You Are Brighter Than You Think!

by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
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Table of Contents


Introduction

Enjoy Immediate Access to Your Own Remarkable Resources — The Project Renaissance Escalator Along Your Own Unbounded Path, Along With Some Practicalities Both Personal and Professional

You are, indeed, much brighter than you think!–far more so, in fact, than you have ever imagined! We now understand much about what has prevented so much of your high intelligence from finding expression–and a number of remarkably easy ways to bring back on-line much of your truly remarkable set of resources for immediate use and for many forms of highly rewarding experience.

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. The century-old “First Law” of psychology largely accounts for why the various forms of Socratic Method are so effective. Combine Socratic Method 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. This new combination, of systems of technique whose power has long been historically demonstrated, opens many paths to your own high heritage of resources.

  • Putting Together Two Different Major Systems For High Level Thought And Perception.
  • How To Bring ANY perception conscious or more conscious. What is there TO bring on line?
  • Portable Memory Bank.
  • Exploring the Sidebands of Your Thought And Perception.
  • How To Image Stream
  • Assuring that YOU–and everyone–can “get pictures” and begin enjoying the benefits of visual thinking!

Two systems of thought and perception, historically have been associated with human intellect functioning at its finest. These are: Einsteinian “Deep Thought” technique, and Socratic Method. In most of the Project Renaissance program, trainings, consulting methods and publications, these two systems are combined into a far more powerful and reliably productive whole which, however, is far easier to use than is either method separately.

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Chapter 1
Einsteinian “Deep Thought” Discovery Technique

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 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. The traditional “Einsteinian” technique was, however, too directed to be productive of much beyond relativity, and moreover required a personal discipline which is beyond the immediate reach of most people. It was by removing part of its overt direction and by adding another system that we correct the shortcomings and present 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.

The historic system we added to Einsteinian technique to create this new tool, aid and convenience to all areas of intellectual operation, comparable to the effects in math and arithmetic of changing from Roman to Arabic numbers, is 2200-year-old Socratic Method.

Socratic Method:

Socratic method is any technique which induces the learner to examine his/her internal and external perceptions and to describe in detail what s/he discovers there–

1. “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?

2. 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.

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 from time to time refer to this expansion-of-perception effect, of describing one’s own perception, this Principle of Description, as the “Whitman/Blake Effect.”

3. 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!

4. The first schools in Western cultural tradition were those of classical and early post classical Greece. Those schools were not for the purpose of benefitting students–and even to promulgate a particular “school of thought” was secondary. Their main purpose was to provide quality audiences to whom the leading thinkers and perceivers could describe their perceptions, in order to develop further those perceptions. Some of the “nicer guys” among these, the Sophists especially and Socrates in particular, would return the favor and draw out their listeners in turn. Their doing so, and the various ways they did so, became known as “Socratic Method.”

5. For 2200 years, classical Socratic Method induced the learner to examine his/her internal and external perceptions and to describe what s/he discovered there. Historically, this practice 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 was frequent enough for this “drawing-forth” theory to have such currency for that 2200 years, “education” itself became named after that concept–“educate” 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 understanding 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!

6. 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.

7. Classical Socratic method–acute questioning of 1-2 students at a time, or fierce argument with maybe a half-dozen at a time–could in fact be practiced only with a few at a time while the remainder of a large group or class grew restless (except in law schools where sheer terror is used to keep attention focussed–“Know that half of you won’t be here next week!”). However, any procedure which has people to examine their perceptions and to describe at length, in detail, what they discover there, creates the Socratic Miracle Effect. Unlike the ancient and law school versions, many of the modern versions of Socratic Method work better the more students or participants there are at a time in a group. (School budget people please note!) Moreover, Project Renaissance’s books are now full of many ways any individual who can read and follow specific instructions can evoke Socratic Miracle Effects for himself or herself.

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Chapter 2
The Combination of Einsteinian and Socratic Methods

This combination by Project Renaissance has given rise to many forms of modern Post Einsteinian Discovery Technique, most of these currently found in the Project Renaissance program and only a few of these, in turn, beginning to be found elsewhere as well. This combination of techniques is more accurate, far easier to use, and can be easily handled by virtually anyone.

