Perceptions
by A. Ritter
(pdf version)

We humans have a very limited system to perceive things. We use our five senses as our main tools for perception: seeing, hearing, tasting, touching and smelling. In spite of what we may want to believe, those systems area rather horrible at their job. What you can see of all there is to see is remarkably small. For example, one cannot see Infrared, or Ultra Violet spectrums at all. With a little myopia one cannot see street signs or a hyperopia one cannot see type face, or with both one cannot see much without an aid. What humans can hear is a tiny fraction of what there is to hear. My sense of smell is beyond horrible. Nearly of these senses can be knocked out with a simple common cold or other ailment and all can just cease working altogether for good. The senses are hardly uniform, as many people see colors in different ways and many find one sound pleasing when another finds it displeasing.

The five senses are our tools to perceiving, receptors of information. While they are tools, rather poor tools, they are tools that are meant to aid in the ability to perceive our reality. They are aids, they are not end all be all but we seem the as such, and here is where we have gotten lost. Humans have become so reliant on the five senses that they have abandoned all other means to perceive. Way, way back we used to find the so called sixth sense as a normal everyday feature of life. Then it became the domain of witches and weirdoes, and now it is seen a quaint novelty that cannot compete with science. Ingo Swann, noted researcher and interesting guy, has written about us having 17 senses in our arsenal. What? If true, it is clear we all agreed to quit at the standard five. His 17 range from sensors in the nose to smell emotions to skin sensors that sense the temperament of other beings. Ever wonder how the first person decided to eat a mushroom, given most are not edible? Maybe it was simpler when folks used all 17 senses, but because we can’t do anything without a dumbphone these days, I’d be hard pressed to take the average person on food hunt in the woods and figure out what to eat without a lab or google access.

The world of 3d is about the culmination of what the senses bring to the brain. We see the world, we hear the world, we taste the world, but in the average reality we do these things independently with little conscious assimilation of the contributing energies coming in through those senses. We “look” at the sun and that is it. Scientists have developed all forms of technology to improve the ability to look at the sun, to improve on our weak visual system. They collect information in the visual spectrum and that ends it. But that creates a kind of 2d interpretation of a 3d thing. We do we not add the sounds of the sun to our assessment of the sun? It has sounds? Sure does http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJiCcYYRin0. Science may look at the sounds, but the look at them as a separate piece of the sun, not a piece to be incorporate into the other parts of the experience.

The problem here is there is no machine that will take the sounds and the sights of the sun and make anything of it except your brain (this fact is why artificial intelligence is thankfully doomed). Your brain, really your consciousness, can and does make sense of the reality you live in by combining all things you perceive through your senses. What if we add the feel of the sun, then the smell and taste to our experience with the sun? Wait, you can’t taste the sun, you can’t smell it. Why not? Just because science hasn’t figured out a way to do those things with machines does not mean it does not happen. Have you tried? Most likely before the preceding paragraph you had no idea the sun created sound? So, we take a moment to go outside and access the sun with our five senses. Then, we take that information and process it - what do we perceive then? Ohhhh, now things are getting interesting, as the 3d world just got a bit more complete. Now, what if you took all 17 senses and accessed the sun? Well, I’ll leave that up to you to figure out.




The different visual spectra of the sun, can you see these without the filters?

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Perception, the processing of the energy around you is what tells you what your reality is. If I take away your ability to perceive, the reality changes. If I put you in a dark room, in a suit that only gives you feed back of yourself (temperature and feeling etc.) make you blind and deaf as well - where are you? Do you think you would be able to tell? In our current state of perception there is not one among us who would have a clue, yet, removing any or all of the senses should not change your ability to know your reality. Hellen Keller knew all about her reality, her challenge was expressing it to others who relied on their 5 senses to connect with her rather then also using a few of the other ones at their disposal. You will hear many folks speak of connections with others who seem handicapped in some way, they’ll say, “he is really amazing” or “while she can’t speak, there is so much there...” and what is going on here is they are using some of their 17 senses to connect. We have become so reliant on our five senses that things could be happening, check that, things are happening, just outside the perceptions that we are not a part of. This isn’t really a bad thing per se, it is our total arrogance, our total lack of humility in this area that is truly despicable. I see and hear this phrase uttered so often, “if that’s true, how come I don’t know about it?” The deeper meaning is, “I know all there is to know, if I can’t perceive it, it does not exist.” How can one say this with such authority with such poor tools for perceiving the world they inhabit?

You perceive the walls around you are solid, I assure you then are not. The senses you have tell you the walls are solid, as you can’t hear through them, the feel hard, can’t see through them and so on; solid. What is going on here is you are not perceive the reality where the walls are not solid. Could using 17 senses allow you perceive a reality where the walls are not solid? At some point someone figured out which mushroom they could eat and it wasn’t with a chemical lab doing an analysis.

