There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

~ William Shakespeare

Let’s start with a little side note here. This is the first quote that came to mind when looking for an appropriate opening for this post. I googled it to be sure I had it right and landed on a page explaining the meaning of the quote in its context. There I found several paragraphs concerning themselves with whether ‘our’ or ‘your’ is more correct. I like ‘our’ better here, since it is more clear in conveying the impersonal nature of the idea. To quote the page about the quote : “Hamlet isn’t attacking Horatio’s own beliefs as limited but simply acknowledging the limitations of all human knowledge.”

We live in a highly visual world. Historically, humanity’s favorite way of transmitting static information has been through visual symbolism, which has usually taken the form of writing, drawing and painting, and in the last hundred or so years has been joined by the photo and video. Obviously, our most natural and dynamic form of communication is through sound, where the symbolism lives through words and music. But to make for an elegant point, I want to bring both these ways of communication, which are functions of two of what we know as our classical five senses, to live in the Visible world.

To make a quick and sloppy estimate, in the last five hundred years we have seen an increasing scientification of everyday life. We all have to bear the burden of inheriting an addiction to empirical thinking. (It doesn’t help that so-called scientific evidence is a great way to prove that I am right and you are wrong, but more on that later.) It is now considered normal to only accept truths if they are able to fit on a sheet of paper, a facebook post or a tweet. You can read them, absorb them mentally, and make them fit in your dreamt up philosophy, even if that requires a little brute force.

The word is the ruler of reality, or so it seems. To take it a layer deeper, our mental faculty is now the accepted and unquestioned way to interface with the so-called outside world. So-called, because the outside world is just another symbolic spasm of our mental faculty. I hope you can sense the impending danger of circular thinking, so let me get you off the ride before I make you carsick.

If you have any inclination toward self-exploration and the Wonderful World of the Woowoo arts, you have undoubtedly come across the many parallel sciences of consciousness that have lived or are still alive in the world. Where the quest for scientific evidence is historically still at the toddler stage – with all its tantrums, drama, over-simplification and blind destructiveness that comes with it – there are other, older and more mature systems to our disposal. Systems that have, through centuries of experiential exploration, drawn a vast and meticulous map of the human experience. These maps are, however, not based on visual feedback.

Where modern science, since its inception, has relied solely on contraptions that make the invisible visible, more ancient systems have been using more natural and intimate devices to understand what makes us tick. For now, let me call these the forgotten senses. Or even supplanted senses – atrophied through overuse of everything that is located in the head. The fact that four out of the five classical senses are located in the skull, and the fifth one is supposedly only serving the brain, should be a pretty obvious red flag.

The little mafia made up of our eyes, ears and mental ability are a tight knit bunch. It doesn’t allow our sense of reality to exist outside of this little club – everything needs to conform to their rules or be denied the sacred seal of truth. If it doesn’t sit right with this committee, there will be pushback. You’re probably very familiar with the way it operates : something is either true, or a blatant attack on my personal belief system, which makes you a total idiot who doesn’t understand anything because clearly I’m right and you’re wrong and I have proof and reasonable reasons. And fuck you.

I hope the picture I’ve been trying to paint so far is starting to come into focus – pun intended.

The visible world is the world of physicality, of biochemistry, of intellectual reductionism. Its ruler is thought, and what an incapable ruler it is. Incapable not because it needs a better understanding of the world – a desire which, of course, only serves its own survival – but because it was never built to rule our sense of reality.

This is where I would like to introduce the very simplistic, almost childlike, idea of the invisible world. It is the world that is not accessible through our eyes or ears. A world that is much larger than the tiny jurisdiction the mental faculties have as their playground.

Where the interaction with the visible world is limited to what we think we see – since what our eyes see and ears hear is so deeply enmeshed with our mental interpretations – interfacing with the invisible world is completely open, free and limitless.

Good, we have the grandiose statement out of the way.

In practical terms, and very much like the Matrix concept, we actually have access to the living, loving and endlessly wise flow of life force energy that makes up and underlies all life in the universe we experience. But not through our eyes, ears or thoughts. And therein lies the invitation to entertain the notion that there is more to life than the visible world presents us with.