Einstein’ s original method of “Deep Thought” required regular disciplined practice. Even with that disciplined practice, Einstein had to hold a rock in either hand to keep himself from nodding off in mid-ponder (the rock falling from his relaxing hand as he dozed off would alert him back to the task). Except for the accidental instances such as Kekule’s and Howe’s, one pretty well had “to be an Einstein” to use that approach very well–though there were beneficial effects from its repeated use: by all reports Einstein himself “was no Einstein” and was mildly retarded during his first few years, before beginning practice of his method of observing his own visual thinking!

–Not rocks but a Socratic audience!–

In this modern combination of methods, we perform Einstein like “Deep Thought” experiments but describe our perceptions aloud, in detail, a la Socrates, while we are observing them, and this simple act brings a wealth of further detail and perception that often lead to fresh discoveries even upon first use of the method. The act of describing aloud to a listener also provides the alertness even a disciplined Einstein often lacked, so that we no longer need to hold rocks! Further differences:

We deliberately program for the unexpected, the surprise to happen in these experiences. This improves accuracy by helping us move beyond the “ought-to-bell expectations which stand between us and the fresh perceptions we need for ingenious, creative answers. Deliberate non interference with the imagery contents lets our subtler, richer faculties show US–which is the whole point of such an exercise in the first place. The whole point of either Einsteinian or Socratic technique is to enable our subtler, richer faculties to show us what we ordinarily would fail to see and which is the answer to our quest, question or line of investigation.

Concurrent describing while observing this ongoing, seemingly self -directed imagery not only helps us keep alert and on task, but develops and strengthens our conscious perception of our inner subtleties in a way no other procedure can.

In this 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 determining 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–yet there are also some other, additional ways, some of which are actively in the Project Renaissance program.

Expanding upon the above point: it does indeed seem natural to try to solve issues and problems based upon what we “know” about the problem situation, but it is the problems which did not solve that way that we have left, all around us. Further, when we mull a problem over and over examining what we “know,” we engender neuronal habituation–the tendency of nerve cells, circuits and the nervous system itself to go to sleep on a constant signal, wake up on a changing signal. When we continue to mull over a situation, we put most of our intelligence to sleep in that context.

Getting Beyond ‘Stuck-Point:’ This “neuronal habituation” is the term used by biologists to describe the phenomenon that with a constant signal, nerves and brain tend to go to sleep. They wake up on a changing signal. An example was in experiments at Berkeley, where tiny slide projectors were mounted on contact lenses so that the same image would remain in place whatever way the eye turned. Within moments, the entire visual field turns blank. Normally, a micro-tremor of the eyes enables mammals to see details; otherwise the experience would be like that of frogs, who can only see motion–i.e., change in the signal. One can override this visual micro-tremor just a bit by staring fixedly at a single point–as some meditators do at a mandala. As one does so details “grey out” and become indistinct. The same principle, with other forms of meditation, is with repeat of a verbal mantra until the loud, chatterbox, conscious verbal mind is lulled into doze and presumably subtler signals from the unconscious have some opportunity to reach conscious awareness. A very few creative solution-finding procedures have this effect in order to obtain answers from the unconscious, but by far the majority of them go the opposite direction–

–Because the “stuck” problem itself has had this neuronal habituating effect on the brain of the person puzzling over it, and often just “changing the signal” on that particular stimulus will have the effect of unleashing floodgates of new ideas and perceptions and answers about the problem. Going into uncustomary perceptual modes is one highly productive way of “changing the signal”, so that the brain “wakes up” in that context and gets off its “stuck point.”So also are some of the “force-fitting” procedures where one imagines the problem to have all sorts of odd characteristics, or “force-fits” it as having relationship or similarity to other objects or contexts, as a way of “seeing the problem in a new light.î

Returning to Post-Einsteinian Discovery Technique, wherein we’ve combined Einsteinian and Socratic procedures: as you might already have guessed from the above remarks, such procedures apply to far more than “merely” solving problems and making fresh discoveries and inventions. For example, such methods are invaluable for predicting trends and for predicting the outcomes of decisions, executive and otherwise. Even if you programmed your office computer with 500 simultaneous variables, it still cannot take into account even l%. of what your in-built, between your-ears PC automatically, reflexively, seemingly instantaneously, takes into account. 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 Learning1 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? 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.,,

