Why do we perceive the world in such a strange way when we are younger?

I'm 19 years old. I'm fairly young still. But when I was like younger in my early teens... I perceived the world in a really strange way. I don't want to say I hallucinated. But, it was just weird for me and I felt like I had a few out of body experiences, or something that was just really weird. I at one time had a dream where I went outside or maybe it wasn't a dream and then I came all the way back to my home and I saw my mom drinking something and then when I woke up I went to her and then saw her doing what she was doing in my dream (drinking something). I literally in the dream walked through the front door of my house. I still have no idea if it was a dream or not. Why is it that we do that? It makes little sense to me.

Originally posted by Frankidealist35
I'm 19 years old. I'm fairly young still. But when I was like younger in my early teens... I perceived the world in a really strange way. I don't want to say I hallucinated. But, it was just weird for me and I felt like I had a few out of body experiences, or something that was just really weird. I at one time had a dream where I went outside or maybe it wasn't a dream and then I came all the way back to my home and I saw my mom drinking something and then when I woke up I went to her and then saw her doing what she was doing in my dream (drinking something). I literally in the dream walked through the front door of my house. I still have no idea if it was a dream or not. Why is it that we do that? It makes little sense to me.

I think we have odd experiences through out our lives. Our perceptions are always changing, and I think we have a tendency, or at least I do, to remember things sort of as being out of body. I don't usually recollect and think of how I see things now. I dunno if that makes sense to you, its hard to convey what I am saying. However, I do have a theory regarding being really young, like really young when your imagination is going wild. I compare it to being drunk. And as a result, you think drunk is fun, because being a kid is so much fun.

reply to post by Frankidealist35

Nineteen..."Fairly young".

From an adult point of view children are literally insane, but in a nice way. While the human brain is developing it's forming and trying out new neural connections. Some connections "work" and some don't but that's ok because there is so much room to rearrange things and try something else.

Gradually it becomes mostly hardwired (unless you're Peter Pan) and our personalities get set. There are things that can upset the set but, for the most part, the eyes of a child belong to children.


[edit on 5/17/2009 by Phage]

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Frankidealist35

 

Nineteen..."Fairly young".

From an adult point of view children are literally insane, but in a nice way. While the human brain is developing it's forming and trying out new neural connections. Some connections "work" and some don't but that's ok because there is so much room to rearrange things and try something else.

Gradually it becomes mostly hardwired (unless you're Peter Pan) and our personalities get set. There are things that can upset the set but, for the most part, the eyes of a child belong to children.


[edit on 5/17/2009 by Phage]

So, what I am to take from this is that Peter Pan was actually insane, and that he most likely thought he was in never never land. I bet Captain Hook was his doctor, and smee (sp?) was his nurse.

reply to post by Frankidealist35


It sounds to me more like you had an astral experience that has little to do directly with your age. We tend to see our psychic gifts or spiritual gifts in childhood and these can either be nurtured or lost depending on family values and personal response to them.

Please, don't take offense at this, but at 19 you are just starting to get a clue, really you are! I think that most people don't really even start to mature until they are 30. I am 50 now and look back at what I thought I knew at the decades gone by and now just have to laugh at myself! As we grow we gain experience and our perspective has to broaden by sheer time of life and seeing things.

You ask good questions and I think you are off to a great start. You could do some work on meditation to hone those skills and see where it takes you. Good luck

Why do we perceive the world in such a strange way when we are younger?

Because we where more ignorant then about everything and less knowledgeable about our surroundings. in 10 more years you will say the same thing about your self 10 years ago.

I've read your replies in other threads OPs and to your credit, I've actually thought you to be older then you are

As others have said, for every decade there are greater lessons to learn and things can look mighty askew upon reflection of the past. Sometimes I don't know how I could have done all I have within a span a of a few years - especially in the distant past at perhaps your age - thinking no, that can't be right, I couldn't have done all of that - but I did.

Which brings me to my curiousity about time and age. It is my distinct perception that as I age, and with every passing year time is actually speeding up. Some might attribute this to increased responsiblity and activity however over the last five years my responsibilites have been on an even keel and yet I still feel this sensation. Sometimes I want that stop watch from the old Twilight Zone series just to take a break, heh didn't work out too well for that character - he dropped the stop watch, breaking it and everyone was stuck in time except for him - no fun there! At least after a few days it would be dull.

But seriously, as a child the summers would last forever and it seemed an eternity before Xmas could get here. Now I start my Xmas shopping in August and I'm still taken off guard when the date arrives! I often wonder if this is just my perception or if there's a real space anamoly causing this: there is a black hole in a nearby location, the universe is actually imploding rather then expanding - with quantum mechanics I suppose the possiblites are endless.

reply to post by Frankidealist35


I believe that young people have an unconscious memory of their recent origins, and that they still have ties to those origins.

