"Winsights" by Dr. Win Wenger
This is a compilation of the Winsights book gathered on the Internet site www.botree.com.
Part 2: A Guaranteed Way to Improve Your Intelligence By More
Than 20 Points.
Part 3: Image-Streaming
Part 4: How to Feel Better Instantly
Part 5: A Fast Way to Get Your Best Answers
Part 6: A Partial Taxonomy of All Possible Methods For Solving
Problems
Part 7: An Emphatic Recapitulation And Summary
Part 8: Make Learning Easier Part 1
Part 9: Make Learning Easier Part 2
Part 10: Solution of the Month
Part 11: Your Personal Empowerment
Part 12: Getting More Intelligence Online
Part 13: In 900 Minutes, YOU Can Be Composing
Part 14: A Fun Way To Teach Your 2-Year-Old
Part 15: HOW TO RUN BETTER MEETINGS, GROUPS, CLUBS AND CLASSES
Part 16: How to See with Artistic Eyes
Part 17: Some New Methods
Part 18: Help a Young Child to Flower
Part 19: Learning from the Lessons of the Future
A Guaranteed Way to Improve Your Intelligence By More
Than 20 Points.
The procedure is called "Image-Streaming." It is a
modernization of Einstein's
"Deep Thought" Discovery Method, combined with a modernized
version of Socratic
Method. Both methods, throughout history, have been closely
associated with
extraordinarily high levels of mental, perceptual and intellectual
performance.
We finally figured out why this is so.
Einstein was not the first to use his method, but he was the
first respected
scientist to "go public" with it. He would let mental
imagery play freely, and
examine it as closely as possible to see what he could learn
from what he
observed (e.g. using this method he learned relativity). However,
in its
original form the Deep Thought Discovery Method is a very soporific
process.
He, and others who used it, would tend to nod off.
The Socratic Method arose from the context of the first schools
in our
civilization's tradition. Those schools were not for the sake
of students. They
were for the purpose of providing audiences to the leading
thinkers of the
times. They could better develop their thoughts and perceptions
by describing
them to those select audiences. In turn, the nicer people -
especially the
Sophists and most especially Socrates - would return the favor
and draw out
ideas from their listeners in turn. This drawing-out process
proved so
productive of miracle leaps in understanding that education itself
became named
after it, when observed in the root - "educare"
(L.), "to draw forth."
Anything you fix your perceptions on, examine, and describe out
in detail to a
listener, you will discover more and more and more about.
This should not
surprise anyone familiar with laws of behavior and psychology,
especially the
Law of Effect: "you get more of what you reinforce."
Further, when you describe
your own perceptions (not someone else's second-hand information
as is the case
in today's didactic classrooms) you reinforce the behavior of
being perceptive.
When the Socratic Method was in extensive use - in late classical
Greece, of
course, and again during the European Renaissance - those tiny
population bases
produced not only a higher ratio but an enormously higher absolute
number of
world-class geniuses than the number found in today's didactically
taught 6
billion people! Think of this in terms of "what gets reinforced"
and "what does
not get reinforced" in these two approaches to
"education."
Especially when we look not at the formalities of fierce argument
and dialog in
which the original Socratic Method was cast, but at what these
methods did:
cause people to examine their own inner and outer perceptions,
and to attempt
to respond to or describe what they discovered there.
Put this aspect of the Socratic Method together with the Einsteinian
Deep
Thought Discovery Method and suddenly you no longer have
something so
soporific. Instead you have a sensitive, subtle process delving
deeply into
one's own personal symbology in an intensifying, vivid experience
of one's own
free-flowing inner imagery. And that free-flowing imagery is
always giving
important insights, at any and every given moment, even though
nearly all of us
have been ignoring this remarkably invaluable personal resource
all these
years!
Image Streaming is the "purest" of the many forms
of this combination of
modernized Einsteinian and Socratic Methods. It not only shows
you a wealth of
in-sight and understanding, but reinforces more and more
of whatever
intelligence you may have online with your immediate consciousness.
With this
your performance on intelligence tests rises permanently, and
the numinous
qualities of experience more and more enrich your life
day by day.
Independently conducted state university tests have been demonstrating,
since
1989, that even as few as 25 hours of easy, entertaining practice
of Image
Streaming improves your intelligence by, on average, 20 "IQ"
points (Southwest
State University, Dept. of Chemistry & Physics, Marshall,
Minnesota; attn.
Prof. Charles P. Reinert.)
Further, neither of us havebeen able yet to find anyone (out
of thousands
trained) who cannot learn and practice some form of Image Streaming
and thus
begin to harvest these intelligence gains and many other
benefits!
Not only is Image-Streaming "good for you" like a
medicine in that practicing
it builds your mind and the interconnectedness of your brain.
It is also:
* Highly entertaining in its content!
* Loaded with understandings about your world and about yourself
and those
important to you.
* What was REALLY going on when you.....
* Creative problem-solving.
* Profoundly accelerated and improved learning.
* Innovating and creating and inventing.
* A fast road to scientific discoveries
* A way to gain control of your autonomic physiological
processes
Next week we will show you a step by step method for getting in
touch with your
own Image-Stream..
Getting At Your Own Einstein Factor:
Some Ways to Get At Your Own Real Genius:
Albert says: to practice some form of my Deep Thought Method:
Let your imagery
play, examine it as closely as possible to see what you can
learn from it. We
say, practice Socratic forms of Einstein's Deep Thought Method.
While observing
these free images, describe them in detail to a listener; be
surprised at what
comes up for you.
Here are a few of the many additional ways to bring up your
own very real
genius to enrich your life:
1) Find ways to "get on a roll," stay on a roll,
get back to being on that
roll, until more falls into it.
2) Find ways to verbally describe "the indescribable:"
where you have to
"reach" to convey an effect, is your
growth zone.
3) Pick up on and describe subtleties and nuance. These arise
in parts of your
brain usually offline from where you are verbally focused,
conscious.
Describing subtler impressions reinforces more and more onto
line with your
immediate consciousness those subtler regions of your brain,
together with
their intelligence.
4) Improve the physical health and condition of your physical
brain:
a) Improve circulation to your brain;
b) Improve nutrition to your brain;
c) Improve your brain's sub-routines.
TOP
Image-Streaming:
Your Own Most Powerful Mode of Thinking
Here, as promised, are the instructions for your most powerful
mode of thinking
and perceiving: receptive visual thinking, or Image-Streaming.
25 hours of
Image-Streaming increases intelligence at an average rate of 20
"I.Q." points.
It also appears to improve the deeper and more numinous qualities
of experience
and ability to an even greater extent.
Image-Streaming is also the most fundamental version of the modernized
Einsteinian Discovery Method or "deep thought experiment".
Image-Streaming can
powerfully help you to: solve problems; discover answers; profoundly
accelerate
learning; inform you about all sorts of aspects of your world
and those around
you and about yourself; and even accelerate and improve your reading.
You were born already thinking in images. For years that was how
you thought,
perceived and understood the world. When well-meaning parents
and teachers and
adults told you to stop daydreaming, stop looking out the window,
to sit
straight and pay attention, this most powerful of all your modes
of learning,
understanding and thinking did not go away. It merely went underground,
so to
speak. You still have within you a reflex response which draws
upon all your
resources including the deeper, subconscious powers of your mind
for solving
problems, increasing creativity, and crystallizing understanding.
99.999999% of
your mental and intellectual resource, perception, awareness,
and data-base is
unconscious, and works much faster than does your conscious mind
which has been
trained by the language you speak to work at the speed of your
talking.
Nearly all this data-base and awareness reside in portions of
your brain which
work in images rather than words and it is usually in images that
the most
reliable answers and understandings are expressed. --If an answer
comes in
words, did it come from these richer resources or from the limited
left verbal
focussed part of our brain with which we've been getting the same
old answers?
If it comes in images - especially if the imagery content is a
surprise to us -
this is an excellent indicator that we're getting in data from
elsewhere in our
brains besides the same old word-processor.
At every instant, part of ourselves is reflexively sorting through
all our
awarenesses and giving us a picture which best relates whatever
is the present
context. The context can be that of your reading this article,
or you can shape
context by asking your higher resources a question or pointing
them to a
problem and letting them answer you in images. Here is one of
the many basic,
step-by-step ways to sensitize to, use and understand your Image
Stream:
1. THE QUESTION - ask yourself a question.
2. START TO IMAGE-STREAM, as follows. Have a live listener or
tape recorder
with you. Sit back, relax, close your eyes, and describe aloud
whatever images
suggest themselves. Go with your first or most immediate impressions
and
describe these images or impressions aloud, as rapidly as possible
in as
sustained a flow as possible, in richly textured sensory detail.
Make it a kind
of brainstorm of description, not of ideas but of adjectives,
things you can
say about the image(s) which somehow describe it or them. AS you
describe, more
free images will emerge: be alert to that or to other changes
and describe
these when they happen, instead of making it all into some sort
of orderly
story.
It's crucial to describe aloud to live or potential listener (as
represented by
that tape recorder), in order to bring more of your images into
conscious
awareness, no matter how unrelated the images may at first appear.
They may
seem to your focussed verbal left brain, at first, to be unrelated
to the
question or context but once you've let all of the data flow freely
onto the
table, so to speak, you'll find what you've been describing was
amazingly and
ingeniously straight on target: the right answer or a key insight.
Let yourself be surprised by what the images reveal to you. The
more
surprising, the more likely that you're getting fresh input from
your subtler,
more comprehensive and more accurate faculties.
(A few paragraphs below, we provide here some back-up procedures
for those who,
at first attempt, didn't seem to be able to get up images. If
you were one of
those, then you can work through one or another of these back-up
procedures and
then come back to this point to decipher the meaning of your images.
The
remaining five of the 7-step process for image streaming given
here, are for
purpose of getting at the meaning of your images. Whether or not
you get at the
meaning of your images, simply observing and describing them aloud
WHILE
observing them will still build your intelligence for that 20-point
"I.Q." gain
and more.)
3. FEATURE-QUESTIONING: while in the imagery, pick out some one
feature of it -
a wall, a tree or bush, whatever's there. Imagine laying a hand
on that feature
and studying its feel (and describe that feel), to strengthen
your contact with
that experience. Ask that rock or bush or wall, "Why are
you (meaning that
object) here as part of my answer?" (--Or as part of this
message for me...)
See if the imagery changes when you ask that question. Describe
the changes.
4. INDUCTIVE INFERENCE: once you've gotten 5-15 minutes' worth
of images
described, thank your image-streaming faculties for showing you
this answer.
--And ask their help in understanding this answer or message.
The help is by
their giving you 2-3 minutes of entirely DIFFERENT images which
nonetheless
somehow are still giving you the SAME answer to the SAME problem.
--Then a
third set of images for just a minute or so, still the SAME answer
or message
but shown to you in yet an entirely DIFFERENT WAY!
5. WHAT'S THE SAME? When all else is different among these several
sets of
image, what IS the same? Maybe it's the color green, maybe it's
triangular-shaped objects; maybe it's even just a feeling - whatever
IS the
same, it's the core of the message after all the ornamentation
of these
often-rich experiences is swept aside. These themes or elements-in-common
are
your core answer or message.
Herein is an additional powerful reason for wanting to describe
as much detail
as possible from your respective sets of images. --Not only because
this helps
to better integrate your brain and make you more intelligent,
but because the
more detail you have there from those several sets of image, the
easier it is
to find matches, themes, elements-in-common which then will let
you make sense
out of what you've seen.
6. RELATE: Go back to your original question or context and determine
in what
way or ways these core elements ARE the answer to your question.
7. DEBRIEF: When you go back through an experience, this often
elicits for you
secondary associations, thoughts and awarenesses not immediately
apparent to
you the first time. Summarize this whole experience either to
another person
(directly or by telephone), or to notebook or computer. This change
of medium,
and change of feedbacks, brings in fresh secondaries and should
add further to
your understanding.
Verification - you might want to test and check your responses
with questions
such as these:
1. "How can I make sure that I'm on the right track with
this understanding?"
(You should get back, through your imagery and assorted awarenesses,
either a
way to test and verify, or a reminder of real-time data or experiences
which
demonstrate that this is the right answer to be working with.)
2. "What more do I need to know in this context?"
3. What's a a good, practical, concrete first step to acting upon
this
understanding?"
One unique advantage of Image-Streaming: nearly all other creative
problem
solving methods invest most of their effort into redefining the
question or
problem, before they ever get started on finding answers. Your
deeper faculties
already know what the real issue, problem or question IS, and
immediately get
on with giving you answer to it.
Another is the speed-up of answer-getting, with practice. Though
the
intelligence-building effects of Image Streaming are an accumulation
of the
time invested in the activity, with practice you CAN get to your
verified
answer in a mere minute or so, when in that particular instance
the answer
sought is of more value to you than is the increment of intelligence-building
experience.
Everyone can get these images and start gleaning their benefits.
If you are one
of those who couldn't immediately start getting images in the
sections above,
and need some help getting started, here's some help.
These "prompting techniques" work best if you have a
helper, or listener, who
can watch your "attention cues" (changes in your breathing-patterns,
or
eye-movements beneath your closed eyelids) and in such instance
immediately ask
you, "What was in your awareness just then?" to help
you notice when these
images happen, and start the flow of description going. This "Helper
Technique"
is in fact the form in which we first discovered Image-Streaming
in 1973. Some
other "prompting techniques:"
1. AFTER-IMAGING: Stare at a bright (but not blinding) light for
half a minute,
then close your eyes. Describe that after-image and continue describing
it as
it begins to change.
2. WORTH DESCRIBING: Even if at first you don't get clear images,
you may get
blobs of color, lines or patterns which you didn't report because
you didn't
think they were worth mentioning. IT'S ANY WAY YOU CAN GET UP
THE FLOW OF
DESCRIBING WHILE LOOKING, so describe even those trivial or meaningless-seeming
blobs or lines, rapidly and in detail, alert to their changing.
If this does
not lead to more coherent or interesting images within 5-10 minutes,
then
deliberately look BEYOND the colors, patterns, etc., as if they
were a screen,
and describe your first impression of what's beyond that screen.
3. PHOSPHENES: Again on the principle of getting started that
flow of
describing-while-looking. Gently rub your closed eyes like a sleepy
child.
Leave them closed, and describe the light-and-c0olor blips which
result. Keep
on describing as these change....
4. DOOR: Imagine you are before a closed door. Tell how this door
looks, then
how it feels to your hand when you touch it. Then suddenly fling
open the door
to catch by surprise whatever is behind it. Describe immediately
your first
impression of what it is or might have been behind the door. (This
method is
excellent for finding answer to a question. While standing before
the closed
door, pose your question. The more unexpected the content of the
imagery, the
better your chances of getting sensitive, fresh new perspectives
and insights.)
WINDOW-SHADE - the release/roll-up kind: some people prefer using
this
old-fashioned window-shade instead of a door. Pose your question,
look at and
feel the bottom of the shade, tug and release: UP it goes! flap!flap!flap!
and
what are you looking at as your answer?
5. CLOSET LIGHT (or bathroom light) - with eyes closed, rapidly
flip the light
on-off-on-off a few times and describe the rich colors, patterns
or other kinds
if images which result, see what the flow of that description
can lead into....
That's all we have space for here, but more than a dozen additional
"prompting
procedures" are published in my book, A METHOD FOR PERSONAL
GROWTH &
DEVELOPMENT which teaches, step by step, the whole range of modern
Einsteinian
technique from basic visual thinking to the most advanced forms
of advanced
high think-tank method. Chances are you won't need more such techniques;
you've
got enough here to get rolling on and to build your mind and intelligence
without apparent limit. --But you should know that not one person
has yet been
found out of thousands trained (either in our own training sessions
around the
world or in the independently conducted state university studies
in Minnesota
which measured the intelligence gains) who has gotten through
all those
procedures withOUT "getting pix" and starting to reap
the rich benefits. That
means that intelligence - indeed, most of the qualities which
make you most
human - is not doled out by ration, leaving you stuck with the
short straw.
Intelligence and your most human qualities can be earned, they
can be built,
without apparent limits. everyone has unlimited access. If this
address of
"intelligence" be "elitism," then make the
most of it! Or come fly with some of
your fellow eagles!
TOP
How to Feel Better Instantly
What does feeling good have to do with a series on factors affecting
levels of
intelligence, creativity and performance? Especially when it is
possible to
override illness and injury en route to a winning performance
as we have so
often seen in televised sports?
One of the most important considerations is the LONG-term stamina
needed to see
your idea or endeavor through to success. If your body is in the
habit of
prolonged ill feeling or weakness, it's much harder to stay with
your effort
Few in fact are able to do so.
Another is the clear functioning of your intelligence itself,
which in large
part is partially determined by the clarity or congestion of your
senses. Try
taking an "I.Q." test or playing a video game immediately
after a Thanksgiving
feast, for example.
There are many emotional factors that affect your intelligence.
The techniques
I describe below will help you get in control of you emotions.
I will also show
you a way to use virtually the same technique for problem solving!
These breathing techniques work faster than any pill with no adverse
side-effects! The first time through, try each of these two breathing-patterns,
"Velvety-Smooth" and "Relief Breathing," for
1-2 minutes each. Thereafter, use
"Velvety-Smooth" ANY time, ANY occasion, to feel much,
much better in only 5-10
seconds! Use "Relief Breathing" to win immediate relief
from whatever is
currently bothering you or causing you difficulties.
Note: most of the difficulty we encounter in life, we inflict
on ourselves by
our reactions. These are reactions not only to present situations
but to most
of our previous difficulties as well. If we could put all that
aside, life
would be much easier. All we'd have to deal with is the actual
situation
itself! Likewise, most of the pain we experience in any injury
or illness, we
inflict on ourselves. If you could somehow just set all that aside
and have
only the actual problem to deal with, you'd be almost invulnerable.......
And
here are two easy ways to set all of that aside.....
Relief Breathing:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Vividly imagine having to carry a heavy sack of groceries a
lot farther than
you had expected. Feel the weight, the sweat, the ache in your
arms and
shoulders, whatever that experience is for you. How strongly can
you imagine,
feel, see that?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Now imagine finally arriving at the table or counter or chair
where you can
finally set down that burden. Breathe your first breath of relief
as that
wonderful easing happens.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Now breathe your next breath as if it were that first deep sigh
of relief
from when you were finally setting down that burden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Each next breath, when you get around to it (this should be
a luxuriously
slow process of breathing), make that your first great sigh of
relief as you
set down that burden at last. Make each next breath that first
great sigh of
relief..... (Continue for several minutes, s-l-o-w-l-y.)
It's as easy as that! Compare how you're feeling now. Better than
when you
started? Breath is regulated by, and provides a bridge to, your
autonomic
nervous system. By breathing in a focussed-relief pattern for
several minutes,
you signal your nervous system to relieve you of anything bothering
you. This
is a great little tactic to use when you find yourself below par
or being
bothered by something.
Not only do you breathe in characteristic ways in response to
what's going on
or how feel, but you can breathe deliberately in such patterns.
This causes the
autonomic nervous system to make your state-of-being congruent
with that
pattern of breathing! You can even "read" more from
someone's breathing than
you can from their "body language". Evidence? Compare,
among the sensory
handicapped, how well in society the long-term blind do despite
the gravity of
that handicap, as compared to the long-term deaf.
The easiest way to learn the various breathing patterns consciously
and to use
them for bringing about desirable conditions and states-of-being,
is to closely
observe infants or very young children. They breathe "transparently"
and it's
easy to learn from their breathing what's going on with them.
Once you've
learned a pattern there, you can then spot it also in fellow adults
and
experiment with it in yourself. This is what yours truly did,
which led to
70-some identifiable patterns. About 40 of which were for desirable
states-of-being or conditions. The best of these were published
as "the
Calm-Breathing Patterns" in my book "Beyond O.K. - Psychegenic
Tools Relating
to Health Of Body & Mind", way back in 1979) Someone
else making such
observations would no doubt develop a different categorical system,
but it'd
likely be as useful.
Velvety Smooth Breathing
* Can you imagine how it would feel to your fingers, to be stroking
gently a
long smooth strip of sleek silk or plush velvet? Imagine the
sheer luxury
of that feeling. For 10-30 seconds, remember or imagine and
intensify the
luxurious feel of stroking that silk or velvet. Really get
into the sheer
luxury of that feeling.
* Now let your breathing become long, slow, smooth, luxurious....
Let your
breathing be like it's stroking you. --Stroking you gently
like a long
luxuriant piece of sleek silk or plush velvet. Let your breathing
be
stroking you as if your whole body, head to toe, were a long
luxurious
strip of silk or velvet.
* With each following breath, find a way to breathe more like
that than the
breath before it. More luxuriously with each breath, as if
you were that
silk or velvet being stroked.
Practice intensifying - not just maintaining but intensifying,
breath to
breath, this luxury-feeling effect, for at least two more minutes.
(Remember,
s-l-o-w-l-y!)
After two minutes of this breathing, compare the way you are feeling
now with
the way you were feeling before you started. Memorize intently
the resultant
feeling. Use that remembered feeling as a takeoff-point next time
or session,
and breathe further into luxuriousness from there.