Taking further this matter of behavioral reinforcement: to describe a perception in detail while examining it, as we saw above, reinforces that particular perception. –And it also reinforces the behavior of being perceptive. If the perception is initially subtle, less immediately conscious: to describe it reinforces more onto line with consciousness the part of the brain which provided that perception together with that part Is resources and intelligence. Post-Einsteinian Discovery Technique cum Socratic Method necessarily works with initially subtle perceptions. Small wonder that frequent practice of the method is associated with 20 points’ “I.Q.” gain for 25 hours of easy practice; 40 points’ gain for 50 hours’ practice, as consistently measured in a series of independently conducted university studies!2

We will definitely return, in some detail, to this topic when discussing the phenomenon, a few pages below, of “Sidebands of Thought and Perception.”

Overall: we have combined two major methods historically associated with human intellect functioning at high levels: Socratic, and the type of visual thinking now popularly referred to as ‘Einsteinian.’ The confluence of these two powerful systems has resulted in a system of even greater power, and wider range of applications including personal benefits to the practitioner. The new, combination discovery system is also far easier to use than were either of its predecessors, to the point where we have even successfully conducted EMR’s (Educable Mentally Retarded persons) productively through it–one indeed no longer has to “be an Einstein” to function at high levels, however much it might help! No one need be left behind who doesn’t want to be left behind.

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Chapter 3
Summary of the Two Historic Systems

Difficult when used separately, two powerful systems which are easy and productive to use in combination, each through history has been strongly associated with high levels of mental performance.

SystemSocratic MethodEinsteinian “Deep Thought Experiment”
DefinedHave someone examine his/her external and/or internal perceptions and describe in detail what she or he discovery there.Set up a visualization running freely, and observe it closely to see what you can learn from what you are observing.
OriginsSophists found that providing quality audiences for their leading thinkers and perceivers to describe
their perceptions to, developed those thoughts and perceptions. Some would return the favor and draw out their listeners in turn. The start of “education:” 2200 years of miracle leaps of growth and understanding convinced practitioners that all knowledge and understanding are already within each learner to be drawn, i.e., “educare,” to draw forth.
Renaissance science or earlier. Some credit various forms of this technique as causing 90+% of the major scientific discoveries and technical inventions of the past few centuries, though to gain peer acceptance this visionary basis was usually concealed at the time. Albert Einstein popularized the technique after using it to discover Relativity.
BasesPrinciple of Description–the more one describes while examining a perception, the more s/he will perceive. In turn: this is an example of Psychology’s “first law” – that “you get more of what you reinforce.” To describe your own perception: (1) reinforces that particular perception; (2) reinforces the behavior of being perceptive.All serious researchers of mind, brain and human behavior concur: 99% of human experience, thought and perception is unconscious. Also, that every experience, conscious or unconscious, is retained in the permanent, unconscious data-base.
Project Renaissance found that these are constantly expressing in sidebands of thought and perception, as described below. By reflex, these, at every moment, are sorting through the entire data-base for the best relevant insights or answers–these are expressed through “receptive” imagery.
Building Intelligence(3) Describing initially subtle perceptions, reinforces more onto line with verbal consciousness
the initially off-line, unconscious parts of brain or mind which supply those subtler perceptions- those parts together with their resources and intelligence.
Virtually all these contents are “initially subtler perceptions” arising in parts of the brain and mind initially off-line from verbal consciousness. Bringing these parts of the brain more on-line brings more intelligence immediately available, while informing the conscious.
Drawbacks of systemPeople are rare who are acute enough to ask you the right question. While prodding one learner, your other learners get restless.Much discipline needed to not nod off during. Also, the contents of “Deep Thought Experiment” experience fade like dreams,quicker than the explorer, returned,can report back on what s/he
observed.

THE COMBINATION–of Socratic and Einsteinian systems, each of which historically was associated with high levels of mental performance: this synergy is far more powerful and productive, and astonishingly easy to perform. What is the combination?–

1. Concurrent describing while exploring the “Deep Thought Experiment.î This describing aloud not only keeps you alert instead of nodding off, but develops the perception. EASIER by far to use and more productive: “you no longer need to be an ‘Einstein’ to cope with, resolve and understand any issue!

