Project Renaissance, Welcome to Image-Streaming (page 1 of 2)

We are pleased to report the existence of an ongoing natural phenomenon, ever-present in every living human being, but seldom noticed and discussed. Constantly, at back of everyone’s mind but usually little noticed, is an ongoing stream of visual and other sensory mental images and impressions, which reflexively relates to and serves as an ongoing understanding and commentary on whatever is going on at the time. Behind this phenomenon:

Far MORE understandings, insights and inspirations are formed there than ever become conscious. These are reflexively, constantly, being expressed in streams of sensory images “in the back of the mind.” Tuning in to those images, and developing them in your conscious focus through describing them aloud in sensory detail TO a live listener or to a potential listener in the form of an audio recorder, is Image-Streaming, the process we are here together today to explore.

Without help, perhaps one third of all people can tune into this simply by looking for it. Virtually all the rest of us can also tune into this with a simple step or so of procedure as described freely in Image-Streaming One not only has there, free, complete instructions for engaging this major human resource. If one clicks through to each linked article encountered there, one will enjoy an entire curriculum on this extraordinary topic, far beyond what we here can achieve together in several hours of training. We give you this information so that if you choose to, you can take this resource and develop your abilities far beyond even the applications we get to address together today. The most authoritative and comprehensive published treatment of Image-Streaming is found, however, in the CoreBook, Image-Streaming: Reaching the higher powers of your mind, by Charles Roman.

To Image-Stream:

Notice the images now playing in the back of your mind, and
WHILE you are examining them,
Describe them aloud in sensory detail to a live listener, or to the potential listener represented by an audio recorder.
Aim to let yourself be surprised by the content which comes up. That is important to all forms of effective answer-finding and problem-solving, a key way to get past our conscious expectations of what the answer “ought to be” to where the best answers really are.

More detailed instructions follow below. Here it is important to draw the distinction between imagery content which is not directly controlled by your conscious mind, so that your faculties beyond where you are consciously focused can instruct you, and the consciously directed imagery which most people think of when one refers to mental imagery. Directed mental imagery has its uses and its place, but so does the “spontaneous, undirected” imagery which seems to form itself of its own accord, and it is that which we are exploring here.

Practical Convenience to Image-Streaming:

To connect consciously with this activity of the majority of the brain, brings more resources more immediately available for conscious use. Since these functions in the brain, by reflex, associate the most related, most relevant experiences with what’s currently going on, you may use that “what’s currently going on” to direct questions or focus on problems, and be presented images in his Image-Stream which answer - often ingeniously - those problems or questions. Some of these answers are presented in images which are literal representations, while most appear to be presented as metaphors, bridging sensory associations to verbal conscious concept.

Another use for this reflexive relating to “what’s currently going on,” is for creative work or for writing. Never ever experience a “block,” or have to wait for inspiration. Simply ask your own Image-Stream faculties “what comes next?” Describe in detail for a paragraph or so whatever imagery results, regardless of what it is, and you find that your next or further inspiration clicks right into focus. - Pretty convenient.

This 100%-effective application of Image-Streaming, to find instant inspiration and totally eliminate “writer’s block,” is one feature in the major course of creativity techniques for writers defined in the book by Win Wenger and Mark Bossert, End Writer’s Block Forever!.

Not only for creative writing or, indeed, for any creative project involving any of the arts, Image-Streaming may be readily used for all these —

Ingeniously discovering solutions and answers to problems of all kinds.
Discovering useful and productive/profitable innovations.
Making discoveries - in any or all of the sciences, Image-Streaming provides a remarkably fast and easy short-cut to the best hypothesis to test, and can save days or years or decades in finding that hypothesis.
Your own internal theater, which the late psychotherapist Adelaide Bry referred to in her book, Directing The Movies of Your Mind, provides you invaluable insights about yourself, about the people around you, and about the situations you are in. It also provides you entertainment, and often the experience of the most profoundly beautiful.
By building better connections between your conscious and the main regions of your brain, practice of Image-Streaming builds you a better intuitive feel for things generally, for even when you are not doing formal process.
Under some circumstances, Image-Streaming can be used to generate useful predictions - see the appendix to this paper, below.
Image-Streaming is now extensively used as a sensitive method for activating material which has been PhotoRead, and for “establishing special state” as a prelude to PhotoReading.