The occasions and situations in your life where this can make
the biggest
difference for you, are exactly those occasions and situations
when you feel
least like breathing in luxurious delight. Once you've practiced
several good
sessions of "Velvety-Smooth" you can revisit this experience
at will. Any time
you find yourself under stress, shoulders or neck stiffened or
you're breathing
high in your chest, you can use this technique and reap the most
benefit.
Suggestion: you can further help the benefits of this technique
by visiting
your spice rack and opening your favorite aromas, such as vanilla,
peppermint
(or coffee or some favorite perfume). Have 2-3 various of these
open which you
can breathe one breath from each, back and forth for comparison,
and make your
breathing not only velvety-smooth but delicious!
Have you tried this Velvety-Smooth Breathing experience yet? Do
so now. The two
minutes invested now will be made back for you many times over.
It will improve
your productivity the next two hours or so, by relieving stress
and making you
feel better. Feel good right now! There's no charge or cost or
penalty for
feeling good this ultimately natural way.
Problem-solving: the solution in a breeze!
Not only will this technique make problem situations easier by
setting aside
all the frustrations you inflict on yourself. You can even use
such breathing
to discover solutions to problems!
The trick is to orient on a problem you've been working hard on,
then set it
completely aside and then begin either Velvety-Smooth or Relief
Breathing or
one of the other Calm-Breathing Patterns, this time not for 2
minutes but for
as long as it takes to completely clear the problem away or even
to nod off.
When you find yourself perceiving the apparent answer, make yourself
alert and
work from there.
Traditionally, many creative people followed the practice of "going
to sleep"
on a problem and waking up with its solution. While this is a
long way from our
strongest creative problem-solving method, it does work often
enough. It works
because from the first instant of contact with a question or problem,
the best
answer or insight emerges deep in the back of your mind. Sometimes
you've
experienced the answer being not only "on the tip of your
tongue" but on the
"tip of your mind." What's in the way of that subtle
signal is all the "noise"
of our other mental and physiological operations. Bringing down
the noise level
- which these breathing patterns do as well as sleep does, and
a lot faster -
gives that subtle signal better chance to slip through.
The first time or so you might initially find some of that "noise"
in the form
of the problem recurring in your thoughts, the same way people
have trouble not
thinking about pink elephants once they decide not to. Just let
that "noise"
amuse you and then set it, and the problem, firmly aside and go
back into the
breathing and deeper luxuries as deeply as you can with the expectation
that
when the answer (not the problem) occurs to you, you'll recognize
that moment
and become alert to give it proper attention. Usually, it's on
the edges of
nodding-off, just when your "Velvety-Smooth" is lapsing
into first-stage
sleep-breathing.
As we said: not at all our strongest problem-solving method, but
strong enough
to work for most people. And the added benefit of this type of
breathing for
problem-solving is not only that of feeling much better for a
long while after,
but clearer senses and greatly improved productivity.
TOP
A Fast Way to Get Your Best Answers
Last week (in the feeling-good procedures), we gave you a
variation on
a traditional method of discovering solutions. That method
works some
of the time. Here today is a much faster way to discover your
best
answer on just about anything, and it works nearly every time.
Things you know from earlier rounds of this column, and from
elsewhere:
Thinking in images draws upon and involves a lot more of the
brain than
does thinking in words, which is largely limited to the left
temporal
lobe. Thinking in images was our original - and is still our
strongest
- modality for thinking, from birth on. It didn't disappear
when
parents and teachers told us to stop daydreaming, sit straight,
pay
attention, don't gaze out that window when I'm talking to
you, etc. It
only went "underground" and is still there - easily
tapped by many of
us, there but with a little digging for some of us. We haven't
found
anyone yet in whom this resource was not and in whom access
could not
be re-established.
Visual thinking a la Einstein, Tesla, the dreaming Kekule
(the benzene
ring, basis of all organic chemistry), the nightmare-struck
Howe (the
cannibals attacking in his dream had holes in the heads of
their
spears, the answer to his problem for inventing the sewing
machine), is
not the only type of method powerfully associated with ingenious
creative and intellectual or artistic achievement. The Socratic
method
is one. It originated in the schools of classical Greece.
(These were
founded not to benefit students but to provide audiences to
whom the
leading thinkers, by describing their own perceptions, could
further
develop them....) Socratic method is associated with a rate
of
production of world-class genius hundreds of thousands of
times higher
than conventional teaching. It produces its miracles by getting
people
to examine their perceptions and to describe in detail what
they
discover there. This method is also closely - and causally
- associated
with historic traditions of high intellectual achievement.
Put these two effective mind-use systems together, each of
them closely
linked to historical traditions of profoundly high mental
or
intellectual achievement, and you get methods like the following
"Over-the-Wall" procedure.
Another key, as we go into that procedure, is of the nature
of
problem-solving itself. It seems natural when facing an unanswered
question or problem to review what we know about the problem
situation
and to seek its answer in terms of what we know. Alas, the
problems
which are left around us are the ones which were NOT (and
will not) be
solved that way. What we "know" has BECOME the problem
by standing
between us and fresh perceptions. Of thousands of creative
techniques
and a dozen major systems of such techniques now in professional
use
around the planet, each succeeds precisely to the extent that
it
somehow moves us BEYOND what we think we know about the problem,
and
into fresh perceptions on it.
Seems like all we have to do, then, is to put aside what we
know and
start examining again our actual perceptions in the problem
context.
Alas, within seconds, nearly all of us seem to find ourselves
back in
rehashing what we think we know about the problem. So, we've
used types
of visual thinking which leave behind our "knowledge"
about the
problem. These approaches look at the problem in imagistic
or other
special ways designed to get us around what our left temporal
lobe
EXPECTS, so we can SEE the answer. The "Over-the-Wall"
technique below
takes us beyond that left-temporal-lobe-expectant mind-set
and into
fresh perceptions and insights.
WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU HARDCOPY THIS FILE SO YOU CAN
USE THIS
POWERFUL PROCEDURE MORE THAN ONCE.
1. You MUST have either a live listener to describe and develop
your
perceptions to (and who can cue you to the next step in the
process if
need be so you can focus more completely on the experience),
or at
least a tape recorder (a cheap one or even an old dictaphone
will do)
and blank tape to record onto, representing at least a POTENTIAL
listener.
2. Arrange your surroundings - including phone, secretaries,
children,
whatever - so you won't be interrupted for at least 30-40
minutes
barring some real emergency. Later uses of this "Over-the-Wall"
procedure will be quicker and quicker. With practice you will
find
ingenious answers to almost any problem or question in less
than two
minutes!
3. Decide upon and write out your question. Choose an issue
or problem
or topic you would truly desire to have good answer to - that
desire or
need helps involve more of your mental resources. The more
difficult or
seemingly impossible-to-solve the problem seems, the better
for our
purposes here. Your chances are good, even this first time
and
certainly in subsequent rounds, that you will discover a great
and
ingenious, retrospectively obvious, answer. If that is a matter
which
has baffled the experts, YOUR discovering an answer to it
can be very
empowering.
Once you've met these three conditions you can begin "Over-the-Wall".
The steps
are in a form which can be read aloud to members of a group. If
working with a
live person OR with a group: the instructions to be read aloud
to your
answer-seeking partner are in brackets. After the group form is
a much briefer
version for when working alone.
The Step-By-Step Procedure for "Over-The-Wall"
[_] Listener (or tape recorder) at the ready?
[_] Your selected question or problem issue written down?
Excellent. Here are the step-by-step instructions for the
rest of the
"Over-the-Wall" procedure...
1. With your question established, simply set it aside and
don't give
it more conscious thought for a while. For a while, no longer
confront
the question directly. Instead, give your more sensitive resources
the
opportunity to set up a space where the answer to that question
will be
on display for you. To screen that answer space from interference
by
what you "know" about the problem in your conscious
mind, imagine that
this answer space is screened from your view by a great wall.
--A wall
you can't "see" past until you are beyond it yourself.
With your eyes
closed to see more freely, imagine that wall to be screening
from sight
your Answer Space on its far side while on this side, the
nearer side,
of that wall you are in a very beautiful garden, a garden
extraordinarily lovely but very different from any you've
ever seen
before. Beyond that wall, without further concern or effort
from your
conscious mind, is now being set for you on display the best
answer to
that question you decided to address some moments ago. Over
here, on
this side of that screening wall, be in this exquisitely beautiful
garden....
2. {With your eyes kept closed without interruption, imagine
being in
the midst of this strangely beautiful garden. It might help
to pretend
that you are a radio reporter, setting background just before
an
expected event, "painting word pictures" of this
garden for your
listening radio audience. Starting with what is directly in
front of
you, there in that garden, and then all around, describe this
garden in
richly textured detail to your listening audience. Make your
listener
see and feel and smell and taste and experience the utter
reality of
your garden, through the rich textures of your describing--(5-10
minutes of rapid continuous description)}
3. {Now go up to this side of the wall and describe the wall
the same
way that you've been describing the garden. Don't sneak a
peek yet at
what is on the other side of that wall. But put your hand
on the wall
and study the feel of it, lean your face up against it, make
the feel
and smell of the wall real to your listeners as well as its
appearance....}
{(In all this description, notice when and if you get visual
mental
images in your mind's eye, like in a dream. If you see them,
switch to
describing THEM even if they go off into things other than
garden and
wall and answer space, because they can be a more direct route
to what
your more sensitive faculties want to show you.)}
4. {Don't sneak a peek yet, at the answer on display on the
other side
of the wall. SUDDENNESS is the key here, to catching your
answer in
view BEFORE your conscious "knowledge" about the
question can jump in
and say, "no, that can't be it, so the answer has to
look like thus and
so." The trick is to experience "jumping over the
wall" so suddenly
that you catch even yourself by surprise, to catch by surprise
what's
there now on the far side of the wall and you are yourself
surprised by
what you find there. Whatever is your very first impression
of what's
on the far side of the wall after you've jumped, when THAT
time comes
describe THAT. Continue describing AS IF you were still looking
at it,
even if it were just a glimpse or a momentary impression,
and more of
that impression will come. Sooner or later, you will discover
enough of
it through describing it that you will learn HOW what is here
in this
answer space is an effective answer to your problem.}
(That suddenness can be supplied by your live listener - "jump
NOW!" -
after you've described the garden side of the wall for a while.
Or, use
anything happening in your auditory environment, perhaps out
on the
street with a car horn or dog bark, to abruptly jump over
the wall even
if you weren't ready to yet, in order to get that needed suddenness.)
{(To the extent that what you find beyond the wall in the
answer space
SURPRISES you; the degree to which what you find over there
is
different from what you expected; is an indicator of your
getting fresh
input from your more sensitive faculties instead of simply
recycling
what you already "know" in your louder, conscious
mind. Describe that
very FIRST impression even if it seems unrelated or trivial
at first --
describing this first impression regardless of what it is
and whether
it's a picture or just some sort of conceptual impression.
The ACT of
describing this first impression opens up on your ingenious
and
unexpected good answer.)}
5. {Continuing to explore and describe what you've found here
in the
Answer Space: is there some feature which especially attracts
your
attention? Is there some oddity which doesn't fit with the
rest of the
scene (often the subtler faculties' way of underscoring the
key to the
message)? Detail that further; or select some particular feature
here,
such as a bush, tree, or side of a house, and ask it mentally,
"Why are
YOU here, in this context? How do YOU relate to this answer?"
In what
ways does your picture or impression change, in response to
your
question? Detail these.}
(If by now you already fully understand the answer that has
been shown
you, skip on to Step # 7 below. If you do not yet understand
that
answer or understand it fully, go instead to Step # 6, next.)
6. {Mentally thank your subtler faculties for showing you
the answer to
your question--but ask their help in UNDERSTANDING it. Find
some object
in your Answer-Space which can serve as a screen, just as
your garden
wall did earlier. This can be the wall of a house, a thicket,
an as-yet
closed door, a curtain, a bend in a hallway, a cover to a
photo album,
a hillside, anything which fits the purpose of being a screen,
behind
which you "can't" see, until you suddenly go across
into the space
beyond it. Without sneaking a peek yet at what's beyond, go
up to and
lay your hand on whatever that screening object is, and ask
your
subtler faculties to show you, on its far side, exactly the
SAME answer
to the SAME question as before, but this time in an entirely
DIFFERENT
SCENE. In effect: you are creating a second answer-space,
with an
entirely different scene in it. What is the SAME between old
and new
pictures, when everything else is different, by inductive
inference
gives you the key to the "message" or answer! So:
first detail out the
new scene after going into it, then search for what's the
same between
the old and new pictures - perhaps it is grass, perhaps the
color blue,
perhaps water, perhaps people running or perhaps no one there,
or
triangular-shaped objects, perhaps a certain feeling to both
pictures.....}
7. {Return to here and now fully refreshed. If you've been
working with
a live listener, now grab up your tape recorder, or a notepad
and pen.
If you've been working with a tape recorder, now is the time
for your
notepad and pen.... some different medium from what you were
using for
the original experience....}
8. Like an astronaut returning from a mission to some far
world,
DE-BRIEF. Describe in detail, to that different medium from
the one
you've just been using, a little of your garden experience,
but every
detail you can from when you jumped over the wall. This further,
retrospective, describing is often the stage at which understandings
and meanings click into place. Also: if you did the original
experience
with eyes closed, debrief with them open; if for some reason
you did
the original experience with eyes open, debrief with them
closed. To
make relation-building effects within your brain a little
more
immediate, try to use the present tense grammatically while
describing
and stay in that present tense mode, even though the experience
is
already in your recent past - e.g., "I AM looking at
all this ripe
wheat bending in the wind," not "I WAS looking...."
Short Form for "Over-the-Wall:"
In order that you don't have to keep looking over at the instructions
to see
what comes next, and in order to let your eyes stay uninterruptedly
closed
during the experience and free to deal fully with the subtler
reaches of that
experience....
--Here is the short form, with a memory device to help you remember
each step
and the step which comes next--
Describe, describe, describe in richly textured detail--
1. The Garden;
2. The Wall; and after your sudden jump over it,
3. The Answer-Space beyond that wall.
G.W.A.S. ("gaWAS") - easily remembered word of initials
to help you
remember Garden, Wall, and the Answer-Space beyond it. Continuing
from
"gaWAS" -
4. Question some particular Aspect or feature in your Answer-Space
(QA)
5. New Scene - same answer to same question, but shown differently
(NS) so this part of the mnemonic is QANS; your total mnemonic
is
"gaWAS-qans," easy to hold in the back of your mind
so each part of it
in turn will remind you of the next step in the procedure.
--Until the
procedure becomes familiar enough to you that you no longer
need any
special devices to find your way with.
Getting The Meaning From Your Displayed Answers:
For inventions, technical or mechanical problems and art, these
"over-the-wall"
answers are usually quite literal. For most other issues, perhaps
because of
the sensory language in which the more sensitive regions of your
brain work,
the answer may be shown in some sort of metaphor - a cartoon,
a parable, a pun
or simile, in which case relating these sometimes takes effort
to figure out
consciously. The most important thing in figuring your answer
out is: to not
try to figure it out until after you've let the whole experience
unfold, and
you've described it out in detail. Always go for the sensory data
first, figure
it out AFTERward. If your a-HA! hits you in mid-stream, well and
good - and
that will happen more and more frequently as this process and
set of skills
become familiar to you. But going for meanings before you've fully
detailed
your experience, invites your conscious knowledge about the problem
situation
to come back in, interfering with your more sensitive internal
data because it
"knows" what the answer "ought" to be, stopping
you short of seeing what the
answer IS.
Once your experience is fully described and recorded, though,
your "data out
there on the table," so to speak, the conscious search for
meaning can no
longer hide or distort it. Here are several ways to improve your
chances of
finding the meaning of what you found over the wall (or the meaning
of your
dreams, for that matter)--
1. The more richly textured the detail in which you describe,
the
better your chances of discovering the meaning.
2. The more rapidly you describe, the better the chances of
outrunning
your internal editor and getting to the most meaningful part
of the
experience.
3. The more different senses you engage in the experience
by noticing
and describing--sight, touch, smell, movement, space and pressure,
mass, temperature, texture, taste, atmospheric feel, etc.--the
better
your contact with your more sensitive faculties and the better
your
chances to discover the meaning.
4. After initially orienting to the scene: the more you experience
moving around in or doing various things to what you find
in the Answer
Space, and observe and describe the results, the better your
chances of
discovering the meaning.
5. Question other objects or features in the experience, asking
"why
are YOU here in this experience, what role do YOU play in
this answer -
then observe and describe how the scene changes or what else
happens in
response (we call this procedure "Feature-Questioning").
Likewise,
pursue what we call the "Clarification Question,"
asking your subtler
faculties to help you in understanding their answer by showing
you that
same answer to that same question again, but through an entirely
DIFFERENT scene (Inductive Inference again). Usually, three
different
scenes displaying the same answer are enough to let you infer
the
meaning from their common elements.
Follow-up questions: See also, and describe, what changes occur
in your scene
or impressions when you ask such questions as--
1. "How can I make sure that I'm understanding the correct
answer
here?" (How can I verify this answer?)
2. "What else should I know about this situation?"
3. "How best can I turn this answer into useful action?"
4. "What's 'Step One' in acting on this answer?"
(If there is something
else you have to do first, that is not 'Step One,' so what
is 'Step
One?"
Whenever in doubt about what to ask, ask:
5. "What is the best thing for me to ask in this context
- and the best
answer to it?"
Most approaches to creative problem solving teach that one has
to invest 90% or
more of his total effort to finding the right question to ask
about a
situation. Yet your subtler faculties already know what is the
most cogent
question to ask about a given situation, so asking this directly
lets you take
advantage of that and saves you considerable time and effort.
Special note regarding verification
Even when some answers come through with the seeming certainty
of the Word of
God, it's a human instrument receiving them, just as subject as
any other
information instrument, process or content to the Laws of Entropy.
Thus, to the
extent that there are significant stakes at issue in the answers
you get, even
if these interior processes do tend to be more accurate than other
information
processes, it behooves you to check their validity against other
indicators,
just as you would and should for information from any other source.
Perhaps this deserves even further comment. Politicians speak
in certainties
even when they have only the vaguest clue, in order to get other
people to
follow their lead. Most organized religions exhort their followers
to absolute
belief - but it's interesting to note that the two greatest doubters
in the
tradition of the Bible, Gideon and Thomas, were rewarded, not
punished, for
having doubted.
You may remember the story of "Gideon and his brave three
hundred." One day
Gideon got the word from God, we are told, to rise up and overthrow
the
Mideonites who had established sway over Israel for generations.
"How can I
tell," asked Gideon, "that it's your word, Lord, that
I'm hearing and not my
own imagination or wishful thinking?"
The answer came back, to set out a sheep fleece that night and
check it in the
morning. So Gideon did. In the morning, the fleece was dry, while
the grass was
soaked with dew. "Well, Lord, that's very interesting, but...."
The answer came back, to set that fleece out again and to check
the results in
the morning. So he did. According to the story, in the morning
the fleece was
soaking wet with dew while the grass all around was bone dry.
So he acted on
the rest of his message and was rewarded with a most extraordinary
victory....
Likewise, by the other story, if "Doubting Thomas" hadn't
put his hands in
Jesus's wounds, Christianity could not have spread nearly so rapidly
nor far.
For his doubts, Thomas was rewarded with sainthood, not punished.
Thus even in Biblical tradition, the basis of most of the established
religions
which are exhorting unswerving belief, the most outstanding instances
of doubt
are rewarded, not punished. All our human-instrumented information
needs to be
verified, whatever its apparent source. By now, with the bloodstained
pages of
history lying all about, we don't need to continue imposing our
unverified
certainties on each other. Check things out as you go.
Compare the fields of human endeavor which have advanced in the
last thousand
years - notably empirical science and technology - with those
which have not,
notably politics and religion. To progress, we have to be willing
to risk our
beliefs and put matters to test.
So please don't hesitate to ask your inner processes, "How
can I tell if I'm
understanding the right answer here?" or "How best can
I test this to make sure
it is so?" And be alert to some opportunities to check out
your answers by
other means as well, including conventionally gathered empirical
and scientific
data.
Frankly -- and this reflects the central theme and purpose of
these "winsights"
briefs -- over the years easily ninety per cent or more of everything
I've been
taught has been contradicted by direct observation. I suspect
that a majority
of what you or anyone has been taught is likewise contrary to
what direct
observation will show. Frankly, I trust what I can see for myself
far better
than I trust what I've been taught or "what everyone knows."
By now, with all
that has happened to and in our country, so should you.
Once verified, though, please note: an answer is not a solution
until it is
acted upon, and put into effect!
The easiest thing for many in the creativity field to do is settle
for some
easy generality as answer, and leave matters there. Your challenge
is to move
beyond such easy generality to action plans and action specifics
and an
immediate Step One from among those specifics and beyond.
Whether using a garden, park, wilderness, or perhaps one of the
"running-start
devices" among our "back-up procedures" (if you
didn't get mental pictures,
send us your ground-mail address with that request and we'll send
them to you
for free, NO one has to go without!!!); or whether using wall,
screen,
window-shade, curtains, door, thicket or other screening device
to insulate
your Answer Space until it's time to suddenly go land in it and
catch your
first impressions of what's there--
--Whatever the details of your preferred or present version of
this
post-Einsteinian "Over-the-Wall" discovering process:
A) Pose and write down a significant question or problem or
issue
beforehand so that the experience can show you its solution;
B) Remember during the experience to orient on some one particular
feature, ask it why it's there in that context - watch and
describe
what changes occur in the scene in answer to that;
C) Ask to be shown another scene which shows you exactly the
same
answer to the same question but in an entirely different way;
D) Remember to use your follow-up questions to verify your
answer, and
to develop specific actions. Remember that when you don't
know what you
should be asking, ask what it is you should be asking, and
its best
answer. Remember to ask what more you need to know about that
context.....