2. Deliberately allow, even encourage, the contents of the “Deep Thought Experiment” to SURPRISE you and run counter to your expectations. The more surprising the contents of the experience, the likelier you are to be engaging your richer, subtler, more comprehensive resources from far beyond your conventional verbal consciousness.

Eight different types of combination, of Einsteinian and Socratic systems, and strategies of their application, define the eight different families of profoundly enhanced and accelerated learning method specifically self-taught in our recent book Beyond Teaching And Learning.3

Other key strategies of combination and application of these two systems, are taught in the BEYOND EINSTEIN training programs from Project Renaissance. Some of these are also self taught in the book so well-liked by Success Magazine, titled A Method For Personal Growth and Development.4

Another source of advanced Einsteinian methods, to which you can apply your own Socratic combinations, is the book Visionizing, by arguably the world’s best-known leader in creative method, Sidney J. Parnes.5

By themselves, Socratic and Einsteinian systems were difficult enough to practice that relatively few have done so. Taken together, the two systems are not only far more reliably productive, but are so easy to practice that out of the last few thousand people worked with, not one was unable to perform it and thus to begin obtaining its benefits. We don’t have to leave anyone behind who doesn’t want to be! –And there seems to be no limit to how far ahead one can fly with this synergy.

Before examining some Einsteinian methods in this context, let us examine several of the simplest ways to engage Socratic dynamics in the task of enriching our conscious awareness from deeper-than-conscious levels of our own minds and brains.

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Chapter 4
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!

–While describing its texture you notice its sheen. –While describing its sheen you notice that set of scuff marks. While describing those scuff marks you notice those chipped-away areas … then those places where the colors have faded …. As you describe one detail or aspect you keep noticing others, and still others … You could fill a dictionary with the detail described from that simple, familiar chair. . . –And so with anything else that you examine closely while describing it aloud to an external focus, a live or potential listener!

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.

–if the point, about discovering more and more about what you are describing, is already obvious to you, don’t bother with describing your chair because we’ve far more interesting things for you to describe to that friend if you haven’t first used him up on that chair. –But that chair, or your floor, is a fully legitimate test of a key principle, IF you have any doubt of it at all at this
stage.It’s better to test it for yourself than to take (or reject) this key point as a matter of trust or of reflexive prejudice. Indeed: where’s your spirit of active skepticism and scientific empirical inquiry? So very much consequence follows from this key Principle of Description, perhaps you should go ahead and verify it even if it means using up that friend ….

Here is a key element within the overall Principle of Description: the subtler or less fully defined the region of perception from which you describe in this manner, the very much stronger and more rapid are your gains. –Your gains in conscious perception in that context, which gains result from such concurrent describing-aloud-while-examining.

To get even unconscious perceptions up into consciousness, start with describing closely related perceptions which are at least marginally conscious. Just as various trace shadows, patterns, tilts from level and other characteristics even of that floor of yours or your chair came conscious for you as you described related perceptions, so also these–

You now know, as easily as that, a good part of how we so easily bring unconscious data conscious without any hypnosis or drugs! –Ranging from conscious accurate recall of birth and early crib experiences, to new inventions and scientific discoveries, to breakthrough concepts for increasing your sales or improving your operations or profits, to resolving what you’ve let stand between you and achieving your most important goals!

–Most of Project Renaissance’s methods are simply a matter of setting up in some special context the related perceptions whose examining, while you describe them, will bring into full conscious focus the particular perceptions you were seeking!

Bringing on-line your subtler perceptions, understandings and resources and putting these to good practical use: that is what this is all about.

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Chapter 5
What Is There TO Bring On Line?

Nearly all perceptions begin as subtle, subliminal or preconscious. We now understand something of what sends some perceptions to full focus consciousness, some to routine and to marginal consciousness, and some to unconscious reception and storage. More to the point, we now also understand pretty well how to, quickly and easily, retrieve almost any unconscious datum, even from the deepest ranges of storage, in its own right or in relation to whatever topic is “search-coded.”

Through your own experience in the search for answers and in making sense of data before you: you yourself already know, as a scientist, inventor, engineer, designer or even avocational putterer, householder, check-balancer, or lay citizen, that most of your relevant perceptions and data at any given point are unconscious, pre- or at best marginally conscious, “on the tip of your mind.” –Until you’ve somehow sorted through in such a way as to bring the right relationship between data into focus. You may even have spent some frustrated time knowing you were right on the edges of your sought-for answer, but for awhile had been unable to quite click it into focus.

