Are your eyes seeing more than your brain ?

[soccer7]

I'm not sure if you guys have seen a documentary called " What the Bleep do we know!? " that is mentioned in steve's article on the secret, which talks about how we percieve reality, that our eyes are seeing more than what our brain can consiously comprehend. This is dued to socail conditioning and our being taugh what is possible and what isn't.

an example that was used in "What the Bleep do we know!?" is when the native americans in columbia looked out into the sea they couldn't see Columbus's ships approaching on the horizon, the reason is becuase they had no knowledge of such a thing could exits. It was only after the sharman noticing big ripples near the shore got curious and went out every day to see if he can find what was causing the riples did he see the ships after some times.

I have been thinking about this for quite a while and have come to believe to be correct, for example why do they say little kids and some animals can see ghost, spirits and auras and then lose that ability when they grow up ? I believe this is because the mind of a little child hasn't been limited to what is possible and what isn't, so they get to see what is REALLY there and not what they are told to be there.

so they might ask "why is there orange around dad head" after viewing your aura for example, and then we go and say "what orange, there is no orange, maybe there's something wrong with your eyes dear" then they think, well dad has always been right about other thing like the fire is hot and such so he must be right, so then they denial the existence of what they see and so the brain blocks it out completely and we go on living like it never exist.

i think ghost, spirits and aura's exits and anyone can see them, except perhaps the blind. I think in order for you to see it you have to believe in it's existence first, then you'll be able to see what is truely there and not your expectation of what should be there.

at the moment i'm capable of seeing the white haze around people's head when they are in a white background like a white board or something. I can't see ghost and spirits because i fear them and condition myself to not be able to see them. I'm going to work on my fear of ghost first before i decide i want to see them.

so who here agrees with my theory ?

[Logicseeker]

Cognitive psychologists have studied these pheomena for decades.
As for the native americans, it is possible that they didn't have much open fields, plains. etc. and therefore their eyes hadn't been developed for "seeing" depth. It's also possible that the story is BS.

There are some documented cases where perception differs between different geographical groups etc. In one, the europeans could see a pedistal on a drawing - looking at the same drawing an african from a tribe saw a tree.
So perception of what we see can differ depending on knowledge, but our eyes "take in" the same information.

The information is taken in by "saccades". This means that our eyes are sweeping from one point to another and only registering what is in those points. A bottom-up process in the brain is then responsible for analyzing simple figures, letters etc. and special neurons corresponds to different lines in those figues. Neurons for verical lines, neurons for horizental lines etc. There is also top-down processing for perception of more complex figues, i.e. determining "what is this?".

Our social conditition do not affect the saccades and the input process from our eyes. After the bottom-up process we already have those angels and things in our brain and without brain damage it is impossible to miss them. So the theory that social conditioning makes us blind to paranormal physical objects seems to be false. Growing up could make us see angels as "girls" or some other thing that might make better sence but they would not just disappear. And it is quite seldom for people to notice unfamiliar girls in unusal places, like in their livingroom etc.

[soccer7]

i see what you mean logicseeker, but how do you know that what you percieve around you is all that there is?

yes logically the eyes scan everything and sends it to the brain what ever it gets, but how do you know that your subconcousness is not auto-altering the images it is getting from your eyes to conform with what you believe to be possible to exist in your reality ?

i mean you say you see everything, but can you prove that what you see is really all there is? Its just an assumption isn't it? And because i realise that this is just an assumption, i became suspicous as to why some people can see ghost and auras while others can't.

yes the majority of people don't believe in the existence of such things as spirits and such, because they require to see it first in order to believe it, but maybe that's not how it works with these kind of things, maybe you have to believe first in order to see it.

i'm not saying they 100% exit and that your wrong, i'm just saying that its possible that this might be the way we percieve reality. thanks for your input btw.

[ethereal]

I think scientists have done studies showing that the information coming in from the eyes are first filtered through some area in the brain before they are registered. That area can also be known as where the "ego" is physically manifested in the brain.

Dr. Hawkins once had his eyesight problems spontaneously heal itself and he had the realization that vision is a function of consciousness, not the physical eyes/brain. This is shown by how sight remains in OOBEs and astral projection, when your "body" isn't even there.

Watch a live hypnosis session and you'll be amazed. You can hypnotize someone into not being able to see some object, and they won't see it, even if it is right in front of their eyes. If beliefs can change perception like that, I think it's fair game to say that this is true in general as well, since we're all hypnotized to some degree.

There was this one story about hypnosis performed on a subject so that he wouldn't be able to see his daughter. The hypnotist then woke up the subject and put his daughter right in front of him, yet he couldn't see or hear her. The really crazy part is that he then held a watch behind his daughter's back so that it was hidden, and asked the subject what he was holding in his hand. The subject nonchalantly replied, "a watch." The hypnotist then asked him to read the inscription on it, and he did perfectly.

Reality is perhaps more illusory than we've previously believed.

