by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 2 – Can and Should Intelligence Be Increased?
Chapter 3 – Awareness and Attention-Span: A Breathtaking Discovery
Chapter 1
Introduction
1. For accumulating 20 hours of held-breath underwater swimming within 3 weeks from start to finish– 10 or more points I.Q. gain; better span of attention; better span of awareness; better awareness of the interrelatedness of things and of ideas and/or perceptions; finding yourself way better at winning arguments or disputes! (20 or so seconds to 3 minutes at a time underwater, stretching the time a little each dip but remaining well within the bounds of comfort and safety – be sure someone with you there is aware of what you are doing. By the procedure we describe herein, you must be truly underwater, not just dipping your face in or just holding your breath, because the brain-circulation enhancement induced by the marine diving response – common to all mammals – is unexpectedly powerful in this combination of effects.)
The other procedure–
2. Accumulate at least 30 hours, 5-20 minutes at a time, of true Image Streaming as directed herein, and you will gain substantial increases in “I.Q.” Your language skills will jump noticeably, contributing to 100 points or greater gain overall in such standardized tests as the G.R.E. (assuming you aren’t already close to the test’s ceiling — see below). Your gain in more numinous aspects will be even more striking. This must be – or rapidly become – true Image Streaming as described herein, using a tape recorder or a live person listening.
At this time we do not know whether the gains from following both procedures together would be merely additive, or whether they will be positively synergistic. Pending formal measurement studies, our expectation is the latter. At least we know that either program by itself will, by itself, provide the benefits cited for it, apparently permanently.
Of course we realize that the dollar-value refund on this booklet means little to you compared with the value of your time, effort and attention in pursuing either of these procedures. There is no way we could refund those greater values. Happily, no refund will be needed – instead, you will find yourself soon able to accomplish far more of what you’ve been doing, far better, faster and further. Your investment in time, effort and attention will be quickly repaid many times over and then go on as a “dividend income” for the rest of your life.
Quibbles and Qualifiers
A-ha, you knew there must be a catch to this! –Only, there truly isn’t, only some common sense.
Of course, to qualify for refund you would need to demonstrate by some well-recognized standardized test that there was no gain resulting comparable to those cited. We would hope, in fact, that you would have more positive reasons for tracking your progress by test, if only curiosity. Making that part of things easier for you is the likelihood that most of you already have, as your before test, an I.Q.-related score of some sort already on record – in which case, all you would need to do is to arrange for a different or new form of the same instrument for your after measurement.
For that matter, you could simply go ahead and pursue one or both the procedures in this quickbook for their own sake, and not bother with tests and refund issues, just go for the benefits. For those of you reading this, however, who care to pursue such matters of proof and test, here are these quibbles and qualifiers (or common-sense provisions):
A. Whatever test you use to measure your benefits from this must be good at measuring in the upper ranges, and have either a high ceiling or no ceiling. If you already are at or above the ceiling on the test, whatever improvements you make in fact would not be reflected ion the score, obviously.
B. The test you use should be in 2 different forms, one for the “before” and a different one for the “after,” to minimize test gains which are attributable to practice instead of to the effects you are seeking to measure.
C. The “after” test should be performed at least 60 days, preferably 90 days, after completion of your process intervention. Your intelligence gains appear to be permanent, but take some while to work their effects through the habituated ways in which your brain and mind think, perceive and work. A test for intelligence immediately after the intervention would show little if any gain, though some of the other gains do show up more immediately.
Next question: are you intelligent enough already to appreciate the value of more intelligence? –Especially since so many people “know,” including many qualified professionals, that you cannot increase or improve human intelligence – that you are stuck with the level of intelligence – or lack of it – that you were born with???
Chapter 2
Can and Should Intelligence Be Increased?
Independently conducted state university tests, running since 1989, demonstrate that with the second procedure, Image Streaming, per hour of easy entertaining practice one gains 8/10ths of a point “I.Q.” With 25 hours’ such practice, multiple points are gained, as are considerable classroom-related academic skills, a better balance of types of mental functioning according to the Kolb inventory, and even more striking in the more numinous but as yet unmeasured aspects of intelligence, creativity and experience. Where participants have participated to 50 hours, 40 points “I.Q.” gain appear and we have not yet found any point where the benefits might start tailing off.
The purest form of the procedure being measured, at Southwest State University, Department of Chemistry & Physics, Marshall, MN 56258, is the second, Image Streaming procedure given you here exactly. The best evidence is that which you can directly determine for yourself.
Short of that is the obvious common-sensical observation that if one improves the physical health, physical well-being and operating conditions of the physical brain, seat of our intelligence – as is the case with the first, held-breath underwater swimming procedure which so profoundly improves circulation to the brain, together with supply of food energy and nutrition and the flushing away of toxic wastes and fatigue poisons – improvements in intelligence-related functions obviously should and do follow. The operating conditions are further affected by the issue of span of attention paced by span of breathing, and…. well, I’m getting ahead of myself here. That’s for Chapter III next.
Also, short of that, there is the most universally known and widely respected natural law of behavior and psychology, a natural law much the same way that the law of gravity is a law of physics. Even aside from the special uses we make of this Law of Effect – that “you get more of what you reinforce” – it is clear that every presently expressed brain function has antecedent functions upon which it is dependent: these in turn also have antecedents. Wherever the brain is performing less than optimally, one may go back along the chain to where the departure from optimum occurred, reworking those subroutines of the brain to better support the higher functions. One entire book of such procedures, at mostly the sensori-motor level, we published way back in 1974 and still carry, still correct and uncontroverted in every detail, in its 1985 edition.
The specialized use we’ve made of the Law of Effect is with regard to perception, particularly sensory feedback, and with regard to the Theory of Pole-Bridging in the Brain which was supported nicely by the results of the tests at Southwest State. With regard to perception: whenever you respond in some way to your own perception and not to someone else’s second-hand knowledge such as you get wall-to-wall in the classroom, you: (1) reinforce that particular perception. (2) reinforce the trait or behavior of being perceptive. If the perceptions you are responding to are initially subtle, meaning that they arise in regions of your brain normally some distance from and offline from your focussed verbal left temporal conscious mind, reinforcing those perceptions (3) reinforces more onto line with your conscious mind, those previously offline regions of the brain together with their resources and intelligence.
More generally, the theory of Pole-Bridging (and keep in mind the Law of Effect): our external senses – such as sight, touch, sound, etc. – are much more immediate than our internal senses, such as gut feelings, larger understandings, vision and mental images, etc. (That is why sports are more appealing to most than are the finer arts and intellectual pursuits, regardless of the relative value of either.) One corollary or aspect of the Law of Effect is: that the more immediate the reinforcement (or sensory feedback), other things equal, the more powerfully that shapes behavior or traits.
Inevitably, therefore: if the output functions of widely separate regions of the brain are expressed in a combination external action, the immediacy of sensory feedback from that external expression/action builds a more and more immediate relationship between those formerly unrelated brain regions, causing them to become more and more accessible to each other.
In thus bridging between regions of the brain remote from each other, to make the resources of each and the intelligence of each more intra-accessible: there is a second aspect which impacts even more strongly on apparent intelligence of the whole brain or whole person. That is the issue of phase relationships between such widely separate regions of the brain.
This phase relationship, or lag in time between when one part of the brain lights up on a given stimulus and when other parts then do so, appears to be crucial.
All of the brain does, sooner or later, light up on any major stimulus, but how the rest of the brain handles that stimulus appears to be set by the instructions which the first brain parts wrote into that stimulus as it is passed along.
If a fairly long time lapses before other, later parts of the brain become involved, the first part has time to complete its work and write “close-out” instructions into the stimulus as it is passed along: “Here’s how it was done, folks!” If, however, the phase relationship is so close that subsequent parts of the brain start to interact on that stimulus before the first part can finish, these iterate back and forth reverberating on that stimulus, and begin doing so with a far more involved, sophisticated set of handling instructions being written into that stimulus for handling by the rest of the brain: “Well, this is what we’ve done so far and its results, and we’re checking this thing now, but there’s this and that and that you should pick up on and you might also want to look into thus-&-so…” The person with good tight phase relationships between the various regions of his brain, characteristically will do more to that stimulus, see more in that stimulus, perceive more relationships to that stimulus. In other words, even with the same brain equipment, the person with good tight phase relationships between the reg-ions of his brain will characteristically see, perceive, think, react in more intelligent ways. If you choose not to call this a higher level of intelligence, the burden of proof and definition is on you!
Let’s look for a moment at where the belief was built, that intelligence can not be improved. All the texts upon which our educators, psychologists and geneticists depend in their training, used to build that case squarely upon Sir Cyril Burt’s purported study of identical twins which had been separated at birth and raised in differing environ-ments. In case you missed it, more and more questions about the internal evidence arose in those studies until Burt himself finally admitted that not only had he made up the studies out of his own head, but had also made up the names of his colleagues published as co-authors in those studies!
–And most of those texts, today, no longer cite Burt’s “studies” by name, only saying instead, “studies show that….”
Such is the power of the stake of having people irrevocably dependent upon (your) professional services, no matter what. –And you’re not responsible for doing anything if there’s really nothing can be done…..
(Also, we have to remember that though the systematically skeptical sciences may be the best thing we have going on this planet at the present time, that both the sciences and the professions are human social groups first, and what they are “supposed” to be a long second. –All the more so to the extent that their high-minded members are unconscious of their own in-group territorialistic instincts. We all have those instinctive behaviors: any species which did not, so exhausted its times of plenty as to become extinct when conditions varied. –But in this and several other related instances, most of humanity is now suffering because this territoriality plays unalloyed amidst those people and institutions to whom we have entrusted the care and developments of our minds and of our children’s minds.)
Gentle Reader:
–Is it other than reasonable and desirable to become abler to identify and readily solve a variety of problems? –That such skills can be trained or practiced and nurtured (or, in keeping with the Law of Effect, reinforced)?
–Is it other than reasonable or desirable to become abler to cope successfully with a wide variety of stimuli and situations? Nor reasonable that such a skill can be trained, practiced and/or reinforced?
–…to be abler to understand, both in words and beyond words? –Is it not reasonable that such skills can be trained, practiced, reinforced?
–…to become abler to think and perceive, in enough detail and enough scope and
enough variety and enough richness and enough depth to involve a large conceptual and verbal vocabulary in support of these processes? –And will not both experiences and vocabulary-building affect such skills?