We now understand such matters pretty well. The methods or “recipes” of Project Renaissance let you take full advantage of that understanding. Key to recognizing the magnitude of that available advantage, is to recognize just how small a portion of your perceptions and data is indeed conscious and how immense your unconscious treasure-trove truly is. –How huge is this treasure-trove, carried around with you all your life, is as invisible to you as the fact of wetness is to a fish in the ocean.

In nearly every instance of contact with an unrecognized opportunity or with an issue or problem or difficulty, your subtler resources are already and immediately aware of your best answer, insight or response!

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Chapter 6
Proportion of Unconscious to Conscious

Virtually all respected researchers and research disciplines of inquiry into human brain and mind function are agreed on one key point. More than a hundred times as much perception and data flow into your unconscious as into your conscious at any given moment.

A second important agreement among investigators: virtually all experience and data are still there in your unconscious, whether initially received consciously or unconsciously! The sheer quantity of data available there in your unconscious is staggering to consider.

–And we’ve discovered, published, and teach professionally in person wherever on Earth we’re invited to, easy, immediate ways to retrieve such unconscious data. Some of these ways are set forth, in either the problem-solving context,6 the human problem-solving context7, the context of education, learning and personal growth,8 or the discovery-making, invention-finding, context.9 We’ve also discovered something far more significant than this retrieval!

We’ve learned, through our own investigations and experience, that it is not just passive data storage sitting there in the unconscious mind. It is dynamic. We’ve learned that there is an instantaneous (“instantaneous” by conscious brain standards, at least) complex reflex whereby the unconscious is constantly sorting and reworking the relevant data into high order insights in relation to whatever is the present issue or the most important consideration at present ….

…. In short: you cannot even begin to contact a problem, question or other issue without this involved reflex surging up the best available answer–within microseconds!

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Chapter 7
The Dynamic Unconscious — Your Instant-Answer Reflex

The sidebands of your co-axial consciousness may be carrying far richer information than does that thin strand which you long since hardwired into your conscious-focus receiver.

Have you ever had the experience, “Oh, I knew I should have said (or done) such-and such only I didn’t!?” Indeed, has anyone not had that experience, and frequently? –Of having the right response square in your sights but overriding it because you thought you “knew better than that?”

Our own investigations and experience have taught us that it is not just only on those especially “loud” occasions when our conscious focus is refusing to accept even forceful input from our subtler resources. We’ve learned that this complex reflex is a continuous, ongoing function, expressing high order in-sights at every instant in back-of-the-mind sensory mental images including, especially, visual mental images.

Working with some of these visual mental images in the procedure we call Image Streaming, as taught a few pages hence, we’ve learned how to bring this ongoing reflex fully conscious so that in virtually every context, these highest-order in-sights (appropriate word, “in sight!”) are immediately and reliably available to you.

Those insights are there right now, in the back of your mind, and/or in the sidebands of your conscious thinking and perceiving. Right there, somewhere between your ears, are good, often superbly ingenious, answers to virtually every issue and obstacle you face. –Right now!

Image Streaming, and Project Renaissance’s methods generally, are but a few of the various ways you can bring on line, and make immediately useful, this subtle, ongoing, data sorting answer-proffering reflex and resource.

Before we even get to Image Streaming–

We have several illustrations of the fact that you have many sidebands of perception and thought active besides the 1-2 strands you’ve hardwired into where you are mainly conscious from. The first of these is the “Portable Memory Bank” procedure which is taught in some form by every one of the major, successful systems of creativity-building and creative solution-finding. To fully understand “Portable Memory Bank,” let us refer back to the “First Law of Psychology:” that “you get more of what you reinforce.,’

Each time you start to have an idea–and you don’t express it to someone or record it in some form or otherwise reinforce it–you are reinforcing the behavior of being uncreative. Each time you do express or record it you are reinforcing not only your perception of that idea but the behavior of being creative. Each time you notice something which others likely have not, even if seemingly trivial, like the play of shadows on the wall or the way So-and-So came into the room–and you don’t express or record that bit of observation, you are reinforcing the behavior of being unobservant. Each time you do express or record such an observation, you are not only reinforcing that perception a la the Principle of Description, but you are reinforcing the behavior of being perceptive and observant.

