High Thinktank

Application of post-Einsteinian discovery technique

by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
<< CPS Techniques Index

That man thought in words….was totally false…. thought flashed into being in a hundred simultaneous forms, with a thousand associations, and the speaking mind selected one, forming it grossly into the inadequate symbols of words, inadequate because common to disparate situations — admitted to be inadequate for vast regions of expression, since for them there were the parallel languages of music and painting. Words were not called for in many or indeed most forms of thought: Mozart certainly thought in terms of music…
— p. 470, Post Captain, Patrick O’Brian. (London: W.W. Norton & Co., Ltd., 1990.)

Introduction

Quick Question/Answer and High Thinktank methods are two very powerful creative solution-finding techniques featuring modern versions of Einsteinian Discovery Method.

For best results, please first practice and accumulate at least an hour’s worth of Image Streaming and/or Over-the-Wall, the most basic modern Einsteinian “Deep Thought” procedures. (Practice of Image Streaming appears to make everything work better, not only these two advanced Einsteinian procedures.)

Einsteinian Discovery Method is letting your own inner reflexive mental imagery inform you of your own best available insights and answers. These immediately come up in any situation you are in or with any question or problem which is posed, but in this culture we’ve all been trained since Day One to ignore and overlook these “spontaneous,” seemingly irrelevant images, to the point where most of us don’t even notice or know that we have them.—This, the most valuable and powerful and sensitive thinking process which any of us have!—And all of us have it going on, even though few of us know it.

Einstein made the technique famous; it taught him Relativity, and he used it to teach Relativity and other concepts to others. Our modern forms of the method also incorporate Socratic Method, in that while you are experiencing and examining these images and impressions, you are also describing them in some detail, thereby developing those images in your consciousness and strengthening your contact with the information, the insights and meanings which are giving rise to that imagery.

Why imagery? More than 90% of your brain works in sensory images instead of words. That is where 99+% of your unconscious data, data-associations, and mental faculties reside, offline from the 1% of your brain which is your word-box consciousness.—But we need the words and wordbox to give definition to our images and to focus our conscious perceptions and develop them to where they are useful to us. Sketching and painting and, indeed, various of the other expressive arts also provide avenues for defining and developing our initially “off-line from word consciousness” awarenesses and faculties, from which nearly all our creativity ultimately flows.

Just as many different programs can be coded in basic MS-DOS and have been, many and various techniques can be and have been coded upon this basic combination of principles, combining Einsteinian and Socratic methods. These are “software for your wetware” and can remarkably improve your use of your basic machinery or “necktop PC.”

The trick is to have presence-of-mind enough to notice when you are in the context of a problem, a question, an issue, an opportunity, a difficulty…

And then to have presence-of-mind enough to turn that situation into an (open-ended) question, and ask that question of your Image Streaming faculties.
Let that image surprise you, at first blush seeming to have nothing to do with that question it’s so different from what you expected. These usually turn out to have everything to do with answering that question, with insights you were unlikely to have won through to by any other means…

Once you’ve gotten, expressed, and detailed out your image-answer to that question (preferably that surprise image)—

Thank your faculties for that image, ask that, to aid your understanding of it, the same key answer to the same question be shown to you again but via another, very different, image.
Then get a third set of images, very different again but still somehow the same key answer to the same question.

Once you’ve mapped out the elements-in-common to these three otherwise very different sets of image, chances are excellent that you’ll be conscious of a really great answer and insight.

Back-up

These images are also, once gotten, a very effective way to think consciously about the problem. “If my boss’s unwillingness to see my value really were, somehow, the sweet potato on that silver plate (assuming that were your imagery), then what would the plate itself represent? What does that tell me about the relationship?” Kind of muddle-through those images, which can often shake loose some new insights. Play with the elements of your imagery to see what comes to mind.

Further Back-Ups

Use any other good creative problem-solving method or procedure which works—and there are hundreds of these! Each can be back-up to the others. If you put mastery of a number of these very different methods in your toolkit, you are more than a match for almost any problem!