–Is it not good, and reasonable, to become abler when need be to respond to the unexpected quickly and effectively? –Do not only a host of trainable skills, but readily changed physiological conditions, greatly affect such speed and accuracy of response? (Why else do we train up response patterns and physical condition in competitive sports? But – ah, we forgot: giftedness is worth something to society only in athletics. It’s so much more valuable to society for one to be able to throw a football well than to write a new symphony or a new formula. –though train with Image Streaming et.al. and you may well also become abler to throw that football!– But still, it is an everyday experience, familiar everywhere, to train such response skills and speed, even if it’s only done in sports!)
Ah, but put such factors together and call them “intelligence,” and suddenly you and everyone has a whole mythology and catechism running through your heads, with the contents of that myth and cant usually having little to do with the reality.
Besides Burt’s purported “studies,” professional texts still often cite two other bases for the belief that intelligence cannot be meaningfully improved. One of these bases is the speed of response to stimuli, not only on timed tests but as measured cross-culturally. All such measures, though, depend upon easily changeable visual functions which have been routinely trained and re-trained since the 1930s, most notably by developmental (or behavioral) optometrists! See also the above references to sports.
The other basis is the tendency of the highly intelligent to practice some form of what psychologists call “mental rehearsal.” Yet hundreds of programs today effectively teach forms of “mental rehearsal,” overtly as in “Inner Tennis” or by inducing it as in Suggestopedia, for example.
Aside from all the many practical aspects and benefits of increasing your intelli-gence: sometime, with a color-blind friend by your side, gaze together at an absolutely gorgeous sunset. Ask your color-blind friend whether and why s/he’d like to see in color. If you tape-recorded the resultant discussion, transcribed it, and substituted the word “intelligence” for “color,” most of that discussion would still bear…
–And now, let’s go directly for one of these two procedures which can put so much rich “color” into your every experience….
Chapter 3
Awareness and Attention-Span: A Breathtaking Discovery
At this moment, as you start to read this, you are holding your breath.
Gotcha!??
As you breathed, you moved your attention to this next sentence. OR, you moved attention to other things and then breathed again before moving it to this next sentence.
Gotcha yet?
Not because this brief is so breath-taking (well, maybe), but because your breath paces and punctuates your attention and awareness. Whenever you start to give attention to any awareness of stimulus, you hold your breath! When you breathe again, that is part of a pattern where you are releasing your attention from the one focus of awareness and moving it on to wherever it will alight next.
You can override this pattern and hold your attention (and not just merely fixate your eyes! ?did you? Gotcha again!) on one thing through several breaths, but it takes an effort. Normally, you don’t go around making that effort, and neither do others.
Your breath is pace-maker for your attention, just as your child’s breath is pace-maker for his or her attention. Not all instances of hyperactivity and short attention-span are caused by being short of breath, nor all reading problems. Being short of breath, an easily corrected condition, is virtually guaranteed to cause these, however.
This breath pace-making effect is not an absolute. You can override this pace-making effect with some effort. For example, hold in mind (not just your eyes at one point! ?gotcha!) the thought, “Holding in mind this one thought while breathing several times.”
As you can see, you can override the interrupter effect, and keep one focus of attention in mind through several normal breaths (though some readers may have needed several tries before being able to do so). Also when driving a car there may have been occasions ?but watch closely what your mind is actually doing virtually the whole time you are driving with your attention ostensibly on the road!
But it does take an effort to override the interrupter effect and even with the effort you just made, with the beginning of one of your next breaths you did find that your attention had moved on. ?And normally, neither you nor your child nor anyone else goes around making that effort. Normally, there is nothing to prevent your breath from playing its absolute role as the pacemaker for your awareness span.
You can easily test the effects of your breathing on your awareness another way, by going out for a run (or any fairly aerobic activity) which leaves you panting, short of breath. Until your breathing settles down, how hard or easy is it for you to give your sustained attention to anything, or to do any detailed work?
Even at the start of a sustained physical effort such as lifting a heavy load, you hold your breath! Doing anything, even physical, which requires concentrated attention, you repeatedly hold your breath, while trying to fix your toaster or car engine. Some people, whose concentrated effort outruns their breathing span, even become dizzy from this effect.
Check this phenomenon out by watching your own responses, then check it out on innocents around you. Fun…. but there is also a very serious side to this.
Normally, there is nothing to prevent your breath from playing its absolute role as the pacemaker for your attention and awareness span. So the normal span of your breath is critical to how well your mental faculties can function. This effect is so strong, in fact, it can change the course of national or world affairs!
A Breathtaking Impact On American Foreign Policy
For example: Former Secretary of State George Schultz, despite his high intelligence was remarkably ineffective in office under President Reagan his first few years. Why? ?Look at recordings of his TV interviews from those early years. He was always very short of breath, and often had to pant before he could even finish a sentence. Schultz could not muster and defend his position during Cabinet meetings. ?Nor did Schultz have the awareness span needed, despite his unquestioned intelligence, to formulate any sort of coherent foreign policy.
You have noticed that even some of your brightest friends and colleagues seem unable to make full use of their intelligence. You know from other things that they arebright, yet they commit gaffes and oversights, or simply fail too often to see the obvious. Why? Why are some impatient with the very detail work which would enable them to succeed in their efforts? Why are so many of even the brightest, uncomfortable at reading? Well, try this one on for size:?
The Impact Of Your Breathing On Your Language Skills
If your breathing breaks your attention sooner than you can finish reading a sentence, it is hard for you to extract sense and meaning from that sentence, even if it is an easy in content as this sentence is, because before the thought it expresses to you is complete, your attention has veered away with your next breath and broken off the communication from page to you and it takes you considerable extra effort to veer back and pick back up the old focus of attention and hold that attention on this very simple sentence for long enough for the entire thought expressed in this sentence to take form in your mind!
If your breath-span is shorter than many of the sentences you read, you can see why your reading is in trouble. This may be handicapping your reading in the technical journals which you need to keep abreast of your field and career.
Smoking may be hazardous to your intellect, not just to your life and physical health!
And when you look at some of our pitifully thin-chested younger generation who have even far less reading comprehension . . . . .
An Easy Cure For The Problem
This difficulty, at least, is easily cured! Any aerobic activity running, aerobic dance, sprint swimming, certain breathing exercises ?will increase lung capacity and bring wider ranges within the span of awareness and attention. The one activity which elicits the most response from the body, in terms of quickly developing greater lung capacity, is: held-breath underwater swimming.
This should be well underwater across the bottom of the pool, because we find a distinct difference in response elicited between people who do this and people who simply swim head-down across the surface. It appears that to actually be underwater, elicits a significantly different physiological response, significantly further aiding breath development and other effects cited below.
Any pool ?during winter months, now in this country there are even indoor pools in almost every community, most often at community centers, Y’s and colleges. In warmer months, no lack of pools. We strongly recommend a concentrated three-week period in which, each day, you spend an hour’s total time at the bottom of the pool, stretching the time you can remain underwater on one breath. Let the lifeguard know what you’re doing, so s/he doesn’t panic.
This writer got into trouble of another sort after one summer he spent in summer school to make up serious academic deficiencies, an opposite difficulty which might also be a problem for some of your brighter students and friends and colleagues. Most afternoons that summer, he spent at the university’s pool and spent a lot of that time underwater. That was the summer everything transformed for him, and he did not know until long after why it was that his world transformed. The trouble? ?As a writer and as a speaker, his sentences became longer than most people were comfortable reading or listening to! He had to and has to constantly work at bringing them shorter.
Is that a problem for you or for some of your acquaintances? Check to see ?our prediction is that whoever has this problem also has or recently had greater than conventional lung power, whether from swimming or from other things long since.
Another problem which many gifted students and adults have experienced as a result of a greater-than-conventional awareness span ?This writer from that time on made his peers and teachers uncomfortable by almost always instantly seizing on the point they were trying to build to in their arguments, long before they got to that point. (Heck hath no fury like some anticipated teachers . . . . . )
Forewarned is forearmed. The writer had gotten himself up to 4-1/2 minutes at a time underwater. Working up to two to three minutes at a span should suffice for most people. If your breath span becomes much longer than that, understand its probable effect on your sentence structure and on your span of awareness ?and on your further high intelligence! so you can deliberately begin re-shortening those sentences and avoid the difficulty which this writer unknowingly encountered.
The effect on Intelligence
Why did we say “intelligence?” Another effect of held-breath underwater swimming is upon the Carotid arteries which supply the brain.
Held-breath underwater swimming builds up carbon di-oxide in the bloodstream which, in turn, expands the Carotid arteries feeding circulation to the brain.* The recommended hour per day over three weeks, permanently expands those Carotids and the circulation to your brain. This not only improves your “wind,” you see, this held-breath underwater swimming improves the physical condition of your brain and is an easy way to increase intelligence, even your own already-high intelligence.
That CO2/Carotid-expansion relationship is a safety system which was bred into all of us, from a time when our ancestors lived under much more rigorous conditions than we do. Any of our ancestors from such times who did not have the ability, did not live long enough to become our ancestors. We still have that Carotid-expansion trait, a fact that every medical doctor in this country has had to memorize while coming through medical school.
Every doctor had to memorize that fact, that the Carotid arteries expand in relation to carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. Yet organized medical science has always looked in directions far more expensive (and disastrous, as per the examples of hyperbaric oxygen! ?and of certain expensive drugs with unhappy side-effects), in its efforts to treat various forms not only of mental and cerebral deficiency and brain damage but even cerebro-vascular deficiencies!
Is the fact that there is much more money to be made from expensive equipment and drugs, whether effective or not, the controlling motivation in medicine? Make your own test of the matter. Ask your own doctor about the fact of Carotid/CO2 expansion, confirm this to your own satisfaction. Then make your own reading about the motiva-tions of your doctor (and/or of the people who keep him or her informed of develop-ments) ?as to whether these motivations are predominantly medical, professional, humanistic, scientific, personal or mercenary ?by assessing his or her response to the idea of using that Carotid expansion response as an enrichment or even as a treatment.
What has made carbon dioxide enrichment a successful brain therapy in those relatively rare instances when it has been thus applied, especially to brain-damaged children, is this: whether by underwater swimming, baggie breathing, certain special breathing exercises, or by whatever means . . . .
. . . . . If carbon dioxide levels are made quite high quite often over a period of several weeks, the Carotids don’t keep on closing back up. They stretch and accommo-date to become permanently broader, supply forever not only more oxygen to the brain but more nutrition and food energy and, most important, more cleansing away of toxins and fatigue poisons. That is why we strongly recommend the hour per day, three-week intensive period of underwater swimming.
