Behind the Doors of Perception: 5 Scientific Thought Experiments That Might Alter Your Reality

[Behind The Doors Of Perception is a new Homegrown column by Ajay Makhija, journeyman and founder of I Am Creator, that attempts to shed light on self-exploration and heightened spiritual awareness, in the hopes of helping people attract the life that they desire.]

‘If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.’ 

Written by William Blake in 1793, this phrase was made notorious in 1954 by Aldous Huxley, whose experiments with Mescaline were motivated by an idea that the brain is a reducing valve that restricts consciousness. He wanted to open that valve and test the waters a bit. So do we.

From the time we’re babies, we’re fed information which shapes our beliefs and our world-view. From parents, family-members, teacher, doctors, television shows, books... the list goes on. No one filters what’s true or not, though, and a lot of the time we enter into adulthood with misinformed notions, ideas and beliefs – ones that serve us quite poorly despite our deep-seeded convinced are true. Thanks to the internet though, a whole slew of new research, ideas and information is available – and if you really sit down to consider some of this stuff, it throws up way more questions than answers.
It’s a bit frosty, but come on down this path less travelled, won’t you?
I.            Rabbits, Guinea Pigs and the Health Industry – How Much of What ‘Experts’ Tell Us Actually Kosher?
During a study by the Ohio State University testing the effects of high-cholesterol diets (on bunnies, of course), scientists accidentally found out that good, old-fashioned loving caused some rabbits to be healthier than others. In the words of Dr. Nerem, who headed the experiment, “We thought the person who was handling the animals, Dr. (Murina) Levesque might have treated some of them differently because she’s fond of animals.”
Subsequently, a test was devised with two control groups where Dr. Levesque would visit the rabbits four or five times a day “just to say hello and cuddle.” The rabbits who were recipients of this TLC were 60% healthier than the ones who were not given the same kind of attention.
Throws up some interesting questions around modern society’s pill-popping behavior. For a start, maybe John, Ringo and the rest of them were right; and all we need is love…
Cue trumpets.
II.            The Vacation Syndrome – Are We Tripping Our Own Wires In Neuro-networked Cities?
We love vacations and constantly feel the need to ‘get out’ or ‘take a break’ to go to mountains, hills or beaches, and get away from crowds, traffic and other city-slicking. There might be something more deeper going on here. In 1953, Professor W.O. Schumann  of the University of Munich discovered that the Earth emits a specific pulsation – a vibrational pulse if you will. In subsequent years, they mapped this frequency and found it to be 7.83 Hertz.
Another scientist, a Dr. Ankermueller who had been working on the human brain’s electromagnetic frequency excitedly contacted Schumann after finding out about his work – with the information that his work showed the human brain emitted the same frequency!
If you think about the city and its cell phone towers, car radiators, Wi-Fi routers, micro-waves, television satellite sets and the potential for all the magnetic fields they emit, you might begin to piece together why being in nature is so much more comforting – once we tune ourselves back into our natural state.
Check out this video for a pictorial representation of magnetic fields in our environment:

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.
If this interests you, go here to the Schumann Resonator Website and read all about this phenomenon.

III.            Qi Gong Energy & The Human Torch – And could we all have undiscovered super powers?
Where have we seen a human with the ability to create or channel fire? The Torch in the Fantastic Four,  or that Pyro guy from the X-Men movies right. What about this Qi Gong master who can set flame to a piece of paper with his bare hands?
(See 3:45 in the video below.)

Qigong master emits heat from his hands from Hans Fleischer on Vimeo.
The Eastern mystics have stipulated for eons that we are all energy beings, and we have the power to manipulate said energy. Science, the modern discipline which is barely a few hundred years old, has ridiculed this for many years, and that’s the crux of what we’ve been taught in school, college and university.
How has this limited our thinking, our actions, and created self-imposed boundaries? What if we were taught that we could all do things like this? Would this be a world of mutants? What else are we capable of?

IV.            The Animal Kingdom and its emerging IQ – Are You Smarter Than A Puffer Fish…Or A Prairie Dog?
Remember that line about goldfish having a 5-second memory? I know this is one’s a whole different kettle of fish, but still. Explain this Fishcasso.

Or this article (including links to the actual published research) on the Scientific American blog, which shows how prairie dogs (yeah, that’s right) have a vocal language so sophisticated that they can name different predators, and describe what they look like. Scientists say that the dogs can make sentences like “a medium, rectangle-shaped dog with yellow fur (we call them German shepherds) is approaching”, or “Here comes a tall human being wearing a green t-shirt who is also fat.”
These 2 instances throw up all kinds of interesting questions about how smart animals are versus how much credit humans give them.
V.            The Idiot Box Or Something More Sinister – Are Large Swathes of People Walking Around in a Hypnotic Trance?
We sometimes adapt colloquialisms for things that are spot on, and yet find a way to miss the message altogether. Case in point--the television. Great for watching the latest episode of Breaking Bad, or whatever the cool kids are into these days – but did you know that the delivery system of a television program includes flicker rates that induce alpha brain waves? This is a subconscious brain-state, and one that hypnotists aim to engender in their subjects, making them more susceptible to suggestion. Google Herbert Krugman experiments for more information (these were basically undertaken as part of larger project concerned with advertising).
The research broken down, basically found that the left hemisphere of the brain, the one responsible for your logic and analysis shuts down, or tunes our completely when one watches television. Whatever is coming from the TV embeds itself into the watcher’s subconscious and emotive mind.

Advertisers know this, and that’s why during IPL games, or movies – you will see an ad repeat 5-6 times. Logically, you think that this is stupid, but somewhere embedded into your brain, is an urge to buy the product that repeatedly imprinted onto you. And what about news and the scare-mongering tactics used there – NEWS is basically 90% bad news, trapping us into a spiral of negative thinking and fear. See this scary video to see how Centrally information is Disseminated – and then think about all the information that is subliminally broadcast to watchers – basically ‘training’ your thought in a particular way.
Check out this documentary available on YouTube – Consuming Kids which shows how youth marketers have used the latest advances in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world. It’s not all the television, but it sure does give you a flavour.
Physical Science has come to certain assumptions based on the experiments and apparatus that they currently are limited by. If we look a bit deeper, or even a bit further back in our history, we’ll find that the truth can be a slippery eel.
Are we limiting ourselves by what we allow ourselves to believe and is it possible that there’s a brave new world out there waiting to be explored?

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Words : Ajay Makhija

[Journeyman and Founder atI am Creator
If you knew that you had the power to create your life experience, that you’ve just forgotten something that is dormant within you and that you could wake up into this power – what kind of life would you live?
Ajay runs workshops on the Law of Attraction and how to start using it in daily life, including a practical toolkit of exercises, tips and tricks to stay positive, increase happiness, process negativity, manifest your goals and begin to dance with life. His great joy is to remind people that living a life of joy is easier than we sometimes think.
Next Workshop Details: 17/18 January at Tangerine Arts Studio, Khar
Check FB for more info]