Getting “unstuck” from what we “know”

A beautiful instrument for focusing our perceptions and magnifying them so they are “loud” for us, our word-box consciousness is so fond of its defined world that usually it is reluctant to accept and process input from beyond itself, which is why many of the most creative among us have learned to pay attention to our dreams, when sleep has our loud box lulled and subtler insights can sometimes slip through.

It is effective when confronting a question or problem to review what we know about that issue and seek its answer from what we know. Trouble is, the problems and questions we have left over are the ones which didn’t resolve that way. Then, what we “know” stands in the way of the fresh perceptions we need for good answers, and on these we definitely need perceptions from beyond our wordbox, from beyond what we think we know.

The greatest outside “expert” you can hire or consult with sits right between your ears and is answering you at every turn, only you’ve been ignoring and overlooking this remarkable resource and its responses.

How to get beyond the wordbox, the editor which wants to make every answer come out the way it expects instead of letting your richer faculties inform you directly? The first of these two advanced Einsteinian methods, Quick Question/Answer, relies on speed—forcing your responses faster than the plodding wordbox can keep up with. It’s plodding because it functions only at the speed of the language you speak while the rest of your brain is literally millions of times faster in its responses.

The second of these two Einsteinian methods, High Thinktank, takes advantage of the fact that our richer faculties are so very, very, very much more sensitive and subtle than is our loud wordbox, that it is feasible to relate questions directly to these faculties and get your answers back and recorded before your loud wordbox has any idea of what’s being asked. So your loud wordbox doesn’t know which way to reshape and distort the answers you are getting, until after they are recorded.

Especially for the truly great and crucial questions and problems

Some questions are so important our learned responses have been staked out all over them long since, and it seems impossible to look beyond all that conditioned reflex noise to fresh, useful insights.

For example, the instant someone asks you, “What is the best system of government?” you are mentally assaulted by a cacophony of conditioned catechisms ranging from “No government” and “They govern best who govern least” to issues of social contract and a rigmarole about democracy being an impossible form of government only the other forms are worse, etc., etc., etc.

None of that noise is very useful, and it seems impossible to reach sensitively beyond that noise to fresh awarenesses, and most people don’t bother to think at all about that or other such important matters because of all that noise.

But if you did not consciously know that was the question you were answering, you wouldn’t know which way to edit your image-answer responses coming from your subtler faculties which, from all sorts of subliminal cues and unconscious pattern-recognition/prediction, do know what the question is and are showing you its answer.

There are a good many creative problem-solving programs and systems of method these days which work and work pretty well. Only High Thinktank thus far lets us deal creatively, ingeniously, and effectively with the truly major, truly great issues and questions.

Presuming, then, that you have developed (or redeveloped) some of your basic conscious skills by experience and practice of either or both the two most basic of the modern Einsteinian procedures — Image Streaming and/or Over-the-Wall—here are two highly advanced and powerful forms, Quick Question/Answer and High Thinktank. The group procedures are described first, followed by instructions for solo use.

The group procedures can go into more detail than can the instructions for the individual solo-use version of either. Examining these group-use procedures first will inform and help your use of the solo-use procedures. We might also note that doing these procedures with a group of co-learners or co-explorers is not only a lot more effective but a lot more fun. Yet even the solo-use is highly powerful and effective.

Detailed Group Procedures for Quick Question/Answer and High Thinktank

Quick Question/Answer form for problem-solving in groups

The chief difficulty for any good problem-solving procedure is that of somehow getting past what we expect the answer “ought to be,” to whatever is the actual best answer. One aim of this first procedure is to force our responses to come so quickly that our verbal left brain has little or no chance to edit our experience or response to fit its expectations. Another aim of this present procedure is to get your own instant-reflex responses to be as image-based as possible, also in order to avoid editing and left-brain biasing. The more sensory image-based, other things being equal, the better our contact with the broader, more sensitive regions of the brain which we are seeking to draw upon for our answers to questions and problems.

Speed, fluency of describing, and inductive inference are our keys to

getting unbiased answer directly from our inner/higher resources;
developing our perceptions of and around that answer; and
understanding what we’re being shown.

If you have a large group, subdivide it into smaller groups of from four to six members. This requires more expressive, describing, involvement from each member, and thus achieves more and better development of awarenesses in each, than is otherwise possible in larger groups, where “air time” has to be shared directly with dozens of other people and usually with a lecturer to boot!