TOP
A Partial Taxonomy of All Possible Methods For Solving Problems
Our whole method and system and theory first began to evolve soon
after I first
came into the literature on creativity, in 1967 while I was still
serving
full-time as a college teacher. My one real contribution was his
asking the
proposition: if you have a good method for solving problems, one
of that
method's best uses is on the problem of how to create better methods
for
solving problems. One of their best uses is on the problem of
how to create
even better such methods.....
We in Project Renaissance have developed at least 40 "Toolbuilder"
procedures
by means of which to discover yet other and better procedures.
You can make
last week's column, "Over-the-Wall" into a "Toolbuilder"
with this simple
method. Have on display, in the "Answer-Space" on the
far side of that garden
wall, a highly advanced future civilization where everyone is
a solution-finder
par excellence. Far beyond anything seen here on our own Earth.
Just beyond
this point of the wall, let there be whatever it is that's made
that
civilization a population of ingenious problem-solvers. Let yourself
be
surprised by what you see there....
When hundreds of methods now exist in the art and science of creativity
and
effective problem-solving, we may need a map to find our way.
Creating a
"taxonomy" can provide us some sense of order and relationship
among such
methods.
Advantages of a taxonomy:
Such advantages are essentially the same as those of the periodic
table of the
elements in chemistry. Grouping specific elements into more general
categories
is conceptually easier. It brings into view regularities which
in turn suggest
potentially useful models and theories.
Please note also the general principle that no categorical system
is "right" or
"wrong" (except for needing to be reasonably consistent),
so much as it is more
or less USEFUL for the purposes to which you put it.
This present draft outline is an initial cut only. In no way is
it to be
regarded as an authoritative taxonomy. It badly needs extensive
criticizing,
revision, and testing. We hope this present draft stimulates creation
of
alternative models, comparison of which will lead toward an authoritative
(or
at least generally useful) taxonomy.
All of the great minds of the past had hit into only one or a
very few such
methods as basis for their successes. YOU now have all these available
to you!
Many of the methods listed are self-evident from their descriptions,
and so
their inclusion here provides you with a wider working toolkit
of methods.
Each category or sub-category below contains one or several specific
techniques. Some of the more successful techniques involve more
than one
category.
Sector One
Sector Two
Sector Three
Though discussed briefly at the start of this draft taxonomy,
deserves to be a
major division of problem-solving methods despite its usually
being ignored:
Reinvest whatever are your best methods for solving problems,
into the problem
of how to create new and BETTER problem-solving methods! Pursuit
of this
principle of reinvestment can build and has built phenomenal methodological
capital over time.
Extending this "Sector Three" into a concluding comment:
Traditionally, each main school or proponent of creative problem-solving,
developed (or borrowed!) one or a few good techniques and practices,
and
offered these as The Way to effectively solve problems.
In a world where problems are accumulating far more rapidly than
solutions, we
strongly urge more people to begin applying this principle of
re-investing
methods into better methods, building effective problem-solving
into an even
better science than it has recently become.
One way you can start doing this is to start brainstorming out,
sorting out,
and "taxonomicizing" everything that you know about
creativity and
answer-finding. You may have a lot more of this than you yet realize.
Hey - the whole universe is yours to draw upon. The resources
available to your
mind truly appear to be without limit, and having read this far,
how can you
not put at least some of all this to legitimate test. Having tested
these
matters and found something of what truly is at stake, how can
any living human
being not go forward with this, without apparent limits? --And
look at all that
wonderful scenery you get to take in along the way!
Indeed, we concur in yet one more regard with Dr. Jean Houston,
who in her
recent lectures has been saying that "for the uses we put
our remarkably
developed brain to, we are obscenely over-endowed!" You,
for instance, have
brains enough to run a galaxy. What have you been doing with them?
TOP
An Emphatic Recapitulation And Summary
On your screen at this moment, and potentially in your printer,
may well be
some of the most valuable information you have ever handled in
your life. You
don't need to buy anything in order to benefit hugely from what
you find in
this brief. Our own motivation in giving you freely such extraordinary
information? --Our belief that if many people begin seeing with
their own eyes,
thinking and perceiving for themselves first hand, a lot of the
problems and
difficulties around us all will be resolved.....
Thus far on Winsights you have learned how to:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Become more effective with yourself, with others, and with events....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Pay less tuition for the lessons of life ("Nature is a
rather severe teacher
-- first comes the test, then the lesson....")
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Experience more satisfying richnesses of perception, understanding
and
meaning than you ever dreamed were possible....
Pay attention to your own perceptions; and respond to or act upon
your own
perceptions, even if and especially when they differ from what
you expect to be
seeing.
Our culture has raised us to be sheep. Even though you may think
you are pretty
observant, you'll be amazed at what you start noticing when you
start to look
for yourself, instead of settling for what everyone around you
believes. Some
of the ways Project Renaissance shares openly, by means of which
to make
yourself far more richly observant and effective and aware, are:
* Portable Memory Bank - carry around, and use, a notepad, index
card, postits,
even a pocket tape recorder, to capture and reinforce having each
idea or
thought or observation. Each one you capture, reinforces and sharpens
your
faculties and each of the hundreds you're always letting slip
away unnoticed,
dulls your faculties...
* Sidebands-of-Awareness: quick-capture techniques. Have a friend
ask you, at
unexpected intervals suddenly, "what was in your awareness
just THEN?" Use that
to describe to your friend everything that was in your awareness
or on the
edges of it besides the main thing you were tending to at that
moment. You'll
be surprised, after several of these, to discover that you have
dozens,
actually hundreds, of parallel semi-independent streams of thought
and
awareness going on some of them trivial but some of them far richer
than what
was immediately in your consciousness. It has to be suddenly and
by surprise,
or you'll start "saving up" impressions and reinforce
different perceptual
faculties instead. It has to be expressed - written out or described
aloud or
there won't be enough reinforcement to bring these sidebands of
awareness
online for you.
* Image Streaming (incidental by-product, according to independently
conducted
state university tests: 20 points of cumulative, apparently permanent
I.Q. gain
for only 25 hours of easy, entertaining practice; this seemingly
remarkable
rate of gain continues past this point even if most reliable testing
does not);
this also informs you profoundly about the world and about yourself;
* Quick Q/A and High Thinktank-method processing, by Einsteinian
Discovery
Technique, informing you extensively about everything you turn
your attention
to. (More on the quick Q/A in a few sentences below, and on The
High Thinktank
in a later column.)
Incidental by-product: When you speak directly from your own first-hand
experience, you are powerful. When you speak from someone else's
experience or
belief, you are weak. Especially when you speak from your own
first hand
experiences on things which matter to you, are you powerful. (Nearly
everything
taught in speech & communications classes and in much about
sales, is
techniques to try to counterfeit the way you would come across
if you were
speaking directly from first-hand experience on things which matter
to you!
--But all that pales besides the real thing!)
Every time you notice and respond to one of your own perceptions
and/or ideas,
you make yourself more perceptive and/or creative. Each time you
fail to
respond at least in some way to one of your own perceptions and/or
ideas, you
make yourself less perceptive or creative. Know this not only
from your own
experience, but from the very most widely agreed-upon and accepted
descriptive
"natural law" of psychology or behavior: "You get
more of what you reinforce."
Each time you notice and describe - to someone near you, or to
a tape recorder,
or even in a more limited sense to a notepad - one of your own
perceptions, you
accomplish these things:
1. You reinforce that perception. The more you describe
about it, the more you will perceive about it, and about
things relating to it, until you find yourself perceiving
and understanding far more about it and generally than
you
dreamed were possible.
2. You reinforce the behavior and trait of being
perceptive. Your own present level of consciousness
and
intelligence right now are largely the product of how
much
of your own perception you got to respond to and act
upon
in some way earlier on. To hear the most extreme form
of
this effect, get a description of the event and its
aftermath from anyone who has ever really had to lay
his
life on the line for something he believed in or was
necessary, such as plunging into a desperately dangerous
situation to save someone else's life, and who survived
to
tell about it. By a little attention, system, and
persistence, you can have the growth without the danger.
(And without falling into the trap some fall into, who
become repetitive dare-devils in a vain effort to recapture
such moment-of-truth effects!)
--And if the perception being responded to is, at the start, subtle,
therefore
arising in parts of the brain fairly remote from where we lodge
our loud verbal
left-brain consciousness -- then you
3. Reinforce those remote regions of the brain more
and
more onto line with your immediate consciousness - together
with those regions' resources and intelligence. This
may
well be our most powerful and rewarding area for growth.
There, in basic, is a key part of what is said in further detail
by our
well-received book The Einstein Factor. Much more is said in this
extraordinary
book--but here and now, already on your own screen and potentially
in your own
printer, is some more information crucial to you!.... How crucial?
Only you can
appreciate once you see what it is.....
Practical applications abound - if you bring more of your brain
and mind online
for current operations, ranging from answer-finding and creative
problem-solving, to intelligence-building, to profoundly imnproved,
eased and
accelerated learning, to health aspects, to invention and discovery
and the
arts and design and athletic performance and many other things...........
YOU ARE BRIGHTER THAN YOU THINK! - much brighter!
For example: Even WHILE you're asking a question on virtually
any matter, part
of you Already is perceiving its best answer!
Whether or not you notice it doing so, your mind's eye always
immediately shows
that answer to you--
--The best, most ingeniously effective answer. Accurately
and immediately! That's you, your more comprehensive
brain
resources, far brighter than you've come to think of
yourself as being.
Don't take our word for it - or reflexively dismiss this either.
Simply look!
Simply look for yourself. Thousands of people, all over the world,
have learned
how and where to look in their own mind's eye. Not one of thousands
has been
unable to, once taught. 10% or more of people already know where
and how to
look for this effect without ever having been taught to do so.
Project
Renaissance does have back-up procedures which ensure that everyone,
without
exception thus far, becomes able to tune in this natural reflex
effect. Through
July 4, 1997: we will send you those back-up procedures for free
in return for
2 oz. postage and return-address label, or by request with any
book order. --Or
you can simply e-mail us the request for these back-up instructions
at
Win@thebestweb.com and we'll download those back-up procedures
for you for
free.
100% success, not only with those we've taught directly. Physics
professor
Charles P. Reinert, who performed the first independently conducted
state
university studies measuring some of the effects of Image-Streaming,
has
himself taught this and related procedures to thousands of students
without a
single failure and he, like thousands of others, learned it from
one of our
books. --And he also has had 100% success rate, without exception,
in teaching
Image-Streaming to his students...
All we're really saying is that it's very good for you to pay
attention to your
own perceptions, and to respond to what you perceive.
> You can build this range of effects entirely on
your own,
unassisted, continually taking whatever techniques you
discover and using them on the problem of how to build
even
better such techniques, then using these in turn to
build
even better such techniques. As each technique reveals
itself to you it will bring in a wealth of understanding
and perspective that transforms everything that has
gone
before for you up to that point.
> Or you can take the short-cut and convenience,
of
teaching yourself some of this from the books and materials
of Project Renaissance. Two books most recommended at
this
time are the above-mentioned Beyond Teaching And Learning
and The Einstein Factor. (Details available at
http://www.winwenger.com>)
You can choose to stay where you are. Or to follow some program
or leader who
has "the answers." --Or work with our "open-book"
approach, with Project
Renaissance or on your own. But before you make such a choice,
we urge you to
pay at least a little notice and response to some of your own
perceptions. or
to look for yourself into some of the effects of various of the
simple Project
Renaissance procedures. For example, regarding what we were just
saying about
part of you already instantly seeing answer to questions which
you consciously
believe cannot be solved or that you, at least, cannot solve them.
We've
already published in this e-magazine, in this column, easy-to-follow
step-by-step instructions by means of which you can solve them!
If you didn't
have the wisdom to download them then, they are still in various
of our books.
Free Instructions Here & Now, For At Least Some of You:
For many of you reading this now, it is already as easy as this:
1. Get someone to be your listener, or set up blank tape on a
simple tape
recorder.
2. Decide upon some question or problem you'd truly like to solve
or find
answer to.
3. Expect to see something surprising in your mind's eye once
you look in.
4. Look in, and go with your first impression of what you see,
feel, smell,
taste or hear there. Describe that in rich detail because, whatever
it is and
how seemingly unrelated at first it may seem to your question,
that imagery
impression does contain somehow your answer!
5. Get 2 more sets of image-impression the same way. Each is to
be the same
answer, but shown in an entirely different way, with different
images. What's
the same when everything else is the core of your answer. Generate
enough
detail from each that you can perform the next step easily.
6. Find the elements or themes in common to those three sets of
image or
impression.
7. If the answer isn't already obvious to you from that, brainstorm
all the
possible ways in which those common elements could or might be
somehow an
answer to your question or problem, and see if you don't, somewhere
in there,
hit what you were looking for.
The parts of your brain you are contacting, don't work in words
but in sensory
images. This is your oldest, strongest, most powerful information-processing
system. You thought in images from the first days of infancy -
maybe even
before, since fetuses dream in REM sleep. You did not lose this
most powerful
information processing system when parents and teachers taught
you to sit up
straight and stop daydreaming and don't gaze out the window, look
ahead instead
and pay attention! 80% of your brain is still involved in visual
response,
according to EEG studies. Your most powerful information-processing
system
merely went underground and for many of you now reading this,
it's reflexive
responses to contexts and answers to whatever questions are still
close-enough
in reach that you can already do the above or similar steps and
get the desired
results immediately.
>>> Half or more of us DO, though, have to learn Image-Streaming
first from
more detailed instructions and a few of us need to work through
one or more of
those free-for-postage/label back-up instructions, or instructions
free upon
request (until July 4, 1997) to win@thebestweb.com>
The parts of your brain you are contacting with the above 4 steps
don't work in
words but in sensory images. The more sensory detail in which
you describe
whatever impression, the more and better contact with these further
reaches of
your brain. (You might prefer also to do this search-&-describe
with eyes
closed to see more freely these subtler impressions.) Get enough
sensory detail
and the intellectual or insight content you were after, takes
care of itself.
Hint: digging directly for the answer or insight throws you back
toward your
verbal left brain, which plods along at the pace of the language
you speak and
so can get around to only a few factors on any issue. Instead,
describe
directly those sensory impressions, building contact with where
you are trying
to get your information from until some of these, too subtle initially
for your
loud left brain to have picked up on on its own, come into focus
to become your
a-HA!
Like moving your left foot and then your right foot freely each
in its turn,
you report out the sensory data first and then figure out or let
be revealed to
you what it means, so you aren't hobbled in moving forward, or
trying to jump
along the whole way on just one foot alone. We have learned that
the most
"left-brained" people aren't using their left brains
nearly as well as they
could were they to engage also some of the faculties of their
right -- any more
than purely "right-brained" people who need to develop
more of the resources in
fact of their right by engaging some of the faculties of their
left! Let's not
go about life hopping on one foot alone!
More on Answer-Finding:
The kinds of problem which do solve as a result of our reviewing
what we know
about the problem situation, already did so. What we have left
all around us
are the questions and problems and difficulties which did not
solve that way.
There, what we "know" about the problem has become the
problem by standing
between us and the fresh perceptions needed wherein to find our
answer. These
receptive visual thinking-based, Einsteinian Discovery Technique
methods are
arguably by far the best way yet to get perceptive on even our
most difficult,
stubborn, crucial problems.
Get beyond what you expect, based on all that you "know,"
that the answer
"ought to be!" Go for the unexpected, the surprise in
what comes up in your
imagery. If what comes up is what you would expect see in that
context, have
you gotten beyond what was standing between you and the fresh
perceptions you
needed? Surprise is a good indicator that you've gotten beyond
what you
consciously expect the answer ought to be, toward more direct
perceptions of
what is.
Once you've developed your sensory data by describing it in richly
textured
detail to your listener or tape recorder, you can interact with
your imagery in
ways to get more directly to understand what your imagery means
- without too
much distorting what your subtler resources are saying to you--
--By doing the above 7 steps, you've already provided the above
three kinds of
trait or behavioral reinforcement - of the particular perceptions
themselves;
of the behavior of being perceptive, and of the richer regions
of your brain
being brought more online with immediately useful, focussed, verbal
consciousness (showing up as apparent intelligence-gain, among
other effects).
The first time you work through this it could take you as much
as an hour
(still worthwhile to use on problems and questions which have
gone unresolved
for expensive years!). Second time and question, it might take
you 40 minutes
to work all the way through. Subsequent times and issues, conveniently
down to
very few minutes.
We strongly suggest that you then de-brief this whole experience
either to
another person (directly or by telephone), or to notebook or computer.
This
change of medium, and resulting change of the secondary associations
and
feedbacks evoked for you by communicating into this different
medium, should
add further to your understanding.
Then or later, we also strongly suggest that you ask your subtler
faculties:
"How can I make sure that I'm on the right track with this
understanding of the
answer?" Observe and describe whatever comes than enables
you to test whether
you've pretty well got the answer. Note also it is good to verify
by other
means as well, to the extent that an issue is important to you
or to others
affected by it, before acting to implement your answer. But test,
don't just
let an answer sit there reinforcing the trait of inaction or procrastination.
Then or later, we also suggest that you ask your subtler faculties:
"What more
do I need to know in this context?" Observe and describe
whatever images or
impressions emerge for you in response to that question.
Then or later, we also suggest that you ask your image-stream
or subtle
faculties: "What's a good, practical, concrete first step
to acting upon this
understanding? Observe and describe accordingly.
You don't have to look to us or to anyone else for the answers.
You are,
indeed, far brighter than you think, and your own testing of the
above will
demonstrate that. We do offer short-cuts through our books and
occasional
training workshops. --But in the larger sense, you already have
what you need,
just as you already have your own answers..... It's entirely up
to you.
--------------------------------------
Upcoming in winsights: what if you could acquire years of easy,
rewarding
proficiency in almost any subject, skill or profession, in only
days or even
hours? By any of eight various systems you now can. Become an
effective expert
for a tiny fraction of the cost in time, attention and resources
it now takes
to hire and manage one! Learn easily and immediately all those
things which
seemed to be worthwhile, but too difficult or involved or which
had to be put
off under pressure of more immediate demands. Look for this information
to be
freely given to you in easy-to-follow, specific steps and explanation,
in some
of the upcoming installments of winsights.
TOP
Make Learning Easier Part 1
Learning Tips For All Ages
Just as in other multiplex dynamic situations such as games
(where "a
miss is as good as a mile" and even an inch makes huge
differences in
outcome): even the littlest things can make huge differences
in how
well or how poorly you learn. --Or how well others whom you
care
about are able to learn. Lack of some obvious practice or
strategy
can get you life-branded as a poor learner. Picking up on
some little
knack can get you on a roll instead and mark you as a great,
gifted
learner or even a genius. Here are some tips on some of these
little
knacks. If some seem overly obvious to you, others might
not. If with
some of these you think they couldn't possibly make that
much
difference, try them and see for yourself.
You've taken too many people's word for too many things.
It's time
you check some things out for yourself instead of waiting
for
school-based authorities (with their own mixed agendas and
purposes)
to tell you what's what. So--
Some Hot Tips for Little Knacks of Learning:
1. Turn "dry facts" into memorable experiences.
Use your imagination
and involve all your senses.
For example, turn the "dry facts" about such historic
events as the
Battle of New Orleans into: hunkering down behind hasty
fortifications in the heat, with the smell of mud and sweat
and
gunpowder, watch the British main force coming directly at
where
you've fortified most strongly instead of where you were
weakest and
the mixed anxiety and relief feelings that gives you there
at those
main fortifications.... And the mix of feelings you get weeks
later,
after all that you and everyone went through to win that
victory,
when you learn that the War of 1812 with England had actually
ended
before you had to fight that battle.....
Or, for example, take the "dry facts" of C=2 pi
R or A = pi R
squared. Imagine being an inch worm the length of pi chasing
his own
tail around and across circles and observe everything you
can from
being that inchworm. Or measure off the relationships involved
in
terms of your own physical body, discover where pi comes
to from here
to there in your own body, feel those relationships in your
own
body....
--Or be a participle dangling on the end of a sentence or
clause.
With great effort and resolve, pull yourself back from the
precipice
toward a more comfortable place in that sentence.....
--Imagine the mixed exhaustion and elation and other feelings
Thomas
Edison must have felt all through his body when, at long
last, he
realized that he was looking at a successful filament for
his light
bulb....
--Or the astonishment and excitement Elias Howe must have
felt as he
emerged from the sweaty breathless dry-mouthed terrors of
his
nightmare. --When he realized that those odd holes in the
spearheads
of the attacking cannibals in his nightmare were the key
solution for
the sewing machine he had been trying for so long to invent....
Make your "dry facts" utterly memorable!
2. Talk your way through the key points or issues. --WITH
someone.