Not Only Genius Code, not only PhotoReading....

Not only these and Project Renaissance find it useful and beneficial to use this process of Image-Streaming. Various other programs —and authors—have taken up its use with our blessing; see a partial list at Citings.

Throughout history and before, and throughout every human culture, people have found their dreams laden with apparent meaning. With the everyday chatter of the verbal conscious brain momentarily muted by sleep, some of the important insights arrived at by interior image-based associative process can tiptoe into where we have some chance of consciously noticing them when we come awake. However, the main processing language of the greater part of our brain is that of sensory images, while the main processing language of our conscious mind is verbal. There ARE ways to effectively and accurately translate such dream content - you will learn a way or so here - but these ways are not yet widely practiced and so, in Western culture at least, we mostly miss the metaphor which is our inner mind's effort to bridge between these two very different brain languages.

Many scientists, in a field which prides itself on systematic independent concrete observation as the way to find truth, confuse the necessary standard for TESTING truth with the process for FINDING it, and this has greatly hampered the progress of science and technology. Scientific method pulls the weeds from the gardens of truth, but good hypotheses TO test may be arrived at by any number of effective means.

Kekule discovered the benzene ring, basis of all organic chemistry, while dozing and dreaming in front of the fire in his hearth. In his dream he saw snakes in the fire swallowing their own tails, the way we as children saw faces or animals in the clouds (and some of us still do). That configuration, of snakes swallowing their own tails, was his aha.
Elias Howe discovered his long-sought-for solution to how to invent an effective sewing machine, by noticing an oddity in one of his exhausted nightmares. Cannibals were attacking in his dream, carrying spears - and, oddly, there were holes in the heads of their spears—Aha!
Albert Einstein discovered relativity by practicing his “deep thought experiments,” his discovery technique which he later sought to teach to others at Princeton, his methods being ancestral to the run of our current “Einsteinian Discovery” techniques of visual and sensory thinking including Image-Streaming.
Nicola Tesla operated almost entirely from such “spontaneous” or receptive visual thinking, in creating his array of inventions in electronics which was the basis of most of the economic development which happened in the 20th Century.
Synectics, from the very beginnings of the worldwide creativity movement, built around elements of Einsteinian Discovery technique.
At M.I.T. and elsewhere, leading researchers working on matters of computers and information technology, report experiencing “computer dreams” which answer their questions and show them solutions to the problems on which they were working.

This receptive visual thinking process, in a far better developed and more easily used form, you can now readily use to solve or to gain deep understanding on the matters with which YOU are concerned, whether professional or personal.

Yours Without Quibble or Hindrance:

Not only leading minds, leading scientists, leading discoverers.....

Everyone, apparently without exception, has this remarkable phenomenon ongoing, and very nearly everyone can learn to engage it to advantage.
Your own imagery “knows” much more than “you” do. It is indeed part of you, but it reflexively understands much more than you consciously do.
Not one person in ten thousand is, as yet, consciously aware that the phenomenon exists, much less that it exists within themselves, much less that it has these and other practical benefits.
This resource consistently operates at an apparently higher level of “intelligence,” and from a much broader base of relevant information, than we consciously function with.

Caveats:

This imagery function in the brain also tries to please us. We tend to see what we expect to see, and if the conscious information and expectations we have on a problem situation held key to the problem, it would have solved long since. Somehow we need to get beyond what we expect the answer to be, and look with fresh perceptions wherein the best answer is to be found.