Here is the cycle of steps for each group of four to six members to perform in this Quick Q/A form of Einsteinian Discovery Technique. In each group of three to six members:

One of you presents the question. On the instant this is done,
Each of you blurts, as immediately as possible, your immediate first impression of the answer. Force that immediacy instead of politely waiting turns. This should be a virtually simultaneous blurt from every member of the group, too immediate for one to pick up cue from another’s response. Speed of response is crucial, to not allow the left brain time to think over what it thinks the answer to that question ought to be. Let the data-response come as directly and instantly as possible from right- and limbic-brain resources, which operate many times faster than does the left brain.

Whenever possible, this blurt-response should be an image-impression. If words reflexively come as the answer, go ahead and say them and then, in Step # 3 next, develop that response as if it were an image, as descriptively as possible. We trust pictures much more than we do words in this role, because sensory images are the working language of the parts of the brain we’re trying to draw upon. Even if your first round or so is an experience of words only, this imagistic descriptive treatment will take hold and let you get future rounds of this process in images.
In pairs within your groups, develop your initial blurt response by turning it into a descriptive Image Stream. All of that Image Stream consists of the answer to the initial presented question and its context. Unlike regular Image Stream, squeeze the time down to a minute or so per image-answer per participant, but be sure to get enough detail that you can “spot the overlaps” in Step #4….

Each different imagery experience is rich with many messages and meanings. Where all three sets are directed to one question, however, the main answer you look for is what these sets have in common.
In your group, compare your respective image/impression responses. See if you can discover common themes, trends or characteristics. Find as many elements-in-common as you can among the image-responses produced within the group.
Now turn back to the question itself. Examine the way(s) those themes or elements-in-common among your image answers can or do constitute an answer to that question.
If time permits, ask a clarification question (such as “Please show me this same answer in a very different way”) and report the new images which result.—Or ask your Image Streaming faculties to show you a way to verify that you are on the right track with the answer(s) that appears to have emerged for you.

Also look for a practical “Step One” to implementing that answer or understanding—don’t settle for merely a generality.

Also ask yourself, “What more do I/we need to know in this context?”

Quick simple form for High Thinktank problem-solving in groups

The one surest of all ways to get our left brain’s expectant editing out of the way of getting at our better answers is to present the question in such a way that the left brain doesn’t have a clue as to what’s being asked! That way it doesn’t know which way to bias your experience and response.

Here we take advantage of the fact that much of your brain is far more sensitive to subtle cues and clues than our “loud left” is. There is trace print-through on questions written onto folded-up slips of paper; there is body english, there is subvocalization, there is high-order predictive inference and pattern recognition—a wealth of information telling your subtler faculties what the question is that’s being asked for them to answer.

High Thinktank Method, at the apex of the Einsteinian Discovery System of techniques, arguably is the world’s most powerful and accurate answer-finding method—especially on the major questions and most important issues.

On such issues and problems, most people have already staked out a position. It’s very hard for most of us to see beyond what we already think and “know” about such a matter, to the fresh perceptions needed for a truly ingenious, effective answer or solution!

Fortunately, that subtler, more comprehensive 99.99999% of our mind is more sensitive, not only wiser and brighter than we think we are. There are more than enough subliminal cues floating around to account for how that richer part of our awareness is able to pick up what the question is and show us the answer. And while it is doing so—because your loud conscious mind, not knowing what the question is, hasn’t a clue which way to censor, warp, bias or edit what’s being shown you—you can get your data cleanly and undistorted from your subtler resources. It is precisely that which makes High Thinktank so remarkably accurate. It’s the one format where your loud left brain won’t get in the way and edit your answers to suit its expectations as to what those answers “ought to be”!

Crucial—do not try to “psyche” what the question isl Just look in and see/read what your answer is to the question being asked you in the concealed or folded-in piece of paper. Key parts of your subtler self couldn’t care less about ESP games but do care about such issues.

Just simply let go expectations and “look in” to see what your faculties are telling you is the answer to what’s being asked, completely free for once of the bias imposed by the expectations of your left brain which perennially thinks that “it knows better” and the answer ought to be this instead of that.