Coming from the other side, it is very easy to prove that there is more. Even if you’ve spent the last ten years of your life coding database management software in a basement with zero social interaction, you will still have feelings. Obviously you know this, or at least you think you do. I thought I knew this as well, but it wasn’t until I realized the vastness (and my ignorance) of this unexplored world, that I understood that any knowledge would only hinder its exploration.

The invisible world isn’t explorable by thought – the whole jurisdiction thing again – and thought does not like that one bit – the whole mafia thing again. You can’t think your way to accessing these forgotten senses, the senses which keep you tethered to what is actually going on in your experience.

Now, let’s make things even more convoluted. Trust me, we need to. And besides, it’s for a good cause. (Spoiler alert : it’s the sense of peace that envelops you like a warm hug when you finally come back home to yourself…)

Living in the visible world is not the natural human state. It is however the state of the human world we are born into, and as such we are infused with this way of doing reality from the get-go. To boil it down to very simple, practical words : when you are taught to behave, you are taught to look at what your body does, and do everything in your power to keep it from doing something that is called wrong – or else. Your body is now an idea that needs to conform to the other ideas. Eventually, the body becomes an afterthought. It’s reduced to being a contraption, enslaved and working for your little skull mafia.

“Well, everybody does it that way, so I better play along” is the reasonable reasoning.

There’s a lot of comfort in conformity. There’s also a lot of unnecessary tension in the conformed body, which eventually leads to mental and physical disease. Which can be made visible through a variety of contraptions and tests. After which you can get the appropriate pills to remedy the scientifically proven problem. If you have ever struggled with any chronic mental or physical disorder, you will have first hand experience of how limited and ineffective this approach is. It can even be dangerous and lethal.

Not being able to measure something obviously doesn’t make it unreal. Especially when that something is very perceivable, even if it isn’t through our eyes or ears. Opening the door to this idea of the forgotten senses will create the space to explore new ways of doing reality.

Time for another side note. I wrote “new ways,” but these are obviously not new in the general sense of the word. What will be new is the conscious exploration of these different modes of experiencing reality. They have been accessible all along, since that is the potential you have as a human being. As a child you even lived this way, unconsciously, and until behaving became the new normal.

A little report from my own explorations : once I experienced the vastness and aliveness that I was greeted by in the invisible world, I couldn’t help but be amazed and saddened by how much I have been missing in my life. The realization that I had the means – and responsibility – to make contact with this greater sense of reality all by myself, only amplified the amazement and sadness. There is a lot of grieving to be done when you are confronted with the fact that all of your life, prior to this exploration and the juicy discoveries it brings, you have been living in a very small and very uncomfortable box. And that during that entire period, you felt like anything worthwhile in life had to be gotten from outside this little box.

And that is exactly the great promise I can make you, the great promise that the invisible world holds. There you will find what you were always so frantically, desperately looking for in the visible world, which is by definition “out there”. And of course, everything that needs to be gotten from the outside, through great effort, requires even more effort to maintain and control. This is the natural, spontaneous illusion that grows from living in a tiny box.

The good news is : you don’t live in a tiny box. But to say that you live in an endless ocean of love energy would be wrong as well. Exploring the invisible world has made me intimately experience the one great truth, the one that all spiritual beings throughout humanity’s history have agreed upon : that I’m not separate from this ocean.

And this is the perfect line to illustrate this post. The mechanics that allow the visible world to exist cannot allow this idea of non-separation. You cannot be the little hermit in the tiny box filled with stories, and at the same time not be a separate entity.

Hashtag mindfuck.

OK, but where to start with this invisible world exploration stuff anyway? You start in the body. Your entire body is filled with sensory systems that feel – FEEL – so much more deeply and subtly than your eyes or ears can on their own. To state the obvious : there is nothing wrong with the experience of reality that your eyes and/or ears allow. But they are very limited in bandwidth, and we have access to so much more – through the body.

I have consciously chosen not to point to any particular system, even though there are many that, throughout history, have documented and mapped out the ways in which the body interfaces with reality. These are all very interesting, and that’s a problem. You can read all the books or watch all the videos you want, but that will only keep you stuck in your box, with even less room than before. More stories, remember.

I’m so proud of my box metaphor… Can you tell?

The real invitation is to step out of the box, down from your skull, and explore the myriad ways in which the body can know reality. This again demands courage. It’s safe in the box. But the price for that safety is poverty. Poverty in experiencing life as a very limited – and limiting – ordeal.

Please don’t die before you have experienced this world.