Another cause of possible inaccuracies: no material or human information process or content is infallible. In this material universe is always that tendency toward entropy or error. Information directly from your Beyond-Conscious may tend to greater accuracy, acumen, etc., but to the extent that the “matter in the message” is important, it should be tested like information from any other source. We need verification, we need scientific method to pull the weeds from the gardens of truth.

Besides such testing, we need practice in objectively reporting this subjective ongoing phenomenon of imagery. We need to work as much as possible in the language - the sensory image language - of the part of the brain we are consulting, describing what we find in sensory adjectives rather than in abstractions and explanations and names of places and things. We need to respond and describe faster than we can stop to think about what we were going to say, too fast for our loudly-focused verbal-conscious brain to step in and impose its bias on the stream of images reaching us from our broader consciousness. Even with these things, to the extent that an issue is important, it is wise to test and verify the answer you get on it, whenever feasible.

Not only the vast majority of your brain, but most or even possibly all of your experience and data for it to work from, is accessed through your ongoing streams of sensory mental imagery.

At any given moment, you are conscious of only 1-2 things in your attention, but hundreds of times more information and data are also simultaneously processing into your greater data-base without ever catching your notice and attention.
Much, most or even all of the awarenesses and data you have ever experienced, conscious OR unconscious, is still there, sorted through reflexively from moment to moment via sensory image association. This makes for a pretty respectable-sized data-base.

We've developed these instructions and published them in public domain, because the value—of access to your own higher mental and intellectual faculties—is far too great for anyone to ration it out by price, or to hold back in any way on their availability. They are yours to work with, at this very moment, without hindrance or restriction, here or in detailed steps of instruction beginning at Image-Streaming.

A Basic, Step-By-Step Way to Image-Stream:

The Question — ask yourself a question.

Start the Image-Stream: Have a live listener or audio recorder with you. Sit back, relax, close your eyes, and describe aloud whatever images suggest themselves. Notice and go with your first, most immediate impressions and describe them aloud, rapid-flow, in sensory detail. More free images will then emerge. Notice when the scene changes or other images emerge, and describe these as well.

— It's important to describe aloud. This brings the mind's images into conscious focus. Pick up on the UN-expected, describe no matter how seemingly unrelated to your question the images may at first appear to be...

Let yourself be surprised by what your images reveal to you. The more surprising these are, the more likely it is that you’re getting fresh input from your subtler, more comprehensive and more accurate faculties.

Feature-Questioning: After several minutes general describing, pick out some one feature - a wall, a tree or bush or flower, whatever’s there in your imagery. Let one feature, more than the others, catch your attention, whichever one that is. Imagine laying a hand on that feature and studying its feel (and describe that feel), to strengthen your contact with the experience. Ask that rock or bush or wall, “Why are you here as part of this my answer?” Whatever you notice changing in your imagery when you ask that question, describe in detail.

Inductive Inference: After you’ve described more than a dozen or twenty sensory details from your current set of images, thank your image-streaming faculties for showing you this answer. Ask their help in understanding the messages in your images. Ask for their help in this way: “Show me somehow the very same answer to this very same question, but with very different images.” Thus you Image-Stream again, with entirely different images which nonetheless somehow are still giving you the same answer to the same question. After 2-3 minutes of this new imagery, repeat this step to get a third set of images, each different yet each showing you somehow the same answer but in a different way...

What's the Same? Examine whatever’s the same among the several sets of images when all else is different. These themes or elements-in-common are your core answer or message

— Essentially the same method accurately interprets dreams, at least some of which are attempts by your inner mind to convey key messages or awarenesses to your conscious mind. Detailing everything you can remember of the dream, takes the place of your first set of the three sets of Image-Stream. For the second and third, thank your faculties for that message and ask for their help in fully understanding that message, via the (new) Image-Stream which somehow conveys the same message but with very different images. Then examine what's the same when everything else is different.

