Two GUARANTEED Ways to Profoundly
by Win Wenger
Part One - Introduction
Part Two - Can and
Should Intelligence Be Increased?
Part Three - Awareness
and Attention-Span: A Breathtaking Discovery
Part Four - Image-Streaming
It's no surprise to any serious researcher, this past century and
more, that for every awareness we have consciously, we experience hundreds of
awarenesses unconsciously. --Nor that every such awareness and
experience, whether received consciously or unconsciously, is still with us in
memory. --Even if we "can't remember" the answer to that question on the test!
It's not our memory that's at fault, it's our recall process: everything still
is in our actual memory. That makes up a pretty fair data-base. In fact, more
than just that data-base:
We each have huge masses of information, experience, data, understanding,
intelligence in every sense of that word, throughout our brain but not
directly linked into immediate verbal consciousness.
Much of this is found in those regions of the brain whose working language is
not words but sensory images. This imagery region is immediately responsive to
context and to question - if we LET ourselves see what's being
reflexively shown to us from those further brain-reaches, via sensory
Even while you are asking a question, part of you is already
showing you, in images, your best available, ingenious, most creative answer or
understanding. Look at what's being shown you whatever it is and regardless of
whether at first blush it seems to fit the context - in fact, aim to be
surprised by its contents. Socratic-method like, develop that image further
by describing it in detail.
--Remember our prime "natural law" of behavior and psychology, that you get
more of what you reinforce? That when you describe your own perceptions, you (1)
reinforce the particular perception being described, and (2) reinforce the
behavior of being perceptive....
--And that third thing reinforced if the perception described is at first
subtle, therefore arising in regions of the brain hitherto offline or barely
online with where we are verbally conscious from? --Reinforcing those offline
regions of the brain, together with their resources and intelligence, more and
more ONto line with our focussed verbal left-temporal conscious
Certainly our own internal visual and other sensory mental images qualify as
initially "subtle." If we can pick up on them and describe them in detail, we
reinforce the corresponding broad regions of our brain more and more onto line
with our conscious mind. Even if these images were not fully charged and
loaded with meaning and understandings and answers, to pick up on them and
describe them would reinforce more and more of our offline intelligence onto
line where we can make more immediate use of it, and where its ongoing resonance
enriches and deeply colors our ongoing experience day by day.
While our combination of effects is new, most of its component elements are
quite ancient in scientific and historical terms, for example Socratic Method
dating back at least 2200 years. Socratic method viewed broadly: not so much the
argument and fierce questioning, but what those tactics elicited: the person
examining and searching through his perceptions, inner and outer, and responding
from there, describing in detail what he discovered there.
As just cited on the three factors which get reinforced by one's describing
from his own perceptions, the century-old "First Law" of psychology largely
accounts for why the various forms of Socratic Method are so effective.
Combine Socratic Method as we have here, with the also historically potent
system of Einsteinian "Deep Thought Experiments," and this gives rise in turn to
Post-Einsteinian Discovery Technique far beyond most systems or sets of effects
which have gone before. Einsteinian Method is to let one's visual mental imagery
run loose, while observing it as closely as possible to see what you can
discover from it. The original deep thought method was easy to fall asleep on
instead of staying on task: Einstein would hold a rock in each hand so if he
nodded off, the falling rock would recall him to task. Describing
instead, while observing these images, to a listener, not only
keeps one awake and on task, but actually develops further the images and
perceptions being described - all in keeping with behavior's prime law of
This new combination, of systems of technique whose power has long been
historically demonstrated, opens many paths to your own high heritage of
By some researcher accounts, most of the major discoveries of the past two
centuries were made by means of visual thinking. Examples: Kekule's doze-dream,
about intertwined snakes swallowing their own tails in his fireplace, taught him
the structure of the benzene ring, basis of all organic chemistry. Elias Howe's
nightmare of cannibals attacking, whose spears happened to have holes in their
heads, gave him his a-ha! for the sewing machine he had been laboring for
so long to invent. Niccola Tesla's in-head visual predictions gave us our
electric power system and a major part of the electronics industry and way of
life. Einstein's "train ride on a beam of light" taught him--and us--his
theories of relativity which remade the whole of physics and helped remake the
whole of science.
Albert Einstein himself did not invent, but extensively practiced and
popularized the method, now known as the Einsteinian technique of "Deep Thought"
or "Thought Experiments," of setting a visualization running and observing it
closely to see what one can discover from it. By removing conscious direction of
all or part of the imagery so that its message could come cleanly from the
unengaged larger resources of our brain, and concurrently describing those
free-playing images to a live listener or to a tape recorder, we have now
found ourselves with a hugely productive investigative technique which, in
addition and remarkably, is well within everyone's easy reach to use
XXIV times XXXVII = ???
History records the effects of another comparable improvement in one type of
thinking method. From Renaissance European times the West has found it not only
convenient but absolutely essential to its pursuit of mathematics and arithmetic
operations, to switch from Roman numerals to the Arabic numerals we use today,
and adopt with that the concept and number zero. (Until then it was a major feat
of high genius just to be able to multiply, say, XXIV times XXXVII!) This
difference is comparable to the greater convenience and ease which our revised
Einsteinian visual thinking system is providing in all areas of life and work,
not only math.
Here we now give you enough of the procedure - and a little more besides - to
enable you to enjoy the range of effects and benefits promised you at the start
of this quickbook, through easy and entertaining practice.
This concurrent describing from one's own perception, of subtle imagery,
evokes as we noted the three aspects cited of behavior's prime law, that you get
more of what you reinforce. That first aspect, of reinforcing the particular
perception, is also known as the "Principle of Description:" to describe
anything in detail while you are examining it--especially to describe it
aloud, to a listener, whether a live listener or to the potential
listener represented by a tape recorder. Describe in detail what you are
perceiving and you discover more and more and more about what you are
describing. The very floor you are on at this moment, familiar as that may be to
you--if you were on the phone with a friend who was trying to sketch that floor
from your description of it for whatever reason, as you described one feature
another would come into your attention for you to describe and as you described
that yet other aspects would emerge for you--wouldn't you soon know far more
about that floor, as simple and as concrete as that is, than you ever wanted to
know about it?
