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Chapter 2: The Brain

I am going to tell you about the way this works for me; in other words I'm going to go through my left brain, analytical approach. It's the best approach for sceptics, of which I am one of the biggest! I'll start by telling you about the brain and how it works: how memory works, how recall works. I want to demonstrate to you that this is scientific. In the last 30 years a lot of work has been done on the brain and scientists have proven many new facts. Prior to that, people who used the brain differently were either labelled “loonies” or “brilliant”. There are new breakthroughs happening all the time and some of the recent ones I will be passing on to you. It's a good idea to keep abreast of all new developments, because there are probably many new things still to come that will revolutionise learning yet again.

I found the following quotation from the 1962 edition of the Reader's Digest: “OUR HUMAN BODY Its Wonders & Its Care” (page 113) quite interesting:

The unconscious mind is a marvellous storehouse. The most wonderful part of your mind is undoubtedly the unconscious, which lies below the recoverable memory and is thousands of times larger. We don't yet know very much about the unconscious mind, but we are learning fast and some day may know how to tap its great powers. Your unconscious mind contains many millions of past experiences that, so far as your conscious mind knows, are lost forever. By means of several devices we now know how to bring back lost memories. One method is “free association”, used by psychiatrists. If a patient lets his conscious mind wander at will, it can give him clues to forgotten things which, skilfully pursued by the doctor, will bring up whole networks of lost ideas and forgotten terrors. There are certain drugs which also help in this process; hypnotism, too, can be of tremendous value in exploring a patient's unconscious. Many psychologists believe that we can make more use of our unconscious minds. Innumerable people have found that they can profitably “talk to” their unconscious. Some people find that they can bid themselves to wake up at a certain time in the morning. You can sometimes even improve your tomorrow's mood if you will say to yourself when you go to bed – and believe it – that you will be more cheerful in the morning.

Haven't we come a long way in 30 years!

The brain itself has got 150 to 200 billion nerve cells and each nerve cell has got thousands of contact points. The human brain of course is the best computer that we know of, and it's 50,000 years old – it has not changed, in man, for at least 50,000 years. Another very important point: the brain is the only organ in the body that continues to make new connections, as long as it is activated, as long as it is used.

It is the only organ in the body that continues to develop, isn't that nice to know? The major thing is, we need to use it, and keep on using it right up until death. Just a brief word on senility: if you believe that old people go senile – guess what could happen to you when you get older? Your belief system is very important and brings about what happens in your life.

Now if you really believe that when people get old they go senile, then you may go senile. You may not, but belief systems can really help to create reality! So that is one belief that should definitely be discarded, unless of course there is some other factor to be considered, such as a medical condition. How many of you have heard of people who are over 90 or even 100 whose mind is still quite active – they're reading, discussing, playing cards – lots of things? Their physical body may let them down but their mind is active, and it can be, and it is. As long as you keep using your brain it will develop. So a fantastic start as far as senility is concerned would be to change your belief system, about old people going senile.

Children

Did you know that from 0 to 5 years old a child learns more facts than it takes to get a university degree? A degree such as law, medicine or engineering for example – and they have such fun doing it! In fact children love learning! It's enjoyable, as there's no stress and the attention span is very short so they don't have a chance to get bored. From 0 to 5 children are learning so much, yet when they come into the world, nothing is stored in their brain, not even the action of yelling out “Mummy I want food”. They do learn to get that message across pretty soon though. Babies do not have the knowledge (or the physical ability and awareness) to roll over, or play with their fingers, or talk – no communication skills, nothing at all, except this yell of course as soon as they're born. They learn at a fantastic rate.

One of the reasons they learn is because absolutely everything is new and they are so eager to learn that their mind is like an “information absorbing” sponge. In fact a lot of research is now being done to prove that genius is not only born, but also made; research is also being done about children learning in the womb. Genius really can be created – it has happened.

Genius

Talking about genius for a moment, do you know what percentage of our brain we use? Well, all of our brain is used at some time or another in our lives (never all at once though!). However, the conscious mind, which most of us operate from in our waking hours, only represents a tiny fraction of the total operating potential of the brain.

At any given time the portion of your brain mass devoted to carrying out conscious mind functions is approximately 2 percent. This means that consciously, we don't have much in use... and we can bring a LOT more of our ‘offline’ resources (which work around 10,000 times faster than the conscious functions) into conscious use. [You can learn more by reading the book “The User Illusion” by Tor Norretranders, a Danish science author, who has studied the work of several scientists.]

Similarly, if we look at the work that our mind does, most of the time when we are awake, a great percentage (perhaps 88 - 90%) of what our minds are doing, is being done subconsciously, and only 10 - 12% of what our minds are doing is being done consciously.

So, if we can use both the left and right sides of the brain and the conscious and the subconscious mind, we are then going to be able to increase our mind capacity! You can do that. That's what accelerated learning is about – ways in which we can learn more, retain it, recall it, and have fun doing it!

Brain: Left (Analytical) and Right (Creative)

What are some of the features of left brain people? For instance I said I was analytical, prove-it-to-me, work-it-out, that sort of thing – I'm a left brain person. What are some of the other things in the left brain? Maths, numbers, logic, sequence, linearity, judgement, speech – language, (the English language at least because the Japanese language, for example, which uses symbols and “drawings”, is learned in the right side of the brain). The words and timing of a song are in the left brain, but the musical aspect – the tune of a song – is in the right brain. Spatial skills and manipulation fall in the right brain. Painting, art, colour, music, imagination, creativity, daydreaming – that beautiful state that we often get rapped over the knuckles for – it's a great state (you're allowed to daydream in accelerated learning) that's a way to learn – are all right brain activities.

So now we have a list of probable left and right brain functions – probable. There is always someone who breaks the rule, so there is nothing 100% about this. Therefore from now on I will refer to the two sides of the brain as the “analytical side” and the “creative side”.

Research varies – some shows that the Analytical Side is on the right side of the brain for over 17% of people (most left handers would fall into this category). Many people who suffer from dyslexia have their dominant brain on the same side as the dominant hand (with which they write). How do we know about the two sides of the brain? There is a machine called the electroencephalograph which scientists use to measure the impulses that are in the brain. In fact, the left brain and the right brain have actually been cut in half. This has occurred when someone has had a tumour for instance, or severe and constant epileptic fits which cannot be controlled by the usual drugs.

Generally speaking the left and right brain constantly communicate with each other, but when the brain is cut in half the two halves can not communicate with each other; also, once cut, the two sides can never grow back together again. In this way, scientists have actually been able to measure what a person does with the left brain and with the right brain. These different activities can physically be measured on the electro-encephalograph.

Most of you have probably seen the electroencephalograph on television – it's that machine on the back of the hospital bed in the doctors' series – the one that looks like a TV set. There are wavy lines going up and down and across the screen. When there is no energy in the mind and when you're dead the wavy line is gone. The wave becomes a straight line across the screen – waaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! You're dead. We've got a machine (the electro-encephalograph) to tell us when we're dead – science tells us! Your heart can still be beating, your blood can still be flowing, everything in your body can still moving, but when you're brain dead – you're dead. That's when the life support equipment can be unplugged, everything turned off, because you're brain dead, and without the life support equipment your heart stops beating, and your blood stops flowing. So we have a machine to tell us when we're dead. The difference between dead and alive is the energy measured by the machine. When you're dead that energy has gone; it's gone somewhere but we don't know where. Science hasn't told us where it's gone; we can speculate, but that is not part of what I am getting into in this book. (I welcome talking about it and do so in the book Switch On to Your Inner Strength).

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