This improved circulation to the brain means a physical healthier, more intelligent brain, improving all areas of life and not just the intellectual.
A technical note ?what actually reaches your brain cells is mediated by another circulatory system, your cerebro-spinal fluid. A blood-brain membranous barrier prevents blood and its impurities from reaching your braincells directly. An enriched blood circulation does, however, constitute for your brain a steeper osmotic slope, giving your cerebro-spinal fluid system more to work with, and still means a physically healthier, more intelligent brain.
A cautionary note
Any cerebro-vascular or stroke patient attempting to use held-breath underwater swimming or other CO2 enrichment method as a way to restore mental functions, must do so only under very close supervision of his/her doctor. Even there, though, some nutritionists believe that some of the focussed foods may also help support the brain circulatory system through such transitional stress including Vitamins E, C, bioflavenoids such as found in the skins of grapes, oranges and most other fruits, and cholesterol-dissolving lecithin, restoring and supporting the circulatory system toward and during the several weeks of intensive practice of held-breath underwater swimming.
Special Note
For years we had been observing this effect, that people who held-breath swim actually underwater do far better for their efforts than does anyone else ?including even those who swim across the top of the water face down for purposes of building the CO2 effect. As of this 1991 rewriting of this paper, it turns out that our observations were correct indeed. There is an additional effect from held-breath swimming actually underwater. Marine biologists call this additional effect the diving response. All mammals including humans manifest this diving response. When one is actually underwater, even more circulation is shunted into the internal organs, including into the brain, than just with the CO2 Carotid artery expansion!
So now there are three major reasons to practice held-breath underwater swimming:
(1) improve awareness and attention span by improving breathing span;
(2) improve intelligence by improving the physical condition of the brain expanding circulation to the brain through using CO2 to expand the Carotid arteries;
(3) likewise improve intelligence by improving brain health through greater circulation during the diving response! For the full range of these benefits, then, you really do need to go actually underwater. Within this combination of effects, this mammalian diving response effect appears to be unexpectedly strong, making a huge difference in outcomes between those who actually go underwater and those who do not, in pursuit of these various effects.
How to Overcome Fear of the Water
Almost any aerobic-type activity should have some benefit. Apparently for reasons of system arousal, held-breath underwater swimming appears to be far superior in its benefits to brain, breath and perception. Many people in obvious need of such benefits may, however, be prevented by fear of the water. If they could overcome that fear and practice held-breath underwater swimming, they could broaden their awareness span, increase their intelligence, and enjoy generally healthier brains. Overcoming such fear is also valuable for safety reasons: adults have been known to disorient and drown in two feet of water!
To overcome fear of water, hold concretely onto the typical rung stairs, or concrete inset spaces serving as stairs, which go down the side or ends of the typical swimming pool. Grasping by hand is biogenetically our most familiar response, one of our most primal. By contrast: in most learning-to-swim programs, the unfamiliar patterns of muscle movement associated with trying to learn to swim are not the kind of reassurance your body may want when in a totally unfamiliar environment.
Grasp those rungs, and use those rungs to practice pulling and pushing yourself up and down through the force you exert on those rungs with that familiar grasp. Practice holding yourself under, for longer and longer times, and then pulling back up. When you find that, through holding yourself under by means of those rungs, the underwater world has become familiar and interesting to you, you’ve become curious about other areas of the bottom of the pool, and you are able to stay under for 2-3 minutes at a time — with these things happening, you will also find that your fear of water (or your child’s, if that is what is being worked on) is long gone and safety secured in an area once at real risk.
An hour’s total time under water, 2?3 minutes at a time, per day, over 2?3 intensive weeks should add an eventual 5?10 points “I.Q.” to your intelligence and an immediate increase to the richness and span of your awareness. With your attention-span improved because of a deeper breathing-span, you will generate more experience of several items-at-a-time being contained within one span of awareness – that, in turn, should considerably improve your sense of relationships, between those items, and generally. That makes a profound difference in the quality of one’s thinking and perceiving! How profound? –It’s difficult to appreciate until you’ve gone through it, since we don’t have test instruments to measure it, but you will notice a profound improvement!
Further benefits
Your personal power as an individual may also improve remarkably, able to press your points, hang in there longer than others can attack your points, and to easily sus-tain efforts which other people aren’t up to making. There is even a cosmetic benefit!-?
An hour’s total time under water per day over 2-3 intensive weeks should add an inch per week to your chest circumference, making you physically more attractive!
The intelligence gains will be over a long period of time, as the effects of improved circulation work their way into the patterns and contents of your brain’s responses. The other effects will be immediate. All cited effects should prove to be permanent.
The full benefit is gotten only with a schedule of CO2-enrichment at least as inten-sive as the hour per day for 2-3 weeks we’ve recommended, forcing the Carotids into a permanent accommodation for a larger flow of circulation. A less intensive schedule may have some benefits, but allows the Carotids to re-equilibrate instead of stretching.
Schools often seem reluctant to accept any program likely to increase their students’ intelligence. The past 40 or so years, they even appear to have gone consistent-ly in the opposite direction. Could this relate to the fact that (at every level below grad-uate school, that is) no one gets more pay if Junior learns better, but if Junior learns worse, much more money and power are allocated into the system for compensatory instruction? (In one of this writer’s workshops, recently, were no fewer than 6 teachers from various schools which had just been abruptly disqualified from further Federal assistance because they had made the mistake of improving what they were doing!)
It is also true that if the underwater swimming were widely adopted at a school, the need for expensive remedial programs would sharply decrease and with it, possibly the school budget accordingly. The decrease in human suffering does not show up on the accountant’s page.
You can, if you like, assess the motivations of your school or school system at its power top, by suggesting held-breath underwater swimming or any other program which clearly would reduce the need for expensive remediation. Then, evaluate the responses of your school or school system. See if your respondents offer legitimate reasons for not doing this, or instead gives you a series of excuses and situations over which the respondent claims to have no control.
By this little test, determine to your own satisfaction whether the motivation of your school or school system is to help your child learn, and to help children generally learn and learn better, or whether it is a money-grabbing machine which will relentless-ly pursue dollars even if doing so means harm to our children.
But as an underwater swimming safety program that is politically and administratively feasible: Perhaps you can talk your school into including in its phys-ed program a 6-week unit in held-breath underwater swimming, as a safety program to ensure that all children can remain safely oriented in water even if they should fall into deep water somewhere by accident. So long as your school (or its top administrators, who are unlikely to be reading this article) does not know that such a measure will also make its students a lot brighter, there is a chance that it will take the desired action.
Meanwhile, you don’t have to wait upon the infinite wisdom of the authorities before helping either yourself or your own child. Virtually every area of this country now has swimming pools and areas. Almost every substantial community has at least one indoor pool for wintertime besides. Even many schools have these, ironic though that be, as do some community centers, and most YMCAs and athletic clubs.
Just go into one of these everywhere-available swimming places and start practi-cing at staying under and moving around on pool bottom for longer and longer periods of time, an hour per day every day for 3?4 weeks. Play underwater retrieval games with your child, underwater tag or whatever to keep him/her (and you) entertained, until you can comfortably sustain a breath span of 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 minutes. (Most people can go to 4 to 4-1/2 minutes within 3-4 weeks, but then might find themselves “too bright” for their surroundings.)
One more sweetener is the fact that this underwater swimming activity also makes you (and/or your child) look good, adding about an inch per week for awhile to chest circumference, and toning up general bearing.
For those who are unable or disinclined to go swimming, this writer has published details of other CO2 enrichment procedures, including certain breathing exercises, which can accomplish some of the same results. (“Sip-breathing,” for example, is a procedure which allows you to conserve your supply of CO2 half-again to twice as long as you could from simply holding your breath, to force a much richer expansion of the Carotids. Held-breath underwater swimming, though, is much the stronger procedure for CO2 enrichment and, further, engages that marine diving response to further expand circulation to the brain. Thus we strongly recommend it, to open up some truly breathtaking possibilities for you and yours.
Lastly, not only intelligence and awareness-span, and water safety, and good looks benefit from this self-training. The ability to sustain any kind of effort at whatever activity, clearly are a function of your “wind.” Not all of life is a breeze, and some things do require sustained effort. In many regards, then, through held-breath underwater swimming, you (and/or your child) can become not only brighter and better looking, but a much more potent and effective person.
Not everyone is bright enough to appreciate the desirability of becoming brighter. For that reason we expect that it will be mostly those who are already intelligent who will pursue such practices as held-breath underwater swimming to improve intelligence (“the rich get richer . . . . . “), rather than those who appear to most need that. Still, the apparent value of such practices appears to stretch across all ranges of intelligence ?high, low or ordinary. Now if the reader were to be ranked in intelligence by how s/he responded to this information and invitation to improve intelligence . . . . . . ? Starting, perhaps, by verifying with a doctor the CO2/Carotid expansion effect? ?Then looking up the nearest suitable pool . . . . .
This, then, was the first procedure to increase intelligence: held-breath underwater swimming. For accumulating 20 hours of held-breath underwater swimming within 3 weeks from start to finish– you will experience:
- the previously-promised 10 or more points I.Q. gain;
- better span of attention; better span of awareness;
- better awareness of the interrelatedness of things and of ideas and/or perceptions;
- finding yourself way better at winning arguments or disputes!
(20 or so seconds to 3 minutes at a time underwater, stretching the time a little each dip but remaining well within the bounds of comfort and safety – be sure someone with you there is aware of what you are doing. By the above procedure, you must be truly underwater, not just dipping your face in or just holding your breath, because the brain-circulation enhancement induced by the marine diving response – common to all mammals – is unexpectedly powerful in this combination of effects.)
An experimenter’s report of results
Profile and Results on 21-Day Underwater Swimming Protocol
by Arturo Muyshondt
Dear Readers,
I post the following results with a great deal of enthusiasm, as I found the Underwater Swimming protocol to be quite challenging at the beginning, but the immediate results have been outstanding. Not to mention my expectations on the mid-term level.
Protocol: One hour per day for 21 consecutive days. I was able to hold my breath underwater for a maximum of 1.33 minutes and averaged 1.12 per dive.
Results:
- Increased awareness, particularly evident when interacting with other people (more aware of their gestures, movements and even their breathing span), walking around in the outdoors (I noticed that I had lost the 3-dimensional view on some objects as I passed through them on a daily basis). Also, more aware of the cause and effect relationship between different components in a given system.
- Increased attention span, this has been more evident through my reading, where I roughly calculate that my reading speed has increased three-fold (this is without photo-reading).
