“The door to the soul is unlocked; you do not need to please the doorkeeper, the door in front of you is yours, intended for you, and the doorkeeper obeys when spoken to.” -Robert Bly
What if you found out there was a key that would enable you to open and close your doors of perception at will, void of psychedelics? What if you found out you not only held the key, but you were the key? Would you unlock the doors, or keep them shut?
Well, you are the key, and whether or not you choose to enter through the doors is a choice that, although invisible, is life changing. You are the vehicle for the trip, consider this but a mere travel summary. And for a detailed itinerary? Well, that can only be fetched by you -not the part of you reading this, but the altered dream state part of your consciousness that will travel beyond the doors of perception to the wildness of the world where there is a livingness to all things- as it can only be found in a place with exclusive access. A place where you can travel, but no one may follow -not even the conscious, waking state version of yourself scanning these very words.
If you have experimented with psychedelics, you most likely know what it is like to sense the type of “livingness” to all things of which I speak. Even if you haven’t used psychedelics, though, you almost certainly have still experienced this same livingness to all things in the world around you to a noticeable degree at least once, but probably various times as a child -a moment where the world around you took on a shimmery glow, colours suddenly appeared brighter, sounds louder and clearer, physical sensations amplified and, most notably, you could FEEL the world around you.
I am not referring to the physical, touching type of feeling, but to the intangible, energy sense of feeling where you could almost feel the luminosity of the world around you within, and you and the luminous rested in harmony as if you were one. You were present, your perceptions altered, your senses heightened. In short, your sensory gating channels opened to some degree, a process more commonly referred to as opening your doors of perception.
Sensory Gating Explained: The Science Behind the Doors of Perception
The “doors of perception” are the part of our brain and central nervous system responsible for filtering input from all external stimuli, involving all of your senses -feeling (both physical and nonphysical), sight, sound, taste and smell. This process, known as “sensory gating,” enables us to decipher the difference between “me” and “not me.” Through sensory gating, we are able to manage and comprehend the constant stream of sensory data from the external environment. Without it, we would be unable to filter out what matters and what doesn’t, and all sensory data would touch us deeply and ultimately, we would become overstimulated and overwhelmed and go “crazy” -according to modern medicine, that is.
You see, many of the people who are now referred to as “schizophrenics” have wide sensory gating channels that they do not know how to close, causing an overload in stimulus. In indigenous cultures, these people would have instead been called SHAMANS, and would have been taught how to control their doors of perception and open and close them as need be. There are ways to begin opening the doors of perception, or sensory gating channels, without using psychedelics. Of course, the experience will not be as intense or immediate, but nor will it be short lived.
Rather, by utilizing practices that help open your sensory gating channels to some degree by altering your state of consciousness, you learn to open the doors of perception into the metaphysical background of the world and continuously uncover deeper truths to yourself and the world around you. In essence, playing with the doors of perception in this manner, rather than through the use of mind altering substances, allows you to do more than have a life changing experience in which you see the deeper meanings to life for a brief period of time (i.e. a “trip”), but to change your life where every moment is an experience in a continuous journey into further, unexplored depths of life.
Listen to Aldous Huxley’s in depth description of the doors of perception, and the mechanisms through which the mind opens and closes them here.
Hypnosis and Meditation
“ …those who have experimented with hypnosis find that, at a certain depth of trance, it happens not too infrequently that subjects, if they are left alone and not distracted, will become aware of an immanent serenity and goodness that is often associated with a perception of light and of spaces vast but not solitary.”(Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudon 99).”
Practicing hypnotherapy and/or meditation on a regular basis is an excellent way to begin dabbling into the metaphysical backgrounds of yourself and of the world by tapping into your subconscious, into otherwise ignored parts of your mind. These practices help open doors in the mind where things such as past traumas that are holding you back have remained imprisoned for years, desperately waiting for you to free them and thus yourself. Meditation and hypnotherapy are also great tools for getting in touch with your intuition, helping you to see the bigger picture of current problems, allowing you to focus on the deeper truths and lessons they withhold rather than getting trapped in the mundane surface details of your problems. In fact, when observed in this light, they eventually cease to be problems and are instead rendered avenues of inner exploration and growth. Here are some guided hypnosis and meditation sessions that may be of benefit.
