications of being acknowledged or ignored are discussed, as are early attachment cues through sound and presence.

Study Diary Assignment – Lesson on the Development of the Perceptual System

Title: From Void to Vision: Creating the Means to Perceive

Instructions:

This assignment invites you to consciously revisit your origins as a perceiving being — the moment before perception began, and the journey through which you began to shape the organs that allow you to relate with the world.

Part 1: The Scene Before Perception

• In your imagination, return to the earliest state of your becoming.

  • Picture yourself in absolute nothingness — no sound, no light, no scent, no touch.

  • What is it like to be in this silence and darkness, before perception existed?

• Tune in to your inner state:

  • Are there sensations? Emotions? Questions?

  • Are there assumptions or impressions about your existence or surroundings — even if nothing is yet perceived?

• Record your inner monologue or atmosphere in this state. What is the quality of your consciousness in the absence of sensory input?

Part 2: The Emergence of Perception

• Now, witness yourself as you begin to respond to this void.

  • What prompts the formation of eyes, ears, skin receptors, the olfactory system?

  • What inner needs or intelligence (entelechy) move you to create these tools for perception?

• As your perception organs form and refine:

  • What do you begin to sense, feel, notice?

  • What changes in your relationship to the environment, to yourself, to life?

• Compare this new sensory world with the original silent void:

  • What has shifted in your inner experience?

  • What becomes possible now?

Part 3: Integrating with the Now

• Reflect on how you currently make sense of the unknown in your life.

  • Can you trace any similarity between that primal journey and how you approach new environments, unfamiliar people, unseen futures?

• Do you tend to remain in the void until something pulls you forward?

• Or do you reach out and create meaning actively?

• Write down what this journey teaches you about how you sense, relate, and construct meaning in your present life.

 Please record your full reflection in your Study Diary under this lesson title.
Use metaphor, image, or symbolic expression if it helps capture subtle nuances of the experience. Submit to your tutor/ mentor at the end of this lesson/ unit. Thank you.

The silent movie is an emotional cinema: it’s sensory; the fact that you don’t go through a text brings you back to a basic way of telling a story predicated on the feelings you have created. Michel Hazanavicius