- Other effect, being a native Spanish speaker and having been in the US for less than a year, I find it easier to write and speak in English, as for some reason I am thinking much faster and am able to retrieve more information from my memory banks. My thoughts flow more rapidly and I am also able to articulate better. This has been evident in my presentations at work and when faced with Q&A; sessions.
- Intellectual, as originally suggested by Win, during this 21 days I engaged myself in a rigid study of mathematics. The results have amazing, as I had a history of logical and memory deficiency when confronting numbers (specially word problems). To my surprise, I encounter myself tackling algebraic word problems and translating them automatically into equations. It may sound simple, but on a personal level this had been a great challenge. I am also for the first time typing without looking at the keyboard.
- Physical, I practically stopped my exercise routine during these 21 days, which included weight lifting (3Xweek), jogging (3Xweek), tennis (1Xweek). To my surprise my whole body seems trimmer (mostly my upper body, from the chest up), and I feel as if I had indeed continued with my traditional routine.
- I have been very relaxed, especially after the actual exercise, one that I found not only physically stimulating but mentally rewarding. After each session I reached a specific mental and physical state, which had been a total stranger to me. It felt as if I just swam 2,000 meters and went through a 1 hour Image Streaming session. Incredible feeling, and today I encounter myself “hooked” to this feeling.
The experience has been nothing but extraordinary and I plan on completing the protocol once a year. Needless to say, I will await for my carotid arteries to fully expand, in order to savor the new experiences that await me.
— Arturo Muyshondt
Reproduced from its original posting at imagestream@yahoogroups.com
Special Addendum 1 — 2002
…to the CO2-building, brain-building, held-breath underwater swimming procedure recommended here in the above article.
We still would very much like to see, and to some extent can support, formal research done on the use of held-breath underwater swimming to increase intelligence, attention and awareness-span, physical coordination, and general physical health.
In the meantime, it is now pretty clear to this writer that all the while during that intense brain-building interval of two to three concentrated weeks of held-breath underwater swimming and for some weeks thereafter, it is hugely important that you be making demands on your brain, learning new subjects, new skills, new arts, figuring out things, laying in new abilities, so that extra circulation is being taken up and so that the new equilibrium that is being established has a USE for all that extra circulation. I think this is very important.
In the new version of the book HOW TO INCREASE YOUR INTELLIGENCE, I am emphasizing this point, that you don’t want the new equilibrium simply to be all that extra circulation going to support just what your brain is doing now.
“Function determines structure.” You can’t expect to build extra muscle with supervitamins just sitting there on the sofa. To be effective with physical strength-building, you have to combine any special nutrition program with a physical exercise regimen. Start figuring out things and working your brain, “press mental iron” — and not just a lot of trivial mental puzzles but stuff worth figuring out or learning, stuff even worth getting excited about. For at least this one concentrated interval, push yourself.
Special Addendum 2 — 2002
Now as it turns out, there is even some increase in bloodflow to the brain resulting from apoxia alone. However, this is not the effect we are after, because with the program we suggest there’d be a net increase of oxygen to the brain even during the actual held-breath underwater swimming, to say nothing of the rest of the time. That increase, of course, results from (1) CO2-triggered expansion of the carotid arteries; (2) the mammalian diving response from being underwater, which further increases circulation to the brain; and (3) improving respiratory capacity, and the effects of that on attention span and awareness span.
Here is a relevant article on “Changes of cerebral blood flow during short-term exposure to normobaric hypoxia” by Buck A, Schirlo C, Jasinksy V, Weber B, Burger C, von Schulthess GK, Koller EA, Pavlicek V, published by the Division of Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland. They report, in part, as follows:
Decreased arterial partial oxygen pressure (PaO2) below a certain level presents a strong stimulus for increasing cerebral blood flow. Although several field studies examined the time course of global cerebral blood flow (gCBF) changes during hypoxia at high altitude, little was known about the regional differences in the flow pattern.
Positron emission tomography (PET) with [(15)O]H2O was used on eight healthy volunteers to assess regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during short-term exposure to hypoxia corresponding to simulated altitudes of 3,000 and 4,500 m. Scans at the simulated altitudes were preceded and followed by baseline scans at the altitude of Zurich (450 m, baseline-1 and baseline-2). Each altitude stage lasted 20 minutes.
From baseline to 4,500 m, gCBF increased from 34.4 +/- 5.9 to 41.6 +/- 9.0 mL x minute(-1) x 100 g(- 1) (mean +/- SD), whereas no significant change was noted at 3,000 m. During baseline-2 the flow values returned to those of baseline-1.
Statistical parametric mapping identified the hypothalamus as the only region with excessively increased blood flow at 4,500 m (+32.8% +/- 21.9% relative to baseline-1). The corresponding value for the thalamus, the structure with the second largest increase, was 19.2% +/- 16.3%. Compared with the rest of the brain, an excessive increase of blood flow during acute exposure to hypoxia is found in the hypothalamus. The functional implications are at present unclear.
Further studies of this finding should elucidate its meaning and especially focus on a potential association with the symptoms of acute mountain sickness.
And now to look at the other, second, and apparently even more “I.Q.”-boosting procedure, Image Streaming.
Chapter 4
Image Streaming
It’s no surprise to any serious researcher, this past century and more, that for every awareness we have consciously, we experience hundreds of awarenesses unconsciously. –Nor that every such awareness and experience, whether received consciously or unconsciously, is still with us in memory. –Even if we “can’t remember” the answer to that question on the test! It’s not our memory that’s at fault, it’s our recall process: everything still is in our actual memory. That makes up a pretty fair data-base. In fact, more than just that data-base:
We each have huge masses of information, experience, data, understanding, intelligence in every sense of that word, throughout our brain but not directly linked into immediate verbal consciousness.
Much of this is found in those regions of the brain whose working language is not words but sensory images. This imagery region is immediately responsive to context and to question – if we LET ourselves see what’s being reflexively shown to us from those further brain-reaches, via sensory images.
Even while you are asking a question, part of you is already showing you, in images, your best available, ingenious, most creative answer or understanding. Look at what’s being shown you whatever it is and regardless of whether at first blush it seems to fit the context – in fact, aim to be surprised by its contents. Socratic-method like, develop that image further by describing it in detail.
–Remember our prime “natural law” of behavior and psychology, that you get more of what you reinforce? That when you describe your own perceptions, you (1) reinforce the particular perception being described, and (2) reinforce the behavior of being perceptive….
–And that third thing reinforced if the perception described is at first subtle, therefore arising in regions of the brain hitherto offline or barely online with where we are verbally conscious from? –Reinforcing those offline regions of the brain, together with their resources and intelligence, more and more ONto line with our focussed verbal left-temporal conscious minds?
Certainly our own internal visual and other sensory mental images qualify as initially “subtle.” If we can pick up on them and describe them in detail, we reinforce the corresponding broad regions of our brain more and more onto line with our conscious mind. Even if these images were not fully charged and loaded with meaning and understandings and answers, to pick up on them and describe them would reinforce more and more of our offline intelligence onto line where we can make more immediate use of it, and where its ongoing resonance enriches and deeply colors our ongoing experience day by day.
While our combination of effects is new, most of its component elements are quite ancient in scientific and historical terms, for example Socratic Method dating back at least 2200 years. Socratic method viewed broadly: not so much the argument and fierce questioning, but what those tactics elicited: the person examining and searching through his perceptions, inner and outer, and responding from there, describing in detail what he discovered there.
As just cited on the three factors which get reinforced by one’s describing from his own perceptions, the century-old “First Law” of psychology largely accounts for why the various forms of Socratic Method are so effective.
Combine Socratic Method as we have here, with the also historically potent system of Einsteinian “Deep Thought Experiments,” and this gives rise in turn to Post-Einsteinian Discovery Technique far beyond most systems or sets of effects which have gone before. Einsteinian Method is to let one’s visual mental imagery run loose, while observing it as closely as possible to see what you can discover from it. The original deep thought method was easy to fall asleep on instead of staying on task: Einstein would hold a rock in each hand so if he nodded off, the falling rock would recall him to task. Describing instead, while observing these images, to a listener, not only keeps one awake and on task, but actually develops further the images and perceptions being described – all in keeping with behavior’s prime law of reinforcement.
This new combination, of systems of technique whose power has long been historically demonstrated, opens many paths to your own high heritage of resources.
By some researcher accounts, most of the major discoveries of the past two centuries were made by means of visual thinking. Examples: Kekule’s doze-dream, about intertwined snakes swallowing their own tails in his fireplace, taught him the structure of the benzene ring, basis of all organic chemistry. Elias Howe’s nightmare of cannibals attacking, whose spears happened to have holes in their heads, gave him his a-ha! for the sewing machine he had been laboring for so long to invent. Niccola Tesla’s in-head visual predictions gave us our electric power system and a major part of the electronics industry and way of life. Einstein’s “train ride on a beam of light” taught him–and us–his theories of relativity which remade the whole of physics and helped remake the whole of science.
Albert Einstein himself did not invent, but extensively practiced and popularized the method, now known as the Einsteinian technique of “Deep Thought” or “Thought Experiments,” of setting a visualization running and observing it closely to see what one can discover from it. By removing conscious direction of all or part of the imagery so that its message could come cleanly from the unengaged larger resources of our brain, and concurrently describing those free-playing images to a live listener or to a tape recorder, we have now found ourselves with a hugely productive investigative technique which, in addition and remarkably, is well within everyone’s easy reach to use effectively.
XXIV times XXXVII = ???
History records the effects of another comparable improvement in one type of thinking method. From Renaissance European times the West has found it not only convenient but absolutely essential to its pursuit of mathematics and arithmetic operations, to switch from Roman numerals to the Arabic numerals we use today, and adopt with that the concept and number zero. (Until then it was a major feat of high genius just to be able to multiply, say, XXIV times XXXVII!) This difference is comparable to the greater convenience and ease which our revised Einsteinian visual thinking system is providing in all areas of life and work, not only math.
Here we now give you enough of the procedure – and a little more besides – to enable you to enjoy the range of effects and benefits promised you at the start of this quickbook, through easy and entertaining practice.
This concurrent describing from one’s own perception, of subtle imagery, evokes as we noted the three aspects cited of behavior’s prime law, that you get more of what you reinforce. That first aspect, of reinforcing the particular perception, is also known as the “Principle of Description:” to describe anything in detail while you are examining it–especially to describe it aloud, to a listener, whether a live listener or to the potential listener represented by a tape recorder. Describe in detail what you are perceiving and you discover more and more and more about what you are describing. The very floor you are on at this moment, familiar as that may be to you–if you were on the phone with a friend who was trying to sketch that floor from your description of it for whatever reason, as you described one feature another would come into your attention for you to describe and as you described that yet other aspects would emerge for you–wouldn’t you soon know far more about that floor, as simple and as concrete as that is, than you ever wanted to know about it?
