"I saw it out of the corner of my eye." I am sure you have heard this said quite a few times in your lifetime, I know that I have. Have you ever experienced movement at the very edge of your viewing area and when you turned to see what was there, there was nothing visible? As far as I know, we all experience this at one time or another. Is it possible that we are seeing something that our normal vision doesn't allow us to see? I know that I have often wondered about this. There is so much around us that we don't understand. Maybe we are even experiencing some sort of daydream, when we use the edge of our vision, after all the brain is the least understood area of our bodies. When we see something at the edge of our vision, this is known as using our peripheral vision. There are three types of peripheral vision, there is "far peripheral", which exists at the edge of our vision, "mid peripheral", which is in the middle of our field of view and "near peripheral", which exists next to the center of where we are looking. This is also known as "paracentral vision".

Many animals have much stronger peripheral vision than humans. The truth is that our peripheral vision is weak, compared to theirs. It might have been much stronger in our ancient ancestors, who needed it for protection from predators, but as we became more sedentary it may have gotten weaker, since we no longer needed it for the same reasons. Some animals can see objects and colors much better when they are on the edge of their vision than we can. Peripheral vision is defined as," Side vision. The ability to see objects and movement outside of the direct line of vision. Peripheral vision is the work of the rods, nerve cells located largely outside the macula (the center) of the retina. The rods are also responsible for night vision and low-light vision but are insensitive to color. As opposed to central vision".

There are some people that are convinced that peripheral vision allows us to see things that we normally wouldn't see when we use our normal vision. There are numerous reports of people stating that they saw ghosts and spirits using peripheral vision. These people claim that using this type of vision allows us to see things more clearly and even see things that our normal vision wouldn't pick up. The theory goes that there are many different dimensions that we are not aware of. These dimensions are occupying the same space that we are, but somehow we never see anything in them and are completely unaware of anything that happens in them. The only time we notice them is when things are just right for our peripheral vision to pick up movement for a split second. We usually chalk this up to our imagination, because when we check with our normal vision, there is nothing there. Could this theory be correct? Who knows? Just for fun let's say that we are getting a glimpse into some other dimension, if this is true, the movement we glanced may have been some other being that is sharing our space that we have no way of ever normally seeing or feeling. While some people say they are seeing ghosts, what they are seeing, if not tricks of the eye, may be other creatures that we are living with that we are totally unaware of and who are totally unaware of us.

There is another theory about this and it has to do with time. Some people believe that everything in time is occurring at the same time. It states that our past, present and future are all unfolding at the same time. Think of time as containing different compartments. Let's say three for now. Compartment one is the past, compartment two is the present and compartment three is the future and each compartment is next to the other and might even overlap without us being aware of this. If this is true, we might be catching a glance of past of future actions. If we take this theory to it's ultimate conclusion, then time travel might just be a matter of crossing over some threshold, into a dimension that is either past or future. Wouldn't that be interesting? This might even mean that even if we altered the past, it would not effect the future, as most people believe. Why would this be? It is because the future is taking place at the same time as past events and therefore might not be able to be changed, unless you enter compartment number three and change it. Does this sound overly complicated? Actually it is much simpler than the accepted theory of time.

Here is a question for you, do we all see the same way? Some say that there are certain neural structures within the eye that allow some people, who master their use, to see differently. Some ancient people have discussed something called the all seeing gaze. One of these people was the most famous swordsman in Japan. He lived in the fifteenth century and his name was Myamoto Musashi. He spoke of two different types of sight. The first was called Ken and the second was called Kan. He apparently had mastered both. Ken allowed one to to see movements of surface phenomena. Kan is more profound. It allows for the examination of the essence of things allowing you to look through or into things. He claimed that he could use both these types of vision without moving his eyes. In other words, they were part of his peripheral vision. This must have played a great role in his sword mastery.

It is funny, in certain situations it is possible not to be able to see something with your normal vision that is visible with your peripheral vision. I have never tried what I am going to suggest, but it would make an interesting experiment. It would be interesting to go out into an open space on a clear day and try and look at the sky using your peripheral vision. The next part of the exercise is to do the same thing, only after dark. What could we possibly see doing this? As I said, I don't know what the result might be, but it would be interesting to see what we come up with. I just might try this myself. Would this make it possible to see things that we have never seen before? I sort of doubt it, but as I said I am willing to give it the old college try. It certainly is a simple enough experiment, that any of us can do. As a matter of fact, if anyone tries this and sees anything interesting, please let me know, so I can tell my readers. I will even keep your name confidential if that is what you want.

Could there be more to human vision than we suspect? For centuries some people have claimed that a few people had the power to hypnotize others by just concentrating a stare at them. There were others that claimed that there were those people that could read minds, also by just staring into someone's eyes. There are an awful lot of these stories around, relatively speaking. It may just turn out that we have only begun to tap into the potential of the human eye. Maybe we will meet other races from other worlds someday, that will have even more powerful eyes than us, allowing them a much broader spectrum of sight and maybe they will be able to see things around us that we are totally unaware of. I just can't help but feel that there is a lot more to human sight than we suspect. Maybe our ancestors were right when they said that the eyes were the entranceway into the soul.