Talk problems through with a pal, whether these are math
problems,
science problems, problems of the school, at home or personal
problems. (Also keep a private diary or journal for these
things,
and/or record these things also onto a tape recorder.)
Take turns. Going through the problem, one of you describes
everything that's going through your awareness as you do
that, not
just what you're "supposed" to be talking about
- to give the rest of
your mind the chance to relate to the problem.
Your pal is listener, not interrupting, just listening and
urging you
on when need be, until you hit your "a-HA!" Take
turns and be patient
enough as a listener to let your pal hit his or her own "a-HA!"
instead of letting on how you've already figured things out.
When it's your turn to describe freely and to have a go at
solving
the problem, allow your own ideas and perceptions, and descriptions
of your ideas and perceptions, to surprise you!--Because
often the
answer comes from unexpected directions if you let it, and
balks when
you don't.
3. Experiment and Record:
If a problem seems difficult, experiment with putting the
problem
into a different form and solving that one, then come back
to the
main one. Also--
Experiment with imagining whatever's in that problem being
bigger or
smaller, or changing with time, or standing it upside down,
or being
in different colors, as another way to "get a handle
on it."
After such experimentation, and after talking problems through
with a
pal, review what you did to see if you can find out from
what
happened, something that will make your next problem-solving
be
easier and more accurate.
4. Treat what you don't understand, in what you're learning,
like
problems and do to them what you did to problems in #'s 2
& 3 above.
Whatever the state of your learning and your history as a
learner,
some parts of your learning have gone easier than have other
parts.
Not all of which is attributable to good or bad teachers
or texts.
Compare everything that was going on for you in your most
successful
leanings with the counterparts of those factors in your other
subjects. Brainstorm all possible factors, don't edit until
you have
maybe 50 or more items. Then sit down to see what items you
might
find it useful to give some attention to.
5. To make sure you understand something, explain it to someone
much
younger than you are and make THEM understand it.
One of our most famous educators, Jerome S. Bruner, once
said that
you can teach any idea or concept to anyone at any age level,
provided you put it to him in his own conceptual vocabulary.
That is,
in terms that he already understands. In your search to find
the
terms which someone much younger than you understands, you
strengthen
your own grasp on that point of understanding immensely.
To the youngest among my readers:
You might not have to get a teacher or parent to explain any of
the above to
you. --Just get together with two or three friends. Each of you
take turns
explaining the above to each other, in detail....
To all of you reading this:
You have brains enough to run a galaxy. What are you doing with
them?
One of the most frequently used paths to genius: find a knack
that works for
you. Get on a roll. Find ways to stay on that roll. Find ways
to return to
being on that roll, until so much else falls into that roll that
even you begin
to realize that you are, indeed, a genius......
TOP
Make Learning Easier Part 2
One of the Ways YOU Can Learn Like A Genius
Of eight major types of accelerated/enhanced learning presented
in one of our
recent books, I can give you at least a glimpse of one here. We
call it
"Periscopic Learning;" also "Borrowed Genius"
and a few other things.
How To Learn Through A Periscope--
* We had enrolled our 4-year-old daughter in a neighborhood swim
team, not for
the sake of competing but simply for safety reasons, to ensure
she would be
competent in the water. During one of the team's meets, in one
heat a clerical
error had her swim as the only small kid among 8, 9 and 10 year
olds. To our
amazement, she swam far faster than ever before and finished right
in the
middle of the pack. "How did you do that?!?" we asked
her. Her reply: "I
made-believe I was one of the big kids."
* In Camelot, Merlin was working with young King Arthur at a point
where Arthur
was imagining himself to be a hawk. Asked Merlin of Arthur: "What
does the hawk
know, that Arthur does not know?" (According to the story,
that was when the
future king discovered that political boundaries were not visible
from above,
and resolved to fashion together one England.)
* Like projecting your view through a periscope: let some aspect
or part of you
"become" a whole, distinct person who happens to be
the world's greatest genius
in what you are trying to learn. Through that new vantage point
cum periscope,
see and understand easily what had been obscure to you before,
as the hawk saw
what Arthur had not...
* ...Just create such genius in the same sense that tribesmen
of the Bear Clan
wore the heads of bears to better understand the wilderness from
which they
made their living... A way of learning independently discovered
by thousands of
human cultures around the world.....
* ...Or take the story of one young lad. He was about to "not
make" his high
school's baseball team. He worked with us during an hour of "putting
on the
heads" of his various baseball heroes. He soon discovered
through one of those
"hero heads" how to get extra focus on the baseball
by swinging, not at the
baseball itself but at an imaginary flyspeck on that baseball.
He made the
team; his first ten games he batted 800; at season's end he was
voted MVP by
not only his team but his school's entire league.
* --Or in the same sense that in our very first 1977 experiment
which launched
Project Renaissance, a secretary starting to take violin lessons
leaped from
raw beginner to advanced student in two lessons by our special
way of "putting
on the head" of great violinists. She came by to visit our
second experiment
three weeks later and gave us a very nice concert. (ALL of us
were getting
similar results in our chosen areas even before we perfected this
method!)
Each of the 47 diverse methods for Periscopic Learning, through
Project
Renaissance's strategies of contextual projection and description,
enable one
to learn with understanding, or gain in skills, years'-worth in
only hours:
truly "accelerated learning!" Periscopic Learning is
only one of eight types of
accelerated learning method unique to Project Renaissance. The
strongest of
these also feature different combinations of Socratic and Einsteinian
process.
(Socratic in that one examines, or is led to examine, inner and
outer
perceptions and to describe in some detail what he or she discovers
there.
Einsteinian in that one sets mental imagery loose and then, as
closely as
possible, observes what it does to see what one can discover or
learn from what
he or she observes. The act of describing what you perceive, a
la Socratic
practice, reinforces both the particular perception and the behavior
of being
perceptive. Einsteinian imagery not only comes from where we do
our
pre-conscious understanding but, being initially subtle, arises
in parts of the
brain remote from our immediate verbal consciousness. --So that
to describe,
while examining it, Einsteinian imagery not only reinforces as
above, but also
reinforces previously unengaged parts of our brain onto line with
immediate
verbal consciousness, making more and more of whatever is our
intelligence,
developed or undeveloped, immediately available to us and enriching
our life.)
Periscopic learning (where you move your point of view into another
focus and
look around from there to see and understand what you normally
have not been
seeing and understanding) first came to our own attention in the
work by
Vladimir Raikov, as reported in Ostrander and Schroeder's Psychic
Discoveries
Behind the Iron Curtain. Students in an art class, each hypnotized
into
believing he was Rembrandt, sophisticated their art prodigiously.
Many years
later, I saw videos of Raikov in a music conservatory, working
with students
each of whom had been hypnotized into believing he was Rachmaninoff
and whose
piano-playing abruptly went to several "next levels."
I just wish Raikov hadn't
shot himself in the foot by going for stage money when he came
briefly to the
US a few years ago: I am convinced he knows a lot more than was
apparent from
his visit.
Fortunately, hypnosis is definitely not needed. Although, it is
featured in the
Merlin story above, in Raikov's work in Russia, and in the somewhat
similar
work by America's own Dr. Jean Houston (whose work with Hillary
Rodham Clinton
was so willfully misunderstood by the press). One of Dr. Houston's
students,
hypnotized for a few minutes into imagining she was attending
a full semester
at the world's leading art academy, came back with her art sophisticated
to an
extent which suggested that she had. My little daughter in that
swim meet
certainly never resorted to hypnosis. In all the time I've worked
with and
developed those 47 various "periscopic learning" techniques,
only twice have I
ever resorted to using hypnosis as an experiment, and clearly
found that such
effects are far harder to achieve by hypnosis than by our totally
hypnosis-free
Project Renaissance methods. Sorry to take some of the romance
out of the
field, but that is our experience.
With or without hypnosis, the fact remains that by the stronger
of these
periscopic learning methods, and by each of our seven other main
types of
accelerated learning method combining Socratic and Einsteinian
principles, one
may easily learn in several days, sometimes in only hours, and
with far fuller
understanding, proficiencies which otherwise conventionally require
arduous
years to build. --Especially in the sciences and in most of the
humanities -
and, oddly enough, athletics, where kinesthetic understanding
is involved.
Understanding is the key here: these are not memorization techniques.
These
methods are not especially helpful in courses whose contents are
mainly the
memorization of things, especially the temporary memorization
for tests and
then forgetting, which typifies far too many classes and classrooms
today.
Don't turn to our kind of method if what you aim is to memorize
something for a
test.
I hope that a few of those reading this still put a positive value
on
understanding.
TOP
Solution of the Month
A new series within the Winsights series. For years, the writer
has been
creating and conducting thinktanks using various methods for creative
problem-solving. On some occasions he has been able to run several
thinktanks
at the same time in parallel on the same issue or problem, each
using different
methods. --Perhaps the only place on Earth where this has been
done, and very
instructive ABOUT those methods.
This present series-within-the-series features, once a month,
a different
apparent solution to one of the great "impossible" problems
of this country or
of the world. Following its exhibit in "winsights,"
the solution will then
migrate to our permanent homepage at http://www.winwenger.com/
This present
article shows us how to dispose of our overflowing nuclear wastes...
Can We Make Part of the Problem
Into Part of the Solution?
Can the most nightmarish part of our environmental and global
pollution problem
actually provide a major part of the solution?
Let's look at power sources---
* There's only so much hydroelectric potential to go around.
* Conventional, fossil-fuel-burning power stations--
--use up fossil fuels(!);
--pollute air and water;
--worsen our accumulating world greenhouse CO2 effect; and
--if oil-fired, worsen our trade deficits and national dependency.
* Solar power, after many decades, we've never yet managed to
master the art or
science of making economical on a large scale. Hopes for space-based
solar
power have slipped another generation further back with the successive
retreats
of plans for the U.S. Space Station.
* Geothermal power pollutes air and water.
* Ocean waves and tidal inlets, after many decades we've never
managed to make
into an economical power source.
* Temperature differences within different layers of part of the
ocean, after
more than a decade we've not yet managed to make economically
feasible as a
power source. Perhaps the same principle could become feasible
with the sharper
temperature differences found in groundwater in desert regions.
(Aluminum and
bauxite companies, and municipal power companies in the southwest,
please
note!)
* Controlled fusion power seems more out of reach now than when
we first
invented nuclear reactors, and "cold fusion" has gone
into the books as an
example of myth and hysteria in science.
* Conservation of power, as relatively a power source, has begun
to bump into
its limits. Thermal insulation of buildings has run into radon.
We don't seem
to be able to push Detroit into much higher fuel efficiencies.
Social
resistance to further measures is climbing unless we radically
adjust
incentives. Only the computer revolution has significantly reduced
power
demand, and how much further can that aspect go?
* Nuclear reactors are not only directly dangerous a la 3-Mile
Island and
Chernobyl, but their greatest problem is the continued accumulation
of
radioactive wastes, already far more than we've figured out how
to handle and
potentially the most lethal threat to all life on Earth. To build
any more
conventional nuclear reactors would be one of the most irresponsible
decisions
in the annals of history!
--So what IS left? --Those very same radioactive wastes already
produced!
The end product of radioactivity is heat. --Enough heat, when
brought together,
to melt and pump sodium as a thermal conductor, or oil or steam
if less than
that, to drive turbines or other power-generating devices.
Can there be much doubt that, as a working power source, a given
set of
radioactive "waste" would receive much more careful
handling than it does now
as "waste?" Still dangerous, but the assembly of radioactive
wastes into
"secondary," thermal reactors has to be counted as a
major safety improvement
over today's situation.
Every unit of power generated from radioactive "waste"
is that much less
greenhouse effect, that much less air and water pollution, that
much less
fossil fuel used up, that much less foreign trade deficit and
dependency
resulting from more conventional power generating.
Unlike conventional nuclear reactors, such "secondary"
reactors from
radioactive "waste" will not generate more such waste.
In two senses it will
make less such waste, in that--
1. It moves stuff from essentially uncontrolled "dumps"
into much more carefully handled power plants; and
2. Its power can begin to replace conventional nuclear
power, thus reducing the rate at which further such
wastes
are being created!
Design and building of these "secondary reactors" will
also be a useful
conversion of some of the technical resources of our dwindling
defence
industry, and a good spur to our economy --perhaps coming at a
time most needed
in our economic cycle!
In the 1940s and '50s we made the basic national decision, echoed
elsewhere, to
build regular nuclear power plants and to treat their non-power
output as
waste, rather than as part of a thermal, secondary power retrieval
system.
Whatever the economics were then as regards such secondary retrieval,
those
economics have certainly changed since, and the whole issue certainly
bears
rethinking.
When we originally made that basic national decision, we were
in the throes of
a technological fantasy about limitless clean nuclear power. Fusion
power was
just around the corner, we had not yet come to appreciate how
hard it is to
keep up safety standards in large-scale enterprises and over long
periods of
time, and we'd certainly not anticipated or come to appreciate
the extent of
the problem that we are now posed vis-a-vis horrendously accumulating,
dangerous, nowhere safely disposable radioactive wastes. Each
of these factors
by itself fully justifies we rethink that decision of not converting
radioactive wastes into secondary thermal retrieval power reactors.
Taken
together, it's quite remarkable that no one is exploring the issue.
It looks like the main reason this recourse has lain neglected
so long, is that
it is such an easy, low-cost way to both generate power and to
handle the
wastes. It's not "cutting-edge;" the romantic frontiers
of technology have long
gone far beyond it so no one is looking there to make an exciting
career. It's
about as exciting as burning garbage for power--which in fact
it is! But what
it could do for our power needs colliding with our environmental
needs
colliding with our political needs colliding with the needs of
people living
near where those teeming-over wastes are being stored? --Now that
does look
pretty exciting....
--And whatever the economics were then; and whatever the economics
may be now:
there is a very simple, direct and easy way to change those economics
for the
better. Exempt from all taxes for a decade, income from commercial
exploitation
of a long list of substances hitherto known as dangerous and toxic
wastes!
(--Including radioactive wastes.) Tax such income at half rates
for the decade
following and at normal rates thereafter. To take advantage of
the tax break,
all sorts of uses will come out of the woodwork to use up such
"wastes." Any
foregone tax revenues during that interval would be many, MANY
times made up
for by what we would otherwise have to spend in protecting and
restoring our
livingspace from those dangerous wastes, and our absolute societal
and global
costs saved would be many times more even than that!
Until World War II, a major part of the history of the industrial
revolution
was a matter of each generation finding commercial uses for the
waste
by-products and overlooked resources of the previous generation.
Since then we
appear to have let matters in this regard get away from us. The
proposed tax
incentive would bring us back in line with this historical precedent,
and
further would be very much in line with current social efforts
to reclaim and
recycle specific wastes such as plastic and aluminum.
Conclusion: we should immediately proceed to study the feasibility
and simple
design of secondary thermal recovery power plants using some of
our radioactive
wastes. The wastes we are so anxious (and unable) to control now
should be made
available to commerce under appropriately controlled and well-understood
conditions. We should also begin immediately to determine how
best to define
and apply the proposed tax incentive to encourage the commercial
using-up of
all sorts of toxic and dangerous substances with which we've let
our world
become overrun.
Step One: please discuss this proposal with at least one other
person whom you
respect.
---
Step Two: if this idea survives your Step One, please get in touch
with us
either care of this publication or via our homepage at http://www.winwenger.com
or e-mail me at win@thebestweb.com/ Be advised: if more than two
of you
respond, depending upon the quality of response I will give you
each other's
addresses and let you take matters from there. We've too many
apparent
solutions, to too many of the seemingly impossible great problems,
to push for
any one of these; moreover, our efforts are toward equipping the
free
individual to be better able to solve problems around him, and
empowering him
to do so. If anything is going to be done with this proposed solution,
YOU are
the one who will have to do it. If you have reason to care about
the nuclear
wastes problem or about this our suggested approach to it, please
get in touch.
Step Two-and-a-Half: ANY proposed new solution to ANY major problem
is, by
definition, controversial. If this one stirs any interest at all,
I expect to
see as much flak on it as on my space-launch invention released
this June 26.
Flak there will be. Some of it may be justified. If you have criticism
of this
solution, please send it to me together with permission for me
to publish it in
a future column -- which, if its good, I very well might and thank
you!
TOP
Your Personal Empowerment
1. Regarding first-hand observation and solidly skeptical testing:
Our main
purpose is to spark people at all levels into looking at matters
afresh and
into checking things out for themselves, first-hand, putting various
issues to
test instead of simply going along with what everyone believes.
That concern includes not "mere ordinary citizens" but
specifically scientists
and professionals as well, of all kinds. Science may be the best
thing we have
going on this planet, but we have to remember that "science"
is first and
foremost a human social group behavioral phenomenon first (including
all that
ethological bother of in-group and out-group behavior and territoriality!!!),
and what it is supposed to be, only a very long second. In a field
where you
(or the institution which pays your salary) survive by grants;
you'd best make
sure that your research results come out like that grant source
expects! Tell
it like it actually happens and you're out in the cold - you scientists
among
my readers are under far more pressure to conform to conventional
view, and to
slide past present and past oversights and gaffes, than is our
"mere ordinary
citizen."
(--And if you are a grant source - especially with public money:
you
necessarily have to screen out all the wild ideas and wild people
from whom,
historically, nearly all our true breakthroughs came. You don't
want a
golden-fleece award to come looking for you! --And since resources
and people
in each field are drawn to where the money is, and virtually every
field is now
financed largely by public money: virtually every field has been
sterilized of
its potential for major, rapid breakthroughs. --Breakthroughs
which would be
happening onrush if the field were first the true science it is
supposed to be,
and other things second.)
Look with your own eyes, see things first hand for yourself, and
you are in for
surprises. Don't just drift with the cultural tide like so many
dead fish.
Be skeptical. That is important. That is the impulse which, when
we act upon
it, moves us to find truth, and which has moved the more readily
empirical
sciences ahead of other human pursuits. When we deal with new
techniques for
various effects, as we do often in this column, we don't and can't
depend upon
belief to make things happen for us. Using belief to make things
happen, makes
for very sloppy techniques at best. The techniques (among other
phenomena) we
address here work for very nearly 100% of anyone trying them.
Flip the light
switch and, whatever our state of belief, the lights come on (nearly)
100% of
the time. But for this to work --
--But for this skepticism to work at all for us, requires that
magic word,
"act" - the folded-arms, closed-face-&-mind kind
of skepticism does us no good
at all. Folded-arms automatic dysbelief is no more productive
than is automatic
naive belief.
Easily 90% of everything I've been taught has proven to be contradicted
by what
I can plainly see for myself. Which makes me wonder about what
you've been
taught. --Which makes me wonder about what you are teaching. --Which
makes me
wonder about what I'm teaching! Frankly, what I can see for myself,
as
imperfect even as that medium is, I trust a lot more these days
than I do what
I've been taught.
"Everyone knows" that you are stuck with the intelligence
you were born with -
meaning the lack thereof. More refined levels of argument have
so much
percentage of your intelligence due to genes and so much percent
to
environment. Think that dynamic situation through. What percent
of the outcome
of play at second base is due to the thrown baseball? Clearly,
even slight
variations in how you combine the effects of baseball, fielder,
runner, second
baseman, crowd reaction etc., will make huge differences in outcome
all over
the ballpark! With that one statement I just destroyed maybe six
of the last
eight major books on the subject of human intelligence. --And
as for one slight
variation--
--As for one slight variation, environmental in this instance
the dynamic
interplay of factors producing a given level of intelligence down
the line:
techniques we publish here in Winsights, techniques for receptive
visual
thinking as one of many means to work the various parts of the
brain more
closely together, in independently conducted state university
studies have
demonstrated an average 20 points I.Q. gain for each 25 hours
of easy,
pleasant, entertaining practice!
That ease and degree of intelligence gain just doesn't fit "what
everyone
knows," so chances are you never heard of the study until
now (inquire to:
Department of Chemistry & Physics, Southwest State University,
Marshall, MN
56258). E-mail us at Win@thebestweb.com and we'll be glad to show
you, for
free, how to replicate those and additional effects.
Nor does it fit "what people know" that in almost any
field, topic or skill,
including especially the content of the sciences, that by any
of a wide range
of methods, one may readily gain years of proficiency in only
hours or a day or
so! (Read how to do so in the book Beyond Teaching And Learning.)
Installments
# 8 & 9 in this Winsights series will give you at least some
of that.
--Nor did it fit my expectations when, in 1979, a classroom of
EMRs (Educable
Mentally Retarded persons), conducted in Windsor, Ontario by St.
Clair
Community College, using one of our procedures (the "Beachhead"
procedure in
Techniques of Original, Inspired Scientific Discovery, Technical
Invention, and
Innovation, were able to come up with original - and workable!
inventions. 27
were in the class; 17 were able to give attention to the task;
every one of
those 17 mild retardates was able to come up with an original
workable
invention! Retarded people just don't do such things. To be an
inventor, one is
supposed to be six different kinds of genius.....???
2. Empowerment:
The point being that what everyone knows, especially what everyone
knows about
everyone's limitations, can stand some modification. YOU are brighter
than you
think. So is the person next to you. Very little of your intelligence
is online
with where you are conscious from. Given the way we raise children
in this
culture and treat one-another, it's a miracle that any of your
intelligence got
reinforced into consciousness instead of having to go underground.