Relate: Go back to your original question that you posed to your Image-Stream, and determine in what way or ways these core elements are the answer to your question, or your key message.

Debrief: Summarize the whole experience either to another person (directly or by telephone) or to notebook or to computer, which lets you order and retrieve your information. This change of medium, and change of feedbacks, should add further to your understanding.

Follow-Up Questions:

In addition to other, conventional ways to test the insights you glean from your Image-Stream, here are a few follow-up questions you can conveniently ask your Image-Stream and get useful information back:

“How can I make sure that I'm on the right track with this understanding?” (You should get back either a way to test and verify, or a reminder of real-time data or experiences which demonstrate that this is the right answer to be working with.)

“What more do I need to know in this context?”

“What's a good, practical, concrete first step to acting upon this understanding? Or: “What is Step One to implementing this answer?” (Is there anything then that you need to do before that step? - if so, that wasn’t ‘Step One’ so what IS ‘Step One?’)

Back-Up Techniques To Ensure You Get Useful Images:

Twenty-four methods are freely published in Backup Procedures. Out of many thousands of people who have been taught or who have taught themselves Image-Streaming, virtually no one has “run the gauntlet” of those twenty-four “back-up” methods without getting images to work with.

More than visual sensory images are important here, not only in the sense that involving what your other senses are reporting to you in these image experiences strengthens your contact with the greater part of your brain that you are consulting. The same principles hold for brain-connecting and development for each of your various senses, although the crucial speaking-aloud feature of Image-Streaming can compete with your auditory imagery. Bottom line on this takes us straight to Behavior's main law, the most basic natural law of psychology, the Law of Effect.

Encyclopedias have been published on various aspects of the Law of Effect; at its most basic, this statement sums it up: “You get more of what you reinforce.”

Each time you make some sort of concrete response to having an idea, or to your own first-hand perception or awareness on something, you are reinforcing—

Not only that particular idea, perception or awareness, but
The behavior, the trait, of creatively having ideas or of BEING perceptive or aware. That is a far more important carryover, and a cumulative one, than just the particular idea, perception or awareness. Moreover, since most ideas and perceptions start out subtle before we notice them, focus in on them and do things or don't do things with them: when you notice and make some sort of concrete response to your own first-hand idea or perception or awareness beginning while it is still pretty subtle, you reinforce—
Your ability to handle subtle matters.

In any case, for most people the Image-Stream is at first a pretty subtle order of phenomena to deal with. Thus you get the full range of these benefits when Image-Streaming, and these pertain to every one of your senses so engaged, not only the visual. However, there is more information conveyed by vision, and to more regions of the brain, than with any other sense, so that whenever possible, visual images should probably be among the mix of sensory images through which we seek to consult with the greater regions of our brain. The sense of touch is also very helpful in this contact and consultation. Most or all of the senses are initially subtle in these inner consultative experiences before we notice and can get our attention on.

(For further understanding of how the Law of Effect affects not only our behaviors and traits but our abilities, please see the article, Feeding the Loop.

Several Specific Key Uses of the Image-Stream:

Image-Streaming appears to make nearly everything work better. It is such a basic tool that asking what it is good for is somewhat like asking what a screwdriver is good for. Its practice makes one far more effective at other visual thinking processes such as Over-the-Wall problem-solving; such en scenario invention and discovery-making processes as Beachhead and Toolbuilder; and such enhanced or accelerated learning techniques as Borrowed Genius and a child's version at "A Little Something You Can Do for Your Own Children" (Winsights No. 20, May 1998).

