Our daily experience of the world seems solid and true, but what if it's just a piece of what really is there?
Marjorie Woollacott and Marina Weiler in their own test “Neuron filters for conscious consciousness and phenomena that reduce their influence” suggest that our brains act as radiotelephones, tuned to a specific frequency of reality.
Built -in neural filters limit what we perceive by keeping us on a narrow piece of existence. However, in some unusual conditions-as such as experiences about close death, deep meditation or psychedelic filters can weaken, potentially revealing a wider, more wonderful reality.
What are neural filters?
Imagine your brain as a guard, carefully reviewing the information flood that bombards us at any time. Neuron filters are brain tools to decide what makes our conscious awareness and what is omitted.
According to Woollacott and Wealer, these filters include sensory receptors, a growing mesh activation system (ARAS) in combination with a hill, a default mode (DMN) and left hemisphere centers.
Together they scratch our perception, narrowing it to a mastered stream of sights, sounds and thoughts. They are like settings on the radio disc, blocking us at one station, while countless others humming just out of reach.
Filters that shape our reality
Our journey begins with sensory receptors – eyes, ears, skin, nose and tongue that connect us with the world. These receptors are amazing, but they are narrow. For example, our eyes can only see a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum – a reliable lightweight – while bees of noise around the view of ultraviolet patterns on flowers and snakes feel infrared heated. Our ears catch it from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, but dogs go out to whistles that you will never hear. From the very beginning, our perception is filtered, leaving huge swaths of reality for us imperceptible and silent.
The next in the line are the growing mesh activation system (Aras) and the hill, a vigorous duo that controls what reaches our conscious mind. Aras, hidden in the brain trunk, maintains us vigilant and decides what to look for – think about it as a goalkeeper in the club, letting some stimuli, while turning others.
Has he ever adapted to the ticking clock until someone mentions it? These are those guards at work, filtering noise so that you can focus on what is significant.
Then there is a network of default mode (DMN), a network of brain regions that illuminates when we do not focus in the outside world – when we dream, remember or get lost in our minds. This is a voice in your head. Viring stories about who you are and how you fit the world.
DMN binds our experiences with self -esteem, but it can also imprison us in loops of worries or fantasy, filtering reality through the lens “I and me” is like a narrator who will not stop talking, staining everything we perceive.
Finally, the left hemisphere of the centers – such as the areas of Broc and Wernicke – helped us understand the world, calling and categorizing it. Language is a superpower, enabling us to communicate and think abstractly, but also transmits our experiences into shapely tiny packages.
The tree becomes a “tree” and we stop noticing its swaying branches or rustling. These centers filter our perception through concepts, sometimes blinding us to a harsh, unrefined essence of things.
Together, these filters limit us to a narrow range of energy frequency, they anchor us in space and time, and prioritize the stories that we tell ourselves. These are tools for survival, they keep us on the basis – but they can also stop us from seeing a larger picture.
How filters limit our perception
Imagine reality as an infinite ocean, and our consciousness as a tiny bucket immerse in it. These neural filters decide how much water maintains this bucket and what remains. They limit us to a piece of electromagnetic spectrum, a piece of sound waves and a linear sense of ticking time.
They focus us on direct threats or tasks, drowning out subtle signals – for example, intuition that is looking for you in front of the phone. Woollacott and Weiler say that this filtered reality is practical, but an incomplete, tiny station at a wide selection of existence.
What happens when these filters relax their adhesion? Woollacott and Weiler indicate three phenomena that can reduce their influence: experiences of close death, deep meditation and psychodelical relationships. Everyone offers a look beyond the curtain.
Imagine that your heart stops, the brain flicker and you suddenly float over your body, watching the doctors try to save you. Experiences about close death (NDE) often oppose the explanation-people report live visions, lightweight tunnel or meetings with loved ones.
Studies suggest that during NDE brain activity changes dramatically, probably closing ordinary filters. Aras can break down, the hill can silence, and the result is an unrefined flood of consciousness – principles, extensive and indefinite from the body.
Now the picture sitting still, your breath slowly and enduring, your mind has fallen like dust after a storm. Deep meditation – apprenticeships such as mindfulness or transcendental meditation – quietly talking DMN and softens the tongue holder. Studies show that advanced meditators experience reduced activity in these filtering regions, which leads to states of unity or timelessness. It is as if the stationary radio disappears, and passes a clearer, wider signal – a sense of being part of something huge and uninterrupted.
Finally, consider the dose of psilocybin – magic in some mushrooms – or LSD, substances that turn perception into a wonderful miracle. These psychEdelics disrupt DMN and other networks, climbing ordinary brain filters. Users describe colors pulsating with life, sometimes stretching or falling and their feeling, how they dissolved in everything. Neuronauka confirms this: brain scans show disordered, hyper combined condition in which the normal boundaries of perception melt, tuning the mind to frequencies that it rarely hears.
What we experience when filters fall
When these filters weaken, the bucket overflows and the reality changes.
Wider awareness: People feel connected with the universe, as if the walls were dissolved in one shiny whole among themselves and others.
Time and space transcendence: Time may loop or disappear, and the space goes beyond the edges of the body, opposing our ordinary coordinate.
Ego solution: “I” disappears, replaced by the unlimited “we” – one that seems both strange and familiar.
Non -local information: Some report sudden observations or knowledge – like knowing the thought of a loved one at a distance of many miles – in an unlimited mind by five senses.
These experiences can exploit a deeper layer of consciousness that exists outside of ordinary brain restrictions.
As Marjorie Woollacott and Marina Weiler suggest in their study, these filters can also blind us to great reality. Experiences about close death, deep meditation and psychEdelics offer a look beyond the place where consciousness expands, takes on time, and the self blends into the whole.
Image Source: Pixabay.com
