Printed in the Conscious Creation Journal
April-May 2000, Issue 11
Three Steps Into The Magical: Perceiving Reality
by John McNally
Ahh, physical reality, comforting isn’t it? So stable and reliable, and you can be sure that whatever you are looking at, the person next to you can see as well. Or is it? What exactly do we perceive anyway? If you and I are looking at the same flower, does it appear the same to our eyes, or feel the same to our fingers? Recently I had the opportunity to peek at a different kind of reality, and it made me realize how highly specialized our senses are for perceiving this one.
When I think of physical reality, I tend to think of visual images first. This is probably true for most people. Humans are primarily a vision-oriented species, with hearing, smell, and taste filling out the picture to a lesser degree. When you look at an object in physical reality, what you are really seeing is its reflection from a light source (yeah, unless you’re looking at a light, I know.) The light itself is merely a form of energy moving at a certain frequency. Small changes in that frequency will change the color of the light. If you were to change the frequency enough, you could turn that light into a sound audible to your ears.
Our eyes and ears are very specific receivers. They are geared to accept only a narrow range of energy and turn it either into a moving visual picture, or a sound. It’s common knowledge that there’s a multitude of energy around us which we do not readily perceive. Even as you read this, radio waves are permeating the room in which you sit. If you don’t believe me, try turning on your radio to test it.
So what would happen if we were to change our internal settings? For example: If you could perceive ultraviolet rays at the lower end of your visual scale, and no light below it. Or if you could reverse the reception of light and sound, so that you would hear the sunrise, and see it when someone called your name. To try this for only a few moments would give you a completely different picture of reality indeed.
Recently, I was placed into a hypnotic trance by my partner Kristen, and I got to visit an “alien” realm. The reality I perceived felt very fluid, movement was effortless, and distance didn’t seem to be a factor, although I perceived physical space between objects, and travel wasn’t exactly instantaneous, there seemed to be no time difference between traveling 100 feet, or 100 miles.
My first assumption was that this was an extra-dimensional reality. One where there was length, width and depth, of some sort, but that was where the commonalties ended. The beings in this reality seemed to be able to pass through objects and each other at will, although they could manipulate objects easily as well. The concepts of space and solidity, as I understand them, made no sense here.
As I began to look at the rather limited scope we use to perceive our every day waking reality, I began to wonder how reality, this physical realm, would appear if my focus was completely different. If I perceived sound as light, and vice versa: What would the ocean look and sound like? What would be like to swim in it? I realized that there was a great deal of “egotism” to assume that all of this physical universe would appear in familiar physical terms, simply because I expected to see and hear things from the range in which I’m most comfortable.
Taking this a step further, Seth once said that future events vibrated at a frequency too fast for us to perceive, and past ones vibrated too slowly. We could interpret any given present moment because it was vibrating at the frequency in which we are accustomed to perceiving. Our sense of time is another, and perhaps our most narrowly focused, sense. Time seems to flow at a constant and regular linear rate for us, so well in fact that we don’t usually find ourselves waking up the day before we laid down to sleep. <grin> If we had conscious control of this sense however, “time” would cease to exist in the straightforward manner in which we perceive it. Instead, it would become a set of coordinates, similar to geographic locations on a map. This could very well explain what I saw in that alien realm I visited.
So what is physical reality anyway? A telepathic common ground? An energetic crossroads perhaps? Beats the heck out of me. However, I am starting to understand that it’s a lot more vast and complex than I was previously giving it credit for.
(c)2000, John McNally. Published in the April-May 2000 issue of the online Conscious Creation Journal. http://www.consciouscreation.com Feel free to copy this article for personal use – please include this copyright notice.