We cannot emphasize enough that for this procedure to work, requires that you be describing aloud to a live listener or to the potential listener represented by a tape recorder. This elicits a different level of “performance” from you and, from hearing your own performance in the context of a listener, gives you also a different level of the feedback reinforcing you and your experience. Without a listener and external focus, the procedure does little or nothing for you! With a listener, it’s all the difference in the world!
This “principle of description” is the operating instruction for how to realize Walt Whitman’s dictum, that if you observe closely enough even an ordinary blade of grass (or as William Blake stated, even an ordinary grain of sand), you will discover the entire universe there. Anything you describe in close detail to listener or recorder while you are observing it closely, you discover more and more and more about.
How to bring ANY perception conscious or more conscious
–By describing it aloud, to someone or to a tape recorder, in as much detail as you can, while you are examining it. That is the Principle of Description: Anything you describe in rich detail to a live or potential listener while examining it, you discover more and more and more about. (The Whitman/Blake Effect, as discussed above, ignited most often in a sustained rapid flow of describing.)
This is true even for the most concrete objects of perception, for which you might think that little subtlety or subliminality might pertain. –Such as your already long-familiar chair you may now be sitting in. Test that if you like, by phoning an acquaintance whose patience you’re willing to stretch, and describing to him/her your chair or your floor in as rich a detail as you can, and see if you don’t discover far more about your floor or chair than you ever imagined!
Sustain that rapid flow of describing, keep on finding fresh things to say about that object of perception which somehow describe it, and you will soon engage the Whitman/Blake Effect, discovering a universe of associated perceptions and realizations beyond anything you had until now imagined.
Modern physics has found this universe to be (1) holographic, (2) comprised necessarily of fractiles, a la gorgeously infinite Mandelbrot Sets. As a result: when description, feedback and perception all intermodulate and so engage these dynamics, you can literally discover all that, and more, just by closely observing anything, even your own thumbnail! Whitman’s dictum about an ordinary blade of grass was more than metaphor: it is literal, provided that you describe in enough detail to your listener while you are looking very closely….
We will refer to this expansion-of-perception effect, of describing one’s own perception, this Principle of Description, as the “Whitman/Blake Effect.”
The second aspect from the law of reinforcement is even greater. As significant as the effect on the particular perception is the effect of such describing on the behavior of perceiving, and on the perceiver himself. A method popular in Europe for training ordinary people into being sophisticated, sensitive winetasters or perfume testers, is: to provide that person a sample, and he is to describe rapid-fire everything that comes into mind, for some minutes. Then another sample, and again describing rapid-fire for some minutes everything that comes to mind or awareness. Then a third sample….
Three days of this activity, sustained, and that ordinary person has developed the sensitivities of a professional perfume tester or wine taster!
Historically, Socratic-like practice of describing from one’s own perceptions, as distinct from didactic teaching, was so often accompanied by such huge leaps of perception, understanding and growth that all its most noted practitioners became convinced that all knowledge and understanding are already within each learner and need merely be “drawn forth.” This “Socratic miracle” phenomenon happened so often that the “drawing-forth” theory behind its practice gave rise to the name of “education” itself became named after that concept–“educare” meaning, “to draw forth.”
Thanks to the above-cited. holographic interference-pattern physics, fractile systems theory and other modern understandings in natural physical law: we are no longer required to make certain transpersonal, metaphysical assumptions about the learner to account for these “Socratic Miracle Leaps,” or Maslovian “Peak Learning Experiences,” “numinous eternities,” “transcendental moments of illumination,” etc. Perhaps those assumptions are true but even without them, the natural laws of physics dictate that when description of even the most ordinary perceptions is pursued in this detailed, sustained, intermodulative manner, a deepened and enlarged insight which seems almost to be “the whole universe” becomes apparent to the describer. Whether in fact all knowledge and understan-ding are within each learner, we now know clearly that such knowledge and understanding are (at least also) accessible through closely detailed describing-while-examining of even the most ordinary objects in one’s own perception!
Interestingly enough, during those 2200 Socratic years: from a population base of but a few thousand citizens most of whom soldiered or sold olives or politicked or followed other interests and pursuits, classical Greece produced more cultural giants and geniuses than has all of Earth’s 5-1/2 billion people during this past half-century, where we are no longer on Socratic education but on didactic teaching, with the results which we see all around us. Likewise, from a population base of but a few hundred thousand citizens allowed access to culture-related ways of living, Renaissance Europe radically outproduced our 5-1/2 billion in geniuses and cultural giants.
In our combination of Socratic and Einsteinian Discovery Methods: the Einsteinian “thought experiment” defines the context, frame or focus within which you’ve oriented your perceptions (and imagery). Modern Socratic Method simply has you describing aloud, to live listener or to potential listener a la tape recorder, in detail, everything you can observe in that context while you are observing it–and again, afterward, in different settings and contexts (which provide different feedbacks), until you’ve made full sense of what you’ve observed.
Importance of context: Context “sets the computer menu” through which and determin-ing how you currently process information. For example, look around your office for a minute with the eyes of a competitor or rival, see what it is that you notice. Now look around your office with the eyes of a tax assessor, see what it is now that catches your attention. Now with the eyes of a client…. A subordinate…. the eyes of the U.S. President….. The subtler and/or further ranging the information set with which you are dealing, as compared to the easy concrete specifics of what’s visible around your office, the more susceptible by far is your handling of it to various contexts–an area almost wholly overlooked thus far by most areas of both creative problem solving method and learning method, among other fields.
Problem-Solving by means of Post-Einsteinian Discovery Technique, this combination of methods: note that the problems which we have left around us are the ones which did not solve based upon what we know about them. There, what we “know” has become the problem by standing between us and the fresh perceptions needed. The various systems of creative problem solving now in world use succeed mainly to the extent that they somehow move us beyond what we “know” and into those fresh perceptions. The sooner and stronger you move into perception on some issue, the better your chances of finding good answer.
Einsteinian or post-Einsteinian type imagery is a great way to move immediately into perception in the context of the problem or issue.
Another aspect very relevant to our Image Streaming procedure: often our imagery or image-generating deeper minds appear to be generating their answers instantly, almost before we’ve even become consciously aware that we’ve contacted a question, issue, problem or opportunity context. Why that seems to be so instantaneous?–Most of the conscious part of our thought and perception take place in the parts of our brain which use verbal language, and so is paced by the speed of the language we customarily use, one word at a time. Electroprobe measurements show the right cerebral cortex to operate some ten thousand times more rapidly than does the verbal conscious part of the left–and the underlying limbic brain, which runs the whole affair, operates some ten thousand times more rapidly than does even the right cortex! No wonder these “unconscious” responses sort out at “computer speed,” to the plodding verbal conscious seeming to be instantaneous!
We have taken this combination of methods also back into “education” itself, finding this modern version of Socratic technique to achieve everything that traditional Socratic miracles did and then some, and that it strengthens virtually every aspect of learning. Our recent book Beyond Teaching And Learning explores this area in some detail and enables its readers to proceed Socratically through whatever skill or intellectual topic area(s) they wish to learn in, regardless of the teaching methods used by schools at hand. The recent huge loss of employment of scientists and technicians following end of the Cold War, and the popularly reported fact that the average adult American will change career 3-1/2 to 4-1/2 times during his working life, may render this literally “educative” application to be very interesting, both personally and professionally, to some readers of this present brief.
How old are these findings? Too new, perhaps, for our schools and institutions to make use of, most of the specific findings we’ve cited about the brain are anywhere from 20 years to a full century old. Einsteinian technique, in its traditional forms at least, is centuries old and indissolubly intertwined with the scientific, technological and intellectual progress of the Western world the past several centuries. Socratic Method goes back, as we noted, some 2200 years. All of this work revolves around Psychology’s First Law,” 150 years or so old in our scientific understanding, familiarly stated as, “You get more of what you reinforce.”
Getting to the procedure itself
A hour or so’s practice of Image Streaming, distributed over 3 to 5 sessions of a few minutes each, will bring you aware enough of this ongoing process to see for yourself that at any instant, and on occasion of any question or problem, your subtler faculties are presenting your mind’s eye with a unique image or set of images relevant to that stimulus.
The most generally useful, marginally conscious perceptions we now know how to elicit and work with is the form of visual thinking we call Image Streaming. These marginally conscious perceptions can be made to relate to and lead on into an astonishingly wide range of previously unconscious perceptions serving a host of goals and purposes, both practical and developmental.
How To Work With Your On-Going Image Stream
All I have to do is to describe how Image Streaming is done, and virtually half of you who read this will be able, that easily, to perform it.
The bulk of these next instructions will be for that other half of the readership, the ones who need a little help initially before they can experience Image Streaming. As matters stand, though–
–For that other half, the half that needs a little help first, we will then present below some of the back-up procedures from which you can train yourself, or train each other if working with a friend, or even train entire groups at a time, how to Image Stream.
At any given moment, there are images in your mind’s eye. Half of you reading this can already see them. Just close eyes and report out loud whatever it is you happen to see there – a tree branch, a sliced orange, a child’s tricycle, whatever happens to be there now, not whatever you decide to see there.
For some of you reading this, visual imagery is so commonplace that it seems extraordinary that there be anyone who doesn’t readily, consciously, continuously experience it. As many of you reading this find it fully as extraordinary that anyone actually would “get pictures” and see things! Yet not only the ability to inwardly see, but to develop that inward seeing a la Einstein and beyond to become your very most immediately valuable information processing tool, is now within ready reach of every single individual who now is reading this.
If it is not already, this can almost immediately be your ability–to receive unexpected, surprise visual and other sensory mental images, carrying information to your conscious mind from the higher, subtler, more comprehensive reaches of your brain and mind. –Not just images you decide consciously to see, such as an oak tree, or a river, or “success,” or a big check coming in the mail.
The most fundamental form of visual thinking is receptive, not directed from your conscious mind but instead an expression of some of those “sidebands” reflecting, regardless of whatever is on your conscious mind, your highest available insights in relation to what is going on for you or in answer to some major issue or problem.
For example, even as I write this I can pause a moment, close eyes, and see, this time: a silver-colored one-engine propeller-driven airplane climbing in what looks like is going to be a loop-the-loop maneuver. I’m looking down on this silver plane from above; below it I see a patchwork of plowed farmfield and woodland. Those woods have “softened” with that early spring look just before their foliage starts to emerge.