However, two specific direct applications of Image-Streaming, per se, bring unique benefits:

Predictive Imagery, while not quite up to the speeds sometimes attained with PhotoReading, does enable one to absorb and understand much more information more quickly, from a given reading, lecture or AV presentation. (We've also taken to calling this “the Mind Primer.”) Here are complete instructions for Predictive Imagery.
Rebuild the very foundations of your understanding! Use your Image-Stream to take you back in imagination to key points in your life where, had you gotten direct experience in a given context instead of being merely taught about it, you would have developed key abilities and competencies which you until now have seemed to be missing. By building in that imagined experience, you build in some of the intellectual and motor and artistic and human concepts THROUGH which you can understand much else today. Complete instructions step-by-step for cognitive structural rebuilding, for this special use of Image-Streaming, are found in "Build Your Ability to Understand Everything!" (Winsights No. 44, August 2000).

One of the most major benefits of Image-Streaming appears to be that of linking across the brain...

Pole-Bridging in the Brain:

Neurophysiological studies, by John Ertl and others, indicate that how soon and how quickly other regions of the brain become involved with a stimulus once it enters some part of the brain in the first place, is a large part of “intelligence.” Indeed, the [we-are-not-yet-done-there-are-these-things-yet-to-do-with-this] “message” passed on to the rest of the brain from initially input sectors, is very different in character from the [that's-all, we're-done] “message” passed along where the different regions of the brain are not so immediate with each other. The person whose brain sectors are in tight phase relationship will characteristically see more aspects to each situation and more relationships, and be more thoughtful and perceptive about them. Such phase relationships can be readily trained up.

Once the necessary studies are run, not only is it increasingly clear that intelligence can readily be increased, but the effects of stroke and/or traumatic brain damage can be more readily ameliorated or overcome. The very idea that intelligence can be improved is finally coming out of limbo, as can be seen if one Google-searches for “Brain Plasticity” and then samples among the many scientific studies which have recently emerged on the brain's well-demonstrated tendency to change its circuitry, its structure, its shape, its size and its very mass in order to better handle the levels and kinds of information with which it has had to cope during the previous year or so.

Pole-bridging in the brain is discussed by Win Wenger and Richard Poe in their book, The Einstein Factor ; also freely on the web at "Pole-Bridging in the Brain: Why and how it builds intelligence" (Winsights No. 73, February 2004).

Teaching Image-Streaming to Others:

Creativity was once believed to be something that one either had or he didn’t - something that you were pretty well born with or with its lack, you were pretty well stuck accordingly and there was nothing could be done about it. The past half century of world-wide creativity revolution has blown that limiting theory out of the water. With the breakthroughs in “brain plasticity,” those similar beliefs regarding “intelligence” are now also being blown out of the water. This removes one of the last excuses for treating people as pre-judged categories rather than as themselves, their own unique, vastly potentialed, human selves. Adding significance to this:

Out of tens of thousands trained or self-trained in Image-Streaming, which appears to be a tool for almost limitless self-improvement, only three individuals have been found who were unable to “get pictures” a la Image-Stream. And those three, with a bit more work, could likely also “get pictures” and pursue Image-Streaming for whatever benefits that practice brings.

You are cordially invited to not only practice it and take it to the limits of whatever benefits you care to make yours, but to teach effective use of the practice to other people whom you care about.

Teaching Image-Streaming to a Child: See the specific, step-by-step instructions for one method how, in "Help a Young Child to Flower" (Winsights No. 18, May 1998).

Teaching Image-Streaming to an Adult Individual: You can use pretty much the same method as the one just above for teaching to a child. Another, possibly stronger way is the “Helper Technique,” spelled out among what now are the twenty-four backup techniques.

Whole Groups At A Time: The easiest method by far, in which groups sized to almost any number can be directly and readily trained to Image-Stream — An easy succession of modelings of the process ensures that very few people will find this difficult by the time it is their own turn to Image-Stream. See this preferred method for training groups, detailed step by easy step at Image-Streaming for Groups .

You are welcome to teach Image-Streaming or any other published procedure from Project Renaissance, provided that you not only give the necessary contact information to those whom you so teach, but represent that process as a resource FROM Project Renaissance and not as the Project Renaissance program or yourself as a Project Renaissance trainer. This not only protects quality control but frees you to go in as a co-explorer. At such time as you DO want to become a Project Renaissance trainer and present officially on behalf of the program, turn to the provisions you will find posted in To Become a Trainer .

