Normally we don’t see that our assumptions are affecting the nature of our observations. But the assumptions affect the way we see things, the way we experience them, and, consequently, the things that we want to do. In a way, we are looking through our assumptions; the assumptions could be said to be an observer in a sense. The meaning of the word “observe” you could get from defining “observation” as “gathering with the eye,” or “listening” as “gathering with the ear.” That is, everything in the room you are in is gathered together and comes to the pupil of the eye, the retina, and to the brain; or it may also come through the ear. So the observer is what gathers: it selects and gathers the relevant information and organizes it into some meaning and picture. And that is what’s done by the assumptions in thought. According to what you assume, you will collect and gather certain information as important and put it together in a certain way, in a certain structure.