Dr. Paul Scheele explains how your visual system processes 10 million bits of information per second, but only about 40 bits reach your conscious mind. The rest gets filtered out by perceptual defense mechanisms, meaning you're missing most of what's in front of you.
10 million bits per second
Approximately 40 bits (of the 10 million)
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. Good to see you again today. I'm very excited that this is Wednesday in September. And the parallel that we're playing with today is called seeing the unseen. Good to see you. Those who are joining us on the Zoom call, thank you for being here. If you're with us on the Facebook Live. The human brain and mind is a lovely and generous thing because when there is an annoying sound in our environment, the brain tunes it out. It habituates. If you've ever been at somebody's house who lives next to a train track or near an airport or by a freeway, and I've lived in all three places myself, what's amazing is you hear all of those additional noises, but the people who live there is a, oh, no, I don't even hear it anymore. This ability of the brain to habituate means that we're not constantly annoyed by the ongoing stimulus that's in our environment. And let's face it, we live in a world that is totally noisy. It's noisy visually, it's noisy by way of how we feel every single day. It. And it's noisy by what we're hearing all the time. Now imagine this.
It's estimated by science that the human eye and brain, just the visual Sense, is processing 10 million bits of information per second. 10 million bits of information per second. Now, if you had to pay attention to all that all the time, it would be impossible. And so the brain has something called. It has something called a perceptual defense mechanism that keeps information from coming in. Plus, the ability of the brain to habituate means that the noise level is going to come down on an ongoing basis. But how much of that 10 million bits of information actually do reach you at a conscious level? According to cognitive science, cognitive perceptual ability research, it shows that we process somewhere around 40 bits of that 10 million. 40 bits of 10 million. Well, hold on just a second. Everything that you and I do on an ongoing basis is kind of running our lives at a conscious level. So we think that we're perceiving everything that's going on in our world. Then hold it. What part of us is deciding that out of 10 million bits of information, only those 40 are going to come into your conscious awareness? You see, there is a vast preconscious mechanism going on, a.
Non conscious database that's taking in, processing, storing what's important and delivering to you at a conscious level what you think you need.
That's why we really don't see a lot. That's going on. We don't hear a lot that's going on and we don't really feel a lot of what's going on on an ongoing basis. Out of 12 million bits of information per second in all of our five sensory systems, we're only getting about 75, 78 bits at a conscious level. What that means is the world is very manageable. So we're deleting, we're generalizing what we think we're perceiving to make quick pattern recognition, and we're distorting the input in order to make our decisions on an ongoing basis. Well, the paralympical that we're playing with on Wednesdays, every day in September is called Seeing the Unseen. And it really means perceiving the unperceived. Not all the time like the character in Rain man where box matches or toothpicks drop and instantly has to count every single one of them. No, no, no, no. We can leave the perceptual defenses in place, we can leave the repression mechanisms in place so we don't have to have all of that information going on in our conscious awareness all the time. That's fine. And you have a choice that when you want, you can open up that profound level of sensory awareness to make new distinctions, to be able to see something you hadn't seen before, to hear an idea that was being told to you over and over again, but you hadn't really made the connection, to feel a new distinction about something, an intuition, a recognition that would allow you to solve a problem that's key for you. Just like Sherlock Holmes. Now, Sherlock Holmes, according to some of the stories about it, didn't have the ability to turn off some of this amazing perceptual ability. But you do. You can turn it on, you can turn it off by will, by choice. And the thing that's going to really turn on these perceptual abilities is your intention. Now, you know that when you listen to a paraliminal, I always say, state clearly what your intention is for this paraliminal listening session, even if sometimes today, sometime today, you might choose to just turn on the paralyminal and go take a little nap. That's fine. A lot of people haven't heard much of what goes on on paralyminals after this is Paul Shealy. And that's fine as long as you are stating what your intention is. What benefits are you intending to receive while taking a nap to a paraliminal, as that paraliminal is playing and immediately afterwards? So my encouragement is to think about a goal that's important to you. Think about an action you would like to be able to take. Take a decision that you would like to be able to make, and you want to gather good, intelligent reconnaissance information in order to be able to make that decision. Open up your sensory systems, hear more, feel more, see more. In order to be able to populate your neurology with new and nuanced clear distinctions that can help you take the right next step toward a goal that's important to you. Best wishes for today. Thank you for joining me in this session. Enjoy the Seeing the Unseen Paralympical listening session, and maybe put on your deer stalker hat today and start noticing more of the world that's available to you. Peace Blessings. See you tomorrow.