The Sixth Sensory Channel: The Feeling Capacity
The 6th sensory channel, also known as the feeling capacity, refers to the ability of humans to feel, as opposed to touch. It refers to the invisible
type of feeling, as opposed to the feeling sense of physical touch embodying the ingredients of the five senses of human beings. One is invisible and subjective, the other solely portrays the mostly objective experience of physical touching, of feeling the texture of a person or object. The feeling sense referring to the ability to feel the invisibles describes the feelings that stir within as we encounter various experiences in our day to day life, sometimes called a sixth sense, or the sixth sensory channel. To better understand the sixth sensory channel, consider the following example: you come home from work and ask your partner what’s wrong.
“Nothing,” they brashly reply.
But, by the tone of their voice, you know nothing means everything, and that you better respond with something along the lines of, “please tell me what’s wrong,” unless you want to endure a silent dinner -one that also evokes a feeling sense, as the silence speaks volumes and is filled with tension, making you uneasy- and sleep on the couch that night. Simply put, awakening to the feeling sense that is not often spoken of as it is not included in the five senses that we are taught we have, cultivates your feeling capacity, your ability to feel the invisible, unspoken and unseen meanings of situations, and of things both yourself and others do and say.
In order to develop your feeling capacity, pay attention to the way things feel. Interpret situations with your heart first, then your thoughts. For a deeper understanding of the sixth sensory channel and how you can begin to reclaim your feeling sense, consider listening to this in this interview with Stephen Buhner.
Sources
http://www.hypnotherapycenter.com/art_mld.html
http://www.hypnos.co.uk/whitlark2.htm
http://naturalhealthtechniques.com/developing-your-sixth-sense.htm
‘Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming of Earth,’ by Stephen Harrod Buhner
‘The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell,” by Aldous Huxley
![Full Interview From Steven Greer’s Close Encounters of The Fifth Kind – [Joe Martino]](https://insights.collective-evolution.com/assets/uploads/2024/07/Screenshot-2024-07-08-at-4.43.12 PM-360x180.jpg)
Shelley M. White, have you ever met a shaman from an indigenous culture? I have, many. And I have met some schizophrenic people. And I can tell you, they are NOT the same. Have you tried psychedelics? Mushrooms, LSD, DMT or Ayahuasca?Or many others? As I read you article, I think you have not..thus you do not know that you can’t reach the same thing. Reading about these things does not mean it is possible. I do not argue there are very few people that can achieve this, but they are one in a million. And it is true, that if a person meditates like jogis do for decades it is possible to unlock those door. But other than that…Ayahuasca is the key 😉 Namaste
Yes it takes practice but it happens much more quickly than you think… it becoming intune with “Everything” the wind.. the grass… the chance encounters .. what did you learn from an experience… its being so hyper aware of everything around you that you litterally can feel.. hear.. and see the paths that God has laid before you… its alot easier ti shut it off than turn it on.. but litterally. . Depending how open you get to it.. can happen over night.. i also believe that it does help to have the gift of strong intuition…. yes it’s easier for some to come to but… drugs really are not necessary to acheive it… pray… when you pray you call a part of yourself to wake up… because you are a part if God… when you ask . You shall recieve it… its like your waking up God thats within you… your waking up yourself
the 6th sensory channel could be referred to as reason, on which the praxis of mentalism is based, or intuition
I would not all the 6th sensory channel, “reason”. The Intellect is just one of several Faculties of the human mind, which include Inspiration, Intuition, Imagination, Instinct, and Will, amongst others. They all have their own unique ‘language’ (for example, the Intuition speaks the language of trusting, the Imagination the language of dreaming, the Instinct the language of feeling) and they make differing contributions to our consciousness.
