Part 9
8 June 1997
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. |
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 focussed, 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.
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