Quite simply put: how creative you now are, and how observant and perceptive you now are, strictly speaking are a function of your own self-imposed reinforcement schedule, as regards the behaviors of being creative, perceptive, observant!
The purpose of “Portable Memory Bank,” of carrying around and using a pen and notepad, or index cards, or Post-Its, or even a pocket tape recorder, is to make it more convenient for you to improve your self-reinforcement schedule as regards those behaviors, those traits! More important by far than the individual ideas or observations “captured” is the reinforcing of those traits. To be more creative, observant and perceptive, simply carry around and use that pad or pack or pocket recorder!

Simple self-experiment: record 50 observations a day for at least 3 days–and you will find yourself in an entirely different universe than the one you started in! — or record about three times that many ideas a day for several days to create such an effect!

–We have another, much more immediate, illustration of the fact that you have many sidebands of perception and thought active besides the 1-2 strands you’ve hardwired into where you are mainly conscious from.

If you’ve been reading straight through, these past few pages ….

If you’ve been reading straight through, and I were to ask you what you were doing and all that was on your consciousness as of five minutes ago, all you could say is, that you were reading this paper. Yet: if I were now to ask–THIS VERY INSTANT!!!***–what was in your awareness just then!??–you’d be able now to describe your awareness of the hum of a distant motor, perhaps the heating or air conditioning; that recent flicker of the lights; the weight of this booklet in your hands; the friction or pressure of your clothing at points of your body which you from time to time adjust; what so-and-so meant by his remarks earlier this morning; is today the day to take out the garbage; was the answer to how I can improve sales on my consciousness five minutes ago? etc. etc. etc.

Suddenness is the key, to capture what is going on in fact in the sidebands of your thought and perception at any given moment and, by describing it to notepad or neighbor or tape recorder, to reinforce many of these strands of thought and perception before they fall back away into oblivion alongside last night’s dreams.

If you set an egg timer without looking to see when you’ve set it, and as a repeated exercise have it go off at unexpected times as your signal to examine and remark or record everything that was in your awareness at the instant of that signal: in a half-dozen or so rounds of practice you will find there are dozens, if not hundreds, of these sidebands of awareness and perception constantly active. (Or you can have your spouse, or your co-worker, or your secretary, look in on you as an experiment a dozen times today at unexpected times with a finger-snap or hand-clap as your agreed
sudden signal to examine what is going on in your awareness at that moment!)

To do so will not only make your awareness many times richer, but you will likely find that some of those sidebands are subtler by far, more comprehensive, more revealing, more intelligent if you will, than those few strands that you’ve hardwired in.

Concentration?–we are finding “concentration” to be a poor strategy. It is self-defeating to try to shut out some awarenesses to get to other awarenesses. our experience is that instead of losing focus as you take more awarenesses in, your awareness just grows more comprehensive, more intelligent, richer, and you can readily focus in on and address whatever you want within the whole while being simultaneously conscious of hundreds of distinct perceptions and strands of thought, more of which are related than you might at first think is the case.

Well, where have all those awarenesses and perceptions been hiding all this time?– Answer, they haven’t been hiding. You simply failed to express them, thus they went unreinforced, and in each instance, within moments disappeared like a dream. A large part of your intelligence today is determined by what proportion of your own perceptions you somehow expressed, related to or otherwise reinforced when you were much younger. Certainly other factors bear as well, but if virtually none of your perceptions ever get reinforced, you stop paying attention to them and no matter how rich some of those strands of awareness are going on there in your own mind, they never reach consciousness and might as well not exist at all!

It may someday count as one of the major discoveries of our time, that you do have ongoing these multiplex sidebands of awareness. –That as you capture and reinforce more of their contents, with “Portable Memory Bank” and/or with repeated use of the [What Was In Your Awareness Just THEN???] stimulus exercise, you do become rapidly more creative, more perceptive, and more intelligent.

Yes, more intelligent. Let’s look again at our First Law of Behavior: that “you get more of what you reinforce.î As you describe aloud in detail to someone, any perception while you are
perceiving it–

1. You are reinforcing the particular perception–as in our example with the floor. You can readily enough test our “Principle of Description” or the Whitman/Blake Effect, discovering more and more and more and more about any perception by describing it in every possible detail to someone while you are examining it.

