INTRODUCTION

What are lenses of perception? Simply put, they’re ways of seeing. We change lenses when looking at the world in different ways. Seems simple enough. We all do it, partially, when we relate to another person, dive into the artificial reality of a movie, or think outside the box.

However, if we want to be more than just a tourist and truly understand how life looks through a different lens, we need to first let go of everything holding us to our old worldview. Then we must pass through a zone of confusion and bewilderment. We feel lost until another lens makes sense. Only then can we fully adjust to a new perspective. Who wants to go that far?

This is why breakdowns in communication are so common. Without a strong desire to understand, other points of view seem wrong and confused.

Thus, in our age of specialists, we’re more like ships passing in the night. We rarely realize how different our perspectives are. It’s easy to write everyone else off as fools. The problem is that we look just as foolish to them.

More importantly, learning to switch lenses is a vital necessity in a society changing as fast as ours. It’s the only way our inner selves can adapt and keep up. If we avoid the path of wisdom and understanding and focus only on objective knowledge, modern culture soon seems alien and wrong to us. We see ourselves as outsiders and feel disconnected. Adjusting our lenses of perception allows us to connect at a deeper level, where we can see that things do make sense.

Here’s an example: The first major earthquake I experienced registered 5.4 on the Richter scale. It was powerful enough to make the ground beneath the San Francisco Bay area move in long undulating waves, as if it were fluid. The illusion of solidity vanished. I felt more like a surfer than someone standing on firm land. My sense of location disappeared as the earth itself flowed beneath my feet.

People around me screamed and froze, not knowing what to do. Others ran outside. However, a few old-timers smiled and calmly walked to the door. One of them said, “It’s nice to feel one once in a while.”

They’d been through the experience before. They knew what earthquakes feel like, so it didn’t shake them to their core. They retained a sense of orientation because they learned another way of seeing.

We don’t like changing lenses. Most of us fight tooth and nail to avoid the feeling of nausea that comes from a new mindset.

We build up our defenses to hang onto our picture of the world, whether philosophical, religious, or scientific.

If we can pry our fingernails free from our precious perspectives and let go of our death grip, we can discover new perceptions we’ve never seen before. These experiences alter our understanding in deep ways. They shine new lights on who we are.

Shifting perspectives not only broadens our understanding of other cultures; it also allows us to peer deeper into nature, solving mysteries that science has pondered for hundreds of years. When I first sat down to write this book, I had no answers to the questions of quantum physics. I didn’t know what was missing from Newton’s laws of motion. I sensed that the theory of evolution was incomplete, but I didn’t know why. I had no explanation for the mind-body problem or the scientific enigma known as “emergence.” The five unsolved problems of physics seemed inscrutable.

I only knew from experience that, when I changed lenses, I found an added level of comprehension. I learned this after making a practice of switching points of view, as an experiment, to explore the nature of consciousness. This doesn’t mean that a new perspective, by itself, gives us better insight. No, it’s the contrast. Seeing from another angle adds context.

While writing this book, I soon realized that I’d underestimated the importance of this simple tool of changing points of view. It’s far more powerful than I realized.

It not only offers the key to seeing in the dark, you might say, and getting to know realms that are new and unknown to us, it also restores our sense of wholeness to life. It bridges the gap between science, philosophy, the arts, and the spiritual experience of being. This is what happens when we connect with nature at a deeper level.

However, explaining lenses of perception isn’t easy. It’s hard wrapping our brains around the impact they have on us. Reading about them isn’t enough to see how deeply they affect our connection with the world. If we want to understand—to truly understand—we need to experience changes in our way of seeing firsthand. That’s what this book attempts to do.

Successful writers know the importance of “showing” rather than “telling.” A good story pulls us into a world where the scene unfolds as if we were there. Telling gives us only a clinical, literal description; it doesn’t move us to a new perspective.

So, to explain lenses of perception properly, I’ll be using words poetically at times to evoke new views of the world, even when talking about science. This is how we can find what is hidden in plain sight.

But words can’t pull this off alone. The reader must do some heavy lifting. This book is more like a tour guide. We are, in a sense, going on a jungle safari to explore untamed points of view. Hopefully your mind will be boggled. That’s the point of this journey.

I’ll start with familiar views of the world. At first you can retain your normal way of seeing and thinking. Yet the quest soon takes us into dense underbrush where the most valuable treasures are hidden. If we want to unearth the gold, we must let go of the way we usually see reality.

That’s where we discover that lenses of perception are not just tools that help us understand the world, they’re fundamental to reality itself. We’ll see the scientific evidence that supports this.

To make such a leap requires a completely different mindset. It will probably feel unsettling at times when the ground starts shifting. New perspectives can shake us to our core. This is true for everyone. I experience the same thing.

If a section of this book leaves you feeling disturbed, even if in a subtle way, try setting it down for a while. Give the ideas a chance to percolate. Then go back and read the section again. You might be surprised. Remember, the goal here is to experience the uncomfortable feeling of confusion and then, breaking through that, to learn how we can change the way we see.

When writing this book, I didn’t expect to be pulled into questions about the laws of nature. I was simply trying to understand the problems of our modern times and see where the story led. Each chapter took me by surprise, as if the sails of my ship were being blown onto a new course by powerful winds. The thread of the story kept leading to deeper and deeper insights. I found myself farther from shore than expected, facing a whole new view of the world and the meaning of human understanding.

If you’re interested in a wild ride, buckle your seatbelt. Then join me on the path of discovery I took to find the dimension of life that scientists have been missing. We’ll use new tools to guide us: lenses of perception.