We cannot emphasize enough that for this procedure to work, requires that you
be describing aloud to a live listener or to the potential listener
represented by a tape recorder. This elicits a different level of "performance"
from you and, from hearing your own performance in the context of a listener,
gives you also a different level of the feedback reinforcing you and your
experience. Without a listener and external focus, the procedure does little or
nothing for you! With a listener, it's all the difference in the world!
This "principle of description" is the operating instruction for how to
realize Walt Whitman's dictum, that if you observe closely enough even an
ordinary blade of grass (or as William Blake stated, even an ordinary grain of
sand), you will discover the entire universe there. Anything you describe
in close detail to listener or recorder while you are observing it
closely, you discover more and more and more about.
How to bring ANY perception conscious or more conscious:
--By describing it aloud, to someone or to a tape recorder, in as much
detail as you can, while you are examining it. That is the Principle
of Description: Anything you describe in rich detail to a live or
potential listener while examining it, you discover more and more and
more about. (The Whitman/Blake Effect, as discussed above, ignited most often in
a sustained rapid flow of describing.)
This is true even for the most concrete objects of perception, for which you
might think that little subtlety or subliminality might pertain. --Such as your
already long-familiar chair you may now be sitting in. Test that if you like, by
phoning an acquaintance whose patience you're willing to stretch, and describing
to him/her your chair or your floor in as rich a detail as you can, and see if
you don't discover far more about your floor or chair than you ever
Sustain that rapid flow of describing, keep on finding fresh things to say
about that object of perception which somehow describe it, and you will soon
engage the Whitman/Blake Effect, discovering a universe of associated
perceptions and realizations beyond anything you had until now imagined.
Modern physics has found this universe to be (1) holographic, (2) comprised
necessarily of fractiles, a la gorgeously infinite Mandelbrot Sets. As a
result: when description, feedback and perception all intermodulate and so
engage these dynamics, you can literally discover all that, and more, just by
closely observing anything, even your own thumbnail! Whitman's dictum about an
ordinary blade of grass was more than metaphor: it is literal, provided that you
describe in enough detail to your listener while you are looking very
We will refer to this expansion-of-perception effect, of describing one's own
perception, this Principle of Description, as the "Whitman/Blake Effect."
The second aspect from the law of reinforcement is even greater. As
significant as the effect on the particular perception is the effect of such
describing on the behavior of perceiving, and on the perceiver himself. A method
popular in Europe for training ordinary people into being sophisticated,
sensitive winetasters or perfume testers, is: to provide that person a sample,
and he is to describe rapid-fire everything that comes into mind, for some
minutes. Then another sample, and again describing rapid-fire for some minutes
everything that comes to mind or awareness. Then a third sample....
Three days of this activity, sustained, and that ordinary person has
developed the sensitivities of a professional perfume tester or wine taster!
Historically, Socratic-like practice of describing from one's own
perceptions, as distinct from didactic teaching, was so often accompanied by
such huge leaps of perception, understanding and growth that all its most noted
practitioners became convinced that all knowledge and understanding are already
within each learner and need merely be "drawn forth." This "Socratic miracle"
phenomenon happened so often that the "drawing-forth" theory behind its practice
gave rise to the name of "education" itself became named after that
concept--"educare" meaning, "to draw forth."
Thanks to the above-cited. holographic interference-pattern physics, fractile
systems theory and other modern understandings in natural physical law: we are
no longer required to make certain transpersonal, metaphysical assumptions about
the learner to account for these "Socratic Miracle Leaps," or Maslovian "Peak
Learning Experiences," "numinous eternities," "transcendental moments of
illumination," etc. Perhaps those assumptions are true but even without them,
the natural laws of physics dictate that when description of even the most
ordinary perceptions is pursued in this detailed, sustained, intermodulative
manner, a deepened and enlarged insight which seems almost to be "the whole
universe" becomes apparent to the describer. Whether in fact all knowledge and
understan-ding are within each learner, we now know clearly that such knowledge
and understanding are (at least also) accessible through closely detailed
describing-while-examining of even the most ordinary objects in one's own
Interestingly enough, during those 2200 Socratic years: from a population
base of but a few thousand citizens most of whom soldiered or sold olives or
politicked or followed other interests and pursuits, classical Greece produced
more cultural giants and geniuses than has all of Earth's 5-1/2 billion people
during this past half-century, where we are no longer on Socratic education but
on didactic teaching, with the results which we see all around us. Likewise,
from a population base of but a few hundred thousand citizens allowed access to
culture-related ways of living, Renaissance Europe radically outproduced our
5-1/2 billion in geniuses and cultural giants.
In our combination of Socratic and Einsteinian Discovery Methods: the
Einsteinian "thought experiment" defines the context, frame or focus within
which you've oriented your perceptions (and imagery). Modern Socratic Method
simply has you describing aloud, to live listener or to potential
listener a la tape recorder, in detail, everything you can observe in that
context while you are observing it--and again, afterward, in different
settings and contexts (which provide different feedbacks), until you've made
full sense of what you've observed.
Importance of context: Context "sets the computer menu" through which
and determin-ing how you currently process information. For example, look around
your office for a minute with the eyes of a competitor or rival, see what it is
that you notice. Now look around your office with the eyes of a tax assessor,
see what it is now that catches your attention. Now with the eyes of a
client.... A subordinate.... the eyes of the U.S. President..... The subtler
and/or further ranging the information set with which you are dealing, as
compared to the easy concrete specifics of what's visible around your office,
the more susceptible by far is your handling of it to various
contexts--an area almost wholly overlooked thus far by most areas of both
creative problem solving method and learning method, among other fields.
