You have to see it to believe it. Trust your eyes. Only believe in what you can see, feel, and touch. Such statements represent what we are taught since birth, what we are domesticated with. But is this so? The world is rife with things based on what you can perceive and only what you can perceive. Science has its roots in what can be sensed and measured, many religions and philosophies were established as a first means to explain the whys of what we perceive, and in everyday life we are guided by what our senses tell us.
To be fair, our senses are quite useful in keeping us alive and well. You see another car coming at you, so you know there is a great probability of harm if you do not turn away. You see the clock on the wall telling you the time and know you must hurry to get to that meeting. Even the blind must perceive the world through their remaining senses, though hampered, the remaining intact senses are improved by the lack of one. If we were suddenly denied the use of all of our senses then we would be helpless indeed. But, are our perceptions telling us everything? Can our senses tell us everything there is to perceive, and correctly do so?
What Ancient Peoples Perceived
In ancient times, men looked up in the sky and saw many specks of light. They perceived them as small dots and not far away stars, so explained them in terms of points of light leaking through Heaven. They saw the Sun and the Moon, knew them to be far away in the sky just from looking at them, and so guessed them to be about the size of a chariot, being driven across the sky by gods. It fit with their perceptions, matched all their data, so who was to say it was wrong? Certainly no way they could prove otherwise. And so this viewpoint was accepted and enforced, taught as the way the world was.
And yet now we know otherwise. That the sun does not move across the sky and is certainly a lot bigger than we might imagine. We based our assumptions on what we perceived but we did not perceive the whole story. Historic texts discuss the arrival of Columbus on the ancient shores. The native tribesmen, although residing on the beaches next to where Columbus's ships anchored where seemingly unaware of the ships, yet they stood directly in front of them. There consciousness was not able to comprehend this "reality" and it is said that the vision was in fact blocked from their conscious vision. This phenomenon is said to be commonplace whenever there is a disconnect between the reality and the relative consciousness of the being. Some posit that we would not comprehend an alien spaceship for similar reasons.
Another example from ancient times. The world was flat. Certainly if you walk outside right now and stand atop a building, you will see a flat world from horizon to horizon just as ancient peoples did. It was their natural assumptions that therefore the entire world must be flat, dropping off at an edge when you came to the end of it. That is what their senses told them so it must be true and must be all of the truth. They did not realize that the reason they could not see past the horizon was not so much from lack of a telescope powerful enough but that the land curves after 88 miles due to the curvature of the Earth.
Their perceptions were true enough in what they could tell them, but did not tell the whole story. This led to false conclusions.
In Roman times one was considered old at about age 30. People looked as old then as someone now in their 60s or so might. Everyone over 30 was physically used up, old, so it must be the norm; it must be as we perceived, so accept it. They did not know about sanitation, health care, and little about a lot of diseases. They did not know about all the preventable factors that contribute to aging. They simply perceived the one thing and accepted it as natural.
Their perceptions and the corresponding behaviors trapped them in a very short life.
There is much in this world that we cannot perceive, cannot see or even feel. Science has extended our senses quite a bit, allowed us to see the unseeable, perceive the unperceivable. But, if science has allowed us to see what we could not before, might there still be things which science has not yet allowed us to perceive? We would seem to be in the same position as people of old, just on a different level. We can perceive more things than we could before, now with our own senses and the equipment brought to us by science, but is that the limit of what there is? Does it only exist if we can see or feel it through our own bodies or through our devices? Remember, these are things that ancient peoples could not see nor imagine, would have dismissed as not real but now they are.
What has changed? Did the UV (ultraviolet light) not exist back then but it does now? Of course not. What has changed is our ability to perceive what was there all along. So too then might there be things which we cannot yet perceive but are waiting for us to find a way to do so. Perhaps something in our genetics that would allow us many times our current lifespan, perhaps we'll find that aging is simply the result of years of bad healthcare piling up, or perhaps something else that keeps limiting what we should expect.
For more behavioral, medical, and scientific detail on how to stop, slow, or even reverse aging; see my book "Thinking yourself young". This book will examine data that was developed from interviews with Tibetan monks during my visit to the Lama temple in Beijing China. I was able to ask them questions about their daily rituals and habits. Since my visit I have been mirroring a diet program myself that I believe may be at the core to their longevity that I will share in the book. A few of these monks had somehow managed to live to 180 years of age yet he looked like a typical 80 year old you might know here in the US. The book will be available for download or purchase on ITunes, Amazon, Borders, and Barnes and Noble this fall.
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"The Point of Power", available now on Amazon. He is also the author of "It's None of My Business What You Think of Me!: If You Want to Change Your Life ... Change the Way You Are Looking at It". His website is peterbaksa.com.