EP. 2 | Unseen Worlds
According to current cosmological models, ordinary matter — the matter that makes up stars, planets, our bodies, and the objects around us — accounts for only about 5% of the universe. The rest is described in terms of dark matter and dark energy, names given to phenomena whose effects can be observed even though much about their nature remains unknown.
Even within the physical world, human vision covers only a narrow range.
The light our eyes can see occupies a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Infrared, ultraviolet, radio waves, X-rays, and many other forms of radiation travel through space without producing an image for the human eye. Our hearing also works within a limited range of frequencies, while many animals can hear sounds that fall beyond it.
The human body is surrounded by far more signals than those that enter everyday experience. Neutrinos from the Sun and other sources pass through our bodies in enormous numbers without us feeling a thing. Radio waves can travel through the space around us in complete silence. An animal standing beside us may pick up signals that our own bodies miss entirely.
Some of these things become visible only when we have the right instruments. Infrared telescopes reveal regions our eyes cannot see. Detectors register radiation, particles, and changes too small or too distant for our senses to notice directly. Each tool gives us access to another part of a world that was already there before we had a way to detect it.
Another group of experiences begins with the person experiencing them.
Esoteric traditions have long spoken about intuition, sensing a presence, seeing images that are not physically in front of us, precognitive dreams, and other forms of perception beyond the familiar senses. New Age thought extends this into ideas about energy, vibration, and additional channels of perception. Science does not place all of these experiences into a single category, while people who report them continue to record what happened and look for explanations.
The word “unseen” can point to very different things. Infrared radiation can be detected with instruments. Dark matter is inferred through its gravitational effects. An intuition or the feeling that someone is standing behind us begins with the experience of the person who feels it.
If our physical senses receive only part of what exists around us, could humans have other ways of sensing what lies beyond the reach of sight, hearing, and the senses we know best?
The pineal gland is one of the names that appears again and again when people talk about perception beyond those limits.