If you could perceive the reality around you where the walls were not solid, how would you express this fact to a person who could only perceive the walls were solid?

How can you see more of what there is to see? You can’t. How can you hear more of what there is to hear? You can’t. Your eyes and your ears are what they are, they are limitations. Wait, you can’t just make your eyes better? Best eye sight might be 20-10 with regard to distance, but that still leaves out Ultra Violet and Infrared and you just are not going to get your eyes to see in that range. But, what if you decided you didn’t care about “seeing” anything but were interested in “knowing” the spectrum of things to “see” outside the visual spectrum? What if you didn’t care how the information came into your knowingness, through eyes, or ears or feet? What if your perception system only relied on the 5 senses, or even the 17 senses in the smallest amount possible: say those 17 inputs only totaled 20 percent of your perception input? What other systems of input could make up the other 80 percent of the input?

Consider this, right “next” to that solid wall you are looking at is a place where that wall is not solid? It is your perception that is preventing you from accessing it, not your eyes, not your ears, not your brain even, your limited perception has to unable to perceive it.

There is a well known story about a young man who is blind, but uses echo location to navigate his reality just fine. So humans have the ability to perceive their reality with echo location, they just choose not to do it and this young man, through need, decided that he could access that skill and cultivate it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLziFMF4DHA

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There is a presumption that we all perceive things in exactly the same way. We do not, but some kind of strange and quite sick effort has been made to make sure everyone on the planet sees, hears, feels and in the end perceives everything exactly the same. To perceive something in a way that is different then another is often cause for murder. Witches, whether true or not, were believed to perceive things others could not: they were burned at the stake. Up until recently, folks who were left handed at birth were forced to use their right hand, to be just like everyone else. Folks who perpetuated this barbaric effort were not even privy to the real reason this was done: lefties perceive things differently, as a result of using the left hand they access the right side of the brain more, as such, they are more likely to access things beyond the realm. Here is simple example. Seems some did not care for people using the left hand-right brain connection for fear of what they could perceive.

We all “know” what Navy Blue is. The color is just fact amongst those who are not color blind. Seems a woman named Hogan can see a much broader spectrum of color, as a tetrachromat woman, she can see four distinct ranges of color, instead of the three that most see. Wait, there is more to see? Yes, and this women can see things you cannot see. So how can she have a conversation about things you cannot see, therefor cannot perceive? Is she wrong for seeing more then you, or are you wrong for not seeing as much as she? What if she were to design machines that break up the color spectrum?

How do you stack up on the color perception area? Find out here?

http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77


Were you perfect? Most people are not, so when one is perceiving one thing related to color, another is actually perceiving something totally different. I would contend there has been a concerted effort to get people to perceive exactly the same things on all levels. If everyone perceives the same things, they are far easier to control. It seems to me that we have been programmed to perceive things in the way a machine perceives things, rather then the way we should be perceiving things as a sentient being with unlimited consciousness. The body has machine like senses, utterly useless with out the perception system, but if you can get people further and further away from their dynamic perception system and get them deeper and deeper into their “seeing” is everything system the all you have to do is control what they see. See my article on Celebrity for more details on this process.

After what I just said, what do you make of the phrase, “everybody knows...?”

This is an old optical illusion. Which do you see, the old woman or the young woman?





Can you flip perception back and forth between the two? There is only one thing to “see” here but there are at least two things that can be perceived. I’ll say this again, in the image above, there is only one thing to see, the image, but there are at least two things to perceive. Some only see the old woman and can’t see the young woman, some the opposite. I imagine there are some who see neither. Magicians get you to “see” one thing while they do something beyond your conscious perception. The art of illusion counts on two things, nearly everyone will “see” the same thing and nearly everyone will “perceive” the same thing from what they see. It seems to me that the fact that illusions exist would tell people that their eyes are unreliable at best, but instead they see the illusion as fun, as the don’t spend any time self reflecting about the reality created by such a curious limitation.

Hmmm? Wait, there is more to perceive then I perceive? Yes. In actuality there is an infinite number of things to perceive, and infinite number and yet we humans actually believe, firmly know, that we perceive all there is to perceive. Humbling isn’t it?


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What is interesting is that when you decide to leave the earth plane for good (known as dying) the world you see around you right now will no longer exist. The reality that is known as your reality, all that is you, will stop existing once you no longer perceive it in the way you perceive it now. I see my dog sitting over by the door waiting to go on a walk. I perceive this primarily through my eyes, but without eyes I would “see” something very different and without a body to perceive my dog, my dog is no longer my dog, as that classification is contingent on my current perceptions. There is an age old saying, “if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” The tree does not even exist if there is no one to perceive it. Confused folks will argue that they happen upon fallen trees all the time, so they “know” a tree fell, and falling trees make sound so there had to be a sound. No, they happened upon a tree they perceived as having fallen but they never perceived it any other way then lying on the ground. It is a presumption it once stood, but it is not a fact, the only thing factual to them personally is what they perceive in that moment. Fallen trees are trees on the ground, falling trees are trees headed to the ground, standing trees may be either tress that haven’t fallen or trees that will never fall, but while one perceives them as standing they are standing and nothing more. Metaphysics is so much more fun then physics as there are no absolutes.

