Perception

Coming to my senses

awareness Self , , , ,

imageHumans have a multitude of senses:

Sight (ophthalmoception), hearing (audioception), taste (gustaoception), smell (olfacoception or olfacception),and touch (tactioception) are the five traditionally recognized senses.

There are few other sensory modalities which include:

Temperature (thermoception), kinesthetic sense (proprioception), pain (nociception), balance (equilibrioception),vibration (mechanoreception), and various internal stimuli (e.g. the different chemoreceptors for detecting salt and carbon dioxide concentrations in the blood).

Some species of animals are able to sense the world in a way that humans cannot:

Dogs can hear in frequencies ranging from around 40 Hz to 60 kHz.
Humans can hear in frequencies ranging from 12 Hz to 20 kHz .The olfactory (sense of smell) cortex is 40 times bigger in dogs than it is in humans and up to 100 million times more sensitive.The human nose can sense up to 4,000 to 10,000 different smells (dogs can sense around 30,000 to 100,000).Dogs don’t have the greatest clarity of vision, but they can see motion much better than us humans. For example, dogs have been shown to be able to differentiate between their owners from distances of up to 900m. However, that’s only the case if you are moving.

some species are able to sense electrical and magnetic fields, and detect water pressure and currents.

Our senses differ with species and age. So our perception of what is real is not only different but not entirely complete or True

Günter Wächtershäuser (born 1938 in Gießen), a German chemist turned patent lawyer, is mainly known for his work on the origin of life. He stated the life form originated as 2 dimensional beings.

Imagine the restriction of perception that these beings  had of their surroundings .They would see a square while we see a cube. They would see a circle where we see a sphere (since we have 3 dimensional perception)

Few scientists like Einstein and Minkowski have proposed a fourth dimension which would throw a spanner in the works of whatever we have perceived through our limited senses… so far. I honestly can’t even imagine what it is that we would observe if we were capacitated to perceive the 4th dimension

The loss of sight in visually impaired people is compensated by other senses being heightened. A new study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, shows people who are born deaf use areas of the brain typically devoted to processing sound to instead process touch and vision. A large body of evidence shows when the brain is deprived of input in one sensory modality, it is capable of reorganizing itself to support and augment other senses, a phenomenon known as cross-modal neuroplasticity.Perhaps more interestingly, the researchers found this neural reorganisation affects, how deaf individuals perceive sensory stimuli, their perception in certain areas is far Superior to people with normal hearing.

Most of our ideas and beliefs we hold on to dearly are arrived upon, with little information most times and a skewed perception. Skewed or distorted due to our limitations of our senses.

So what if we strive to shift our focus… To see through a different vantage point, a different angle, maybe we could see something that we never saw before. Something that may surprise us pleasantly. What if we did not tie ourselves to any theory about anything no matter how “logical” our reasoning may have been to ourselves.
And most times since we have arrived at conclusions, theories or even principles we miss out on something that is in reality there but we fail to perceive!

Let look at some conclusions we arrive at or logical results we have filed away neatly in our little cabinets:

I don’t have the time.
This is too hard.
I’m tired.
I can’t swim so fast.
I can’t sleep.
I worry too much.
I hate noise.
I can’t remember names.
I can’t learn this now.
I’m only meant to do this.
I’m only meant to look after people
This is not my cup of tea

Similarly about others:
My mother in law just can’t understand
The shop keeper is definitely lying/conning me and other people
She/ he has no respect for me or other people
My child doesn’t ever listen to me
My husband doesn’t care .
My employee/ maid/ colleague just can’t do their work right.
People will fool/con me I need to be alert.
She/he is so ….

Even the ones that are not negative…
I’m beautiful.
I’m good at cooking.
I love chocolate.
I’m fast
I’m a fitness freak
I’m a cleanliness fanatic.

What if these are just limitations….
What if these labels don’t define but confine?
What if we don’t really perceive what we “truely” are… Or others are..
What if we don’t have a limit…
What if we, like the visually impaired, have to mute or tune out the information gathered by our senses to open ourselves up, so as to open our other senses up? Our other capabilities?
What if what we see feel or know Is not just “it” but “More”