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Lesley

Grey Matter

Lesley is also a columnist for UFO Magazine. Check it out !

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8.4.10

Esoteric Perception

I've been thinking on perspective and perception again lately. I know I wrote about it long ago in GM, the way people perceive things differently, especially colors.

Looking at Dali's Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, I wondered if some only ever see the people in the painting and others maybe only ever see the bust?

Maybe some people never notice that you can see something different if you look at it from a different perspective.

The other day after a hike in the mountains, we were back home and I looked up at the mountains and saw a huge stone that looked exactly like one of the stone statues on Easter Island. So far, I have never been able to see it that way again. Apparently, the spot in which I was standing and the light and shadow at that particular moment made it look that way, but any other time of day and it just blends in with all the other stones and looks completely normal.

If our perspective of ordinary objects are different and can change, it would seem obvious that our perception of extraordinary and unexpected objects may be at least slightly skewed. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean you are not seeing a ufo and it is really just an F-16 or some other common thing, just that you may not be able to fully comprehend it. This would explain why witnesses that are in the same place and see the same UFO have at least slightly different reports of it and sometimes very different reports of the object and event. Debunkers use such differences to debunk the sighting, but can you imagine if police used that same method of investigation?

I probably have used this example before, but, years ago, when I was managing a fast food restaurant, we were robbed. It was the 4th of July and just myself and one other girl were working. When the police came, they asked us basic questions about the robber, what he looked like, what he was wearing and so on. On several of those things, we had totally different answers. I thought he was wearing a green shirt and she thought is was a totally different color. She, being about 5 feet tall, thought he was around 6 feet tall. Me being 5.6', thought he was only a couple inches taller than I am, around 5.8'. There were other differences, but I can't remember them now. In a way, this was very much like a UFO sighting, because it was something unexpected that caused stress and/or confusion. The police saw nothing strange about these differences in our story, in fact, it is so common that they become suspicious only when people's descriptions are too alike because then they seem rehearsed.

However, the basics of our story were the same. A man (not a woman or dwarf) came in, he threatened us with a gun, we gave him the little money in the register and he went out the side door.

It is the same with UFO sightings. Just because all of the witness accounts are not entirely the same doesn't mean that they didn't see something very much out of the ordinary. In that unexpected moment of confusion, they just didn't comprehend what they saw in the same way.

For example, the Easter Island stone may not always look like a statue, but the basic information that it is a stone is true. Dali's painting is still a painting. I was robbed by a man. An unidentified flying object, no matter the perception differences of the witnesses of color, shape, size or whatever else, is still an unidentified flying object. I am sure the same would apply to ghosts, Bigfoot and other esoteric sightings.

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    As well as her Beyond the Dial blog