Self-Improvement and Interesting Knowledge

This is really the fundamental secret that allows a small few to control the many.

Books mentioned in the video:

 

 

 

We tend to be very sure of ourselves. You could ask just about any person on just about any topic that you like and he or she would tell you the way things are. When they tell you the way things are they will tell you in such a way that you will know that they are quite sure about what they’re talking about.

But can we be that sure? Can any of us be that sure about the things that we see and what we perceive of the world around us? The problem with being so sure arises from the fact that our perception, the sense data that we are able to perceive, is not that powerful or that exact.

Looking about you, you would most likely say that you are quite certain about the things that you see before you. Certainly, if you see a book and you reach for that book you will find that the book is there. We are all quite certain that if we hear a bus and see a bus then that bus must be there, and if we don’t get out of the way then we will surely feel the consequence of that mistake. The world is not an illusion, we prove that to ourselves every day, this is not the problem. Our problem lies in the fact that we believe that the world is just like the way we see it, hear it, feel it, smell it, and taste it.

Unfortunately our senses have a very limited range. If we were to study every single one of our senses, like hearing for example; we would realize that within the broad range of possible noises, we are only able to hear only a very small range of them. While humans have an average range of hearing in between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, there is an infinitude of possible sound above and below this limit. To give you an example, the lowest sound ever perceived in the universe is said to have been 0.0000000000000016 Hz; this sound was detected by astronomers studying the Perseus Cluster.

Imagine the amount of noise that you can’t hear right now. If you ever see your pet lifting its head and caulking it ears one way or the other, without you ever having heard anything at all, then you get a basic idea of just how limited our hearing is.

The point of all this is to illustrate the fact that our sense perceptions are very limited, and yet we seldom stop to consider the fact that there could be entire universes existing around us that we are not able to perceive in any way. The size of our universe is limited by the range of our perception, and even with our most subtle instruments, this perception is still quite limited.

The world out there is not an illusion, but we are only able to perceive a small fraction of it. Even our most sensitive instruments cannot begin to perceive all that is going on around us. These instruments can even give us a highly skewed interpretation of the world around us because we tend to create instruments to perceive what which we think we should perceive.
Realize then that wherever you are right now, there’s far more going on around you than you could possibly imagine. While it is possible that you could have a very large imagination, that imagination is still limited by your senses, because it is nearly impossible to imagine that which we can’t even conceive perceptually.

We live in an infinite world made up of the known and the unknown. Our mistake comes from our insistence of trying to fit the unknown into rules that we have developed through the little that we do know. Instead of looking into the unknown with a broad perspective, we tend to look into it with a narrow focus, trying to see what we expect to see because of what we already know. But the unknown is the unknown because it exists in a realm beyond our current perceptual and intellectual capabilities. The only way that we will be able to make any headway into the unknown is by expanding our intellect enough so that it is able to understand that the broad range of possibilities out there can only be accessed by swiping clean our current expectations.

There’s an old Zen story that illustrates this point:

An academic from a local University once approached a Zen master wanting to learn the Way. The master asked the academic into his home and served him tea. While they were having tea the master politely told the academic that he could not possibly teach him the Way and that the academic would need to go somewhere else. When the academic asked why, the master asked him for his teacup; he told the academic that he was like that teacup and that what the master had to teach was like the tea in the teacup. The master grabbed the teakettle and began to pour tea into the teacup, but soon the teacup was full and the tea began to run over the teacup and fall to the ground.” You see,” said the master, “if I were to teach you about the Way, you would never be able to grasp it because you’re teacup is already full.”

When we walk around being ever so sure about what we perceive of the world around us, our teacup is full. The problem with normal human perception is that it lies to us, but just like the best liars it doesn’t tell us an outright lie, it just tells us half-truths. In order to empty our teacup, we must begin to realize that our perceptions are highly limited and we tend to see only what we expect.

But even with our limited perceptive abilities, there is the possibility of extending our awareness. We do see very little of what is around us but we can learn to see more. In my book The Occult Experience I show you different ways to expand your perceptions, and I do recommend it to you if you are interested in trying to empty your teacup.

Anyone that tells you that the paranormal does not exist is someone who is completely unaware of just how little of the world they see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. Anyone that tells you that UFOs, Bigfoot, ghosts, psychic abilities, etc. CANNOT be real; has deluded him or herself into believing that the unknown is only made up of different combinations of the infinitesimal parts that they do know.

3 comments

  1. Would love to see a printed book version of The Occult Experience!
    Thanks for all you are doing!
    Cheers!

    1. Just like we can only see a spectrum of energy we refer to as physicality, there are other spectrum that we must use machines to detect…and yet others that even machines cannot really detect yet. I am not a reiki expert in any way but it is the case (I feel) that such practitioners are using energy in a positive way in spectrums’ beyond the current measure.

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