Few if any
of us actually intended the vast array of suppression and shut-down
effects
with which we've laced each other's existence, but maybe a brief
history lesson
is in order at this point.
Until a few hundred years ago, it required the more-or-less willing
services of
many, many human beasts-of-burden to be able to support a few
people in more
appropriately human conditions. A few of those few, in turn, would
deal with
the larger needs and issues of the culture while the rest wasted
their bounty
and opportunity a la Thorstein Veblen. Only those cultures survived
long which
found ways to make most of their people content to be beasts of
burden, hewers
of wood and haulers of water. The stabler cultures evolved a zillion
features
and practices to assure that outcome. Other cultures without that
stabilizing
feature disintegrated or became absorbed by those which featured
it.
Then came steam power and the industrial revolution. We no longer
needed hewers
of wood and haulers of water, thank you! we needed instead interchangeable
cogs
in the machine, with technicians and middle-level managers to
maintain it.
Everything transformed - or so we thought. Where previously we
had fought over
who got to rule, now we fought over how that rule was conducted.
We went
through ideologies, world wars, all kinds of paroxysms reflecting
the changing
nature of society's need vis-a-vis what it means to be human.
--But: we changed
almost nothing. That vast webwork of practices, a few conscious
or deliberate
but the vast majority unconscious and reflexive, which had been
used to make
most people content to be hewers of wood or haulers of water,
now were used to
make most people content to be technicians and middle-level managers.
Bang! --Here came the information revolution. Now we no longer
need
middle-level managers, and soon will no longer need most of the
technicians
either. All that struggle and redefinition to do over again!......
Now we have
to learn to use one-another as full human beings, here in the
information age.
Nothing less will do. We can cut to the quick and start treating
with
one-another - and with ourselves! as full-fledged human beings,
or we've got a
lot more wars and ideologies and struggles to go through.
Before I say this next thing, let me give you my definition of
one term we've
bandied about, a definition which could lend some meaning to all
of this. The
term, which everyone has used to mean something unintelligibly
different from
each other's usages, is: "Democracy." "Democracy"
I define as "people having a
meaningful say in the decisions which affect them."
With that definition, unlike the others, one can look at a given
situation and
specify exactly how much "democracy" is actually present.
Why is this an issue for us in this context?
Every aspect of your life is being constrained, assaulted, reshaped,
without
your having an input into the decisions of the decision-makers
who are thus
affecting your life. More to the point, it has become convenient
to the various
establishments conducting our society, that most of you find the
world too
confusing, bewildering, and uncomfortable to think about very
deeply or to look
closely at. It's the working belief of most who are in those establishments
that most of you aren't worth consulting with anyway, that there's
little if
anything of value which any of you "laymen" (from their
perspective) could
contribute to the outcomes. It's easier for them if you don't
get in their
hair. They prefer that you settle for the evening TV news, some
beer, and maybe
a joke or so at the office.
--Not that any or many of "them" are conscious of this
attitude. Most have
verbal-based attitudes and beliefs which run in a very different
vein. But
"they" are embedded - as are we - in a massive, nearly
invisible soft web of
reflexes and practices shaped for us all in those bygone centuries
when most
people of a society had to be made content to be mere hewers of
wood and
haulers of water.
I respectfully submit: if some major national or world problem
is affecting
you, your children, your well-being, much of what you've struggled
so on behalf
of: that you own that problem as surely as does the president
or agency head or
legislative leader or the company boss. You have every right to
input on that
issue, whether we call that "democracy" or "only
fair!" The second part of what
Winsights is about, week by week, is the fact that contrary to
what everyone
knows, you are fully capable of learning about, dealing with,
finding effective
answer to, just about any major problem or issue! You are more
than a match for
almost any situation, if you pay enough attention to your own
first-hand
perceptions and free up a few notches from what everyone knows.
You can find
effective answers where our pitifully helpless chronic experts
cannot.
From time to time in Winsights, we provide a working tool or so
such as in
installment # 5, "Over-the-Wall Problem-Solving" or
in our various other
published techniques on effective/creative problem solving, on
the prime
intelligence-building procedure Image-Streaming and on other enhancers.
But the
main thing is: that you begin paying more attention to your own
first-hand
actual perceptions, as contrasted to what everyone knows and what
you "know."
Go see for yourself; test things out for yourself. Test what?
For starters--
Everyone knows you can't meaningfully increase intelligence. For
free, learn
and practice the procedure, as a test, which has thus far demonstrated
20
points I.Q. gain + other more significant kinds of gain for 25
hours' easy,
entertaining practice.
Everyone knows people can't learn a new skill or even a profession
in a day; it
takes years of hard, concentrated work and sacrifice. Many test
by getting a
little of that effect going with Winsights installments # 8 &
9, then see where
to go from there if you like that kind of results....
Everyone knows hardly anyone can invent or innovate, or make meaningful
scientific discoveries.... Everyone knows that world poverty can't
be solved,
or lasting peace, or the problem of nuclear wastes (see installment
# 10), or
the destruction of the rain forests, or global warming, or recurrent
recessions
and sluggishness from time to time in the economy......
Friend, YOU can readily discover effective solution to each of
these grave
issues, just as you can also surmount the toughest issues in your
own immediate
life. Friend, we're looking right now at apparently effective
answers to each
of these more general or global matters! --Rather than promoting
our wonderful
answer to this or that, though, what we are about and what Winsights
is
about----
It doesn't matter, certainly it doesn't matter to us, whose solution
fixed the
problem, only that it gets solved effectively. My belief is that
as you become
empowered to deal more effectively with what's in your own life
and around you,
and others become likewise empowered by these tools and with this
see-with-your-own-eyes perspective, more of those greater problems
will get
solved.
As you heighten your capabilities and make your own life better
and more
rewarding, that helps improve the life of us all. --And you have
every right to
do so, no matter how inconvenient that might sometimes be to existing
arrangements.
TOP
Getting More Intelligence Online
The oldest, most universally agreed-upon natural law of behavior,
like gravity
is a pretty universally-agreed natural law of physics, is: "that
you get more
of what you reinforce." Also known in psychology as "The
Law of Effect," this
law also has a number of agreed-upon corollaries, among them the
descriptive
statement that the more immediate the feedback or reinforcement,
other things
equal, the more that such reinforcement shapes traits and behaviors.
Also widely observed and agreed: our EXternal senses (sight, sound,
touch,
etc.) are much more immediate and focussed than our equally important
INternal
senses (feelings, images, pre-verbal thoughts and understandings,
sense of
nuance, etc.). That is why, for most people, games and sports
have a greater
attraction than the intellectual and aesthetic activities which
can be of such
far greater value, but which are in large part a learned taste.
Putting these
two widely-agreed sets of observation together:
If the functions of widely separate, hitherto unrelated regions
of the brain
are EXPRESSED TOGETHER in a combination EXternal activity, THE
IMMEDIACY OF
EXTERNAL SENSORY FEEDBACK FROM that external activity builds a
more and more
immediate relationship between those formerly unrelated brain
regions. This
then causes those brain regions to become more and more accessible
to each
other, and the INTELLIGENCE of each part of the brain to become
more and more
immediately available to the other part(s).
If one of these hitherto less-related or unrelated regions of
the brain is the
left temporal lobe and verbally focussed conscious mind, as is
the case when we
describe a perception: if the perception is a subtle or nuance-involved
one
originating therefore in a region or in regions of the brain not
immediately
related to our verbally-focussed consciousness, TO DESCRIBE such
perceptions
brings such remote-from-consciousness regions of the brain more
immediately on
line with consciousness, making their resources and intelligence
more
immediately available to our focussed verbal consciousness. This
will manifest
with improving "I.Q." scores and other positive changes
relating to
"intelligence" and intellect.
Indeed this prediction is borne out in a series of independently
conducted
state university studies, which since 1989 have been measuring
the effects of
perhaps the purest form of such externalizing-through-describing
such
awareness, the process called " Image-Streaming." On
average, as little as 25
hours of easy, entertaining practice of Image-Streaming results
in 20 points of
"I.Q." gain, together with apparently even greater gains
in the more numinous
aspects of intelligence, creativity and experience. (Department
of physics and
Chemistry, Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota.)
Does this mean that intelligence can be earned or built? Apparently
yes.
Operationally, at least, there seems little difference between
TRANSFER of
intelligence withIN the brain, as seems the case here, and an
absolute increase
in intelligence such as can also be obtained through improving
physical
circulation to the physical brain to improve its health and operating
condition
(Project Renaissance will send you free on request, in return
for 4 oz.
postage, an article on "breathtaking awareness" full
of instructions how to
produce that effect); nutritionally at least for short-term effects--longer
run
effects depend upon the uses put to brain functions during those
immediate
intervals of nutritional advantage; through re-working the sub-routines
of the
brain to better support its higher functions [many sensori-motor
ways of doing
so are provided in Win Wenger's older book HOW TO INCREASE YOUR
INTELLIGENCE];
and through training of physical visual response patterns as has
been performed
since the 1920s by developmental optometrists.)
For whom can this be accomplished? Astonishingly, apparently EVERYone.
Of
thousands trained, either directly by Project Renaissance or at
the university
in Minnesota, not one person has yet been found who was unable
to learn and
practice the procedure for Image-Streaming, and so to begin harvesting
its
benefits. Besides the main procedures for Image Streaming, Project
Renaissance
has developed more than 20 back-up procedures to assure that absolutely
everyone becomes able to perform Image Streaming. All educational
levels, all
ages from infancy to nursing home, all "I.Q." levels,
appear to benefit.
This picking-up on, sensitizing to, and describing-aloud of, internal
awarenesses and imagery, which we call Image-Streaming, also has
enormous
practical usefulness as well. It is the main basis of arguably
the most
powerful and accurate solution-finding creative problem-solving
system of
methods now in professional use anywhere on Earth. (That modern
form of
Einsteinian Discovery Method is set forth mainly in two books
by Win Wenger:
the problem-solving one titled A METHOD FOR PERSONAL GROWTH &
DEVELOPMENT, and
the currently new book on discovering and inventing: TECHNIQUES
OF ORIGINAL,
INSPIRED SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY, TECHNICAL INVENTION AND INNOVATION.
It is the
main basis of six diverse systems of method for profoundly improving
and
accelerating learning (six of the eight systems set forth in Wenger's
BEYOND
TEACHING AND LEARNING). One form of use of Image-Streaming directly
improves
reading comprehension nine-fold; another set of uses of Image-Streaming
is
associated with the even greater reading gains of Paul Scheele's
PhotoReading
system. Many more practical uses for Image Streaming have been
found in a great
variety of other contexts.
To see learn the Image-Streaming technique, see Winsights Part
3.
TOP
In 900 Minutes, YOU Can Be Composing
Very Fine Music in Your Own Genre
Even though recent Winsights columns have been very strongly
into
science and technology, the arts are virtually as crucial
in our
concern for improving human ability, performance, and well
being.
Today's example presents the little-known fact that you,
or virtually
anyone, can become a highly original composer of really fine
music.
--Your preferred type of music, though this writer is steeped
in the
classical. Whether you play an instrument with any skill
whatever, or
are just a bathtub singer, the same principles hold.
All you need do to find yourself composing astonishingly
good music,
is to set up a tape recorder where you will be attempting
to create
music, and to follow the simple 900 minute self-training
program we
call "Improvitaping."
Yes, this simple 900-minute program does involve improvising,
but
even the narrowly formally classically trained can do as
we describe
below and your payoff will utterly astonish you. But unlike
improv
jazz and improv in other branches of music, you do not build
up
routines. In fact, any time you find yourself playing familiar
themes
or anything you recognize, you change away from it and let
the
feedback system we've designed do its integrations at a deeper
level
instead.
In only 900 minutes, you will be creating entire fine pieces
of
music, in your own preferred genre, highly original, and
in their own
elegant form without your ever having had to wrestle with
composition
formalities or other music theory. Just do the following
simple 900
minute self-training, and feedback and your own brain will
take care
of the rest. Here is this simple 900-minute self-training
program,
180 minutes total per day for 10 days:
The Improvitape Technique---
1. Simply play your chosen instrument (or bathtub-sing!)
for a half
hour per day while recording on blank tape. Try to make it
sound like
a "real" piece, keep going for a half hour per
day....
2. In so doing, steer away from recognized themes and patterns.
Keep
on doodling for that half-hour per day, trying to make it
sound like
"a real piece."
3. --And then the hardest part! --Play back the tapes you
make, for
an hour per day. --A half hour while paying attention to
the
contents; the other half hour as background while you are
doing other
things.
--As simply as that! Within 10 days, doing this
at-least-90-minute-per-day program, as you run this simple
flow-with-feedback process, you will be amazed to discover:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* How much of what doesn't work drops out;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* How much of what bores the ear drops out; and
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* How much of what does work reinforces up into good new
pieces of
music!
It's probably 'wince-and-grown' for you at first....
You will likely experience going through these three distinct
stages,
during your 900-minute evolution into becoming a good, original
composer:
1. Wince-and-groan Stage, while you are playing back the
first tapes
of your improvisations. Bear with it--this is the hardest
part right
there, and it lasts only for the first 3-5 days. You won't
believe
how quickly you move on into the stages of pleasant surprises.....
2. Mining Melodies: good thematic material and figures will
start
surprising you, showing up here and there in your taped
improvisations. You can "mine" this increasingly
high-grade "ore" to
extract from these tapes these instance of good original
melodies,
motifs and patterns. Even if you did not take the Improvitape
Technique any further than this, you could use these good
original
themes for pieces which you then compose conventionally.
But if you
continue this Improvitaping program for 3 to 6 days further,
you
reach---
3. The Stage of Elegant Whole Pieces: the music flows, following
its
own intrinsic logic, developing its own form, and your improvitapes
emerge as complete original compositions. Finer and finer
works
emerge from this flow, each of them a rich surprise. At times
while
playing, you won't know that anything special is happening
until
afterward, when you are playing the tapes back and sit in
stunned
disbelief that l'il ol' you could possibly have come up with
such a
wonderful thing. Real hair-raising at times! --And nothing
else quite
so extraordinarily rewarding as this experience, which -
if you
continue Improvitaping - will occur for you again and again
and again
with different wonderful pieces each time.
From that point on, most musicians who have done this simple 900-minute
program, over 10 days, will find themselves generating a mixture
of Stage Two
(Mines) and Stage Three (whole pieces) tapes. Expect a variety
of valid musical
forms and, increasingly, instances of breathtaking elegance.
I challenge you to do this simple 900 minutes without getting
at least these
high-level results!
I know it doesn't seem fair - the above Improvitape Technique
in composing
music, or our hundreds of other techniques for improving various
areas of human
ability, performance and well being, when so many people have
by more formal
training labored so hard for such results as they are getting
now or are not
getting now! I am reminded of how a certain unnamed major university,
with whom
I had arranged an intelligence-building study which had been about
to go to
catalog, suddenly had fierce objections and an overrule from unnamed
sources
within. One quote which got back to me was: "You can't increase
human
intelligence and, furthermore, you can't increase it HERE!"
Well, this one you can do here, or there, or wherever you please,
on your own
and no one to overrule you. And as is the case with each of the
techniques
we've offered here in "winsights," you can reasonably
infer with the results
you get from this one what the likely verity of the other ones
must be. So we
invite you: make this simple 900-minute experiment and, while
judging therefrom
the verity of results of our procedures and something of the huge
human stakes
riding with them, enjoy harmlessly your own creation in a highest-quality
experience wholly beyond any you could normally expect to get
elsewhere - and
enjoy it for a rich full lifetime!
Next: how to happily teach sight-reading and playing of music
to your
2-year-old. --And something of why that's one of the best things
you can
possibly do for her or him!
TOP
A Fun Way To Teach Your 2-Year-Old
to Sight-Read & Play Music--
And Expand the Core of His Intellectual Capacity!
The bulk of the following article was written in October, 1989
and published in
SALT in 1990, but the crucial event concerning it may be said
to have occurred
in early February, 1995.
I have never met Washington Post reporter Susan Okie, but I am
eternally
grateful to her. Without her "Science Notebook" for
2/6/95 having crossed my
desk, I would have missed entirely:
1) The publication in Science February 3, 1995, of Gottfried Schlaug,
Lutz
Jancke, Yanxiong Huang, and Helmuth Steinmetz: "In Vivo Evidence
of Structural
Brain Asymmetry in Musicians."
2) The crucial footnote which cited studies I had missed demonstrating
that the
crucial trait, musical perfect pitch, basis of Schlaug's article,
is trainable.
It's one thing to know that perfect pitch is trainable because
of your own
personal experience and because of the by-product of the method
described
below. It's another to see the formal study cited which demonstrates
that fact
and tells one that he is not alone on some of the important issues.
This had to
be buried among the footnotes where editors and peers at Science
wouldn't catch
it, because Science wouldn't be caught dead publishing the out-of-paradigm
fact
that human intelligence can be profoundly improved, regardless
of whatever
evidence. In the Schlaug paper, the key footnote is # 20, citing
D. Sergeant
(1969), A. Bacham (1975), C./L. Krumhansi (1991), and others in
a series of
studies demonstrating the trainability of what has always been
assumed to be a
"born" trait, like intelligence itself has for so long
been so considered to
be.
3) The whole body of important work going forward at Dusseldorf
University by
Schlaug and his colleagues.
As you will see below, we had taken an interest in musical development
during
early childhood because our theory of building up crosslinks in
the brain
("Pole-Bridging") told us that children who sight-read
and played music, as
distinct from only playing music at an early age a la Suzuki Method,
would
enjoy great intellectual advantage over their counterparts.
I knew of the many powerful advantages conveyed when children
learn to read the
printed word at an early, pre-school, age. The methods which achieved
that at
age 2 years, 1 year, often 6 months of age, had to be pleasant
games - you
couldn't push" a child 2 years or younger into reading. So,
figuring that the
younger the child, the greater the developmental boost to the
brain also for
learning to sight-read and play music, I wondered out loud to
Susan, my
brilliant and creative wife, what kind of game method might be
invented to
achieve that combination of skills for children one and two years
old. She told
me! The method published below is her invention.
--But the best was yet to come.
1) The incidental by-product of her method, published in 1989-90,
is that the
children so taught develop not only relative but perfect musical
pitch.
2) The Dusseldorf Study, published by Schlaug in Science Feb.
3, 1995,
demonstrates that people who have perfect musical pitch also have
a left plenum
temporales which is physically double the size of that crucial
organ in the
brains of ordinary people!!! Part of our word-processing left
temporal lobe,
the left plenum temporales is the part of your brain which handles
nuances of
word-meanings, and so is the very core of your intellect!
This core organ of intellect is not only physically larger in
people who enjoy
perfect pitch - it is so much larger that it is physically double
in volume
that of people who don't have perfect pitch. That is a huge, profound
physical
difference, utterly astonishing to see in terms of the physical
brain, and has
to convey enormous intellectual advantage!
We had not sought to create perfect pitch - until Schlaug's study
I had
considered perfect pitch a mixed blessing at best. I am cursed
with it, in that
ensemble groups and choral groups I've been part of, seem to love
to transpose
for the convenience of one member or another the music into different
keys.
Hence, I had to transpose back in my mind as we went - no problem
for those
without such pitch; probably no problem for the many whose musical
skills
vastly exceed mine - but a major bother for me. However, I've
also felt that
somehow my musical perfect pitch was a key part of my quick ability
to
understand what other people are saying or leading up to.
Summary/Significance:
- People with perfect pitch have a profoundly superior left
plenum
temporales and intellect.
- Following is much of the text of the article describing
a simple
method to create, among other things, perfect pitch in young
children
from an early age.
- Do this for your child, grandchild, niece/nephew or the
kid next door
and you create for him or her a tremendous, wonderful intellectual
advantage and basis of life understanding.
Training Music Sight-Reading and Perfect Pitch in Young Children,
As a Way to
Enhance Their Intelligence
Win Wenger, Ph.D. and
Susan Honey Wenger, M.A.
Gaithersburg, MD 20884
Abstract: The following paper suggests an experimental program
for easily
training children, ages 1-5 years, to sight-read and play music
and to gain
relative or perfect pitch. By integrating phase relationships
between widely
separate, key regions of the brain, the writers propose an easy,
game-like
procedure that will significantly increase the lifetime intelligence
of
children.
As simply as this:
1. Face the young child away from the piano or other keyboard
instrument, as part of a game.
2. Sound a single note on the piano, while saying (or singing)
the name
of the note - "A," "B," or whatever. (Flats
and harps can be introduced
a little later in this training, other than being named when
hit during
the child's "miss.")
3. The game is to have the young child turn to the keyboard
and try to
hit the same note on the keyboard - on first try if possible.
When s/he
strikes a single note, say or sing the name of the note s/he
struck -
but the correct "hits" then get reinforced with
laughter, applause,
hair-tousle, hug or whatever is reinforcing for that child
in that
context in a light-hearted kind of way. The "misses"
are part of the
game but are less reinforced - too absolute a non-reinforcement
would
be another kind of reinforcement and make the game less light-hearted.
4. At the start of each round, set a 3" or 56"
or larger card
vertically on the music rack above the keyboard, just a short
segment
of base and treble clef bars upon which rides, prominently,
the note
you're about to hit.