In the last 400 years the Intellect (reason) has been held up as the pinnacle (via science) and is overloaded. Many of the jobs we ask the Intellect to do, are much better done by the Inspiration, the Imagination, the Instinct, etc; the latter are also much faster at processing information.
Thank you for sharing this..I just read a handful of your other works and I am very happy to see an herbalist addressing some of these issues at a philosophical level as well as practical. In regards to this article, I feel that learning to ‘turn off/on’ elements of the brain will be a major practice here in the near future. This vastly under-utilized tool (the brain) will be capable of so much more, when it allows for the heart to retain its obvious position as main communicator for the self, rather than the ego. But all is well, as you have mentioned disease is but an opportunity for growth, for change, for living a life full to the brim..one that I feel I have been blessed to receive. Oh, and mentioning the feeling sense, do you know of other groups who tend to discuss this at a very practical level? (creating words to help describe the experiences as we have done for taste, smell, etc..)
It’s a nice idea, but there is nothing suggested here that comes close to the power of entheogens to alter consciousness.
help
One toke of salvia and i was gone for two weeks, in the span of 15 seconds. Like a blast of amyl nitrate. Did that once back in my twenties, very weird. Salvia, though, i’m going to get me some more of that if the store still carries it.
Love our Mother Nature!!
Nooo stay away from salvia. .. it made my throat close up…. you become helpless in an imaginary state… i dont recomend it.. its way to intense
Ayahuasca is not the key, Gasper. “Open the door” is a completely different thing from dive into a illusory mental state. The reality is far beyond that, and we can say that is exactly the opposite of what one experiences with Ayahuasca. The shaman’s not know, but they are like children having fun with fireworks. Worse, the door they opening is for your anima (kamaloca), something that must be overcome to achieve real perception.
I do not agree with your conclusions.
Many people think calming brain activity down allows subtle sensory input from the five physical senses as well as ones beyond them to be prioritised to provide greater fidelity to our moment to moment experience. However, because of internal electrical noise due to neuron to neuron traffic, the subtlest signals remain heavily drowned out.
The only way to enhance sensory experience is to not filter sensory signals, to allow them to mix freely in a synaesthetic way (so sounds are seen as colour and tastes felt as shapes, and smells become orchestras of sound) as well as to enhance sensitivity to ‘sub-neuronal’ shifts in the electromagnetic field of the brain and body. The latter can be done by actually increasing chemicals such as GABA which inhibits neuronal activity and to also prevent nerve fibre junction synapses from allowing flow of neurotransmitters.
A non-medicinal way of doing this is simply to cycle input and focus through the senses with increasing speed. Eventually the brain cannot take the bandwidth and shuts sensory channels down just after maximum sensory input and fidelity thresholds are crossed. After that the brain goes into a state where it is not giving physical sense signals priority or processing importance -leading it to just process ‘sub-neuronal’ electromagnetic shifts in the field of the brain and the space and time environment it is immersed in. The experience is one of maximum excitement followed by immediate stillness and peace. This process allows the brain to pick up perceptions in the form of archetypes and symbols (because the input is beyond the language functions). This is what shamans typically report about their ‘vision quests’ and can be done with a conditioned or ‘entrained’ neuronal brain function via the sensory cycling, without the use of externally consumed psychoactive compounds because the psychoactive compounds are generated internally via cyclic traffic between the endocrine (hormone) and nervous systems.
I have done this with a number of groups as preparation for trial Remote Viewing, With a background in Physics and Molecular Biology as well as Eastern Meditation and Energy circulating practices I joined dots across cultures, as well as Science and Spirituality, to understand how the brain exchanges activity with the space-time-mind continuum. Psychoactive drugs are a crutch. Eventually you have to learn to move your mind without them or your mind will atrophy just like muscles do when they are not exercised directly.
Jazz Rasool