Very interesting stuff

[searstower]

Douglas Adams wrote an interesting bit related to this in one of the HitchHikers Guide to the Universe books. It's a completely fictional comedy science fiction book.

According to 'the guidebook', "The Somebody Else's Problem field (SEP field) is a cheaper and more practical alternative to an invisibility field.

"An SEP field is a generated energy field which affects perception. Entities within the field will be perceived by an outside observer as "Somebody Else's Problem", and will therefore be effectively invisible unless the observer is specifically looking for the entity.

"This effect is greatly heightened if the entity within the field is already unexpected or out of place. It should be noted that a SEP field won't render an object invisible if it is expected to be there, and an SEP-cloaked object may be noticed out of the corner of the eye."


Of course, some of the more die-hard fans have inspired actual scientific tests to see if this holds up in real life. According the Wikipedia:

The idea of the SEP field has some grounding in the real life idea known as static filtering, in which people immediately disregard information contrary to what is expected. An example of malicious use of static filtering is the theory of subliminal messages in visual media. This theory is also put to practice in the film Fight Club; viewers are shown brief glimpses of a specific character as he suddenly appears and disappears, yet first-time viewers will generally disregard the flash unless they are told about its significance.

There exists a related phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. Essentially, when a person is paying close attention to a specific object or task, they are unlikely to remember anything else about the scene. This was reported on clearly by Daniel J Simons and Christopher F Chabris of Harvard University in their study "Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events" (Harvard University, 1999).

This study discusses subjects who were told to carefully watch a televised basketball game and count the number of passes made or other similar tasks. Most of the subjects failed to notice when the scene changed in various ways, such as the ball being thrown off court (with the players continuing to mimic passes), or exchanging all the male players for women. In the most dramatic example, nearly half the viewers failed to notice a woman carrying an umbrella and a man in a gorilla suit walking across the screen in the middle of the video.

It sounds like you've got some real life science to back up your theory there. Our eyes may see everything, but we don't notice everything in our field of vision, especially if we don't expect it to be there.

[OldTex]

I'm not sure if I'm using my eyes or not... but in this case it sure does appear my eyes are seeing more than they are supposed to be seeing.

I do photography - and until digital came about, I always had a darkroom. Either in a studio somewhere or in my house. Now, many of the processes, including loading film and processing color prints, MUST be carried out in total, absolute darkness. To this end, I'd test a darkroom by leaving a piece of film out for 20 minutes, then process it and check for fogging, a sure sign of a light leak somewhere. I'd work and work to make sure there were no light leaks at all.

After years of working in the darkroom, I noticed I would sometimes see what I was doing. I'd get worried I got a light leak, but I never had a fogging problem. I talked with some pals and found out that many folks who work in total darkness occasionally begin to see in the dark as well.

A girlfriend at the time told me I was using my 3rd eye to see, and this makes sense because the image in my head was odd - not fuzzy or distorted, but like it was illuminated with a faint blue light.

[Lallymac]

I absolutely believe our eyes see more than our brains can assimilate. I've had many incidents over my life of seeing more on recall than I was aware that I'd seen eg; I was a guest speaker at a seminar a few years ago and had to speak to a packed hall. I was incredibly nervous and am short sighted. I'd taken off my glasses so I coudn't see the audience in an attempt to reduce my stress levels. At the end of the night a number of people came forward to ask questions. Amongst them was a man I ended up in a relationship with.
A couple of years later someone asked where I first met him. On recall, I clearly saw him enter into the back of hall late, talk to an older man and slip into an empty seat 3/4 of the way from the back.
He confirmed that he had done exactly that and yet I had no conscious memory of having seen any of it until I was asked.
When I'm doing readings, I'll often glimpse relevant aspects of a person or object. But I've also discovered that I can go back (recall) and bring the image up again and see a lot more detail.
Lallymac

[soccer7]

Yes ! it seems like my theory is at least partially if not entirely correct.

ok so now that my theory has been supported with scientific explaination, real life example and past experience, i can proudly say that maybe we are seeing only what we expect to see, and that our subconscious is messing with the images before it hands it to our consciousness, wow.

but how does knowing this change anything ? well if this is really how we percieve reality, then perhaps we can use this theory to explain why some people can see ghost, spirits, human auras while others cannot.

using this theory i can say that belief play a significant role on how we percieve reality. So if you are truely open to the existence of non-physical beings and are not afraid to see them, i recon with practice and faith you will be able to see them.

now and then i would try to see the aura of my hand, i can see a green haze around my hand sometimes, and i can see a white haze around peoples head in front of a white backgroud, i still need training.

[DoAnyOfYouExist]

Originally Posted by soccer7

and i can see a white haze around peoples head in front of a white backgroud, i still need training.

I see this around the people at my temple when I go to chant nam myoho renge kyo. My first thought was that I was seeing their auras and it was a hint to me that I was doing the right thing with this Buddhism. Then my skeptic decided it was just the lighting and the white background but who knows. I feel something inside when I see these 'auras' though, something that makes me think that it isn't just in my head and it isn't just the lighting. I enjoyed your theory and it matches well with my view of reality.