Problem-Solving by means of Post-Einsteinian Discovery Technique, this
combination of methods: note that the problems which we have left around us are
the ones which did not solve based upon what we know about them. There,
what we "know" has become the problem by standing between us and the
fresh perceptions needed. The various systems of creative problem solving now in
world use succeed mainly to the extent that they somehow move us beyond what we
"know" and into those fresh perceptions. The sooner and stronger you move into
perception on some issue, the better your chances of finding good answer.
Einsteinian or post-Einsteinian type imagery is a great way to move
immediately into perception in the context of the problem or issue.
Another aspect very relevant to our Image-Streaming procedure: often our
imagery or image-generating deeper minds appear to be generating their answers
instantly, almost before we've even become consciously aware that we've
contacted a question, issue, problem or opportunity context. Why that
seems to be so instantaneous?--Most of the conscious part of our thought and
perception take place in the parts of our brain which use verbal language, and
so is paced by the speed of the language we customarily use, one word at a time.
Electroprobe measurements show the right cerebral cortex to operate some ten
thousand times more rapidly than does the verbal conscious part of the left--and
the underlying limbic brain, which runs the whole affair, operates some ten
thousand times more rapidly than does even the right cortex! No wonder these
"unconscious" responses sort out at "computer speed," to the plodding verbal
conscious seeming to be instantaneous!
We have taken this combination of methods also back into "education" itself,
finding this modern version of Socratic technique to achieve everything that
traditional Socratic miracles did and then some, and that it strengthens
virtually every aspect of learning. Our recent book Beyond Teaching And
Learning explores this area in some detail and enables its readers to
proceed Socratically through whatever skill or intellectual topic area(s) they
wish to learn in, regardless of the teaching methods used by schools at hand.
The recent huge loss of employment of scientists and technicians following end
of the Cold War, and the popularly reported fact that the average adult American
will change career 3-1/2 to 4-1/2 times during his working life, may render this
literally "educative" application to be very interesting, both personally and
professionally, to some readers of this present brief.
How old are these findings? Too new, perhaps, for our schools and
institutions to make use of, most of the specific findings we've cited about the
brain are anywhere from 20 years to a full century old. Einsteinian technique,
in its traditional forms at least, is centuries old and indissolubly intertwined
with the scientific, technological and intellectual progress of the Western
world the past several centuries. Socratic Method goes back, as we noted, some
2200 years. All of this work revolves around Psychology's First Law," 150
years or so old in our scientific understanding, familiarly stated as, "You get
more of what you reinforce."
Getting to the procedure itself:
A hour or so's practice of Image Streaming, distributed over 3 to 5 sessions
of a few minutes each, will bring you aware enough of this ongoing process to
see for yourself that at any instant, and on occasion of any question or
problem, your subtler faculties are presenting your mind's eye with a
unique image or set of images relevant to that stimulus.
The most generally useful, marginally conscious perceptions we now know how
to elicit and work with is the form of visual thinking we call Image Streaming.
These marginally conscious perceptions can be made to relate to and lead
on into an astonishingly wide range of previously unconscious
perceptions serving a host of goals and purposes, both practical and
How To Work With Your On-Going Image Stream:
All I have to do is to describe how Image Streaming is done, and virtually
half of you who read this will be able, that easily, to perform it.
The bulk of these next instructions will be for that other half of the
readership, the ones who need a little help initially before they can experience
Image Streaming. As matters stand, though--
--For that other half, the half that needs a little help first, we will then
present below some of the back-up procedures from which you can train yourself,
or train each other if working with a friend, or even train entire groups at a
time, how to Image Stream.
At any given moment, there are images in your mind's eye. Half
of you reading this can already see them. Just close eyes and report out
loud whatever it is you happen to see there - a tree branch, a sliced orange, a
child's tricycle, whatever happens to be there now, not whatever
you decide to see there.
For some of you reading this, visual imagery is so commonplace that it seems
extraordinary that there be anyone who doesn't readily, consciously,
continuously experience it. As many of you reading this find it fully as
extraordinary that anyone actually would "get pictures" and see things!
Yet not only the ability to inwardly see, but to develop that inward
seeing a la Einstein and beyond to become your very most immediately
valuable information processing tool, is now within ready reach of every single
individual who now is reading this.
If it is not already, this can almost immediately be your ability--to
receive unexpected, surprise visual and other sensory mental images,
carrying information to your conscious mind from the higher, subtler, more
comprehensive reaches of your brain and mind. --Not just images you decide
consciously to see, such as an oak tree, or a river, or "success," or a big
check coming in the mail.
The most fundamental form of visual thinking is receptive, not directed from
your conscious mind but instead an expression of some of those "sidebands"
reflecting, regardless of whatever is on your conscious mind, your highest
available insights in relation to what is going on for you or in answer to some
major issue or problem.
For example, even as I write this I can pause a moment, close eyes, and see,
this time: a silver-colored one-engine propeller-driven airplane climbing in
what looks like is going to be a loop-the-loop maneuver. I'm looking down on
this silver plane from above; below it I see a patchwork of plowed farmfield and
woodland. Those woods have "softened" with that early spring look just before
their foliage starts to emerge.
I'm seeing this silver plane glinting with sunlight, about two hundred feet
below me and the woods and fields about four hundred feet below that airplane.
My point of view seems to be moving parallel with that plane and we're both
climbing at a steep angle. I've a glimpse of the sky, sort of milky blue....
Whatever the significance of those images, it's not what I decided to see or
"made up" for the occasion. It's simply what happened to be there in my mind's
eye when I looked in at that moment in writing this manuscript. Half of you now
reading this can already see your own images, different images whatever these
may be, in your own mind's eye. For that already fortunate half of you,
here is your experiment:
Simply close eyes, and see what's there now in the way of imagery, waiting
for you to notice it. Please try that now!
