# TUNNEL THINKING and THE BLIND SPOT

Pahanal Panoramic sensing, the parasympathetic nervous system, and the lower brain. See The Pahana Systems for details.
sensing is a collective blind-spot.

For a species which is trained in rational and abstract focusing – it is outside our imagination.

## Focusing is Dominant

Focusing is by nature dominant. Among all animals, focusing has to be dominant in order to find food and reproduce.

Humans used their brains to survive. We focused to learn, remember, and think. And abstract thought, whether rational or poetical, gave our imagination the ability to reach new understandings.

With our brilliant abstract focusing abilities we identified and eliminated the dangers. We made walls, warning signals, and weapons. We overcame the daily fears and insecurities which other animals have. We have no more need of pahanal sensing.

The original use of pahanal sensing is obsolete and redundant. It's useless for getting anywhere, doing anything, or being anyone. From our focused point of view, it seems like just doing nothing. It's pointless.

Focusing is creative and exciting, attractive and purposeful. Humans are more successful with focusing, than all other species. Why should we be interested in how other animals sense?

## Tunnel Thinking

Focusing is always specific – it has to be. Focusing is always a form of inhibition.

Focusing penetrates and is penetrant. It always has a converging tendency which gets narrower, always becoming more fragmented and making more connecting bridges.

Focusing has no natural tendency to divergence or wholeness it can only achieve these by association and coordination.

## The Box

In every thought we have, a subject does something to an object – focused thought always needs to "complete the sentence" to be whole. In turn, every sentence we think re-confirms this mind-set and world-view.

We built associations into a network of understanding. A safe box.

We have developed tunnel thought and live in our own echo chamber.

Our cultural herd-understanding of life is complete within its own parameters. We've created an integrated picture of the world by excluding part of it. This is typical for all forms of closed-mindedness.

## Outside the Box

Being pahanal for safety, contradicts all our normal ideas on safety.

Human safety lies in a feeling of confirmation from herd mentality. At present, there is no confirmation of pahaning from any herd or even small group.

Added to this, in this ironic age of individuality, few people have the ability to step outside the box, and do anything independent of herd mentality.

Pahaning lies outside our experience and understanding.

## Accepted Human Experience

When we have a pahanal experience, when we see a panoramic view, or when interacting with nature – we interpret it as a response to the environment.

So we take photos of the scenery. And if we start thinking about it, we focus on the memory of that landscape or river.

We fail to recognise that the landscape stimulated a different way of sensing which is actually independent of the environment. We just don't realise it. We suffer a form of self-fulfilling tunnel vision.

Modern humans only consciously train a limited horizontal part of their pahanal vision when driving, but focusing dominates. We focus on where we're going, mirrors, maps, and signs. The "peripheral" vision is only subliminal... and then as soon as we notice something subliminally – we focus on it.

I imagine fighter pilots were trained panoramically in previous times. These days, i imagine they focus on radar display panels.

Adult humans never use their pahanal senses actively, except perhaps some autistic people.

## Natural Peoples

In traditional times, without ten years training of focusing talents, people would have had far more flexibility between the two sensory forms.

Without walls blocking the view and lights flashing for attention, it would have been normal, on the hour-long walks to hunt or work, to just be casually pahanal, nothing special, nothing worth talking about...

In preliterate times they had no words to distinguish between the different types of sensing.

## Modern languages

Writing allowed language to diversify. However it wasn't until the late 1800s that European languages developed a descriptive word. And the Germanic languages only recognise a "peripheral" use of this way of sensing.

Panoramic sensing describes the experience of a panorama. But even in modern times there is still no word to describe the way animals detect just the events happening, all the moving things, all the changes.

The lack of a clear, common, or scientific name always indicates a lack of cultural recognition.

## Animal Studies

We should have rediscovered it by observing animals. But animal training and psychological research are only interested in animals' abilities to focus and learn tricks, solve puzzles, develop memory, and abstract thought. They want to know if and how animals can learn human focusing abilities.

And all the time, there was so much we could have been learning from them, and how they use their pahanal senses.

Maybe it's too simple. Researchers seems to be looking for clever answers, new discoveries... but nothing which has been staring us in the face for centuries.

## Been There, Done That

To some extent it's human egoism. I often hear "i can do that already" and very probably most people have touched on the experience. This "been there, done that" attitude, blocks openness to the full experience.

Pahanal sensing has as many different intensities as focusing.

At one extreme, gazing out into the void when daydreaming, depressed, or stoned.

Then, when walking in nature, or when cycling round in a relaxed way, the lack of an intense focal point opens up a central area of the pahanal field.

But animals always stay still, and their lives depend on it, it's an intense awareness, it's not a casual experience.

## Cultural Information

There is a small start to research into "peripheral" vision from the modern psychological perspective.

And some ancient cultures practised it.

## Organised Religion

The pahanal experience of oneness and peace is generally associated with religion, but in turn religion is generally associated with a higher focal point. So here again, pahaning is outside our experience. (A few exceptions are noted below.)

If we were to mould the idea into our beliefs and make it part of feeling like a complete individual... it wouldn't work... we'd still be focusing.

Humans, even when spiritually motivated, have to be doing something , or going somewhere spiritual, anything but staying still in body and mind.

Mindfulness is usually applied to selective focusing on breathing or inner-body awareness. Many meditation practices aim at a higher state of consciousness. Intensive focused practices simply aren't conducive to pahanal sensing.

Interstingly all religions originated outside out-of-doors i.e. the same place that pahanal sensing originated. As religions became organised they started practising in churches and temples – indoors where outside disturbances are excluded and pahanal sensing is superfluous.

## Being Still and Waiting

To sit just waiting for anything and everything, with the ears and eyes open, and waiting for changes and movements has only rarely been practised.
Once you've experienced the pahana, you'll find it described in
Taoism. Taoism started in China around 600 BCE. It teaches harmony with nature rather than supreme enlightenment. See Tao and Zen for details.
But Taoists described it with poetry, they could never have imagined the needs of modern Western rational thought.

Once you've experienced it, you'll also find it described in many of the central Buddhist texts, notably The Middle Way.

Considering the English words to describe even peripheral sight were first used in 1871, it's extremely doubtful the ancients had specific words to describe the difference between focused and pahanal sensing.

Quakers Christian based 1600s reformation movement with strong emphasis on waiting for the spirit
are the only group i know who just sit and wait. But they practice it with closed eyes and closed windows.

Christianity have the attitude that we're here to look after the animals, not the other way round. Genesis goes so far as to suggest we have "domination over the birds and fishes and all the animals". Christians generally seem to feel abomination at the idea we could learn something from animals... as though the next step would be public copulation. And though some Jesuits clearly have knowledge of the pahana, they combine it with highly mystical practices.

Back to Chapter Three : Civilisation's Habitual Ruts
Back to THE PANORAMA SENSES Priority Pages