When I first got to the planet I could not understand the idea of “seeing” things. At a certain age, while not yet fully developed, the limitations of the senses were clear to me. I recall being very frustrated at having to “see” the mountains, trees, snow and textures of the Rocky Mountains. I could not accept that I could not be them, but had to “perceive” them through this isolation chamber known as my body. Seeing, hearing or tasting things in isolation is a form of separation and a far inferior way of existing relative to being something. Seeing things without the aid of perception is simply death, can you imagine looking at something with no way to actually make sense of it?


Sadly, we “see” nature, we smell “nature,” we “taste, touch and hear” nature but we cannot be it, we process that information in parts, with very little way to actually be what we “see.”


In many ways, folks have become observers of their own reality, as such they live a kind of waking death, seeing the world as a tiny fraction of what it is. Someone once said to me, “I’d love to see what you see.” Of course what was meant was “I’d love to perceive what you perceive” but of course this is not all it is cracked up to be here. Perceive things that others cannot is rarely, if ever, applauded, and is most often met with derision, or even death. Yet, folks seem perfectly happy to be told what to perceive. The newsfotaiment programs tell us what we are seeing and what it means for us, there is no effort on our behalf and many are content with this.

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We generally perceive things through symbols associated with things programmed into our brain. The symbols we are used to tend to be short. What I mean by this is we can see a shoe and know it is a shoe. We can see a picture of a shoe and know it is supposed to represent a shoe, our perception system tells us one is a shoe the other is an image. Things get a bit more complex as we move up the symbol system food chain. One of the most prevalent corporate locos is an homage to the rings of Saturn. We see it everywhere, the Nike Swoosh, the Toyota logo ( and many many more) and yet we don’t seem to put it together that they are all variations on the same theme. The logos are everywhere, on everything, yet seems to us each logo is unique, when in fact there are very few unique logos in the corporate world if you take them apart. We don’t string all of them together to see them as one because we cannot perceive them as a whole, only piece by piece. (see Michael Tsarion’s work on the topic)

Our limited sensory system has us unable to perceive things in a broader way due to the feeble nature of both the senses themselves and the perception system we use to interpret that information. Some time back a few stoned out dudes figured out that if you played Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon along with The Wizard Of Oz, they synched up perfectly. I watched this phenomenon and was rightly impressed with the detailed correlation. Now, The Wizard Of Oz was a book that was not what it is was said to be about. The entire book was a metaphor for the banking system, as Frank Baum was one to didn’t care for the banking cartel and wrote this book to attack the process (he feared for his life should he just write an op ed piece). The Wizard was the banking cartel, controlling the reality of our world with nothing at all - they print fake money out of thin air and then demand repayment with real energy. The movie is not about that system, but something entirely different. Same general symbols, entirely different meaning, or meanings...

The Wizard of Oz and Dark Side Of The Moon were created years apart, with no discernible connection between the two. So what gives here? The human brain’s ability to perceive the symbols coming from the input systems is the key problem. The movie version of The Wizard Of Oz is a symbol, made up of several tiny symbols which equal a whole symbol. Some say the idea here is Dorothy is lost, her Higher Self is the good witch, her lower self is the bad witch, the Wizard represents the false god which is not necessary for Dorothy to find her way home - she knows inside what to do. That’s the gist of one version, but, the images complete a larger symbol then even that story. We’ll say the puzzle pieces of The Wizard Of Oz complete the picture X, and only if you know how to decode the puzzle pieces do you get to perceive symbol X. Now, Dark Side Of the Moon is a musical symbol made up of lyrics and tones. What does that album mean? No idea, I listened to it be never studied the lyrics, but even if I had, they lyrics are only one part to the perception, as the music is another part and my perception is not one to that sees the two at the deeper level. Are there even more parts to the famed album? Most assuredly, notice there are complete songs, gaps between songs and order of songs as well. So, if we take Dark Side Of The Moon and add up all the pieces, we find that the symbol we perceive is X! Yes, the two totally different expressions are the same exact symbol. The Wizard Of Oz and Dark Side Of the Moon are exactly the same symbol, a larger symbol made up of a sequence of smaller parts. Try it another way, if each was a map, the map would take us to the exact same location. Many will ask about the fact that the movie goes on longer then the album, since I don’t know what the symbol means, it is possible that there is another album that fills in the last half of the movie (maybe by a different band) or that the meaningful part of the pieces end at the albums completion point. It should be noted that what ever X is, or means, is quite enduring to the American populace as Dark Side Of The Moon sold 50 million copies and charted for 741 weeks, and The Wizard Of Oz’s impact really can’t be quantified, as it is so great.