How to Image-Stream:
What you need is an external focus to describe your images TO. A tape
recorder with blank tape, or a simple Dictaphone like every office used to have,
provides you a potential listener for that all-essential focus. Call in a
friend, or phone to call up a friend and keep him or her on the line, and you
have, even better, a live listener to serve as that external focus.
Of that half of you who did get an image, some found a strong, clear,
definite image or set of images, while others just got a glimpse, a faint
impression which you might think was hardly worth describing, or weren't certain
whether you were just making up the idea rather than seeing an image--
--Yet whatever you got, the key is to examine and describe it aloud,
in as rich detail as possible even if you feel at first as if you are "forcing"
it and "making up" some of it to fill your description to your external focus
listener. More, though, and more, will come as you describe - be alert to
this happening, and describe the new impressions when they come. Your images
will become rich and vivid and even their meanings - as Image Stream
contents are often symbolic or metaphoric - will start to become apparent.
THAT is Image Streaming. Each full-flow Image Streaming session should
run from 10 to 30 minutes. Examine whatever images happen to be playing in your
mind's eye at the time, while describing them in rich detail to a live or
potential listener (person or tape recorder). Even minimum, trivial-seeming
impressions or whatever: describe them in such richly textured detail as to
force anyone listening to experience and see what you are describing. 10 to 20
minutes at a time, practice several hours of Image Streaming and you will have
mastered the basic skills needed to make other forms of visual thinking work for
you. --And you will also have experienced some of the other
benefits of Image
Streaming as well, including improved intellectual performance and
Even if your imagery is already clear and vivid, you will be astonished at
how much more so it quickly becomes when you describe it in this way,
while continuing to examine it. This improvement is even stronger if--
1. You describe in as sensory-textured detail as possible. The major part of
your brain that we want to bring on line, works with sensory images even in
profoundly intellectual matters. Explanation takes you away from that sensory
immediacy. Instead of saying, "I'm at the beach" or "This is Virginia Beach,"
detail instead the warmth of sand under your toes, the sound of surf, the smell
of salt, the wheeling of the gulls above you in the almost-white sky, black and
white of the gulls on that paler white far above you....
2. Describe as rapidly as you can, to get more and more detail in.
Describe faster than you can stop to judge whether or not something is worth
mentioning, just go ahead and flow it through (and see what comes with it). This
is a kind of "brain-storm" only with description instead of ideas or answers,
and has a similar rule to brainstorming's "if it occurs to you, express it!"
Really rapid-flow describing exerts almost a Venturi force or suction
pulling other perceptions into focus.
3. All this is done most easily with eyes shut, so that your inner visual
circuits aren't distracted away from these initially subtler signals, and so
they can operate at full sensitivity. In other words, please keep eyes closed
during such processing, in order to see more freely.
What If You DIDN'T Get Pictures?
Please pursue whichever of the back-up procedures below which work for you,
until you are able to do pure Image Streaming. Most of the following are
forcing techniques, to get a flow of something started which, by
describing it while you are examining it, will bring other perceptions on line
until you find yourself working with actual and consciously undirected images.
Once you achieve this, then please do log several hours of Image
Streaming, 10 to 30 minutes at a time.
--What we call the "Ten/Ten Test"--if, after at least 10 minutes per day of
Image Streaming for at least ten days, you don't find your life positively
and miraculously transformed, then ignore everything we've said and do something
else instead. But if you do find Socratic and other miracles happening in
your life, please do continue the practice of Image Streaming: no matter how
good things become, they can become even better for you! --Fair test?
Special Segment Insert: For Those Who Did Not At First "Get Pix:"
Here, however, following below is a series of back-up procedures, any one of
which is pretty likely to help you to get pictures started. Once you
do get any kind of impression at all started, "describe the Dickens out
of it," as if you were still looking at it even if it was but a fleeting glimpse
or impression - and you will find more coming. --And more coming. --And more
If you did get pictures, these back-up procedures would only slow you
down from getting your Image Streaming accomplished (unless you are planning to
teach it, in which case you'll want to be familiar with all the back-up
techniques). It'd be better to go ahead and begin experiencing and
For years it was cited as "a scientific fact" that one American in three is
unable to "get pictures," to visualize. In our experience, not one person out of
thousands has been able to get through the following "back-up" procedures
without getting pictures in his or her mind's eye and thus begin to
harvest the benefits of visual thinking. (And: oh, yes--this writer was one of
those who "absolutely can't visualize" until, by dint of methods much harder to
use than those here, he finally became able to "get pictures in his mind's eye"
and start thinking visually. He found visual thinking so very, very useful, that
he began teaching it to others -- initially by methods similar to the ones he
had been taught by, only these didn't work for a lot of people. Consulting his
own visual thinking for guidance how to enable this person or that one to
begin getting visual imagery, one method after another literally taught itself
to this writer. One of the first remains one of the strongest, the "Helper
Technique" version of Image Streaming.
1. Helper Technique for beginning Image Streaming: For this technique
you definitely do need a live partner, following these next instructions
Normally, it's preferred that you simply close eyes and begin noticing--and
describing--whatever images happen to be there. Imagery is going on there
all the time, an ongoing commentary on everything. For some of us, though, that
natural, ongoing process is far enough unconscious that this "Helper Technique"
may be needed--
--Though that imagery goes on all the time, some images come through a little
more strongly than do others, and while this is happening, you
automatically make little responses which are visible to outside observers.
These little responses are "attention cues" because you make these responses
when you start to give attention to some stimulus. A partner observing these
cues can, whenever they happen, gently ask, "What was in your awareness just
then?"--until the one who was asked, realizes s/he was seeing something
just then, and thus begin the flow of description from that point.
Here are ways to make two of these attention cues highly visible and obvious
enough that an untrained observer can spot them and appropriately ask you that
A. When you start to give attention to something, you hold your breath. If
your partner is instructed to breathe slowly, smoothly, rewardingly, and
continu-ously, with no pauses between breathing in and breathing out, then
the attention-cue pause in breathing becomes highly visible by contrast, and an
occasion for asking that partner, "What was in your awareness just then?"