Here is the cycle of steps in the simple form of group high thinktanking. In each group of three to six participants…

One of you presents the question silently, or in hidden form such as a folded-in piece of paper bearing the question within, a slip of paper that gets handed around but whose contents are not consciously seen. If the question is being asked silently, a nod or light snap of fingers is appropriate to indicate to partners the end of asking and to elicit the imagistic snap response.
As quickly as they can, each participant identifies the image in his/her mind as answer, and reports it in that simultaneous blurt. While we are depending more on “hiding” the question than on speed with the High Thinktank form, it’s still valuable to get that initial response made so quickly that people don’t have time to pick up on one another’s cues.

—OR—

Each participant silently describes his or her own image-answer by writing or sketching it for a few moments on a sheet of paper, enough on each image to support the ongoing describing to be made of these in Step # 3.
In pairs within each group, develop that initial response into a brief but very descriptive Image Stream. Be sure to get a lot of detail, even in just that 1 to 3 minutes each, so it’s easier to see where those details match up as common elements in Step # 4.
Compare your respective Image Stream answers around the group, looking for those common themes and elements.

After identifying those common themes or elements,
The original asker “reveals” the formerly silent or folded-in “hidden” question.
Explore the relationship(s) between those common theme elements as answer, and the question asked.
As time permits, ask follow-up questions to clarify, verify your answers and to map out ways to implement them as appropriate. Also ask yourself or as a group, what more do I/we need to know in this context?

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

Only your own practiced use of the High Thinktank method can effectively determine for you the actual relationship between the answers gotten from your more sensitive resources and the silent or hidden questions asked. Is it anything more than provocative random force-fit? If it is, then you are also looking at your own ability to find effective answers to virtually any question or problem in the world!

Whether it is some sort of common Universal Mind you are tapping into for these insights, as some believe, or whether it’s your own Universal Mind from all the awarenesses you have ever had, loud and subtle, past and present — at this level it makes no difference. You get these understandings in either case. See a remarkable instance of this in Innate Ethics.

Use of High Thinktank Methods When Working Alone

Accumulate six or more questions in a box, each question on a separate index card or scrap of (folded in on itself) paper. Because you have written these, your subtler resources will know which is which, but if you randomize these questions and pick one at random, your conscious left temporal isn’t likely to recognize which one is which, and will most likely get out of the way of the visual data-flow coming from the rest of the brain in answer to that question. Your objective is not to “psyche” which question that is, but simply to look at what your mind is showing you as answer to it.
On the question you thus select, get three sets of imagery on each question. As in the group form, this gives you a basis for comparison. Be sure to get enough sensory detail recorded from each image that it will be easy for you to spot where one of the many aspects of the one image matches with one of the many aspects of another image. Each image coming from your richer resources is rich with many meanings and messages, but each image generated within a given context as answer, context defined by this “hidden question” you are holding, contains among these in some form your main or key answer(s) as well. This comparison, looking for common elements or for themes running among your several different images, makes this key meaning or meanings stand out above all the other messages for you and makes this key far easier for you to spot and to experience your “aha”!
Only after you’ve mapped out these detailed comparisons among your several various images or impressions, should you then look at the “hidden question,” read it consciously, and examine how those common elements or theme do actually answer that particular question.

Be sure to replace the answered question with another so you keep up a minimum stock of six at any given time to draw from, keeping that old left-temporal guesser from getting back into the act.

Your questions should be very different from one another, so the answer to one isn’t confusable with that to another. Doing two to four such questions per day for a few days should give you the feel for allowing the flow to come from wider sectors of your brain, so that then you can resume doing regular Image Streaming undirected even by such questions (though you might also keep up this Q/A process as well, which can be very instructive!).

High Thinktank apparently does different things to develop the brain than does Image Streaming:

Besides the convenience of speed, there are apparently some things in the brain which High Thinktanking does which not even Image Streaming does. We don’t know quite what’s going on with the brain with this, but see some extraordinary abilities develop and remarkable things happen which we’ve not seen even with regular sustained practice of Image Streaming.

Until we know more about it, we strongly recommend some practice of both, to encourage as wide a range as possible of neurons and brain circuitry activated and abilities developed.