Provisions for teaching The Genius Code) are not yet determined, but are likely to become the subject of discussions between Project Renaissance, Learning Strategies, and other interested parties.

Protocols for Quick Question/Answer Procedure and High Thinktank:

Up to this point, this article has mainly served both as a “talking paper” and as a directory showing you where to obtain further information in depth in various of the topics relating to Image-Streaming. At this point in our training together, if time permits we will be pursuing one or two procedures which feature a number and sequence of specific steps. If we get to either procedure, it will be best to have in your hand for ready reference a list of the steps. The two procedures are a fast way to get answers via your impressions and reflexive/responsive visual mental images, and a way which works especially well with the most important questions and issues.

Full descriptions of these two procedures are on the first two pages of the instructions of High Thinktank. Objective of both methods is to get past the baggage of conscious expectations as to what the answer “ought to be,” allowing perception through of what the better answer to your question or problem may well be.

Quick Question/Answer Method: By this point in your experience you will have had some practice with the basic Image-Streaming process, and with several of the steps for making sense of what your images and impressions mean. You will also have found that you are able to obtain images - and make sense of them - more and more quickly as your practice and skills progress. On the making-sense, inductive-inference interpretative side you still need three very different impressions or sets of images; you need to record a dozen or more describable aspects of each impression or set of images; and you need, in coming to the core of your answer or message to discover, among all those aspects, impressions and images of what is the same when everything else is different.

You need at least a dozen or more describable aspects or features in each of the three frames, in order to have enough opportunity to spot the regard in which there is such a common feature or similarity.

Here are the specific steps of Quick Q/A: (Do this in groups of three or four. Instructions how to do this alone and by yourself will become apparent from the instructions given for that in the High Thinktank method.

One of you presents the question.
Immediately - don't wait turns - instantly blurt or record your first impression or set of images as answer to that question. As immediately as possible, since we want the answers to be in response to the question and not to one another's initial answers.
Describe in sensory detail a dozen or more features and aspects of that impression or set of images. If there is an even number of participants in your group, directly Image-Stream with each other in pairs. And/or, record detail on paper.
Compare notes and look for trends, similarities and aspects-in-common among your group's responses.
Determine - or speculate - how those elements-in-common may actually be an answer to the question that was asked. (For proper thinktanking, if the question was on an important matter, then follow-up questions would be in order including verification - “How can I best make sure I'm on the right track with this interpretation and answer?” Here, we want to run enough questions to afford everyone if possible the experience of getting interesting and plausible answers and hypotheses worthy of testing.)

Some problems or questions are so extensive or so major that either we or people around us are bound to have put some thought into them, formed some conclusions, have expectations as to what the answer ought to be. This of course makes it harder to get the fresh perceptions needed without distortion. Case in point: I can ask you a question right now and for minutes, in response, your head will be filled with nonsense that doesn't come even close to constituting a useful answer to that question.

Are you ready for that question? OK, here it is....

“What is the best form of government?”

— Listen to the stuff pouring through your head in response to that question! Some of it conditioned responses and catechisms, some of it other and equally useless stuff, none of it allowing any room for you to glean a fresh and possibly useful perception....

But what if you had been asked that question in a way that only your sensitive major part of the brain, able to pick up on subtle and subliminal cues, knew that that was the question being asked, while your loudly focused verbal word-conscious sliver of brain hadn't a clue as to what was being asked? Your loud word-based consciousness wouldn't know in what direction it wanted to bias the (sensory impression) data to make that data support its beliefs. To get good fresh answers, all you'd have to do is look in and see what answer was being told you in response to the question. AFTER you had gleaned that answer, THEN it'd be useful to find out consciously what question you had just gotten answer to! This gives you a high accuracy rate on the important issues and questions, where other problem-solving methods and even straight Image-Streaming tend to give you answers that fit your expectations rather than the most effective answer.

