seeing without reference

Maharaj: The refulsal to see the snake in the rope is the necessary condition for seeing the rope.
   — I Am That

But, first one must see something. As with seeing fruit in the trees, one must see something or have some idea (memory) of what to look for. Some believe that when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, the native people did not see his ships because they had no frame of reference, memory, of there existing such an object as a ship and it was a wise man of some kind who recognized a change in the water and deduced there must be something there. If I have never seen anything similar to a rope other than a rope, I am likely to only see a rope and be befuddled by why it is moving. That I might observe movement and consider that the object is not a rope is certainly not a given.  At least, not in existential reality.