2. You are reinforcing the behavior of being perceptive, just as we’ve been discussing. The absolute transformation of the universe you’re now living in, when you practice that dozen or so rounds of [–in your awareness just THEN!] and/or 3+ days of 50+ recorded observations each, seems an adequate test and demonstration of this particular application of psychology’s “first law.” (And even maybe an adequate reward!)

3. When the perception you are thus reinforcing is initially subtle, meaning that it arose in parts of the brain not so immediately on-line with the verbal speech centers where you are mainly conscious from: you are reinforcing more onto line with consciousness those more remote parts of the brain, together with their resources and their intelligence. As striking as they are (op. cit.), those sharp gains in “I.Q.” may be the least significant part of what’s actually going on with this activity, of reinforcing more and more onto line with consciousness the further, subtler, more comprehensive regions of the brain.

The richest, most sensitive procedure for developing this aspect, that we’ve found thus far, is the basic receptive visual thinking procedure we’ve named “Image Streaming.”

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.

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Chapter 8
How To Work With Your Ongoing 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.10

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!

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Chapter 9
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–

1. 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,î 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 ….

2. 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 “brainstorm” 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.

3. 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.

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Chapter 10
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.11 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 continuously, 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.î 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.î 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. Backgroundsounds–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. Houseblindfolded–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 I see I it differently than I’m seeing it now?’ –or deaf person? Or any other sense handicapped? or dwarf? Or 6’0″ 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. Airsculpting–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 threshold:

12. EatBlindfolded–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 I 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 after-imagery 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 lock 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 boat ride 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 opportunity! 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 beforehand 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, symbolic, and that is why we now refer you to two books each of which presents you extensive detailed instructions on ho@ to decode these experiences, how to make sense of them, and how to develop your visual thinking skills within hours to the point where you can put questions and issues of all kinds to your inner faculties, instantly get images in response which answer them, and almost as instantly become able to understand and verify those answers!

One of those books, the one which Success Magazine liked so well it has carried it for sale for 3 years, with several articles, is A Method For Personal Growth and Development (op.cit.), exploring many forms of application of Image Streaming to creative solution-finding, all the way to the most advanced of all post-Einsteinian Discovery Technique, High Thinktank. The other, focussed more on technical and scientific discovery and inventing, and upon entrepreneurial innovation, will be published by or before the start of 1995–Techniques of Original, Inspired Scientific Discovery, Technical Invention And Innovation.–(op.cit.), by our branch in Singapore which produced our Beyond Teaching And Learning.

That third strongly recommended book, Beyond Teaching And Learning (op.cit.), applies Image Streaming and related techniques to eight major families of radically enhanced and accelerated learning and growth technique, some of which families have 50 or more specific methods associated with them. –Not all 50 are in the book, just a representative example or so from each family.

The most comprehensive and extensive of all our publications, a set of texts, tapes and equipment which will become a course titled The Beyond-Einstein Training, now under preparation, is expected to be completed and published by October, 1994. The Beyond-Einstein Training represents Project Renaissance’s attempt to take most of the entire field to a yet higher level.

Project Renaissance has published 80-some books, monographs, and other special educational resources as of mid-1994, date of this present paper’s publication. Many of these- indeed, more than we can really afford–are kept still in print because each has made a unique, and uniquely valued, contribution.

One division of Project Renaissance is C.E.L.T.–the Compendium of Enhanced Learning Techniques, a project initially commissioned by the Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching to prepare an encyclopedia and information depot which should become available in all libraries. It is intended to contain all available instructions, and research data organized a la Consumer’s Guide, on all major methods of teaching, learning, training or other instruction from around the world which yield learning outcomes highly superior to those of standard methods currently in general use. Data and operationally detailed instructions will be available to anyone, anywhere, and through most libraries and electronets. The review task, originally thought to number in the hundreds of methods, has grown to include thousands. Presently without funding, the CELT Project has managed one major publication thus far, that of some of the Project Renaissance techniques in the book Beyond Teaching And Learning (op.cit.).

