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The windows of perception | Waldemar Falcão | TEDxVilaMadáSalon

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    (Video) He's a musician,
    astrologer, writer,
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    but I would describe him
    as someone with an inner light.
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    I think he's really someone
    from the New Age,
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    from a generation
    that experienced everything,
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    that lived and incorporated everything;
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    somebody deeply spiritualized.
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    I recently got to know a side of him
    which I found very moving,
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    which is his extreme affection
    and pride toward his children.
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    He's a very cherished person
    in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the world.
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    Waldemar Falcão, flutist of Merlin,
    come here and tell us your stories.
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    (Video ends)
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    Waldemar Falcão: Wow,
    that’s some responsibility!
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    A few days ago a friend of mine
    published on social network
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    a photo that had a humorous intent,
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    but which gave me an idea for my talk.
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    It was of a young man
    sitting on a park bench,
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    wearing a coat and hood,
    and a very sad, dispirited face.
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    Below it was written:
    "If you’re feeling alone,
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    remember that there are trillions
    of bacteria inside your body,
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    and that you represent the world to them."
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    We're unaware of this.
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    We don't see the life
    that's going on around us,
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    because we only capture life
    through our five usual senses.
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    But it’s much more than this
    - much, much more.
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    One example we have of this
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    are the sayings by some
    of the greatest visionaries
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    our world has ever known.
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    William Shakespeare once said:
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    "There are more things
    in heaven and earth
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    than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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    Another great person, William Blake,
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    poet, visionary,
    graphic artist, illustrator,
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    and most of all a great visionary,
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    once said, "If the doors
    of perception were cleansed,
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    everything would appear
    to man as it is, infinite."
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    And he wrote a beautiful poem,
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    that I'm fortunate enough
    to have the translation of,
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    done by a great friend of mine,
    here in São Paulo, Alberto Marsicano,
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    who recently transitioned
    to the higher realms.
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    He did an admirable translation
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    of one of the most beautiful verses
    by William Blake:
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    "To see a world in a grain of sand
    and a heaven in a wild flower,
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    hold infinity in the palm of your hand
    and eternity in an hour."
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    I then went in search of another level
    of information, not so poetic,
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    - though I'll still have
    the help of some poets here -
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    which is the illustration
    of the electromagnetic spectrum.
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    Look how much we can see
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    of the electromagnetic spectrum.
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    It's a microscopic fraction.
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    Before it we have the radio
    and microwave frequencies,
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    after it comes the X-rays,
    the ultraviolet, the gamma rays.
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    None of this can be seen by us.
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    Right at this moment, there are
    all these waves passing by us;
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    electromagnetic and neutrino waves,
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    which we're not aware of.
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    So it’s important for us to understand
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    that life is going on around us,
    and we need to pay attention to it.
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    There's no way that we can't see
    what's going on.
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    So, besides those citations,
    how did I get to this conclusion?
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    During my life I've had
    the privilege of knowing...
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    and I still have this privilege,
    though not with the same ones,
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    of knowing people
    who are considered "paranormal",
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    people who see beyond what we see.
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    One of them was a surgeon
    who never studied medicine,
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    who operated people using
    any sharp instrument he could get hold of.
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    And what did he do
    so that people wouldn’t feel pain?
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    He used music.
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    He always had a musician
    playing during the sessions,
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    and Lourival opened, closed,
    sewed up the person;
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    opened with a razor blade,
    with a kitchen knife or nail scissors.
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    The person was wide awake
    and felt nothing.
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    Another one who died about six years ago,
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    with whom I had the privilege
    to know for 25 years,
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    received messages from people
    who had already gone to another dimension.
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    He received those messages
    with an absurd level of precision,
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    giving their addresses, phone numbers,
    license plates, or other numbers.
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    Through this acquaintanceship,
    without any clairvoyant ability of my own,
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    I was able to see all this,
    though not necessarily with my eyes.
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    The Kabbalistic tradition, for example,
    says that we only see 1% of reality,
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    and that if we could see 2% we'd go crazy.
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    I'm not suggesting here
    that anyone should go crazy.
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    (Laughter)
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    Eastern traditions, especially Hinduism
    and Tibetan Buddhism,
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    say that we live behind a veil
    that they call "Maya",
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    the veil of illusion of material life.
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    We have to tear that veil off.
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    We have to try to see beyond
    what we sense in our daily lives,
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    because then our everyday
    problems, our difficulties,
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    the problem with
    a sick relative, or with money,
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    takes on another dimension,
    another proportion.
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    You might say: "Wow,
    you're proposing a kind of utopia."
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    And I say, "Yes I am."
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    Utopias keep us alive,
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    and I'll use the words
    of a great gaucho poet, Mario Quintana,
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    who wrote a little poem
    called "Das Utopias"
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    in which he said:
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    "If things are unattainable,
    that is no reason not to want them.
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    How sad the paths would be
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    were it not for the magical
    presence of the stars."
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    So what I'm suggesting here
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    is that we open up the windows
    to our perception,
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    and that we always make the effort.
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    There's nothing paranormal about this,
    it's an existential matter.
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    Let's look at life
    from a broader perspective.
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    Let's go and open those windows.
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    I'm going to cite another great poet,
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    the greatest Portuguese language
    poet, Fernando Pessoa,
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    in the writings of his
    heteronym Alberto Caeiro;
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    the first of his "Selected Poems"
    where he says:
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    "It’s not enough to open the window
    to see the fields and the river.
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    It’s not enough to not be blind
    to see the trees and the flowers.
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    It's also necessary to have no philosophy.
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    With philosophy there are no trees,
    there are only ideas.
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    There is only each one of us, like a cave.
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    There is only a closed window,
    and the whole world outside,
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    and a dream of what could be seen
    if the window is open,
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    which is never what you see
    when you open the window."
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    Thank you very much.
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    (Applause)
Title:
The windows of perception | Waldemar Falcão | TEDxVilaMadáSalon
Description:

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but inde-pendently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

In his talk, Waldemar Falcão talks about opening up the windows of our perception to see a reality that normally our vision doesn't allow us to see. "We don't see the life that's going on around us because we only capture life through our five usual senses, but it’s much more than that;
much, much more.

Waldemar Falcão is an astrologer, writer, and musician.

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Video Language:
Portuguese, Brazilian
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDxTalks
Duration:
08:28

English subtitles

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