I’m seeing this silver plane glinting with sunlight, about two hundred feet below me and the woods and fields about four hundred feet below that airplane. My point of view seems to be moving parallel with that plane and we’re both climbing at a steep angle. I’ve a glimpse of the sky, sort of milky blue….
Whatever the significance of those images, it’s not what I decided to see or “made up” for the occasion. It’s simply what happened to be there in my mind’s eye when I looked in at that moment in writing this manuscript. Half of you now reading this can already see your own images, different images whatever these may be, in your own mind’s eye. For that already fortunate half of you, here is your experiment:
Simply close eyes, and see what’s there now in the way of imagery, waiting for you to notice it. Please try that now!
How to Image Stream
What you need is an external focus to describe your images TO. A tape recorder with blank tape, or a simple Dictaphone like every office used to have, provides you a potential listener for that all-essential focus. Call in a friend, or phone to call up a friend and keep him or her on the line, and you have, even better, a live listener to serve as that external focus.
Of that half of you who did get an image, some found a strong, clear, definite image or set of images, while others just got a glimpse, a faint impression which you might think was hardly worth describing, or weren’t certain whether you were just making up the idea rather than seeing an image–
–Yet whatever you got, the key is to examine and describe it aloud, in as rich detail as possible even if you feel at first as if you are “forcing” it and “making up” some of it to fill your description to your external focus listener. More, though, and more, will come as you describe – be alert to this happening, and describe the new impressions when they come. Your images will become rich and vivid and even their meanings – as Image Stream contents are often symbolic or metaphoric – will start to become apparent.
THAT is Image Streaming. Each full-flow Image Streaming session should run from 10 to 30 minutes. Examine whatever images happen to be playing in your mind’s eye at the time, while describing them in rich detail to a live or potential listener (person or tape recorder). Even minimum, trivial-seeming impressions or whatever: describe them in such richly textured detail as to force anyone listening to experience and see what you are describing. 10 to 20 minutes at a time, practice several hours of Image Streaming and you will have mastered the basic skills needed to make other forms of visual thinking work for you. –And you will also have experienced some of the other
benefits of Image Streaming as well, including improved intellectual performance and creativity.
Even if your imagery is already clear and vivid, you will be astonished at how much more so it quickly becomes when you describe it in this way, while continuing to examine it. This improvement is even stronger if–
- You describe in as sensory-textured detail as possible. The major part of your brain that we want to bring on line, works with sensory images even in profoundly intellectual matters. Explanation takes you away from that sensory immediacy. Instead of saying, “I’m at the beach” or “This is Virginia Beach,” detail instead the warmth of sand under your toes, the sound of surf, the smell of salt, the wheeling of the gulls above you in the almost-white sky, black and white of the gulls on that paler white far above you….
- Describe as rapidly as you can, to get more and more detail in. Describe faster than you can stop to judge whether or not something is worth mentioning, just go ahead and flow it through (and see what comes with it). This is a kind of “brain-storm” only with description instead of ideas or answers, and has a similar rule to brainstorming’s “if it occurs to you, express it!” Really rapid-flow describing exerts almost a Venturi force or suction pulling other perceptions into focus.
- All this is done most easily with eyes shut, so that your inner visual circuits aren’t distracted away from these initially subtler signals, and so they can operate at full sensitivity. In other words, please keep eyes closed during such processing, in order to see more freely.
What if you DIDN’t get pictures?
Please pursue whichever of the back-up procedures below which work for you, until you are able to do pure Image Streaming. Most of the following are forcing techniques, to get a flow of something started which, by describing it while you are examining it, will bring other perceptions on line until you find yourself working with actual and consciously undirected images. Once you achieve this, then please do log several hours of Image Streaming, 10 to 30 minutes at a time.
–What we call the “Ten/Ten Test”–if, after at least 10 minutes per day of Image Streaming for at least ten days, you don’t find your life positively and miraculously transformed, then ignore everything we’ve said and do something else instead. But if you do find Socratic and other miracles happening in your life, please do continue the practice of Image Streaming: no matter how good things become, they can become even better for you! –Fair test?
Special Segment Insert: For Those Who Did Not At First “Get Pix:”
Here, however, following below is a series of back-up procedures, any one of which is pretty likely to help you to get pictures started. Once you do get any kind of impression at all started, “describe the Dickens out of it,” as if you were still looking at it even if it was but a fleeting glimpse or impression – and you will find more coming. –And more coming. —And more coming!
If you did get pictures, these back-up procedures would only slow you down from getting your Image Streaming accomplished (unless you are planning to teach it, in which case you’ll want to be familiar with all the back-up techniques). It’d be better to go ahead and begin experiencing and practicing.
For years it was cited as “a scientific fact” that one American in three is unable to “get pictures,” to visualize. In our experience, not one person out of thousands has been able to get through the following “back-up” procedures without getting pictures in his or her mind’s eye and thus begin to harvest the benefits of visual thinking. (And: oh, yes–this writer was one of those who “absolutely can’t visualize” until, by dint of methods much harder to use than those here, he finally became able to “get pictures in his mind’s eye” and start thinking visually. He found visual thinking so very, very useful, that he began teaching it to others — initially by methods similar to the ones he had been taught by, only these didn’t work for a lot of people. Consulting his own visual thinking for guidance how to enable this person or that one to begin getting visual imagery, one method after another literally taught itself to this writer. One of the first remains one of the strongest, the “Helper Technique” version of Image Streaming.
1. Helper Technique for beginning Image Streaming: For this technique you definitely do need a live partner, following these next instructions with you.
Normally, it’s preferred that you simply close eyes and begin noticing–and describing–whatever images happen to be there. Imagery is going on there all the time, an ongoing commentary on everything. For some of us, though, that natural, ongoing process is far enough unconscious that this “Helper Technique” may be needed–
–Though that imagery goes on all the time, some images come through a little more strongly than do others, and while this is happening, you automatically make little responses which are visible to outside observers. These little responses are “attention cues” because you make these responses when you start to give attention to some stimulus. A partner observing these cues can, whenever they happen, gently ask, “What was in your awareness just then?”–until the one who was asked, realizes s/he was seeing something just then, and thus begin the flow of description from that point.
Here are ways to make two of these attention cues highly visible and obvious enough that an untrained observer can spot them and appropriately ask you that question–
A. When you start to give attention to something, you hold your breath. If your partner is instructed to breathe slowly, smoothly, rewardingly, and continu-ously, with no pauses between breathing in and breathing out, then the attention-cue pause in breathing becomes highly visible by contrast, and an occasion for asking that partner, “What was in your awareness just then?”
B. If partner keeps eyes closed and the observer notices them moving around under the lids, what is it that they are looking at? Eye movement under the closed lids is what is significant here, not eyelid flutter. When you spot that eye movement, ask partner, “What was in your awareness just then?” When in doubt as to either cue, go ahead and ask the question.
–Meanwhile, if the one who is to Image Stream notices any images happening, go ahead and start describing them anyway, instead of waiting for your partner to ask you what was in your awareness just then.
Once anything at all is spotted, the would-be Image Streamer is to describe the dickens out of it in as much detail as possible, even forcing some made-up detail if need be, to get the flow started. (Spotter asks no more questions unless flow falters, in order not to slow the flow or interrupt it.) More, much more imagery will come and, after awhile, the Image Streamer can truly begin enjoying functioning as an accurate reporter of increasingly meaningful and intriguing internal event perceptions.
This spotting and identifying of attention cues is the preferred way to get Image Streaming started if you weren’t able to simply look in and self-start as above. However, with so many other back-up techniques available: if 10 minutes’ try of such closed-eyes breathing and cue reinforcing does not bring about the sought-for perceptions and experience of “pix,” switch to one of the following alternative methods.
In each of these procedures hereafter, we will refer to the person seeking to see images as the Image Streamer, and the listening partner as Listener. Once both of you get images going you can both play both roles simultaneously, one of you describing until you have to pause for breath, the other then rushing in with some description of his/her own images and vice versa, to get a lot of viewing and describing into the available time. Some of the following, including # 2, “After-Image” next below, can be done by just the Image Streamer working alone with a tape recorder.
2. After-Image is another way to get inner visual impressions going, as basis for that descriptive flow which leads to further visual mental awarenesses. Stare at a bright light (but nowhere nearly as bright as the sun!–20-40 watts is more than bright enough) for a half minute, or another part of the room or windows which have strong light/dark contrast. After that, especially when you close eyes, you should have momentary after-images, left-over prints of that light on the retina at back of the eye. You may experience seeing a gloating blob of light or color, perhaps a line or so. Describe that in some detail and continue describing it as that afterimage begins to change color and shape.
Unreinforced after-images last only a few seconds. Reinforced by attention and description, your after-image can last long minutes–we’ve found experimentally some which lasted 4 hours! If yours fades out after a few moments, recharge on the light again and resume describing.
At some point in that process of examining and describing your after-images, you may notice experiencing some other kinds of image, whether just trace impressions or a momentary eye, face, landscape, vase or whatever. It’s those other kinds of image which we’re hoping to get to and describe in this experience, so please notice when this happens, and switch to describing that new image – in present tense, as if you were still looking at it even if it were only a momentary glimpse that you caught. With sufficiently forceful and detailed sustained flow of description, more images will come.
Again: if 10-20 minutes’s sustained effort with After-Image did not lead you to more interesting images, try another procedure. The same for any of these procedures. No one has “run the gauntlet” of these several various procedures without getting pictures in their mind’s eye with which to begin visual thinking. Once you have a procedure productive for you, practice the imagery-and-describing as such. After getting started, do not try out all the other back-up procedures since that would slow down your more essential practice, unless you plan to teach visual thinking to others and so wish to familiarize yourself with all the techniques for getting people started into imagery. What matters is the Image Streaming itself, not how you got it started.
3. Worth Describing–you may have been getting blobs of color, lines, patterns, other visual impressions and not reporting them because you thought they were too trivial to mention. –Or impressions in other sensory channels–sounds, tingles, impressions of pressure or movement. These are still inner phenomena worth reporting and if you report them rapidly and detailedly enough and sustain that flow of description, you will find this leading to other impressions some of which clearly will not seem so trivial to you.