I think that young people experience the truth a lot more than older people do, because unfortunately people are conditioned to believe other than the truth. This is not on purpose, it is just what humans do, maybe because they are afraid of the truth? I don't know. But I think it is a great shame that parents squash a lot of their children's beliefs, by telling them that it is not the truth.

I think that the younger you are, the closer to the truth. What a shame babies can't talk.

reply to post by Whisper67


Perhaps it only seems faster because you are currently living it at that point in time. Do you get what I am saying? Perhaps it seemed equally as fast the year previous but looking back on it its hard to tell b/c you aren't living it anymore, instead you are living now. However, I too get this feeling.

reply to post by Whisper67

Let's...do the math.
When you're 10, one year is 1/10th of your life. When you're ... um ... older, one year is 1/50th of your life. Each year really does become shorter when compared with your total experience.

reply to post by Phage


yes, but 1 second when your young is still 1 second. Just as it is now.

reply to post by Ryanp5555

In a week, I'll have a hard time remembering that.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Ryanp5555

 

In a week, I'll have a hard time remembering that.

Do you have something important to do next week or something? I'm having a hard time remembering that now b/c I have a final for Civil Procdure, and I never have enough time to study for them. I really should be getting off this message board.

reply to post by Whisper67


I like your ideas.

Michio Kaku did that experiment on one of his programs from the science channel. Here:






Furthermore, I am currently trying to correlate the monotonous lifestyle one adopts most of the time as they age, especially in the U.S. system of work, to the more dynamic lifestyle we usually have as children.

I will elaborate some....

Perhaps, somehow as we grow older, everything seems to become more static in life, always thinking we know what is "coming around the next corner". This may somehow skew our perception of time to be slower, which means one counts seconds slower than clock seconds.

Now as children, this seems to be the opposite. We are constantly learning as children, living quite a dynamic lifestyle. Younger folks will effectively count faster seconds, expecting it to be later in time but actually be before what they initially thought. E.g. Saying it feels like 7:30 when it is only 6:30.

My solution to this speeding up of time as we age is, ALWAYS KEEP LEARNING.

Anyway, hope it made sense. ttyl







[edit on 17-5-2009 by Unlimitedpossibilities]

reply to post by Unlimitedpossibilities


And what better place than ATS to follow that advice?

reply to post by Phage


Good Point! It slipped my mind that ATS is nice for consistent learning, for all ages.

Now we just need to make sure the resources never run dry.

[edit on 17-5-2009 by Unlimitedpossibilities]

It's like Aldous Huxley described in 'The Doors of Perception', whilst conducting a scientific mescaline experiment.
He says how when we were younger, our personal 'Doors' were all wide open, and our perception of events and our surroundings were very different to today. But as we get older, the constraints of living within a society and the concerns that come with this can block our doors of perception and prevent us from truly perceiving the world.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

Here's a bit more:

* To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large— this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.

* "Is it agreeable?" somebody asked.

"Neither agreeable nor disagreeable," I answered. "it just is." Istigkeit - wasn't that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? "Is-ness." The Being of Platonic philosophy - except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were - a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence.

I think there's definitely something in this, but it should be attainable without the use of mind altering chemicals. It probably is, but with our clogged up doors, we can't imagine the way to do it! We just need to let go...

Our concept of time & space is learned through social indoctrination and conditioning, which is reinforced through out our lives

We are taught to accept the measuring tools like Michio Kaku's stopwatch as reality.

We are raised to live in grids(cities,streets) and cubical(houses, apartments)
which can then be quantified and calibrated with accepted time constraints

This is rather useful for social interaction and work programs

Experiences such as : non Einstein/Newtonian relativity , non Euclidian space or intuitive improvisation are not encouraged because they do not fit the social templates

Our 5 sense mind is completely developed by the time we are 6 years old

What happens to most is that we learn to trust only our 5 sense/Left brain analytical mind and not our intuition.

We play less creatively as we adopt the indoctrination of society

When we relate our unique experiences to other further indoctrinated members of society, the feed back is we receive is that we should ignore our intuition and creative experiences and adopt to the group think of the accepted elders

Creative play and intuition are discounted as outside of the box and therefor of little value.

"wake up and smell the coffee kid, if it doesn't fit the time/space grid it has no value,..now get a job, the only game worth playing is the status game" !

I actually felt I knew more about the world around me when I was a child than I do now.
As a child you don't have the scientific answers for what you see, feel and experience and interpret it in a more instant direct way minus the intellectual input that can sometimes cloud things.
Especially the surreal that science has no answers for anyway.