Both Image Streaming and High Thinktank are Modern Einsteinian/Socratic Method. Both reinforce not only subtler awarenesses into better contact with our conscious word box, but the brain and mental faculties from which those subtler awarenesses spring. Yet it is clear, from those of us who have pursued the “30-Day Challenge” (see below), that these two seemingly similar procedures are doing very different things in the brain and integrating our brains in very different configurations, both of them good.

Whoever can arrange to obtain detailed scans of brains, while engaged in each of these two seemingly like but very different procedures, will get his/her name into historic footnotes in a lot of future texts. Use of both of these remarkably beneficial procedures is bound to spread and to increasingly affect events, and the principles behind them are bound to find further and still more useful application.

The 30-day Challenge

Daily practice of Image Streaming does not appear to present any problems even though it commits several times more time. It has been rare, however, for people to succeed with at least one thinktanked question every day for a full 30 days, for reasons as yet not fully understood (though one of our members reached more than one hundred consecutive days and counting). That rarity shows it to be a real challenge for you, to be able to run at least one question each day through the high thinktanking process for a full 30 days. If you succeed, we fully guarantee you not only some of the most intriguing experiences of your life, but skills and awarenesses which you did not consciously possess before, to an extent even more striking than is the case with Image Streaming.

The High Thinktank Kit

This simple kit is designed to make it as easy as possible for you to process questions using high thinktank. You need a small envelope which you can carry around in a shirt or jacket pocket (along with your Portable Memory Bank!!!) and whip out to use as you get a chance — a pause before or after telephone calls; just before or after you’ve propped your feet up in front of the TV; a few minutes before or after lunch or dinner; when you are riding in a conveyance with someone else doing the driving. You probably have 20 to 50 such opportunities each day. All we ask, minimally, is that you use at least one such opportunity each day and try to do so for thirty consecutive days. Failing thirty, if you miss one, try to get in 29 of those 30, or 28…. Things will still happen.

Within that envelope, you should carry 8 to 12 questions, each on a folded slip of white paper, and several more such slips of paper, on which you have written your own questions, whose stake and interest will help keep you motivated enough to see your experiment/challenge through. We are providing a page of “white” questions you can print out and cut up into those separate white folded-in slips for the envelope, to help you get started.

Also carry in this envelope six or more green slips of paper (or at least a different color of paper). Each of these folded-in “greenslips” has a different (follow-up) question on it. What kind of follow-up question? See the examples provided in the page of “green” questions, which you can likewise print out on green paper and cut up into those separate green slips folded-in for the envelope, to help you get started.

Using the Kit

Here are the seven simple steps.

Select a folded-in white question, without looking to consciously see what it says.
Gather three different sets of impressions or images. Each of these is the same answer to the same question, only shown differently.
On your notepad, describe or sketch enough detail from these impressions to make it easy to see where they overlap.
Find the common theme(s), trends or threads.
Open your question and see how that element(s)-in-common answers the question.
Make sure you have a minimum of six white questions in your envelope/pool toward next time.
Select one of the green questions and answer it the same way. Depending on the importance of what you’re dealing with, you may want to do an additional green question or so on it.

You may want to keep some sort of journal or diary in which to record the surprising things you start to notice, in yourself or around you, by or before the fifth consecutive day of this thinktanking challenge.

Summary instructions for 30-day question challenge

Always 6 or more questions in the pot or pocket, to keep the guesser out of the way.
Face down or folded in on themselves to “conceal” the question from consciousness.
Take any one question, gather 3 images or impressions each of which is the same answer to that question, just shown differently. As much detail as you can get on these three, to better spot the ways in which those impressions of the answer overlap. Maybe 3 to 5 minutes detailing on first impression, 1 to 2 minutes on each of the others.
Identify the common elements or trend or theme(s) of your images/impressions, taken together.
Look at your question, determine how your answers answer it.
Pose such follow-up questions as you may want to, and record your answers.
Replace the answered question with new one, into your pot or pocket.

We suggest either a special small box, or a special envelope for your pocket, into which you can put your questions and some writing material and a pen.

The challenge

Few of us have managed thus far to make 30 straight days.
Keep a detailed record of your experiences, answers and observations.