B. If partner keeps eyes closed and the observer notices them moving around
under the lids, what is it that they are looking at? Eye movement under the
closed lids is what is significant here, not eyelid flutter. When you spot that
eye movement, ask partner, "What was in your awareness just then?" When in doubt
as to either cue, go ahead and ask the question.
--Meanwhile, if the one who is to Image Stream notices any images happening,
go ahead and start describing them anyway, instead of waiting for your partner
to ask you what was in your awareness just then.
Once anything at all is spotted, the would-be Image Streamer is to describe
the dickens out of it in as much detail as possible, even forcing some made-up
detail if need be, to get the flow started. (Spotter asks no more questions
unless flow falters, in order not to slow the flow or interrupt it.) More, much
more imagery will come and, after awhile, the Image Streamer can truly begin
enjoying functioning as an accurate reporter of increasingly meaningful and
intriguing internal event perceptions.
This spotting and identifying of attention cues is the preferred way to get
Image Streaming started if you weren't able to simply look in and self-start as
above. However, with so many other back-up techniques available: if 10 minutes'
try of such closed-eyes breathing and cue reinforcing does not bring about the
sought-for perceptions and experience of "pix," switch to one of the following
In each of these procedures hereafter, we will refer to the person seeking to
see images as the Image Streamer, and the listening partner as Listener. Once
both of you get images going you can both play both roles simultaneously, one of
you describing until you have to pause for breath, the other then rushing in
with some description of his/her own images and vice versa, to get a lot of
viewing and describing into the available time. Some of the following, including
# 2, "After-Image" next below, can be done by just the Image Streamer
working alone with a tape recorder.
2. After-Image is another way to get inner visual impressions going,
as basis for that descriptive flow which leads to further visual mental
awarenesses. Stare at a bright light (but nowhere nearly as bright as the
sun!--20-40 watts is more than bright enough) for a half minute, or another part
of the room or windows which have strong light/dark contrast. After that,
especially when you close eyes, you should have momentary after-images,
left-over prints of that light on the retina at back of the eye. You may
experience seeing a gloating blob of light or color, perhaps a line or so.
Describe that in some detail and continue describing it as that
afterimage begins to change color and shape.
Unreinforced after-images last only a few seconds. Reinforced by attention
and description, your after-image can last long minutes--we've found
experimentally some which lasted 4 hours! If yours fades out after a few
moments, recharge on the light again and resume describing.
At some point in that process of examining and describing your after-images,
you may notice experiencing some other kinds of image, whether just trace
impressions or a momentary eye, face, landscape, vase or whatever. It's those
other kinds of image which we're hoping to get to and describe in this
experience, so please notice when this happens, and switch to describing
that new image - in present tense, as if you were still looking at it even if it
were only a momentary glimpse that you caught. With sufficiently forceful and
detailed sustained flow of description, more images will come.
Again: if 10-20 minutes's sustained effort with After-Image did not lead you
to more interesting images, try another procedure. The same for any of these
procedures. No one has "run the gauntlet" of these several various procedures
without getting pictures in their mind's eye with which to begin visual
thinking. Once you have a procedure productive for you, practice the
imagery-and-describing as such. After getting started, do not try out all
the other back-up procedures since that would slow down your more essential
practice, unless you plan to teach visual thinking to others and so wish to
familiarize yourself with all the techniques for getting people started into
imagery. What matters is the Image Streaming itself, not how you got it
3. Worth Describing--you may have been getting blobs of color, lines,
patterns, other visual impressions and not reporting them because you thought
they were too trivial to mention. --Or impressions in other sensory
channels--sounds, tingles, impressions of pressure or movement. These are
still inner phenomena worth reporting and if you report them rapidly and
detailedly enough and sustain that flow of description, you will find this
leading to other impressions some of which clearly will not seem so trivial to
If, after 10-20 minutes of reporting blobs of color, this has not led to any
other kind of imagery that you've noticed, you can, with eyes kept closed:
A. Deliberately look beyond the color as beyond a colored screen, just
a few feet further distant, and see..... (whatever impression: resume describing
from there). Or,
B. Breathe as if to "breathe in" the nearest of the colors, clearing
thereby the way to see other impressions.....
4. Phosphenes--gently rub your own closed eyes like a sleepy child,
and describe the light-and-color blips which result from that changing slight
pressure. Go in with describing from there.....
The next two procedures become deeply enough introspective that it's easy to
nod off--the reason Einstein kept a rock in either hand--so for these two we
strongly recommend using a live partner as listener and "spotter." Another
reason for using a live partner with either or both of these is that we will be
using again those "attention cues" from "the Helper Technique"-----The
instructions for these next two procedures are worded for the use of your
listener/spotter partner to follow in working with you as the intended Image
5. Stream From Memory--have your image-seeking partner, still with
closed eyes, remember a real scene, especially a very beautiful landscape or
object or even a dream. Or have him/her make up a beautiful garden or park. Even
if these are just made-up story words at first and not a perceived experience,
have your image-seeking partner begin describing that scene to you in as rich
detail as possible while keeping eyes closed. Have your image-seeking partner
like a reporter, sending that description to you from amidst that scene as if it
is going on right now instead of being a memory of back when. While your
partner is describing this memory, watch his or her closed eyes closely: when
you see them move under the lids, seize that occasion to ask your partner what
s/he saw just then..... It's noticing those images that's our key to pick up on
and switch the describing to, whether they are memories or new fresh images.
--Especially when images show up that don't fit the "story" or scene being
Keep encouraging description until it is flowing, even if it has to be from
word-memories or make-believe and not pictures, until images are in fact
flowing. Once description is flowing, "get out of the way of the flow" by
not interrupting with questions or with any encouragement more involved than a
lightly positive "um-hm." The flow of description will bring flow of
pictures, sooner or later, if that description is in richly textured detail,
sustained without interruption or lapse or much repetition, and if the describer
keeps eyes closed to see more freely.