Project Renaissance, in turn, is the education-and-arts division of MCM, Inc., a nonprofit education and research 501 (C) (3) founded in Maryland in 1970 with Win Wenger as president. Project Renaissance is the main part of the endeavor, carrying forward its program of research, publication, consultation, and training. Most of its training programs are offered non-commercially, through arrangements with local sponsoring institutions, organizations and groups around the world.

The academic publishing wing of Project Renaissance is known as The Library of The Republic of the Sciences. The Institute of Visual Thinking consults, conducts research mainly into visual thinking methods and processes, and conducts a number of diverse local thinktanks each based upon different methods for comparison.

Copyright 1993, 1994 by Win Wenger, Ph.D. Project Renaissance, 301/948-1122 or Box 332, Gaithersburg, MD 20884-0332 U.S. This paper may, however, be copied freely–in whole including this copyright notice, but not in part, to share with those whom you care about.

Descriptopedia

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©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.


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Endnotes

  1. Win Wenger, Beyond Teaching And Learning, 2nd international, edition. Singapore: Project Renaissance, 1992.
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  2. As reported, for example, by Charles P. Reinert, Ph.D. A Preliminary Comparison Between Two Methods of Intellectual Skill Development. Marshall, MN: Department of Chemistry/Physics, Southwest State University, 1989. Or from the same source, A Preliminary Study of the Effect of Verbally Described Imagery in the Development of Intellectual Skills at the University Level, 1990. Several different kinds of population have also been so tested but not reported, as in the instance of patients in a nursing home initially too ill to be tested, but who reportedly demonstrated the same kinds of gain including in physical well-being. There should be many more such studies by now, reflecting our 20 years of effort to get such performed, but most universities as of this writing remain aggressively adamant in their secure “knowledge” that “intelligence” cannot be improved, and in fact variously have blocked a half-dozen studies of the matter from happening that were pending. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof,” but science should also be objective enough
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  3. See Win Wenger’s main text of educative methods, Beyond Teaching And Learning. Singapore and Gaithersburg, Md. : Project Renaissance, 1992.
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  4. Win Wenger, A Method For Personal Growth and Development. Gaithersburg, MD: Project Renaissance, 3rd edition, 1991.
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  5. Sidney J. Parnes, Visionizing: State of the Art Processes for Encouraging Innovative Excellence. Buffalo, NY: Creative Education Foundation, 1988.
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  6. –in Win Wenger, A Method For Personal Growth & Development,op.cit.
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  7. –in Win Wenger, Ph.D., Beyond O.K.–Psychegenic Tools Relating to Health of Body & Mind. Gaithersburg, MD: Psychegenics Press, 1979.
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  8. –in Win Wenger, Ph.D., Beyond Teaching And Learning, op. cit.
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  9. –In the forthcoming book by Win Wenger, Ph.D. Original, Inspired Invention And Scientific Discovery: Techniques. Singapore, Project Renaissance, 1994. An older book meanwhile helps supply some of this context: –Wenger and Susan Wenger, Your Limitless Inventing Machine, 3rd edition, 3rd printing, Gaithersburg, MD: Psychegenics Press ‘ 1981. A special version of the newer of these two books is being published in the various new democracies of the former Eastern bloc and in the underdeveloped countries, for use by common citizens there: Creating Wealth, For Yourself And For Others, In Countries Without Capital.
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  10. Cookbook recipe-like instructions, literally word-for-word until one gets used-enough to the procedure to improvise, provide how to train entire groups at a time, numbering as many as several hundred participants. Two different group-training scripts are published, in Beyond Teaching And Learning (op.cit.) and in A Method For Personal Growth & Development (op.cit.).
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  11. By the Principle of Re-Investment of Methods. We seem to be the first to apply this key principle. We’ve been applying it relentlessly since the late 1960s. The principle runs thus: IF you have a good method for solving problems, one of its best uses is on the problem of how to create better methods of solving problems! — And one of the best uses of those better methods is on the problem of how to create even better methods of solving problems! Keep on re-investing your methods into creating better methods, and after awhile you’ll be hitting into some pretty heavy-duty systems. We have done so. We are. Our intent is, for so long as we draw breath, to use the best of what we’ve found in search of yet better. If other programs can be persuaded into a similar self-instructive search, things could get pretty interesting!
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