Don't point out the card. Just change the card each time to the
next note
you're about to hit. It may be immediately, or it may be several
hours (spaced,
of course, over several weeks at 2 to 5 minutes of this game each
day or so),
before the child catches on that the card has something to do
with the note you
are hitting. Only when s/he asks about it do you minimally explain
that where
the note is on the card, shows where the note is on the keyboard.
Now the child
has both eye and ear to help guide him or her on the keyboard.
After the child has the first game well in hand (including, eventually,
those
sharps and flats): you can do the same thing with sequences of
2 and 3 notes.
Once that skill is well in hand, simple tunes will make sense
to the child and
be well within his/her competence to likewise pick out and play.
Likewise
combinations of notes, chords. Likewise the game of which other
note most
sounds like this one, as developing the sense of octaves.
From there, the child will be well equipped to take full advantage
of
conventional music training if desired, or of Suzuki training,
now widely
available and which is excellent for developing playing skills
and attitudes.
If you use Suzuki, though, continue to reinforce the sight reading
on the side
or at home, since Suzuki training does not teach sight reading
until much later
and it'd be a pity to waste the reading skills already developed.
Even without
such follow-up musical training, though, a major boost to the
child's
intelligence will have been accomplished by the above game.
Children too young (or developmentally too young) to as yet be
able to pick out
a single key on a conventional keyboard, may be able to do so
with full
benefits by being started on a special keyboard whose individual
keys are
broader, so long as its pitch is true.
(The above technique was created by Susan Wenger during October,
1989.)
Purpose of this technique:
The purpose of this technique and game is not that of training
the child to
become a musician. That may indeed often develop, and a musical
perception and
background make for a far richer and more rewarding lifetime experience.
--But
the purpose here is not that of making the child into a musician.
The purpose of training perfect pitch and music sight reading
skills, in
children between ages one and five years old, is to substantially
improve their
intellectual intelligence for a lifetime.
We predict that normal children ages 1 to 5 years will, within
several years,
average no less than ten to thirty points "I.Q." higher,
similar to though not
quite so strong as the gains made from another brain-building
procedure, Image
Streaming as discussed below. In very young children who Image-Stream,
sharp
gains are observed immediately. In older children and in adults,
and in most
developmentally young people of any chronological age, such gains
are also
substantial but gradual, though these gains continue developing
for some time
beyond the interval during which Image Streaming was practiced.
Since the
structure of brain process in Image Streaming is so similar in
principle to
that of the sight-reading and playing of music, we can expect
the patterns of
gain to likely be similar.
Even in adults and college students, the eventual gains from Image
Streaming,
per eighty minutes of practice, accumulate at the rate of a full
point I.Q., so
we expect substantial gains with some form of this sight-reading
training
procedure even with older children. However, the greatest and
most immediate
gains may be expected with children who are so young that most
of their habits
and short-cuts for perceiving and thinking have not yet been formed
and who,
for that reason, can obtain the most benefit from a given amount
of such
training.
Why should training to sight-read bring any benefit in terms of
intellectual
skills or intelligence? Can an early experience in music relate
somehow to
later academic abilities?
Why are people who learn, early in childhood, to sight-read and
play music,
usually several standard deviations above average in intelligence?
It's long
been assumed that they had an inborn natural "gift"
- most of which, of course,
are never developed. Early economic and cultural disadvantage
can be a
preventing factor, though ours is an information-pervasive environment.
There
definitely do appear to be some instances of special "gift."
Recent
discoveries, however, point toward early musical development itself
being a
main cause of this subsequent higher intelligence, not merely
a co-by-product
of social privilege or the magic wand of a "genius gene."
Discovery of Brain-Integrative Factors:
The phenomenon of Image Streaming (defined below), was discovered
early in
1975. From that time on, we observed that the practice of Image
Streaming
enriches the intelligence of its practitioners. In 1984, we developed
a simple
hypothesis to account for this increase in intelligence (as set
forth below).
In spring of 1989, with the results of the Reinhert Studies, which
formally
measured and are measuring some of the effects of Image Streaming
on physics
students at Southwest State University, this hypothesis, called
"Pole-Bridging," became a supported theory.
Definitions:
Image Streaming is the practice of letting oneself become aware
of the
spontaneous free-flow, free-association, visual mental imagery
which is going
on all the time as a reflection of unconscious perceptions, thoughts
and
understandings. Part of this practice also is the describing of
these images
aloud while examining them. To be effective, this describing bust
be out loud,
to an external focus - a person as a listener, or to a tape recorder
as
potential listener.
This is quite different from the directed imagery which is familiar
to many
people and programs. Image Streaming, being undirected, when brought
conscious
constantly surprises the viewer with unexpected images and associations,.
This
imagery appears to arise in other, subtler-signalling regions
of the brain.
This different location is significant in giving rise to higher
intelligence,
according to the theory of Pole Bridging.
This constantly ongoing stream of images is usually unconscious,
but virtually
every person can readily self-train or be trained to bring this
resource stream
conscious./ That general ease of training, in turn. makes Image
Streaming an
excellent candidate for any program which seeks to improve the
intelligence of
large numbers of people. In the aforementioned study, students
who practiced
Image Streaming as an enrichment outside of class, gained in general
intelligence at a rate of a full point's "I.Q." per
eighty minutes of practice,
20 points for 25 hours of practice, among other benefits.)
Pole-Bridging - Combines in expressive form the activities and/or
perceptions
which are characteristic of widely separate regions of the brain.
One should
involve these perceptions or activities closely together, for
an immediacy of
experience feedbacks which forces those widely separate regions
of the brain to
work closely together.
--In Image Streaming, the left temporal and parietal lobes (expressive
and
articulative, and specific associative) are caused to work closely
with the
right temporal lobe (making general sense), and with wide additional
regions of
the brain including apparently the right optic chiasm at the rear
of the brain.
--In the above method for developing both sight reading and music
playing
skills and relative or perfect pitch. much of the motor cortex
is involved with
the left temporal (reading recognition), the right temporal (music
and
aesthetic response), and with wide-ranging auditory regions of
the brain. In
addition one of the writers, who enjoys perfect pitch, speculates
that this
automatic ready-made auditory orientation becomes a great help
to all the areas
of the brain which make sense out of or otherwise sort out sounds.
/ (This
hypothesis, concerning effects of perfect pitch, might eventually
be tested by
bio-instrumented comparison of the brain behaviors of persons
with and without
perfect pitch, in response to diverse auditory stimuli.)
Obviously, causing widely separate regions of the brain to work
closely
together, by building up communication between those regions,
will cause the
resources of each such region to become more available to the
operations
proceeding in the other regions. This is a factor in the improved
intelligence
observed to follow such Pole-Bridging activities. A still more
significant
issue in Pole-Bridging, though, is the factor of Phase Relationships.
Phase Relationships concern the length of time between when one
part of the
brain receives a stimulus and when other parts of the brain become
involved in
the processing of that stimulus.
Significance of Phase Relationships (in Pole-Bridging Theory)
All of the brain sooner or later lights up on any major stimulus.
The length of
time before this happens, though, is the critical issue. Ertl,
Herrmann, and
others have consistently found for decades, that closely integrated
phase
relationships between left and right hemispheres, at least, are
associated with
higher intelligence; wide lags with lower levels of intelligence.
One of the
writers found this same relationship, left-right, in studies he
performed on
his own students during 1969-70 and again in 1970 in testing eight
pre-identified geniuses.
If there is too great a delay between the time when some initial
part(s) of the
brain get(s) that stimulus and the rest of the brain thence receives
that
stimulus, then the first part completes its operations and writes
close-out
instructions into that stimulus as it is passed along into the
rest of the
brain. (In effect, the first part says, "That's the way it
was done, folks!"
and the rest of the brain, saying "Yeah," shuts down.)
If the phase relationship is closer, however, other parts of the
brain are
reverberating with the first on that stimulus before the first
has completed
its processing. What results then is a much more involved set
of instructions
getting written into that stimulus as it is passed along into
the rest of the
brain. (In effect: "Here's what we've come up with so far,
folks, but there's
this to be checked out, that to be investigated, with such-&-such
still to be
found out!")
A brain so instructed does many more things, and much more involved
things,
with that stimulus. Consequently:
A person with well-integrated, tight phase relationships (not
only left-right
but, apparently, in all directions within the brain) will characteristically
sense more relationships, and perceive more and richer meanings
with that
stimulus and generally. --In other words, be considerably more
intelligent.
The Reinert Study (1989, 1990 op.cit.)/ supported this theory
of phase
relationships and Pole Bridging, in 3 ways:
1. The overt, overall gain in intelligence of Image Streamers
at a rate
of a full point "I.Q." per eight minutes of easy
home practice - a
considerably greater rate of gain in intelligence than by
other means
thus far studied.
2. In perceptual and learning styles, the students who Image
Streaming
zipped strongly and immediately into integrated balance of
brain
functions, as measured on the Kolb. Students who enriched
with a
different method, moved sharply further toward extreme imbalance,
as
most college physics students do during their course of study.
3. The combination, of viewing these inner images and describing
them
aloud, was crucial to the outcome. Those students in the Reinert
(1989)
study who did everything else in the procedure but did not
describe
aloud those images to a listener or to a tape recorder, not
only did
not gain as much as those who did so: they showed no gain
whatever
during the interval of the experiment It is the combination
of these
regions of the brain which is significant in increasing intelligence,
and in the other benefits associated with Image Streaming
or other
forms of Pole-Bridging.
With modern PET-Scan, CAT-Scan, blood-flow imaging and other equipment,
it
should be far easier than ever before to test further the theory:
that to
integrate phase relationships between various regions of the brain
by
Pole-Bridging between those regions, combining those regions several
activities
into some expressive form which yields immediate experiential
feedback,
increases intelligence.
Relationship to the proposed early training of music skills in
young children:
As an excellent further test of the Pole Bridging theory, we suggest
a
longitudinal study of intellect and intelligence in young children
taught as
described at the start of this paper, compared with closely matched
children
not so taught. Such musical Pole-Bridging integrates brain behaviors
which are
very different from those of Image Streaming, and brain regions
which are
somewhat different. If the behaviors so integrated are different
and
intelligence still increases substantially, then the common factor
causing the
increase will be the integration of diverse brain functions -
the dynamic
principle, not just the particular brain behaviors which happened
to be
combined in the one lucky technique of Image Streaming.
The prediction is that young children who learn these music skills
by such a
method will enjoy more than 10 points I.Q. advantage over children
who are not
so trained. To be frank, this average advantage in intelligence
could well be
upwards of 30 points I.Q. - with all which this can mean in terms
of a lifetime
of enriched experience and in terms of potential contribution
to our society
and culture.
If this prediction is confirmed in the context of music training,
that should
cause a significant increase in public support for the arts and
for arts
education. As already shown at the start of the (music sight-reading
article
segment of this) paper, this particular procedure is certainly
simple and easy
enough to make testing this proposed experiment feasible for any
reasonably
competent musician, music teacher or music education program which
can also
arrange access to the appropriate child-level I.Q. tests. Even
ordinary
parents, siblings or tutors who at least know musical notation
should be able
to conduct this program successfully.
Such further confirmation, from another context, of the Pole Bridging
Theory,
should encourage further investigation and development of this
theory. Given
the great number of diverse brain functions, and of the identified
regions of
the brain where some of these functions are localized, it should
soon be
feasible to create 10,000 different specific Pole Bridging techniques,
each
effective in increasing intelligence, or as therapies and/or remediations.
[We abridge the foregoing article at this point, to better pursue
the goals of
this present paper. Please note that although the contents of
the foregoing
were touched up for editorial purposes of readability, their meaning
was
unchanged and, in particular, the predictions made then were not
in any way
"touched up" but appear as they were published in 1990.]
The gist: Image-Streaming, and this easy game form of teaching
young children
sight-reading, both express activities of widely separate regions
of the brain.
When those activities are expressed together in such forms, immediate
feedback
induces these widely separate regions of the brain to work more
closely
together, with improved phase relationships. This results in cumulatively
higher intelligence.
--This apart from, and in addition to, the intelligence gains
to be obtained
from training perfect pitch, an accidental by-product of the Susan
Wenger
method of training sight-reading, which expand the size and powers
of the
word-meanings-involved left plenum temporales.
Conclusion:
When the hard physical evidence of cat-scans et al demonstrates
that incredible
doubling in physical size of the brain's main organ for intellectual
understanding, how can anyone of conscience go on letting our
present schools
and home practices lay such terrible waste to our own children's
minds? Please
let us hear from you, in the forum here at Botree, or at my world
wide web site
winwenger.com or by e-mail at win@thebestweb.com
Gifted Computer Games Programmer wanted: to work on spec, own
part of the
results. We have outlines for a computer game to develop in preschoolers
inner
musical skills to Mozart-like level; also for another game to
teach
preschoolers in weeks of fun a quantity-sense, number sense,
relationships-sense, and the whole of arithmetic and secondary
school level
math. Why make 12 years of drudgery and misery out of what can
be accomplished
to far higher level in a few playful, joyous weeks? The music
program would
implement advanced versions of the above Susan Wenger Method (1)
to a far finer
degree than even gifted musician parents could normally take it;
(2) bring
these advantages within reach of all children and not just those
of parents who
can themselves sight-read and play music and are alive enough
to want to share
that with their children. Please get in touch with us at the above
address(es),
and/or bring this to the attention of those of your friends who
are gifted
computer games programmers. Thank you.
TOP
HOW TO RUN BETTER MEETINGS, GROUPS, CLUBS AND CLASSES
Have you ever had the experience of having something important
to say but no
opportunity to say it? How easy or hard is it for you to really
hear and
respond to what someone else is saying while you're sitting there
seething with
your own thwarted urgent contribution?
--Same for your participants. Every time you've done your job
as chair ore
moderator so well that your people have gotten interested and
involved, you
inflict that perception-inhibiting frustration on your brighter
members and in
direct proportion to the degree that each has something important
to
contribute!!!!!
--Same for your students! Every time you've done your job so well
that your
lecture starts to get interesting, you inflict that perception-inhibiting
frustration on your brighter students and on your class generally!
In a corporation where time is money, how much time is wasted
in board and
staff meetings, either in lengthy discourse by the chair or CEO
while expensive
specialists and executives sit mute, or in pre-orchestrated speech
presentations whose "discussion" outcome was determined
long since, or in a
chaos ended only when the chair or CEO goes out and either does
things himself
or by dictate, dismissing 99% of all that was said at the meeting?
Or where
everyone is saying only what the chair or CEO wanted to hear,
providing no
meaningful feedback or direction?
--So why the heck HAVE such a meeting? IS there a way to make
meetings
contribute positively and meaningfully to our affairs?
Here is how to get the best out of your group or staff, instead
of settling for
the lowest common denominator of performance. Here, then, follow
in summary a
very few, very simple provisions through which you can build interest,
sustain
tight topical focus while fostering dynamic expressive interaction,
wonderfully
integrating and developing your group's various perceptions and
perceivers. You
will find that you can maintain a stronger, better topical focus
with these
interactive group-managing techniques than you can sustain now
in solo lecture!
This is not loose soft-minded stuff about letting employees or
students or
members express themselves: this is highly efficient group, boardroom
or
classroom MANAGEMENT. You've been getting your group's seemingly
inevitable
idiocy: now, through "Dynamic Format," discover and
focus your people's (your
people's!!!) very real genius.
Dynamic Format--introduction:
Dynamic Format fits comfortably with and can benefit most other
group methods
and procedures. It can turn miraculously productive, all kinds
of group meeting
from classroom (and even faculty meetings!!!!!) to board room
to sales meeting
to Town Hall and civic clubs. --Be first in your block to try
it out!!
Dynamic Format will enable you to easily get the members of your
group
actively, richly exploring, debating, investigating, and relating
to any topic
or issue, yet staying far better focussed than can the most forceful
lecture or
most rigorous use of Robert's Rules. Dynamic Format helps your
participants to
participate without getting in each other's way or in your way.
Dynamic Format
is a set of very simple managing techniques to conduct the transaction
of
information and/or decision with maximum sensitivity and breadth
of
consideration and perception quickly, crisply, in depth but efficiently.
(Doesn't sound like meetings you've been in before, does it? We've
all heard
the old joke about an hippopotamus being an animal designed by
committee,
meaning that group outcomes normally are a joke or come out close
to being the
lowest common denominator. Getting genius from such a group?!?
Unthinkable!
--But within a few paragraphs you'll be seeing how to easily do
so...)
The simple "house rules" of Dynamic Format enable your
people to be
interactive, thoughtful, perceptive, expressive, comprehensive,
and yet to
maintain a tight, clear progressing focus on your topic. Dynamic
Format allows
a group to movedeftly, crisply and quickly, without heavy-handed
directing and
without having to wander through mishmash.
Dynamic Format Instructions:
Here is how to bring about these and other desirable effects
from a group
meeting---
FIRST: Have any group of more than 5-6 participants to subdivide
at the start
of your session, so each is already in place with his or her partner(s)
on a
stand-by basis. That will let you move swiftly and smoothly and
deftly in and
out of the interactive mode when you come to the point in your
session where
you want to use it. Have your people stay oriented with their
partner(s) even
while functioning in your larger (plenary) group. This way, when
you want to
switch modes, neither logistics nor shuffle is required. You are
free to move
crisply between levels of interaction as well as from step to
step, or into
interaction and crisply back to formal lecture or other formal
process.
Your teams can be pairs, or threes, or you can have "buzz
groups" consisting of
as many as 5-6 participants, depending upon what you want to do
with them. Each
participant in a pair has far more "air time" in which
to examine and describe
what she perceives, in the context of the defined topic or question.
The larger
your sub-divided groups, the more chance that someone in each
will catch on to
what you want and model how it is done. The more difficult your
question or
task, therefore, the larger you want your sub-groups up to a maximum
of six, to
ensure that someone there in each group will be able to comprehend
and get
things moving as you want. Most of the time, though, to get the
maximum of
Socratic benefit,/ the maximum of perception-developing "air
time" for each,
work your participants in pairs. You can even have your participants,
as this
writer has often done with his participants in his workshops and
classes and
demonstrations, orient in pairs within larger sub-groups of 4
to 6 members.
SECOND: From the very start of such a session, set up at least
some of the
following "Core Agreements" or "house rules for
this session," to make it easy
for you to swiftly and gently guide and focus or refocus your
people into,
through, and out of highly involved, highly interactive "buzz-sessions."
A. Waterglass Rules. The waterglass, ashtray or chime which
can be
heard easily when everyone is talking at the same time --
so your voice
won't have to compete with all the other voices--
1. Three 'bings' = Instant Pause in Talking. Rule: the
moment
you hear 3 'bings," pause in talking not only in
mid-sentence
but in mid-word so that you and others can hear the next
topical question or step of instruction. The game: to
not be
the last one caught talking after the third bing. (Keep
the
whole process light-hearted.)
Over the many years since I started demonstrating this
process
in classes and conferences, I've seen many conference
presenters adapt this part of the process to use with
light
switches, drums, pianos, party horns, even in one instance
a
trumpet! Make the sensory-attention-catching device pleasant
and agreeable, however. This works by far the best if
you keep
your participants in good spirits.
2. One 'bing' = Half-Minute's Notice, before the 3-binger.
Rule: keep on doing what you are presently doing but be
ready a
half-minute after this one 'bing' to pause in talking,
to hear
the next instruction. Because the chime is so different
a sound
from human voices, it is heard easily through the buzz-murmur.
You don't have to be strident: even a very light chime
will
carry through and can be made to sound quite pleasant.
3. Hand-Up = Instant Talk-Pause + Hand-Up, this simple
device
often used by the Scouts. This is best for very large
groups,
of one hundred or more members. Rule: the instant you
notice
either the leader's hand go up or other people's hands
going
up, pause instantly in your talking and get your own hand
up!
(On-off flicks of the room lighting can serve the same
purpose,
especially in starting groups that have not yet previously
been
introduced to these house practices.)
B. RELEVANCY CHALLENGE. Make a triangle of your thumbs and
fore-fingers. Sight at the speaker through that triangle.
Rule: on that
instant, whoever is speaking must
* Demonstrate how his/her remarks relate to the topic;
or
* return to the topic; or
* yield the floor. Instantly.
How many times have you been reluctant to shut off someone's
story but
had to stand there bleeding internally while s/he got further
and
further off the subject and broke your hard-built context?!?
You can see how, with just a little simple pre-arrangement,
major group
dynamics can be set in motion or stopped, directed, focussed.
You can
orchestrate these effects to produce a maximum in terms of
meeting-goal, in terms of learning, in terms of creative production,
in
terms of arriving at decision and consensus.
Simple arrangement of easily used signals as standing rules
or
agreements allows you to orchestrate a wide range of group
behaviors
virtually without effort or delay. On the same principle,
from time to
time you may want to set up these special-occasion rules for
particular
situations--
C. Support-First Rule. Used to obtain creative production,
fresh ideas
and perceptions, innovations, and answers to questions or
issues whose
outcome is not narrowly predetermined. To get more and better
ideas
contributed, the first response to the contributing of an
idea should
be a positive reinforcement. However off-the-wall an idea
or input may
seem at first, the first response to it must be some form
of
meaningful, content-related support! After that meaningful
first
support, then it's o.k. to carve that weird notion into corned
beef
hash. --So long as the support came first. Every major system
of
creativity training or creative problem solving now has some
form of
this rule. To use it effectively, simply put it in this form:
1. Any time you observe an idea not getting supported
first,
whether yours or someone else's, clasp your hands together
over
your head for a second or so while looking wistfully upward,
then go on.