[Lallymac]

I have frequently throughout my life 'seen' things I'd never previously percieved of, didn't know existed. They appear in the gaps between reality (solid objects). As a child, because no-one else mentioned the things I saw, I assumed they were my imagination. As I got older, some of things I saw happened, and the evidence that they were real, gave credit to some of the other visions that they are most likely real as well. In the physical world we see things as we believe them to be but when we allow ourselves to see through the gaps, we see beyond the restraints of our beliefs.
Lallymac

[songwriter]

Well, I think you know the famous Coca-Cola experiment.

In some cinema they put pictures of a Coke bottle in between the movies images. So no-one consciously saw them... but yes subconsciously. Because the sales of the Coke in that cinema were multiplied for 3. Subliminal ads. Subconscious perception.

You perceive more than you think you perceive.

[Liara Covert]

I definitely think human eyes haven't yet all evolved to their full potential. The same could be assumed for other human senses which could also be sharpened. Consider how animals can hear higher frequencies than humans. House pets seem to 'sense' when their owners are coming home. Why is it that a dog will bark when looking in the same direction as you and you may not perceive anything unusual? We may only be as limited as we believe we are. Life is all about learning to see, raise awareness and heighten perception.

[DoAnyOfYouExist]

Originally Posted by Liara Covert

I definitely think human eyes haven't yet all evolved to their full potential. The same could be assumed for other human senses which could also be sharpened. Consider how animals can hear higher frequencies than humans. House pets seem to 'sense' when their owners are coming home. Why is it that a dog will bark when looking in the same direction as you and you may not perceive anything unusual? We only be as limited as we believe we are. Life is all about learning to see, raise awareness and heighten perception.

Seeing TOO much can be quite overwhelming and I begin to long for simplicity...turn off the flow of information...stimulus overload...

[Liara Covert]

I completely agree about feeling stuck 'between a rock and hard place' when it comes to my desire to turn information and thinking "off." At the same time, my curiosity can build and I get excited about putting pieces of puzzles together. I think of psychics who have been known to wear a walkman with headphones to listen to music as they walk through the corridors of a hospital. This has been an effort to ignore all spirits who approachr from the other side. This appears to be an issue of control and channeling. Yet, some spirits and some ideas in our own heads can be very determined to capture our attention! maybe we're not meant to disregard those? What do you think?

[Sam988]

I agree about the fact the our eyes really see more than our brain can proccess, but it doesnt mean that there are ghosts and auras out there.



Even though because most children dont see it, it might be only some, after they watched it on TV or something like that.


The culture doesnt condition our mind to not see those things, because if ghosts and aura really could be seen by anyone then before there was a culture, back in the times when humankind was living in caves, once everybody could see ghosts and auras, those things would be included in human culture and would be accepted and everybody would be able to see it the same way humans see each other...


So your theory doesnt make much sense about everybody being born able to see ghosts and auras im sorry to disappoint you. But it is correct, as i said before, about the fact that our eyes see much more than our brain can proccess.

[CeciL]

About the Native America Story...

Lets say I am away from my desk, you come in and place a shiny new gadget I have never heard of or seen before. I come back to my office... will I not see that new gadget that has never been introduced into my reality? I would have to say yes...

I seen that movie and quite like it. I think it is more of a metaphor than actual science.

[Liara Covert]

Perhaps we have evolved as creatures with multiple senses because no one sense can seemingly digest and interpret all the information and details we aim to understand. Would life not be very different if we were limited to only one of our many senses? Mre people talk about discovering the power of hidden senses to expand our understanding of thw world. If you could, would you go backwards? Consider how blind people or deaf people intensify those senses they do posess.

[soccer7]

By Sam988 :
because if ghosts and aura really could be seen by anyone then before there was a culture, back in the times when humankind was living in caves, once everybody could see ghosts and auras, those things would be included in human culture and would be accepted and everybody would be able to see it the same way humans see each other...

You got a point there, personally i believe in aura's and ghost, and was wondering for a while now on why some people can see them while others cannot. After watching the documentary "What the bleep do we know" i thought i had some leading clues.

Hmmm, ok, i just remembered something, have you see some aboriginal paintings on cave walls, some of them are draw with halos and auras, like this one:

From Aura - Learn to see your Aura image with your own eyes :
Advanced spiritual people such as Buddha, Christ and their immediate students were painted with golden haloes around their heads, because some artists could actually see Auras. In Australia remote West Kimberleys you can find prehistoric cave paintings, many thousands of years old, depicting people with golden haloes.

There are sources that suggest that some people in the past were able to see aura,

I'm using these examples as clues that suggest the existences of auras, do not to be mistaken for proof.

My theory is that we all have the oportunity to see auras if we believe in them and practice, this theory is supported with the other theory that our eyes are seeing more than our brians, so all in all, they are just a bunch of theories, which i choose to believe in.

Just wondering if how many people out there agrees with me.