If, after 10-20 minutes of reporting blobs of color, this has not led to any other kind of imagery that you’ve noticed, you can, with eyes kept closed:
A. Deliberately look beyond the color as beyond a colored screen, just a few feet further distant, and see….. (whatever impression: resume describing from there). Or,
B. Breathe as if to “breathe in” the nearest of the colors, clearing thereby the way to see other impressions…..
4. Phosphenes–gently rub your own closed eyes like a sleepy child, and describe the light-and-color blips which result from that changing slight pressure. Go in with describing from there…..
The next two procedures become deeply enough introspective that it’s easy to nod off–the reason Einstein kept a rock in either hand–so for these two we strongly recommend using a live partner as listener and “spotter.” Another reason for using a live partner with either or both of these is that we will be using again those “attention cues” from “the Helper Technique”—–The instructions for these next two procedures are worded for the use of your listener/spotter partner to follow in working with you as the intended Image Streamer.
5. Stream From Memory–have your image-seeking partner, still with closed eyes, remember a real scene, especially a very beautiful landscape or object or even a dream. Or have him/her make up a beautiful garden or park. Even if these are just made-up story words at first and not a perceived experience, have your image-seeking partner begin describing that scene to you in as rich detail as possible while keeping eyes closed. Have your image-seeking partner like a reporter, sending that description to you from amidst that scene as if it is going on right now instead of being a memory of back when. While your partner is describing this memory, watch his or her closed eyes closely: when you see them move under the lids, seize that occasion to ask your partner what s/he saw just then….. It’s noticing those images that’s our key to pick up on and switch the describing to, whether they are memories or new fresh images. –Especially when images show up that don’t fit the “story” or scene being described…..
Keep encouraging description until it is flowing, even if it has to be from word-memories or make-believe and not pictures, until images are in fact flowing. Once description is flowing, “get out of the way of the flow” by not interrupting with questions or with any encouragement more involved than a lightly positive “um-hm.” The flow of description will bring flow of pictures, sooner or later, if that description is in richly textured detail, sustained without interruption or lapse or much repetition, and if the describer keeps eyes closed to see more freely.
6. “Door”–much the same as with # 5 just above, except instead of a garden, park, or remembered beautiful scene, have your partner imagine being in front of a closed door. Have your partner describe that door, and the feel of that door as if s/he had just put a hand on it. Then have your partner suddenly fling open that door to catch by surprise whatever’s there to see on the other side of it, and ask his or her first impressions of what was there or “what might have been there.” Get your partner to describing that impression, even if it were hardly there, as if it were still there, see what else comes into view.
If nothing at all came, repeat the door procedure but with colorful, textured window curtains, or with jumping around the end of a high wall, with the idea that something unexpected but valuable or useful will likely be in view on the other side if partner opens that view suddenly enough. The more unexpected the contents of the imagery, the better your chances that the image is coming from further ranges of the brain and not just the conscious treadmill portion (which is likely to deal up pictures of what you already consciously know about the context or present situation). The more surprising the imagery contents, the better your chances of getting sensitive, comprehensively based fresh perceptions and insights.
Both you and your partner please note: after you have become conscious of your imagery and have some practice in observing and describing it, you can also use such doors, curtains, corners, etc. as a way to find ingenious possible answers and solutions to questions and problems. In contact with this side of the visual barrier, pose your question. Then, suddenly, look into the “answer space” beyond and describe your first impression of what’s there, with the expectation of being surprised. If your answer is metaphoric and hard to understand, as sometimes happens, find second and third such “answer-spaces” but program to be shown exactly the same answer to the same question, though shown to you in a wholly different way or picture. What’s the same when everything is different, becomes key to the meaning: inductive inference. Take any answer, however clear or certain-meaning, with a grain of salt, verify it as you would ideas and answers from any other source.
Key to the above, the following, or any other “back-up” procedure to ensure visual imagery happening, is: once you find any kind of impression at all, “describe the Dickens out of it” as if it were still in view, until more appears. Keep finding fresh things to say about it which describe it, even if it’s long gone, until more appears. The ideal discovery state, and the ideal personal growth state, is the process of rapidly describing in rich, accurate detail the flow of visual mental images which are undirected except for their intermodulations with your rich treasure-trove of beyond-consciousness understandings and perceptions.
The ability to Image Stream is natural, the difficulty some initially have is learned, artificial. Children just don’t have any difficulty seeing their inner images. The very highest incidence of people having difficulty “getting pix” this writer has thus far met have been people who train other people in imagery or in various forms of meditation! Yet none, even of these, is able to go through all 6 of the above back-up procedures and all of those following below, without “getting pix” and starting to get the benefits of visual thinking.
It almost doesn’t matter how you get the rapid flow of detailed, sensory-rich textured description going. Once you do have it going, to report accurately actual ongoing inner phenomena is so much more rewarding than is “just making up a story” that, over time, this reinforcive effect in the practice of Image Streaming will train anyone to be a highly efficient, sensitive, accurate observer, not only of his inner imagery but in all senses, interior and exterior. It’s getting the richly textured flow of describing started, and keeping it going without interruption, pause or much repetition, that’s important: the rest will naturally take care of itself. Here are some more ways to get that initial flow going:
7. Music–Listen to some richly textured music with your eyes closed (and tape recorder ready to record)–preferably classical music, French Impressionistic music or progressive jazz, with “enough music per unit of music” to attract and involve your more sensitive faculties. Notice when you have an image or images and begin describing, persist in that describing. (A very old idea indeed – remember Walt Disney’s Fantasia?) If you’ve really had a problem visualizing, up until now, a live partner could be invaluable at this point, not only as your live listener but to spot your attention-cues when some especially strong image starts to catch your attention: eye movements under the lids, or breathing pause, or shifts in face and neck and shoulder muscles…
8. Background sounds–Pick up a record or tape of background sounds, at one of the “New Age”-type record shops or bookstores or health food stores. Listen to these background sounds with eyes closed. Detailedly describe, to tape or to live listener (who can also act as your Spotter alerting you when you are responding with attention-cues–“what were you seeing just then?”) what images these sounds evoke for you (which may or may not be the images those sounds logically should evoke for you–go with what actually comes up). Let the sounds end but keep on describing, noticing when other images emerge and describing these in turn, since this use of evocative sounds is a form of directed imagery and you wish to go on to the undirected form – i.e., Image Streaming.
9. House blindfolded–Go around your house blindfolded feeling different objects. Describe at length the appearance of each item you feel. Or, get someone to set up a grab-bag for you, of many highly diverse objects, each object for you to feel, to describe the feeling of, and regardless of whether you successfully identify what it is, to describe the appearance of. See if at some point in working through your grab bag this way, eyes closed or blindfolded, you don’t notice other images also coming…..
(This is also a mildly effective creative problem-solving technique. If you’ve been working to solve a problem and haven’t yet gotten your a-ha! to resolve it, you can turn to perception by asking yourself, ‘How would a blind man experience this problem differently than I? How would he ‘see’ it differently than I’m seeing it now?’ –or deaf person? Or any other sense handicapped? Or dwarf? Or 6’10” basketball center? Anything to change the way you are looking at the problem and to get you from your stuck “knowledge” and your neuronal habituation into perception…)
10. Air sculpting–with eyes closed (and other people not about!), begin “sculpting” from thin air (or even from clay) some object d’art. Keeping eyes closed, then “hold your sculpture in your hand” and describe its appearance in detail. See if other images don’t also begin to emerge for you.
11. Passenger–when riding as a passenger in train, bus or car, describe in detail with your eyes kept closed what you think is the appearance of the landscape or street scenes you are riding through. See if after some of this you don’t notice other images also happening.
–Each of these, you see, are calling on other resources to help you visualize your way through these situations. How many times have you had to feel your way through the dark to some goal, even though in your own house–such as going to the bathroom without waking anyone else. What about all those fictional stories about being kidnapped and the victim figuring out where he was while blindfolded in the escape car?
Another item of the same type, setting up a situational, multi-sensory demand upon your imaging faculties to bring their response above conscious threshhold:
12. Eat Blindfolded–describe the appearance, in detail, of what you’re eating and see if more pictures don’t also come.
13. Arrange 4-5 different delicious aromas from your spice rack. Set them before you, unstoppered. Shuffle them around with eyes closed and with eyes kept closed, try to identify them. See if any of the aromas trigger further visual images. If they trigger only memories instead, describe a scene from one of those memories in as vivid detail as you can, with eyes kept closed, and see if other images don’t develop which can then also be described….
Another type of method, again the goal being that of providing some visual stimulus from which to begin the rapid flow of describing to pull onto line other, subtler free imagery also to describe…
14. At night with all lights out, just inside your bathroom, eyes open, orient toward the lights, turn them on and immediately close eyes! You should find some rather elaborate after-images or even a scene of some sort–describe the Dickens out of it and see what else comes…..
Variant: flicking the bathroom lights on and off several quick times with eyes open, then closing eyes and proceeding as above. See how your afterimagery comes out with the lights finally out; and with the lights finally on.
15. Obtain a simple stroboscope (IF you are not epileptic!). Set the stroboscopic light to somewhere between 4 and 12 beats per second. Look into that stroboscopic light with eyes kept closed–describe as best you can the evoked colors and patterns for awhile and be alert to other images also happening.
IF no other kind of image happens after 10-15 minutes of this, start describing some imagined or remembered scene in detail, while continuing to look into the strobe light with closed eyes and be alert to such imagery as may develop for you…. If nothing additional still comes, try again with the strobe set to different frequencies, whatever frequency makes the greatest color and pattern display to your closed eyes….
Another type of method–
16. Read a good, fully entertaining novel, or at least a story long enough to get really into. Then with tape set up and eyes closed, “word-paint” some scenes from the story besides those described by the author. See if more also then unfolds. Or, remember a very favorite story or novel and do likewise with that. Again, see if you can pick up on noticing other images also happening as you get well into the rapid descriptive flow, so that you can move from directed to undirected free association imagery.
The key in any event is (1) to get anything at all started from which to describe; (2) to describe so rapidly, run so fast, that to keep up the flow you have to reach beyond what you’ve consciously calculated, so that you can (3) force your loud-conscious mind to accept for processing fresh inputs from your subtler resources–from beyond where it’s already got everything all paved over.
You can make work out of this, or each of these and other options can be a fresh, enjoyable new exploration bringing you new experiences and opening toward new skills. Because we perceive more with pleasure than we do when not experiencing pleasure, we suggest that if you need any of these resources to get your Image Streaming going, make that ploy as enjoyable an exploration as you can. To do so improves the chances that your senses and mind will open to fresh new perception, which is your purpose.