6. "Door"--much the same as with # 5 just above, except instead of a
garden, park, or remembered beautiful scene, have your partner imagine being in
front of a closed door. Have your partner describe that door, and the
feel of that door as if s/he had just put a hand on it. Then have your
partner suddenly fling open that door to catch by surprise whatever's there to
see on the other side of it, and ask his or her first impressions of what was
there or "what might have been there." Get your partner to describing
that impression, even if it were hardly there, as if it were still there,
see what else comes into view.
If nothing at all came, repeat the door procedure but with colorful, textured
window curtains, or with jumping around the end of a high wall, with the idea
that something unexpected but valuable or useful will likely be in view
on the other side if partner opens that view suddenly enough. The more
unexpected the contents of the imagery, the better your chances that the image
is coming from further ranges of the brain and not just the conscious treadmill
portion (which is likely to deal up pictures of what you already consciously
know about the context or present situation). The more surprising the imagery
contents, the better your chances of getting sensitive, comprehensively based
fresh perceptions and insights.
Both you and your partner please note: after you have become conscious of
your imagery and have some practice in observing and describing it, you can also
use such doors, curtains, corners, etc. as a way to find ingenious possible
answers and solutions to questions and problems. In contact with this
side of the visual barrier, pose your question. Then, suddenly, look into the
"answer space" beyond and describe your first impression of what's there, with
the expectation of being surprised. If your answer is metaphoric and hard to
understand, as sometimes happens, find second and third such "answer-spaces" but
program to be shown exactly the same answer to the same question, though shown
to you in a wholly different way or picture. What's the same when
everything is different, becomes key to the meaning: inductive inference. Take
any answer, however clear or certain-meaning, with a grain of salt, verify it as
you would ideas and answers from any other source.
Key to the above, the following, or any other "back-up" procedure to ensure
visual imagery happening, is: once you find any kind of impression at all,
"describe the Dickens out of it" as if it were still in view, until more
appears. Keep finding fresh things to say about it which describe it, even if
it's long gone, until more appears. The ideal discovery state, and the ideal
personal growth state, is the process of rapidly describing in rich, accurate
detail the flow of visual mental images which are undirected except for their
intermodulations with your rich treasure-trove of beyond-consciousness
understandings and perceptions.
The ability to Image Stream is natural, the difficulty some initially
have is learned, artificial. Children just don't have any difficulty seeing
their inner images. The very highest incidence of people having difficulty
"getting pix" this writer has thus far met have been people who train
other people in imagery or in various forms of meditation! Yet none, even
of these, is able to go through all 6 of the above back-up procedures and all of
those following below, without "getting pix" and starting to get the
benefits of visual thinking.
It almost doesn't matter how you get the rapid flow of detailed,
sensory-rich textured description going. Once you do have it going, to
report accurately actual ongoing inner phenomena is so much more rewarding than
is "just making up a story" that, over time, this reinforcive effect in the
practice of Image Streaming will train anyone to be a highly efficient,
sensitive, accurate observer, not only of his inner imagery but in all senses,
interior and exterior. It's getting the richly textured flow of
describing started, and keeping it going without interruption, pause or
much repetition, that's important: the rest will naturally take care of itself.
Here are some more ways to get that initial flow going:
7. Music--Listen to some richly textured music with your eyes closed
(and tape recorder ready to record)--preferably classical music, French
Impressionistic music or progressive jazz, with "enough music per unit of music"
to attract and involve your more sensitive faculties. Notice when you
have an image or images and begin describing, persist in that describing. (A
very old idea indeed - remember Walt Disney's Fantasia?) If you've really
had a problem visualizing, up until now, a live partner could be invaluable at
this point, not only as your live listener but to spot your attention-cues when
some especially strong image starts to catch your attention: eye
movements under the lids, or breathing pause, or shifts in face and neck and
8. Background sounds--Pick up a record or tape of background sounds,
at one of the "New Age"-type record shops or bookstores or health food stores.
Listen to these background sounds with eyes closed. Detailedly describe, to tape
or to live listener (who can also act as your Spotter alerting you when you are
responding with attention-cues--"what were you seeing just then?")
what images these sounds evoke for you (which may or may not be the images those
sounds logically should evoke for you--go with what actually comes up).
Let the sounds end but keep on describing, noticing when other images emerge and
describing these in turn, since this use of evocative sounds is a form of
directed imagery and you wish to go on to the undirected form - i.e., Image
9. House blindfolded--Go around your house blindfolded feeling
different objects. Describe at length the appearance of each item you feel. Or,
get someone to set up a grab-bag for you, of many highly diverse objects, each
object for you to feel, to describe the feeling of, and regardless of whether
you successfully identify what it is, to describe the appearance of. See
if at some point in working through your grab bag this way, eyes closed or
blindfolded, you don't notice other images also coming.....
(This is also a mildly effective creative problem-solving technique. If
you've been working to solve a problem and haven't yet gotten your a-ha! to
resolve it, you can turn to perception by asking yourself, 'How would a blind
man experience this problem differently than I? How would he 'see' it
differently than I'm seeing it now?' --or deaf person? Or any other sense
handicapped? Or dwarf? Or 6'10" basketball center? Anything to change the way
you are looking at the problem and to get you from your stuck "knowledge" and
your neuronal habituation into perception...)
10. Air sculpting--with eyes closed (and other people not about!),
begin "sculpting" from thin air (or even from clay) some object d'art. Keeping
eyes closed, then "hold your sculpture in your hand" and describe its appearance
in detail. See if other images don't also begin to emerge for you.
11. Passenger--when riding as a passenger in train, bus or car,
describe in detail with your eyes kept closed what you think is the
appearance of the landscape or street scenes you are riding through. See if
after some of this you don't notice other images also happening.