2. Don't use this support-first rule where you don't want
richly expansive creativity, multiple considerations,
and
enthusiastic participant expression. In much of schooling,
for
example, information is arranged to have only one right
answer
and creativity might be in the way of the leader's or
teacher's
immediate objectives. To avoid creativity being obstructive,
have your audience know when this rule is in effect and
when it
is not.
3. Note: the best ideas usually are those which were greeted
first with a burst of laughter. You may wish to give those
laugh-burst ideas special attention. In any case, make
sure
that the first response to whatever input positively reinforces
that act of creating and contributing ideas and fresh
perceptions. Win your way past the usual reflexive
self-censorings that stifle creative thought and
perceptiveness.
D. 3-Sentence Limit. (Or 4, or 2, or simply a 1-minute limit
per input,
depending upon the size of group and the nature of the process
you are
working.) Once this rule is invoked. any time you notice someone
going
beyond the set limit, simply lean forward with hands clasped
in front
of you.
E. Make Record of the Run-Pasts! This is an additional way
to correct
the main frustration about any group discussion or process
which gets
interesting enough to provoke a lot of desire to participate/
Rule:
Anything you notice that seems worthy of mention, but which
the group
process (or lecturer!) has stampeded past: make a written
note or
record of it, immediately! So reinforce YOUR OWN perceiving
of
overlooked aspects, not merely just that particular point!
(--And clear
the traffic jam in your perceptions between what you have
to say and
giving more attention to what others are saying now! --And
if others
also follow this Record Run-Pasts Rule, your inputs when you
do get to
make them will receive attention.
Sometimes: there is a chance before the end to pick some of these
points back
up and consider them. But the main purpose of this rule is to
reinforce your
own perceptiveness and integrity of view. Any time you notice
someone else
seething with an overrun point, point to his or her notepad and
waggle pen or
pencil at it.
Boardroom, Clubhouse, City Hall:
Note that Robert's Rules of Order were designed to shut down communications
within a group so that business can be transacted. The too-typical
result leads
to all those tired old outcomes about which we all make all those
tired old
jokes. Dynamic Format, instead, elicits focussed communications
in a way that
causes the business transacted to reflect the highest considerations
and actual
genius of the group!
--Yes, your group! Working this format, you have some very pleasant
surprises
coming to you.
Board meetings, annual business meetings of societies, faculty
or staff
meetings, planning groups, task forces, town meetings, political
meetings,
etc., all are appropriate for this set of focussing strategies.
This form of
participant involvement, fostering expression from each participant's
own
perceptions while sustaining a tight topical focus, yields results
far superior
to those of the methods historically or currently in general use.
Any
corporation, society, committee, task force or staff can immediately,
easily
and sharply improve its performance and product, and greatly reduce
the time,
attention and cost required to arrive at objectives.
Aside: A Lecture to Teachers---
The lecture method was invented for the situation, back in the
Dark Ages before
printing, when only one copy of some book would be at the university.
There the
most qualified person would both read aloud from that book to
the class, and
comment or lecture based upon it, for the benefit of all the students
who
otherwise had no access to that book and its contents. A few of
the relevant
circumstances have changed since then! Some churches and most
schools have
continued the practice, though. All most classrooms need to become
a religious
service is a hymn or so! (The prayers can be said secretly! --if
many of our
children have a prayer of making it through intact!)
Even if you are wedded to the lecture method and have never "buzzed
a group" in
your life, you can experiment just a little. Identify the key
point you've just
been trying to make in your lecture, and instruct your students
to "turn to
your partner(s) (or "the person next to you" if you've
not pre-set the class)
and, between you, let's see which pair of you can come up with
the best
statement of this issue" (or the best answer...) Or, turn
your main point into
a question and ask that question. (Indeed, any question you would
ordinarily
ask rhetorically can be usefully handled in this manner.)
* Get them started. (By look or persuasion, make sure all
are
participating.)
* Allow 3-4 minutes.
* 'Bing' and state the half-minute's notice, or hold up with
the 'bing'
a sign that says, "KEEP GOING - BUT IN A HALF MINUTE
BE READY FOR THE
NEXT STEP"
* Gently or moderately THREE-bing your waterglass, cup or
ashtray to
end or pause the "buzz."
* Sound out (and give at least a little somewhat positive
reinforcement
to) each of a few pairs' wording of the issue (or answer).
If possible,
hear what they actually are saying instead of what you expect
to hear,
but keep orienting toward your intended insight. Reinforce
from there
the point you were making, and move on.
Now, that wasn't too hard, was it? --And easier to do next time.
Courage,
there, for lo you can soon be effortlessly moving your students
in and out of
interactive process, and through different levels of process,
with amazingly
well-focussed discussions, like a pro. --Like a master conductor
directing his
well-trained orchestra! Yes, you!
You can manage easily your students, even your students, into
ever more
excellent topical focus and intensity and in-depth understanding.
Consider: of what value even the most eloquent lecture, or cleverest
workbook,
if little is learned from it? What matters is what is learned,
not what is
taught. Dynamic Format lets you have it both ways.
Whether board room, club room, Sunday school, task force, public
committee, or
classroom: your only possible drawback to doing this is that you
might actually
achieve some of your stated objectives, and then where'd you be???
If you are shy about it, test out these rules one step at a time
until you feel
them working for you, and you see and are pleased with the results.
TOP
How to See with Artistic Eyes
What follows goes far beyond art appreciation, to enrich the raw
stuff of
perception per se. It is a really great way to create a "high"
experience, one
of the more enjoyable of your life.
You can enhance this highly repeatable experience even further
on special
occasions with a temporary boost effect via simple nutrition.
For that
temporary boost effect before an intended main enrichment experience,
just as
you would before an important sports competition, you might wish
to nourish
your organs of perception with Vitamin A or beta carotene, the
nucleic acids
RNA/DNA, and/or brewers nutritional yeast. Heavy foods, alcohol
or artificial
substances just prior to a main perceptual enrichment experience
would impede
the highest qualities of perception even though the following
protocols
(behavior recipes) may be strong enough to carry past such hindrances.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* 1. Flick-Gazing. [For here now and at the art museum later.]
Simple way to
counter neuronal habituation which, to a greater or lesser degree,
normally
deadens everyone's senses. Nerves, circuitry and the brain itself
go to sleep
on a constant signal, awaken on a changing signal. Arousing the
sensory nervous
system by rapid change of stimulus (as in sequential rapid montages)
lets you
perceive with far more aliveness.
Training plan, phase one: the "flick-gazing" exercise
conducted here, by
yourself or, preferably, in a group. [Originally published in
my book (still
available from Project Renaissance--contact <http://www.winwenger.com>
or
e-mail me at <win@thebestweb.com>) How To Increase Your
Intelligence.) See if,
by looking at a different face or different feature of this room
every half
second or so for 3 to 5 minutes, you don't awaken your vision
to see nearly as
much of what you were looking at during that half second as you
normally would
by staring at it. The importance of vision--80% of the area of
the brain is
involved in visual response. This simple flick-gazing trains that
much of your
brain to handle more information far more quickly. If that increases
intelligence, then make the most of it!
Training plan, phase two: (Here, now, on a walk through the landscape
or
streetscape just outdoors; the Art Museum later). While here,
alone with a tape
recorder or preferably with a live partner or so: pick at least
one, preferably
two partners from here who will also be going over to the museum.
Here,
describe in detail what you encounter, to tape recorder and/or
live partner(s).
(Teachers: this is also a great thing to do for your classes,
especially before
any field trip, not just visits to an art museum!) At the museum,
each of you
together (a) remind each other to flick-gaze at the works around
you on
exhibit; (b) do so yourself; (c) immediately from flick-gazing,
orient on one
or two especially outstanding works to examine with awakened eyes,
pointing out
and describing in detail to each other all the features which
to you are so
special about that work.
"Brainstorming" rule of Description: if it occurs to
you in the context, go
ahead and say it. Keep on finding all the fresh things to say
about it which
somehow further describe it.
Note: this descriptive phase should run 10-20 minutes, and reach
a point where
it becomes a real challenge to convey through your language the
effects you are
describing. The more you have to "reach" to effectively
describe such effects,
the greater your gains in your own powers of language, observation,
and
intellect!
Further note: working with partners as urged here, will let you
master the
techniques to such an extent that you not only transform the special
experience
tonight at the museum but then are able forever after to use these
ways on your
own to enrich your life whenever you are in a beautiful setting,
artistic or
natural. If you opt not to work with partners tonight, you may
or may not have
enough of any of the techniques to be useful to you.
2. Cleansing the Windows of Perception: using a breathing meditation
to
clarify, among other things, vision. Preferred: that form of the
psychegenic
"Calm-Breathing Patterns" known as "Noise-Removal
Breathing," originally
published in Beyond O.K.
Phase One: group training here in this breathing pattern.
In brief: With each slow breath, breathe in as if you were breathing
in from
below and from behind. Breathe in as if you were breathing in
all the way up
from the very bottoms of your feet, while releasing each breath
luxuriously out
through normal channels. Luxuriate also with the feeling of as-if
your
breathing were coming in and working its way through all the tissues
and cells
of your feet, ankles, legs and lower body up to where you release
and
profoundly let go through normal channels. Make each next breath
feel more
luxurious than the previous slow breath; manage to let go still
more with each
next slow breath out than with the previous breath out. Like the
wind swirling
around corners of buildings, swirling up debris and dry leaves
and carrying
them away, let your incoming breath seem to be swirling through
all your
tissues and cells of your feet, of your ankles, of your lower
legs, swirling
through all the nooks and crannies and swirling up and away whatever
didn't
belong there - all tensions, toxins, tiredness like those dried
leaves. Let
these release in your outgoing breath, as they hit the open air
let them
release into hot bright sparks of fresh new life energy. See how
much of the
tiredness or other stuff, other "noise" that didn't
belong, you can sweep up
and away out of various parts of your body and turn into those
hot bright
sparks of fresh new life energy....
.....Make this into a well-practiced, very good feeling, meditation,
5-20
minutes at a time. See if you can get in at least 3 rounds of
such practice
before you go to that art museum experience....
.... Fix your gaze upon some feature of the room or landscape
across from you,
or later at the museum upon some work of art... Sweep your incoming
breath
through that space between you and what you are gazing at, sweeping
up and away
whatever had been between you and fuller, richer perception of
what you are
gazing at.....
Phase Two: with your previously selected partner(s), at the Museum,
using the
Noise-Removal Breathing to intensify/ clarify perception of select
works of
art, comparing notes in detail with your partner(s) as to what
this breathing
brings into view for you about that particular work of art.
3. Seeing Through And With The Eyes of the Artist. Experience
"putting on the
head" of some artist to "become" that artist. First,
here, experience an
imaginary garden landscape, describing to your partner(s) every
detail. Then
bring in the artist, describe her or him or it, to live partner
or to your tape
recorder. Imagine putting on the head of that artist, as concretely
as you can.
Waft forward into that imagined artist, bring your eyes to where
the eyes are
of this artist so you are looking through and with those artist's
eyes. Bring
your ears and other senses to where those of the imagined artist's
are, so you
are listening and sensing through and with those of the artist.
Use her or his
senses and sensibilities to look around at this same garden landscape
and
amazedly detail what the artist is seeing that you hadn't noticed
before you
became that artist. Then and only then go through some of the
experience of
that artist creating his/her art.
At the Museum: with your partner(s) (or pocket tape recorder),
view select
works of art first with objective (your own) eyes; then put on
the head and
eyes of that work's artist, richly describing in detail to one-another
the
resulting changes in perception of the painting or sculpture.
Note: this "putting on the head of the artist" is also
used to actually and
rapidly learn the skills of the artist, and can be used to accelerate
and
enrich the learning of virtually any subject or skill. It is a
form of
"Periscopic Learning" or "High Leverage Learning"
as trained in detail in the
book Beyond Teaching And Learning. In turn, this type of learning
method is
only one of a dozen major types of accelerated/enhanced learning
method now in
world use. Some types, as does "Periscopic Learning,"
feature use of forty or
more specific individual methods and techniques, each of which
conveys years of
learning or sophistication within hours of practice. The first
mention in the
literature of periscopic-type learning as an accelerated learning
procedure was
Schroeder and Ostrander's early report on art classes (and later
music)
conducted by Russian hypnotist Vladimir Raikov.
4. Tuning into the Infinite Aesthetic Hologram--(whimsically,
this may also be
referred to as "tuning into the G.H.P.B.S. network broadcast"--the
Galactic
Holomindartcast Public Broadcasting Service!)
Here: learn to Image Stream, as per previous " Winsights"
entries, or send for
your set of free instructions how, to <win@thebestweb.com>.
At the end of the Museum experience or immediately thereafter,
while you are
still with one or both partners: Let your arts-stimulated image
streaming
faculties show you their art gallery. While you describe back
and forth with
your partners, let your "Arts Channel" Image Stream
show you works of art
possibly even more beautiful than those you have been viewing
at the Museum.
This "Arts Channel" happens spontaneously anyway if
you do some practice in
Image Streaming, and the arts reward is so strong we don't try
to interpret the
meaning of the images in that channel--we just detail and enjoy
the beauty. You
may be astonished at how intensely your beauty-perceiving faculties
may be
activated.
------------------------
These 4 protocols are yours to enjoy and, if you so choose, to
share with
co-explorers and people whom you care about, even to teach. It
is a way to
enrich without significant cost, not only the experience of art
and beauty, but
life generally.
Note: Not only the arts themselves, but the act of art criticism
and music
criticism, by expressively working together widely separate regions
of the
brain working together, may cumulatively integrate phase relationships
between
those regions of the brain and so build intelligence--see our
descriptions, in
"Winsights" and elsewhere, of brain-based "Pole-Bridging."
--So detail those
descriptions!
Amended for this "Winsights" column, these 4 protocols
were developed by
Project Renaissance specifically for the Arts Themebase of the
1994 Creative
Problem Solving Institute, for educative purposes. Copyright 1994,
1997, by Win
Wenger, Ph.D., 301/948-1122 or Box 332, Gaithersburg, MD 20884-0332
U.S.A.
However, this paper may be freely reproduced (in whole, including
this
copyright notice, but not in part) to share with people whom you
care about.
Enjoy!
TOP
Some New Methods
Unlike hundreds of other profoundly accelerative or enhancing
techniques developed by Project Renaissance, these are two
methods of
teaching and learning which have not yet been tried. We'd
like to see
what you can do with them. Let us hear from you.
Some untried new methods to experiment with and report on,
to improve:
learning, perception, and conceptual ability in young children.
1. Sherlock Cruises The GEOGRAPHIC
Organize children into tables or teams of 3-4. Provide each
team with a
selection of 2-3 or more pictures from The National Geographic
or
equivalent.
Level One:
A] One child describes as much as s/he can of the one selected
picture
while the other children either look away or "rest their
eyes" and try
to picture in their own mind's eye what's being described.
B] Each of the listening children then tries to tell everything
that
that description suggests to them about the location, climate,
culture,
demographics, whatever else about who and what is depicted
in that
picture, from the one child's description.
C] Now everyone looks at the picture, and the former listeners
describe
what differences it makes for them actually seeing the picture,
in what
they were guessing or speculating about who and what were
in the
picture. Example: the steep roofs of buildings suggesting
the climate
has much heavy rain or snow; clothing that suggests a hot
time of year
in an otherwise cool climate.....
Caption and brief digest of article from which the picture
was
excerpted, provides feedback. Each child gets his/her turn
as
observer-describer, on a different picture. Emphasize this
as game and
treat, not as a lesson.
Level Two:
Most of my techniques are intended for easy use by teachers,
without
time and effort spent in special preparation. In Level Two,
however,
this could be made into somewhat more of a scored game if
the teacher
has points of geography he/she wants to teach with this, or
to give a
little more formal structure and/or competitive impetus w/o
actual
competition. If the 3-4 pictures cycled are on the same locale
and
people, a simple checklist or "test" of who, what,
where and how at the
end of the cycle could lend an informal scorecard so long
as the
teacher goes to some lengths to keep this an informal game
and not a
"lesson." More important by far than any particulars
of correct or
incorrect will be getting children used to looking at all
sorts of
things with an increasingly perceptive eye and being entertained
by
what they can figure out. Letting this become a lesson or
a real
competition would kill such a development in all but a few,
whereas we
want everyone to become more observant, and more entertained
by what
s/he can figure out from what s/he sees.
An easy further step is to get children to "go meta"
to their own
perceptual and thought and languaging processes. This greatly
encourages the growth and development of their higher-level
functions,
to such a splendid extent that it is one of my own major objectives
to
get young children, especially, to start looking at their
own
perceptions and thinking analytically and creatively about
their own
thinking.
Variance: Some few young individuals will stand out spectacularly
well
in the above activity; others will not. We need to find some
ways to
support these few individuals in the further development and
upper
ranges of their success, without daunting the other children
before
they can bring their own functions up. Prediction: without
exception,
these few young individuals will usually also be voracious,
wide-ranging readers who have built a broad information base
through
their irrepressible reading-for-entertainment. Problem: if
that
prediction holds true: how to use that outcome to motivate
voracious
reading in other children without targeting one-another's
differences
and without daunting some of the children whose initial "Sherlockian"
performances are much more modest.
2. How did they DO that? - an art-related developmental procedure.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arrange children in pairs; the pairs also paired closely enough
to
overhear each other but not interacting formally. Only within
their own
pair will the children interact formally. Taking turns, each
with a
different picture work of art--
A. One child describes in as much detail as s/he can the one
picture.
The other looks away or "rests his/her eyes," then
asks questions about
the picture and/or tries to "predict" other aspects
or features of that
picture from that description.
B. Describer then identifies 2-3 special features about the
painting
and speculates what the artist did which enabled him/her to
so create
or execute that feature. Did he sketch first and paint over;
did he use
such-&-such a brush stroke or other technique? Did he
lay down one
color first and then daub over it? Just guessing, how did
the artist DO
that?
C. Listener now looks at the painting, and describes--
1. What's now in his awareness about the painting that wasn't
before he
looked at it?
2. Counter-speculations about how the artist executed each
of those 2-3
features.
3. 1-2 further such features in the painting and speculations
how the
artist achieved those effects.
D. Both children now begin experimenting onto paper testing
their
hypotheses how the artist may have created each of those special
feature effects. Then go on to free-form their own paintings,
with or
without regard to the foregoing.
E. The paired groups de-brief to each other.
Note: encourage children to describe in detail everything
that went
through their minds as they painted their pictures and while
they were
creating this or that feature.
Objectives: To engage the power of description to enrich and
inform
vision in the context of art. To make it real for children
how there
are different ways of seeing things, and different ways of
creating
effects in and out of art. Also to start especially young
children
thinking in terms of how they might portray this or that effect,
and to
let that thought further inform their vision. Becoming more
effective
representational artists can be a further objective - the
ease with
which this is achieved by this and similar approaches can
be important
to self-esteem and thus to achievement and performance in
all other
areas of the curriculum. The previous objectives are, however,
the more
important and must be protected from any tendency of students
to either
formally compete or to become invidiously self-critical.
If you perform such an experiment as either of these: inform me
of the details
and as much on the results as possible. If you get up anything
at all
worthwhile, I will help you publish, on several levels.
I will also welcome suggested procedures from you which extend
the range,
interest and variety of colorful activities wherein children develop
their
conscious minds, their language, their intelligence, their vision,
and their
independence of vision, by interactive, expressive, increasingly
articulate
means. Between us, perhaps we finally can fire up our children
and our schools
with better methods and better results - in time to help the ones
you care
about!!!
Unlike hundreds of other profoundly accelerative or enhancing
techniques
developed by Project Renaissance, the above two methods have not
yet been
tried. We'd like to see what you can do with them. Let us hear
from you.
TOP
Help a Young Child to Flower
With all our references to and even columns instructing on, how
to
Image-Stream...
--That powerfully brain-integrative process 50 hours of whose
easy,
entertaining practice builds 40 points' improvement in both "I.Q."
and in more
meaningful forms of intelligence, according to independently conducted
state
university studies--
--That simple, pleasantly entertaining practice which absolutely
no one out of
thousands has been unable to learn and do and thus to start benefiting
therefrom--
...some of you must have wondered what you might be able to do
for your own
young children. Of many things, two are given you today in this
column, freely.
Use them with your children, aged 2 to 11 years, and please share
with us your
resultant joy in the results.
As cited above, we know some of the rate of gain in adults. For
young children
it appears to be far more helpful and powerful even than for adults.
And only
takes a few minutes to teach.
The impact of Image Streaming in a young child, upon language,
brain,
perception, understanding, thoughtfulness and apparent intelligence
is so great
and so immediate, that to see those immediate effects has been,
time and again,
this writer's most rewarding experience ever!
Each time you have a young child Image Stream, in the days ensuing
you will
find extraordinary improvements in that child's general joy of
life, not
"merely" that child's quality of perceptiveness and
insightfulness, from then
on! What is now known about the brain in relation to such processes
makes it
appear that such improvements always will result from a young
child's
Image-Streaming.