Some are going to ask the obvious question: are the folks who created Oz and Moon aware of the X meaning you are speaking of? No, but the answer to that question is for another article.

What does X mean, what is the symbol? I have no idea and I’ll leave it at that. The point I am seeking to make is our ability to string together long, complex symbols systems is compromised by our both our feeble 5 senses and our rather poor perception programming. As such, we cannot perceive anything beyond what the two limited systems can conjure up, and even then what we are programmed to perceive the things we take in is usually all we make of any given experience. Yet the hubris with which many claim to know all about everything because they can “see” this or “read” that is beyond comical, in many cases it is downright destructive. Many folks claim to speak for god, well if they that well connected they would easily be able to decode the symbols of our two iconic entertainment experiences.

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What we perceive is an issue more often then not incorrect. Modern psychiatry has us constantly looking for the “why” with regard to what we are doing. It never seeks to really accurately define what we are doing. The “why” is largely irrelevant when you know what is actually happening. Several years ago I belonged to a chain fitness center located near my house. I was constantly frustrated by the missing and broken equipment and the general state of the place. In my mind I could not figure out when they just didn’t do a better job of making the gym more like a quality gym. One day I was talking with the manager and I said, “could you tell me why there is always missing equipment, even the pins that go into the machines are often gone?” He says, “sure, it’s our demographic.” “Huh,” what did he mean by that? I was momentarily caught of guard by the answer. “People steal stuff here, I lose about 600 dollars worth of equipment a month.” I stood there confused beyond all comprehension, why would people steal things they are entitled to use by being members? Who would steal a 50 pound weight? What value are the machine pins? Then it dawned on me, the problem was not the gym, the problem was the fact that I was choosing to go to a gym where people stole things! The gym was fine, in fact the manager expressed no real dismay over this shocking fact, the gym is perfect. My choice was the problem. Now, what happened after I perceived things in a more correct fashion is that I received and offer to join a new gym - the next day, where they have no problem with folks stealing things.

I so often hear women complaining about the state of men. Men are this, men are that, there seems to be an endless list of problems with me . “No good men are available,” is something I heard once from a women who dated only married men! The problem wasn’t with the men, it was with her choice of men. The even deeper truth is that it was not even about her choice of men, it was about her perception, it was about which men her senses were able to actually perceive. She was only able to perceive men that fit the “no good men are available” model. She could not perceive men who were not married because she perceive those who were married as the good ones, the ones who where taken.

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We perceive the world as outside us, but this isn’t true, as everything is inside and projected out (see harmonizing statements to demonstrate this for yourself). This confusion causes a major disconnect in how we perceive things, how we process the information put out by ourselves. The last 100 years of psychiatric insight has reinforced the idea that the world is outside and happens to you, which has turned things upside down and backwards. At the most basic level folks should not be asking, “why is this happening to me” but “why am I perceiving this is happening to me?” We should be wondering why we are unable to perceive anything else.

The world around me is always at war, why is the earth always at war? What if I altered that point of view a little. What if I ask the question, “why do I perceive I exist in a reality where there is always war?” “Why do I insist on perceiving the war world and not another world?” “What in me, in my brain programming, has me perceiving a reality in which war and killing is the answer to almost everything?”


What You Can Do To Increase Your Awareness

Increasing your perception is more about removing things then adding things. Trying to see better, or hear more is about creating more limitation, not getting less.

• When you go about your day to day experiences, ask yourself, often: “what am I choosing not to perceive?” Then, don’t “try” and perceive anything, let your system go and see what happens.

• When confronted with a problem, turn it around. The gym was not my problem, my decision to go to a gym where people stole things was the problem. I can’t change the gym, I can’t change my choice. Look to see the problem from the other side.

• Place your hands on your knees. Look around the room carefully, take it all in. Then ask yourself this question: “how would I know if everything in my reality was replaced with a 95 percent replica?” How would you know of your reality had altered, what tools do you think would tell you this? Do you really trust your eyes to tell you all about your reality, the eyes that fall for the magicians illusions? The film Dark City is an interesting visual representation on this idea.

• Begin to accept the idea that the body’s senses are limitations, limitations that don’t work very well at best. This is process, not an overnight thing.

• Begin to accept the idea that there are things to perceive beyond the body’s systems, and while you don’t know how to perceive them yet, you are open to what kind of work it takes to expand your perception to get there. This is a process, not an overnight thing.

• Fully and complete accept that people perceive things differently. Accept and embrace the idea that this fact is wonderful, not a problem, but exactly how it is supposed to be. Stop insisting others perceive things just like you and stop feeling angry, or disappointed that folks don’t perceive things just like you.