--Each of these, you see, are calling on other resources to help you
visualize your way through these situations. How many times have you had to feel
your way through the dark to some goal, even though in your own house--such as
going to the bathroom without waking anyone else. What about all those fictional
stories about being kidnapped and the victim figuring out where he was while
blindfolded in the escape car?
Another item of the same type, setting up
a situational, multi-sensory demand upon your imaging faculties to bring their
response above conscious threshhold:
12. Eat Blindfolded--describe the appearance, in detail, of what
you're eating and see if more pictures don't also come.
13. Arrange 4-5 different delicious aromas from your spice rack. Set them
before you, unstoppered. Shuffle them around with eyes closed and with eyes kept
closed, try to identify them. See if any of the aromas trigger further visual
images. If they trigger only memories instead, describe a scene from one of
those memories in as vivid detail as you can, with eyes kept closed, and see if
other images don't develop which can then also be described....
Another type of method, again the goal being that of providing some
visual stimulus from which to begin the rapid flow of describing to pull onto
line other, subtler free imagery also to describe...
14. At night with all lights out, just inside your bathroom, eyes
open, orient toward the lights, turn them on and immediately close eyes! You
should find some rather elaborate after-images or even a scene of some
sort--describe the Dickens out of it and see what else comes.....
Variant: flicking the bathroom lights on and off several quick times with
eyes open, then closing eyes and proceeding as above. See how your afterimagery
comes out with the lights finally out; and with the lights finally on.
15. Obtain a simple stroboscope (IF you are not epileptic!). Set the
stroboscopic light to somewhere between 4 and 12 beats per second. Look into
that stroboscopic light with eyes kept closed--describe as best you can the
evoked colors and patterns for awhile and be alert to other images also
IF no other kind of image happens after 10-15 minutes of this, start
describing some imagined or remembered scene in detail, while continuing to look
into the strobe light with closed eyes and be alert to such imagery as may
develop for you.... If nothing additional still comes, try again with the strobe
set to different frequencies, whatever frequency makes the greatest color and
pattern display to your closed eyes....
Another type of method--
16. Read a good, fully entertaining novel, or at least a story long
enough to get really into. Then with tape set up and eyes closed, "word-paint"
some scenes from the story besides those described by the author. See if
more also then unfolds. Or, remember a very favorite story or novel and do
likewise with that. Again, see if you can pick up on noticing other images also
happening as you get well into the rapid descriptive flow, so that you can move
from directed to undirected free association imagery.
The key in any event is (1) to get anything at all started from which to
describe; (2) to describe so rapidly, run so fast, that to keep up the flow you
have to reach beyond what you've consciously calculated, so that you can
(3) force your loud-conscious mind to accept for processing fresh inputs
from your subtler resources--from beyond where it's already got everything all
You can make work out of this, or each of these and other options can be a
fresh, enjoyable new exploration bringing you new experiences and opening toward
new skills. Because we perceive more with pleasure than we do when not
experiencing pleasure, we suggest that if you need any of these resources to get
your Image Streaming going, make that ploy as enjoyable an exploration as you
can. To do so improves the chances that your senses and mind will open to fresh
new perception, which is your purpose. ------------
Other "Start-Up" Procedures for Anyone's Use:
Guided Paths Into Unguided Image Streams
Favorites of many people are the 8 following procedures. Each provides
a special guided imagery device which then can open for you into some
especially enjoyable unguided free-flow Image Streams. So much so, even
if you are already normally able to simply "look in" and "get pix" with which to
start describing to tape recorder or listener, you may want to occasionally vary
your entry into the Image Stream with one or another of the following
guided starts--one of this author's personal favorites is this next
17. Tree and Cloud--Imagine, and describe, walking in a meadow. Find
yourself going uphill in this meadow toward a single immense tree at the very
top of the hill. Engage all your senses in the experiencing of warm
breeze, sunshine on your neck, face and shoulders, smells of the meadow, the
pull of walking up a gradual slope for a long time, the variety of wildflowers,
the sounds of the grasses, the sounds of your own steps in those grasses, and of
your breathing.... To rest up from climbing that long hill, lie down in the soft
moss at base of the tree--look up the tree's immense trunk, between its branches
low and high, near and far, at the sky. See the clouds moving across the sky, as
you look at them up the trunk and from between the branches. See how the
movement of the clouds makes you feel like the tree is moving instead.
Experience how the movement of the clouds across the sky makes you feel as if
it's the tree, the hill and you who are moving instead of the clouds.... Let
that movement, let that experience, take you wherever, describing as you
18. Windblown Leaf--Be a leaf, or a fluff of dandelion, blowing with
the wind, around corners of buildings and over trees and swiftly racing across
an immense landscape..... Describe as you go, toward wherever....
19. Beneath the Boat: Imagine riding a boat gently onto the lake or
downstream in a broad slow river. Peer down into the water, past the sparkle and
the ripples, try to make out what's below there. At first maybe you see only the
water reflections, ripples and sparkle in this imaginary boatride but as you
peer more intently, you begin to see....?
20. Climbing a steep hillside or mountainside, through a forest:
describe this fully multisensory experience. As you approach the top, you near a
clearing, the scenery unexpectedly opens up to show you....what?
These next three are liked especially by those who are oriented toward
science and technology--
21. The elevator you are on is stopping, its door is opening--where?
(Some scene you've not seen before, some place you've not been before, the door
slides open and-- (fast, very first impression!)--
22. Be a seed or spore, floating in far outer space, cocooned and
having floated comfortably and safely in space for millions of years. Now
approach some world, different from any world you've ever seen before. Drift
down onto that world, reporting back here as you go there, rapidly describe in
detail as you see and experience more and more of this new world....
--Now be a person on that world. Suddenly look down where your feet would be
if you were human, what do you see? What surface are you on? Continue describing
23. Radio Pulse--imagine what it might be like, simply flowing as a
pulse of electricity along some wire--into a great radio telescope and
transmitter--what would it be like to be a radio wave pulsed out through that
telescope? --across deep space, between stars, between galaxies, to.....where?