For another good look at why, and to teach yourself Image-Streaming
well enough
to model it for your child in the manner shown you below, you
might want to
take a look at the following site: < http://www.anakin.com
>. Pay particular
attention to his description of image-streaming principles, and
his free
reprint of the whole text of You Are Brighter Than You Think.
It contains
excellent instructions on how to Image-Stream.
Become, then, at least a little smooth at Image-Streaming and
you not only
build your own intelligence, but you are able then to model the
procedure for
your own child in the way shown you just below. Following that,
a brief set of
instructions how to make your slightly older child (age 6-12 years)
not only
able to sustain such a practice but to become far better at solving
problems
and difficulties. First, and for as young as the child is able
to use language,
is basic Image-Streaming--
Teaching Image-Streaming to a Young Child:
1. Be fairly smooth and/or practiced with your own Image-Streaming
so the
following example is a real one and from you, and not just a script.
Say
something like this to your child:
2. "John (or Mary), I think that even when we are awake,
we still have dreams
going on somewhere inside of us - let's see - when I close my
eyes and look to
see what's going on there, I see.....
(such as the following, only your own Image-Stream segment: "Two
green bushes,
must be springtime because most of the leaves are dark green but
some leaves
are smaller and almost golden toward the tips of the branches.
two entirely
different sets of leaves on the same bush. The grass is just starting
to turn
green, still a lot of grey and brown there. I see a moss-covered
brick sidewalk
in front of the bushes....")
3. "O.K., for fun - John (or Mary), when you close your eyes,
tell me what you
see there....."
If need be, "play the game" with another adult or older
child to model the
process, then the young child joins in. Because of shorter interest
span, a
young child responds to this approach far better than to the lengthier
steps
used in Project Renaissance's adult instructions, not only to
the simpler
vocabulary.
Often, a very young child will just name objects instead of describing
them.
Although this is an important start, you want to get the child
into describing
things - whether things actually visualized, things just made
up, or things
present in the here and now and objectively looked-at. The more
word-picture
sensory evocative adjective-rich the details described, the sooner
and stronger
the resulting brain and language development. If this is performed
with eyes
closed, building up the visual feedback effects, the sooner and
stronger will
the child's own innate visual thinking abilities, originally his
prime mode of
thinking and learning, will come back on line and develop and
enrich.
The tradeoffs-- its easier with older children with better-developed
vocabularies; it's effects are more powerful and immediately visible
in younger
children. The benefits do appear to be permanent, and to view
these and to know
you had something to do with that child's richer, higher and more
wonderful
development, is truly one of the most profound joys an adult can
know.
If need be to encourage actual descriptions instead of mere namings
of things
envisioned, model this describing aspect as a separate game, with
another adult
or older child until the young child joins in. If need be, for
starters go
around the house seeing how colorfully you can make richly detailed
descriptions of even the most familiar, ordinary, objects and
situations. Even
without the visualizing, this is an invaluable way to develop
the left brain of
the child, together with the child's entire perceiving and reasoning
apparatus
and intelligence. The child is still a child - but far more richly
so, fully as
himself or herself, than would have been the case otherwise.
Until recently, the strongest known method for integrating left
and right
brains in young children was to teach them to sight-read and play
music. That
is still a very effective way, especially if done early enough
to make much
difference in the maturing of the corpus callosum, entirely aside
from the high
value of the music as such. Now it appears that to describe from
ongoing
spontaneous mental visual imagery is far more powerful even than
that, and far
easier and quicker to accomplish. --Still better, though, if you
did both....
(If you go back to Winsights Part 14 , though, we outline there
a pleasant
game-like way to teach even 2-year-olds to sight-read and play
music, instead
of the harshly driven methods familiar to some of you - and with
some effects
even more remarkable than any cited here thus far!!!)
Extending Inner-Image Response into Practical Problem-Solving:
With somewhat older children, ages 6-12, here is a simple way
to extend
Image-Streaming and equip the child to cope effectively with many
things which
other children are helpless before. Once some problem, question
or difficulty
has been identified, tell the child:
1. "Imagine a door. Something like a dream is on
the far
side of that door. That dream may tell you an ingeniously
clever wonderful effective solution to this problem
- or at
least a way that works.
2. "Dreams being what they are, that answer may
not be in
words, but somehow in what is shown you. Maybe some
of what
is shown you will surprise you, or seem to have nothing
to
do with answering the problem but when we look at it
closely, maybe we'll find somehow that the answer is
in
there somehow.
3. "Let's see if you can tell me everything in
this
dream-behind-the-door, or in what you imagine on the
far
side of the door, tell me everything about it while
you're
looking at it....
4. "--So when you're ready, open your door suddenly
and
start telling me what you see there on the other side
of
it...."
If the child has had some Image-Streaming experience, he should
be ready to get
intelligible answers from beyond the door. If not, he may or may
not. You might
need to just make a game of seeing what you can see-and-tell about
what's
beyond the door, without regard to any problem or difficulty,
a round or so
before using this on problem-solving.
If the actual answer is not fairly readily apparent in the content
of what's
beyond the door, have the child go through another door in answer
to the same
problem, but with an entirely different scene behind it which
somehow is
nonetheless the same answer. If you have enough descriptive detail
from both
scenes, some detail or adjective or aspect will overlap. What's
the same when
all else is different, is core to the actual answer. Looking for
same and
different, in this inductive inference solution-finding, may well
be better for
the child's mental development and for the child himself/herself
than any
particular answer might be. Please refrain from interpreting for
your child and
getting between him/her and access to those inner resources. You
can ask
slightly leading questions, but not heavily leading: let the child
discover,
even if it takes awhile. You'll be so very, VERY glad you did.
TOP
Learning from the Lessons of the Future
As we gradually begin at last to find our way past the C-prompt
sign, into the
human brain:
We've found one type of format or "software program"
to be especially useful
for solving a wide range of problems, and for creating new designs,
innovations
and inventions. The "main menu" of this software involves
visiting, in
imagination, an advanced world a la science fiction, to make observations
"there" that are useful to you "back here."
Absolutely necessary to this format is your describing aloud,
to a live
listener or tape recorder (as potential listener), every detail
that you can
observe or bring yourself to notice. This describing-as-you-go,
and this
format, gives your subtler brain resources a very effective way
to make known
to you the designs, devices, answers, and even advanced scientific
discoveries
which "work."
Jean Houston's "Exploratory Anthropology" procedure
(from Mind Games) is a
direct ancestor to our present futures-visiting methods, but lacked
(as did all
her wonderful mind games) this concurrent describing-aloud feature
which is so
essential to development of the vision in each instance.
Also essential is to put aside the stereotypes and other expectations
you might
have, relevant to your area of investigation, before hopping over
into that
imagined future world. Let yourself be surprised by what comes
up in the
imagination or vision. Surprise is the indication that you are
reaching beyond
your conveniently loud (but narrowly focussed) verbal left brain
and into your
subtler reaches.
For example: during a workshop we were conducting back in 1977,
during the
energy crisis, one kid wanted to find a cheap source of energy.
Along the way
he also wanted to see futuristic cities and vistas. To his surprise
and
disappointment he found himself to be instead in what seemed to
be an ordinary
cow pasture, nothing else in view or vista except a fringe of
trees to one side
of that pasture. Worse, he kept stumbling over trailing cables....
Persuaded-upon to go on with his describing-aloud, despite his
surprise and
disappointment the kid finally focussed on those pesky trip-over
cables. These
led to that fringe of trees. The trees were so rigged that every
time the wind
moved them, they tugged along guywires or cables at one-way ratchets,
which in
turn drove little generators like old-fashioned car generators
or telephone
generators.
That looks to be a highly appropriate way to power hard-to-reach
unelectrified
rural regions. Beyond that: using trees as nature's already-built
windmills
might indeed present an economical source of power. The sense
was that a modest
woodlot could power a neighborhood; a small forest put enough
power into the
net to supply a small city's worth of consumption - certainly
in the windier
stretches of the country.
That system may or may not prove to be economical. The point is,
though, that
you need to set aside your expectations as to how things "ought
to be," and let
yourself be surprised by what actually comes up in your imagination
or vision.
No way could have that kid have come up with the "nature's
windmills" invention
had he clung to his expectations.
The third essential is to actually notice what's happening in
your imagination
or vision and report that out in your describing.
Train THAT faculty to notice things, and you'll be far better
able to notice
things "here" in the "real world" as well.
For example, millions of Americans
have visited Stockholm on tour or business. Not one has ever brought
back with
him for use here, any version of Stockholm's traffic signal control
system,
which uses auditory cues along with the visual lights to direct
Stockholm's
pedestrian-encumbered streets. The system is at least a half century
old. Set
up in most American cities, that same system or approach could
be saving
hundreds of American lives a year.
But no one has noticed, except persons practicing the "futures-visiting"
process which trains oneto notice......
Nor have any Americans noticed the Swedish use of hot-water feedpipes
into
bathrooms. Those hot water pipes are exposed as finished towel
racks, adding a
touch of real luxury at no cost. Some builders here in America
could make a
bundle if anyone noticed this.
We spend incredible sums in America on retirement homes and communities;
these
now competing rather ruthlessly with one-another. How many Americans
have been
in Italy? How many Americans are or have been musicians? Near
the start of this
century, Giuseppe Verdi began a successful retirement home for
musicians, which
is still going. The sensibilities of a lifetime, built up during
a career in
classical music, or a career in art, or a career in various types
of
writing----these sensibilities are not easily surrendered. Other
things equal,
I imagine that such arts-specialized retirement homes and communities
could be
extremely successful here in the States - if anyone noticed!
To say nothing of the European nickel-cadmium battery which ran
for a
half-century without any American or American firm noticing it
or exploiting
it.
If you practice noticing what you are noticing, in these visits-in-imagination,
you start noticing all sorts of things here in "the real
world" - and some of
these might be very beneficial or profitable..
--And much of what you view in your own inner vision may prove
profitable as
well! Take a good look at some of these visions following below
which were not
gotten, for the most part, by our invention-seeking procedures
which might be
expected to be productive of such things. These following visions
were
incidental by-products from other kinds of excursion into "the
future" or from
simple Image-Streaming. If you use our futures-visiting procedure
next time you
can expect to run across - if you notice them as they are happening!
- your own
such visions of possibly useful products and developments and
designs. Of the
following visions: are there any you are (1) clever enough, and
(2) situated to
be able to, turn some of the following to gold?
Incidental By-products of Einsteinian-type "Visits to the
Future:"
In our various "excursions into the future," especially
with the procedures
we've published in the new book Techniques of Original, Inspired
Scientific
Discovery, Technical Invention, and Innovation: in search of inventions,
answers and other matters, we've necessarily run across a wide
variety of both
architectural and landscaping features. Some of these were attractive
and some
not. Some of these are easier than others to describe. Any architect,
any
landscaper, any design engineer who decides to use these inner-vision
procedures to find rewarding new design principles and designs
themselves, will
be endlessly rewarded. At a layman's level, let us cite a very
few examples of
what came up, not as result even of search for these, but as incidentals
in
support of the context of the various "futures" through
which we were digging
for various answers.
Breezegarden
* --a garden planted with weeping willow, birch, wild cherry,
aspen, other
trees and shrubbery whose willowy branches and fronds move
very
responsively to even the slightest breeze.
Greenblocks
* --densely populated suburbia which looks like nothing but
rolling
countryside. In most areas, the houses are lowset and screened
by smallish
trees; section by section of the neighborhood is screened
by shrubbery.
Some sections of taller houses are screened by larger trees.
Effect: viewed
from any distance at any near-horizontal angle, you see what
seems to be
rolling wooded hills and fields. Streets are hedged and curve.
It's as if
you were out in the fresh countryside on some road, neighbors
to each side
of you; theirs and your own house and the road the only artifacts
in this
densely populated bucolic-seeming setting. Supporting this
effect are low
ridges crossing over the region at intervals (perhaps to enclose
utilities), 3-6 feet high and crowned by hedges or shrubbery
to provide
additional greenery screening in support of the bucolic illusion.
NJ Blocks
* --Where the town is run-down and the air polluted but people
still have to
live. Enclose entire blocks with ionized-and-filtered ventilation
in this
manner. The four to sixteen homes maintain a common wall to
the street, and
surround the rim of the block, like a Mediterranean great
house surrounds
an interior garden and patio. The whole is roofed over, possibly
with
glass, plastic or some sort of translucent panelling for part
of the
diurnal lighting, but airtight for the integrity of the ventilation
system.
Part of the open interior is commons to preserve a feeling
of space;
shrubbery partially delimits individual private areas. The
housing of the
common ventilation system and/or other utilities backs up
to the chimney of
the house which has the fireplaces, and also has mounted on
it a deluxe
barbecue pit with forced-draft automatic flue. The rest of
the commons is
an attractive yard/garden combination. Parking is on street.
Secure Blocks
* --Similar to above but in crime-ridden regions, with these
adaptations: the
above is up one floor. Ground-floor is small shops as in a
shopping mall, a
return in that sense to older midtowns where responsible owners
are present
at all times--by day in the shops, by night in the homes or
apartments, and
are in fact encouraged to be "snoopy neighbors."
Residential parking is in
an interior, ground-floor or underground garage with security
videos and
one entrance, manned by security guard. Outside that one guarded
entrance,
there are no street-side exterior alcoves or recesses convenient
for
loitering or covert activities, and corners-mounted videos
survey all four
fronts. Yet internal living is spacious, clean, secure, and
essentially as
private as in the better residential suburbs.
Some of this writer's visions were influenced by having read,
long ago, R.
Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House autobiography, which helps
account for
these two following--
Forest Spread
* --Suspend hearty cable between 2, 3, 4 or more stout trees,
ends of such
cable anchored in suspended heavy concrete blocks or other
weights. Suspend
a network of lighter cables over the heavier cable. Mount,
above and below
the cablework, layers of transparent or translucent fabric.
The airspace
between the layers is ventilated and provides thermal insulation.
Thus
enclose, for slight cost, a huge residential space most sectors
of which,
visually and by psychological feel, it becomes difficult to
tell what's
outside and what's inside. A ground-floor kitchen-and-utilities
core
supports balconied second-floor bedrooms and/or a multi-purpose
open
platform still with plenty of spacious headroom beneath the
overhead
canopy. The part of this "living acre" which fronts
the main approach to
this spread can be facaded to look more conventional (until
neighbors and
mortgage holders get used to such designs), the wall of which
contains most
of the storage spaces. This "glorified tent" can
easily encompass 3-5 times
as much livingspace as a conventionally built house of the
same cost, and
be far more pleasant to live in. Without trees, the same structure
can be
accomplished with strong poles supporting the initial strongest
cables--but
without forest around, the eventual results wouldn't be nearly
so much fun
or pleasant. The interior furnishing of this "living
acre" should, for the
most part, help support the illusion of being unseparated
from the woodland
outside.
Buildowns--
* Another way of escaping from the 20th Century's disease of
having endlessly
to look at one-another's walls. This one might have been instigated
in some
futures by shifting property tax bases, from corruptible estimates
of
market value, to the amount of above-ground cubic space enclosed.
Many
versions and sizes of buildown have been seen, the counterpart
of tall
apartment complexes and office buildings only dug in around
a common
opening like an amphitheater, only with attractive balconies
and promenades
instead of row seats. From outside, one sees unspoiled countryside
or
pleasant, low-lying cottage-type effects. In some of these
visions, there
is one common "pit" perhaps an acre or half-acre,
with trees, shrubbery,
garden, recreational or leisure areas. In other such visions
the "pits" and
buildings are linked by a major thoroughfare which is strongly
screened by
greenery and baffle from the garden areas. Entire cities can
be "trenched"
out in this way, leaving nearly the entire countryside unspoiled
or
modestly suburban. Both drainage and ventilation pumps are
powered in
excess of need, and have independent power units for back-up,
secure
against almost any emergency.
Riverbankery
* Where a river has cut fairly deeply. Residential and/or mixed
light
commercial/recreational complexes, dug into offsetting areas
of the
riverbank. Natural riverbank, hanging garden, restored riverbank,
natural
or artificial waterfalls, and forest are what's opposite each
complex and,
together with the river itself, is all that is in view from
each
river-fronting such complex. Topside service areas are carefully
arranged
to maintain recreational and leisure commons overlooking the
scenic sectors
of the river and opposite riverbank.
Grotto House
* Single-household version of "Buildowns." Dig a 20-or-so
foot deep hole,
bottomed by a sunken garden and pond or pool, walled with
trailing
greenery, waterfall, other effects. Wrap the much-balconied
house around
half to 2/3 of the hole to make an exceptionally pleasant
grotto space for
living.
Lightslabs
* --for non-load-bearing interior walls and as insulating decoration
on
load-bearing walls. Very, very light-weight; in some visions
seen literally
as inflated like balloons, though it was not clear in instances
checked
thus far how pressures were maintained for the long run. In
other instances
pressures could be deliberately let out as part of a remodelling
or moving
process, then restored in the new setting. Other slabs would
be like
bubbled plastic or styrofoam, but lined permanently smooth,
and colorful.
Some, translucent, would be internally lit. Some of these
would backlight a
panel diorama or hologram which gave good illusion of a window
looking out
on some excellent scenery.
Treetops
* Whether a commercial restaurant or businessplace, a classroom,
or even a
livingroom, everything is in little platforms at different
levels, with
greenery, so arranged as for everything to appear to be little
alcoves and
platforms up in some great tree. When experienced, this seems
to yield a
great deal of at least atavistic satisfaction, a very attractive
effect.
Space Habitats
* From even before the time we developed these techniques and
programs, we
knew that the popular notion of large scale space habitats
as rotating
cylinders needed to be amended to idea of concentric cylinders
realizing
still greater economies-to-scale, per person and absolutely,
and providing
greater security to its inhabitants. Not all shells have to
be at one gee.
Realization in 1992 that only about 2/3 of the ship would
be these
concentric shells and 1/4 to 1/3 would be huge cylindrical
open space,
providing visual and psychological relief for its inhabitants
while still
substantially realizing aforementioned economies-to-scale.
One vision showed yours truly a popular way of getting around
inside such
large-scale rotating cylindrical spaces will be by glorified pogo
stick; wasn't
sure about jet assist although the math seems to call for it.
Have not yet read
any S-F story envisioning people boinging around all over the
place across the
rotating space by these glorified pogo-sticks, so it seems to
be an original
vision...
Jovian Mine
* First seen--a "Y." Top part of "Y" on
closer inspection a broad saucer,
dirigible and supporting a small colony. Tail of "Y"
a long, LONG stovepipe
drawing up matter from far deeper in the gas-planet's atmosphere,
for
processing. Automatic anchor boats outride on tether, at nearly
the level
of the inhabited dirigible-supported saucer, for added stability
when and
if turbulence further down reaches up to this level. Skimmer-jets
ram-jet
in hydrogen to climb from mine to near-space pick-up; conventional
atmospheric breaking for the return voyage, with inflatable
dirigible
capability for flying around if miss the landing web.
Ending Hunger
* by sea farms: pump air down to sea bottom to bubble up--usually
by solar
power, though differential currents, differential temperatures,
or even
waves can be a source of the needed power for the pumps. Bubbling
air up
from bottom (1) oxygenates the water and (2) brings up minerals
to enrich
the sea water, creating a rich habitat for fish. One such
farm could
provide 2-3% of the world's protein needs: one standard-sized
GM auto plant
could if desired turn out 100 or more complete such farms
per year.
Addressing distribution issues is another problem, including
the livelihood
of those providing current sources of protein in the world
market. Note
that 2/3 of Earth's oceans at the present time are essentially
desert, very
low in biomass production and support; most of this desert
is over depths
which are suited for such farming.
Hybrid Vehicles
* --Most notably, semi-dirigible helicopters, seen in several
futures as the
"family car." Low-flying, slow, light, can't fall,
worst it can do is only
to drift if its power fails; following radar/radio beacons
like roads;
low-powered and fuel efficient. No more traffic problems:
just mount
another beacon-channel to fly through between widely spaced
poles; safety
overrides force drift-down with distress beacon if leave pre-programmed
channel or power fails. Wind and storm warning provisions
built into
override system. If drifts down onto water, will float indefinitely.
Emergency anchors and anchor for normal tethering when onsite.
Going beyond these envisionings to detailed, workable inventions
and true
scientific discoveries: see Techniques of Original, Inspired Scientific
Discovery, Technical Invention, and Innovation, details posted
at the website
http://www.winwenger.com, or you can inquire to win@thebestweb.com.
A much
shorter work is a kit for hosting a party whose central feature,
for all that
these are effective, serious techniques for viewing and learning
from the
future, by procedures like "Over-the-Wall" published
recently in this column,
are offered as an entertainment. Let your guests come in for fun,
and
unexpectedly discover that they can forecast (or invent, or problem-solve,
or
many other things) with uncanny accuracy. Right now this "Futures
Prediction
Party Kit" is in hardcopy for $4.95 + $2 mailing costs but
we plan soon to have
the whole kit as a FREE downloadable at website: http://www.winwenger.com>
We
will meanwhile and soon, publish one of the procedures from this
Kit in this
column so YOU, like your guests, discover some of what you can
do with uncanny
accuracy.