Other “Start-Up” Procedures for Anyone’s Use:
Guided Paths Into Unguided Image Streams
Favorites of many people are the 8 following procedures. Each provides a special guided imagery device which then can open for you into some especially enjoyable unguided free-flow Image Streams. So much so, even if you are already normally able to simply “look in” and “get pix” with which to start describing to tape recorder or listener, you may want to occasionally vary your entry into the Image Stream with one or another of the following guided starts–one of this author’s personal favorites is this next procedure….
17. Tree and Cloud–Imagine, and describe, walking in a meadow. Find yourself going uphill in this meadow toward a single immense tree at the very top of the hill. Engage all your senses in the experiencing of warm breeze, sunshine on your neck, face and shoulders, smells of the meadow, the pull of walking up a gradual slope for a long time, the variety of wildflowers, the sounds of the grasses, the sounds of your own steps in those grasses, and of your breathing…. To rest up from climbing that long hill, lie down in the soft moss at base of the tree–look up the tree’s immense trunk, between its branches low and high, near and far, at the sky. See the clouds moving across the sky, as you look at them up the trunk and from between the branches. See how the movement of the clouds makes you feel like the tree is moving instead. Experience how the movement of the clouds across the sky makes you feel as if it’s the tree, the hill and you who are moving instead of the clouds…. Let that movement, let that experience, take you wherever, describing as you go…..
18. Windblown Leaf–Be a leaf, or a fluff of dandelion, blowing with the wind, around corners of buildings and over trees and swiftly racing across an immense landscape….. Describe as you go, toward wherever….
19. Beneath the Boat: Imagine riding a boat gently onto the lake or downstream in a broad slow river. Peer down into the water, past the sparkle and the ripples, try to make out what’s below there. At first maybe you see only the water reflections, ripples and sparkle in this imaginary boatride but as you peer more intently, you begin to see….?
20. Climbing a steep hillside or mountainside, through a forest: describe this fully multisensory experience. As you approach the top, you near a clearing, the scenery unexpectedly opens up to show you….what?
These next three are liked especially by those who are oriented toward science and technology–
21. The elevator you are on is stopping, its door is opening–where? (Some scene you’ve not seen before, some place you’ve not been before, the door slides open and– (fast, very first impression!)–
22. Be a seed or spore, floating in far outer space, cocooned and having floated comfortably and safely in space for millions of years. Now approach some world, different from any world you’ve ever seen before. Drift down onto that world, reporting back here as you go there, rapidly describe in detail as you see and experience more and more of this new world….
–Now be a person on that world. Suddenly look down where your feet would be if you were human, what do you see? What surface are you on? Continue describing from there….
23. Radio Pulse–imagine what it might be like, simply flowing as a pulse of electricity along some wire–into a great radio telescope and transmitter–what would it be like to be a radio wave pulsed out through that telescope? –across deep space, between stars, between galaxies, to…..where? First impression: describe….
This last device for now is of a type which frequently gives rise to truly high, great, illuminating experiences…..
24. Tremendous light you sense is on the other side of the door (or curtain), at the head of a long climb of stairs. A sense of excitement, expectation, high exhilaration, seems also to await you on the far side of that door (or curtain). Describe that door or curtain, feel it, stroke it, describe it further; you sense something very bright or very powerful or very illuminating behind it. Suddenly: open that door, rise exhilarated into that light! –So much light, at first you can’t quite see what’s there, but you begin to clear the air by breathing in the light, slowly and luxuriously and feeling more exhilarated with each breathful of light you take in, and there you begin to see around you…..what?
You can easily think of hundreds of other such devices for “triggering” a flow of images and experiences, and for shaping or partially shaping contexts without directing the images themselves.
Contrary to recent general belief, virtually every human can quickly and readily learn to “get pictures” in his mind’s eye, thus becoming able to do visual thinking. We have provided here, after the main Image Streaming procedure above, some of the back-up procedures we now keep on hand to ensure that everyone “gets pictures” and becomes able to think visually. Thus, the benefits and advantages of visual thinking are widely available, not just to a fortunate few but to everyone who cares to make use of them!
(You are welcome freely to even teach Image Streaming to others whom you care about, and even to replicate this paper–in whole to preserve context, but not in part, despite the copyright notice at the end of this paper–so long as you cite in each instance your source having been via Project Renaissance.)
Here, more perhaps than in any other context, we are looking at equal opportuni-ty! You now have this paper in your hands. You are virtually guaranteed success if you bother to learn and practice simple activities which, apparently, everyone can readily learn and practice! (–And if you’re tough enough to see through to application the unique discoveries you will be making!) Starting advantage differences of birth, wealth, placement, schooling, even intelligence, can make little long-run difference compared to the advantages of simple sustained practice of these activities and your active resolve to see their results through to fruition.
There is some justice in the world.
And, indeed: once you’ve started examining your perceptions and detailing what you find in them, you are just as capable of Socratic miracles as anyone else!
Note, though, that for most people, for most purposes, these “back-up” procedures are a sidetrack–an admittedly somewhat entertaining sidetrack but a sidetrack nonetheless. For most of your Image Streaming exploration experiences, once you’ve learned how to do so, should simply be to look in, see “what’s playing there now,” and to begin describing as you continue to examine what’s currently “there.”
–And in the nature of things, every one of the images you did get up, which was not an afterimage and which was not an object or set of objects that you decided before-hand to see but which came from “somewhere else besides where you were telling the story from”–EVERY such undirected image is full of message, pregnant with meaning, addressing some issue or key insight for you with your subtlest, most comprehensive resources which are, indeed, “brighter than we are” even though they are very much a part of you. Although technical solutions and inventions often come in literal images, many important “messages” gotten from your subtler resources are metaphoric, symbo-lic, or like a parable.
Understanding Your Images
1. The more detail you describe, the more you will perceive, and in almost every case this will lead you to your a-ha!. Eventually. Some shorter cuts:
2. Continuing to go for surprise, get a second set of images which are, somehow, the same answer to the same question, only shown very differently. To concretize this step: thank your imaging faculties for their message or answer, but ask their help in understanding that message or answer, that help to be in the form of a fresh stream of very different images. Everything about them is different except in the regard that they are, nonetheless, somehow the same answer to the same matter. Describe this new set of images in as rich a detail as you can, but in about half the time you took for the first set of images.
3. Get a third set of images the same way, the same answer or message or understanding but shown in an entirely different way. Detail these new images but in about half the time it took you to describe the second set.
4. Examine, to the very best you can, what’s the same from among these three sets of images when everything else is difference. What common theme is running through these images? This helps sweep away the rich ornamentation and, by inductive inference, lets you see far more easily what the meaning, message or answer actually is. Examine then how that common theme or element or elements answer your question or apparent context.
5. Ask your imaging faculties for a way to verify that you are on the right track with this answer or understanding, and see what they show you this time!
We consider this search for meaning to also be part of the Image Streaming process, at least in terms of further supporting the increase in your intelligence, because it involves iterating back and forth between the languaging, the visioning, the gestalt and meaning grasping, parts of your brain building a more immediate relationship between these. And finding out what these mean, and what your dreams, many of which are also meaningful, mean, has proven vastly entertaining to us, even to people who have never before tried to figure out anything in their life! Much to the disappointment of some analysts, there does not seem to be any universal code of dream symbolic meanings, no Rosetta Stone for interpreting any universal code. Everyone appears to have his own dream language – developed from the working language of those wider regions of the brain which we refer to above, differentiated by experience. But you can easily discover your dream meanings by (A) recording the details of the dream; (B) asking your faculties for another set of dream like images to stream on which say the same thing as did the dream but show it a different way. (C) A third set of images, likewise, (D) then find the common themes or elements which are the core of that message.
Quite a few additional methods for discovering and testing the meaning of your images, especially in context of discovering answers to questions or problems, are found in our book A Method for Personal Growth & Development, which Success Magazine liked so well as to run two feature articles on it. Method is our main text on creative problem-solving methods, a thorough exploration of Einsteinian Discovery Technique ranging all the way from Image Streaming and Over-the-Wall Problem Solving to The High Thinktank set of methods, arguably the most powerful and accurate answer-finding system in professional use anywhere on Earth at the present time. (The book, only $24 + shipping, is available from Project Renaissance at the address below.)
Einsteinian and modern Socratic Method applied to learning is presented in eight types of profoundly accelerated learning method set forth in our main text on education-related matters, Beyond Teaching And Learning. With any of the eight sets of methods, you may learn in only days (and sometimes only in hours!) proficiencies which normally require years to learn. –And learn more effectively, with far richer understanding and command, than if you went the route which took years. In 1997, Beyond Teaching And Learning is only $29.95 + shipping, from Project Renaissance at the address below.
Einsteinian Discovery technique applied directly to discovering! — that is the gist of our book for not only scientists and engineers and designers, but entrepreneurs and for supposedly “ordinary” human beings: Techniques of Original, Inspired Scientific Discovery, Technical Invention, and Innovation, published in 1997, only $29.95 + shipping from Project Renaissance at the address below.
Before we ever developed this combination of Socratic and Einsteinian methods, we had already worked out a powerful system for reworking the subroutines of the human brain in order to better support its higher functions. This book of mainly sensori-motor procedures, How To Increase Your Intelligence can be purchased here.
–But you don’t need the above books. All you need to know to give yourself (or your loved ones) the cited benefits, is contained in these pages now between your hands, and in the resources between your ears.
No one has failed to “get pix” and so to start harvesting the benefits of Image Streaming, out of thousands trained locally and thousands more trained at that state university in Minnesota. No one has “run the gauntlet” of serious press application of the 23 above back-up procedures without getting pix and starting to reap the benefits. Intelligence is earnable. Here is equal opportunity in the fullest sense. If building 20, 40 or 100 more “I.Q.” points higher intelligence is “elitist,” make the most of it! If absolutely everyone who wishes to can fly with the eagles, don’t tell me to stay down here in the mud!
- You are brighter than you think!
- It’s easier to fly than you ever dreamed!
- The universe is richer/wilder/weirder/more wonderful than you ever dreamed!
- Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more!
PS–these were two procedures for improving intelligence. We now know of more than 40 different systems of method for doing so. Enjoy!
©1998 by Project Renaissance (regarding this internet version only, other copyrights may apply). While we encourage the free distribution of this article (complete text only, including this notice and acknowledgment of source), we do require that expressed permission be granted by Project Renaissance for any major republication. For minor printing and sharing, we only request that you notify us.
This version originally published by Matthew Turco at Anakin’s Brain (sorry, website temporarily offline). Adapted for access via Project Renaissance’s website, October 30, 2000.