So that is the secret to getting fresh - and accurate - answers on the most important issues and questions and on problems where the stakes are the h ighest. Present to one another, or find a way to present to yourself, questions such that the main sector of your brain can pick up by subliminal cue or other sensitivities what question is being asked and then respond, through your image-generating faculties, a fresh answer which often is also the best answer available. - All the while that your verbal-conscious mind and brain hasn't a clue as to what's being asked, so it won't know which way to turn the data.

Important: with this High Thinktank process, for best results, you are not trying to “psyche” what the question is. That would start guessing games with your conscious mind and brain which would get in your way. Instead, just look in and report and detail the images which come as the answer you are seeking.

Working with others in a group or in small groups, each numbering three to six people, here is one such method for High Thinktanking:

One of you presents the question silently, or in hidden form such as a folded-in piece of paper bearing the question within, a slip of paper that gets handed around but whose contents are not consciously seen. If the question is being asked silently by one of you, a nod or light snap of fingers is appropriate to indicate to partners the end of asking and to elicit the imagistic snap response.
As quickly as they can, each participant identifies the image in his/her mind as answer, blurting and/or recording their very first impression... While we are depending more on "hiding" the question than on speed with this form of the High Thinktank method, it's still valuable to get that initial response made so quickly that people don't have time to pick up on one another's cues instead of those pertaining directly to the question being asked... — OR —
Each participant silently describes his or her own image-answer by writing or sketching it for a few moments on a sheet of paper, enough on each image to support the ongoing describing to be made of these in Step 3.
In pairs within each group, develop that initial response into a brief but very descriptive Image-Stream. Be sure to get a dozen or so sensory details, even in just that 1 to 3 minutes each, so it's easier to see where those details match up as common elements in Step 4.
Compare your respective Image-Stream answers around the group, looking for those common themes and elements. After identifying those common themes or elements,
The original asker "reveals" the formerly silent or folded-in "hidden" question.
Explore the relationship(s) between those common theme elements as answer, and the question asked.
As time permits, ask follow-up questions to clarify, verify your answers and to map out ways to implement them as appropriate. Also ask yourself or as a group, what more do I/we need to know in this context?

The more important the question, the more that people have already developed conscious, even reflexive, opinions which tend to prevent the fresh perceptions needed for an effective answer. This is one reason we remain "stuck" on the greatest human problems and issues, and why great national and world problems remain unsolved for decades or centuries. Even more does this appear to be the case with the most basic issues in science and technology.

How to thinktank when working alone without partners, at home or at your desk:

Accumulate six or more questions in a box, each question on a separate index card or scrap of (folded in on itself) paper. Because you have written these, your subtler resources will know which is which, but if you randomize these questions and pick one at random, your conscious left temporal isn't likely to recognize which one is which, and will most likely get out of the way of the visual data-flow coming from the rest of the brain in answer to that question. Your objective is not to "psyche" which question that is, but simply to look at what your mind is showing you as answer to it.

On the question you thus select, get three sets of imagery on each question. As in the group form, this gives you a basis for comparison. Be sure to get enough sensory detail recorded from each image that it will be easy for you to spot where one of the many aspects of the one image matches with one of the many aspects of another image. Each image coming from your richer resources is rich with many meanings and messages, but each image generated within a given context as answer, context defined by this "hidden question" you are holding, contains among these in some form your main or key answer(s) as well. This comparison, looking for common elements or for themes running among your several different images, makes this key meaning or meanings stand out above all the other messages for you and makes this key far easier for you to spot and to experience your "aha"!

Only after you've mapped out these detailed comparisons among your several various images or impressions, should you then look at the "hidden question," read it consciously, and examine how those common elements or theme do actually answer that particular question.