YOU ARE BRIGHTER THAN YOU THINK!
Page Two
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.
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!
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
context,(7) 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!
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.
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!
To Page 3 of this text
Back to Books Online index
Back to Project Renaissance homepage
©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.
You may reach Win Wenger via email at Project Renaissance
You may reach Win via telephone at (301)948-1122
You may reach Project Renaissance via groundmail at Box 332, Gaithersburg, MD 20884-0332 USA
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.