First impression: describe....
This last device for now is of a type which frequently gives rise to truly
high, great, illuminating experiences.....
24. Tremendous light you sense is on the other side of the door (or
curtain), at the head of a long climb of stairs. A sense of excitement,
expectation, high exhilaration, seems also to await you on the far side of that
door (or curtain). Describe that door or curtain, feel it, stroke it, describe
it further; you sense something very bright or very powerful or very
illuminating behind it. Suddenly: open that door, rise exhilarated into that
light! --So much light, at first you can't quite see what's there, but you begin
to clear the air by breathing in the light, slowly and luxuriously and
feeling more exhilarated with each breathful of light you take in, and there you
begin to see around you.....what?
You can easily think of hundreds of other such devices for "triggering" a
flow of images and experiences, and for shaping or partially shaping contexts
without directing the images themselves.
Contrary to recent general belief, virtually every human can
quickly and readily learn to "get pictures" in his mind's eye, thus becoming
able to do visual thinking. We have provided here, after the main
Image-Streaming procedure above, some of the back-up procedures we now keep on
hand to ensure that everyone "gets pictures" and becomes able to think
visually. Thus, the benefits and advantages of visual thinking are widely
available, not just to a fortunate few but to everyone who cares to
make use of them!
(You are welcome freely to even teach Image Streaming to others whom you care
about, and even to replicate this paper--in whole to preserve context, but not
in part, despite the copyright notice at the end of this paper--so long as you
cite in each instance your source having been via Project Renaissance.)
Here, more perhaps than in any other context, we are looking at equal
opportuni-ty! You now have this paper in your hands. You are virtually
guaranteed success if you bother to learn and practice simple activities which,
apparently, everyone can readily learn and practice! (--And if you're
tough enough to see through to application the unique discoveries you will be
making!) Starting advantage differences of birth, wealth, placement, schooling,
even intelligence, can make little long-run difference compared to the
advantages of simple sustained practice of these activities and your active
resolve to see their results through to fruition.
There is some justice in the world.
And, indeed: once you've started examining your perceptions and detailing
what you find in them, you are just as capable of Socratic miracles as
Note, though, that for most people, for most purposes, these "back-up"
procedures are a sidetrack--an admittedly somewhat entertaining sidetrack but a
sidetrack nonetheless. For most of your Image Streaming exploration experiences,
once you've learned how to do so, should simply be to look in, see "what's
playing there now," and to begin describing as you continue to examine what's
--And in the nature of things, every one of the images you did get up, which
was not an afterimage and which was not an object or set of objects that you
decided before-hand to see but which came from "somewhere else besides where you
were telling the story from"--EVERY such undirected image is full of
message, pregnant with meaning, addressing some issue or key insight for you
with your subtlest, most comprehensive resources which are, indeed,
"brighter than we are" even though they are very much a part of you. Although
technical solutions and inventions often come in literal images, many important
"messages" gotten from your subtler resources are metaphoric, symbo-lic, or like
Understanding Your Images:
1. The more detail you describe, the more you will perceive, and in almost
every case this will lead you to your a-ha!. Eventually. Some shorter cuts:
2. Continuing to go for surprise, get a second set of images which
are, somehow, the same answer to the same question, only shown
very differently. To concretize this step: thank your imaging faculties for
their message or answer, but ask their help in understanding that message or
answer, that help to be in the form of a fresh stream of very different images.
Everything about them is different except in the regard that they are,
nonetheless, somehow the same answer to the same matter. Describe
this new set of images in as rich a detail as you can, but in about half the
time you took for the first set of images.
3. Get a third set of images the same way, the same answer or
message or understanding but shown in an entirely different way. Detail
these new images but in about half the time it took you to describe the second
4. Examine, to the very best you can, what's the same from among these
three sets of images when everything else is difference. What common theme is
running through these images? This helps sweep away the rich ornamentation and,
by inductive inference, lets you see far more easily what the meaning, message
or answer actually is. Examine then how that common theme or element or elements
answer your question or apparent context.
5. Ask your imaging faculties for a way to verify that you are on the right
track with this answer or understanding, and see what they show you this
We consider this search for meaning to also be part of the Image-Streaming
process, at least in terms of further supporting the increase in your
intelligence, because it involves iterating back and forth between the
languaging, the visioning, the gestalt and meaning grasping, parts of your brain
building a more immediate relationship between these. And finding out what these
mean, and what your dreams, many of which are also meaningful, mean, has proven
vastly entertaining to us, even to people who have never before tried to figure
out anything in their life! Much to the disappointment of some analysts, there
does not seem to be any universal code of dream symbolic meanings, no Rosetta
Stone for interpreting any universal code. Everyone appears to have his own
dream language - developed from the working language of those wider regions of
the brain which we refer to above, differentiated by experience. But you can
easily discover your dream meanings by (A) recording the details of the dream;
(B) asking your faculties for another set of dream like images to stream
on which say the same thing as did the dream but show it a different way.
(C) A third set of images, likewise, (D) then find the common themes or elements
which are the core of that message.
Quite a few additional methods for discovering and testing the meaning of
your images, especially in context of discovering answers to questions or
problems, are found in our book A Method for Personal Growth &
Development, which Success Magazine liked so well as to run two
feature articles on it. Method is our main text on creative
problem-solving methods, a thorough exploration of Einsteinian Discovery
Technique ranging all the way from Image-Streaming and Over-the-Wall Problem
Solving to The High Thinktank set of methods, arguably the most powerful and
accurate answer-finding system in professional use anywhere on Earth at the
present time. (The book, only $24 + shipping, is available from Project
Renaissance at the address below.)
Einsteinian and modern Socratic Method applied to learning is presented in
eight types of profoundly accelerated learning method set forth in our main text
on education-related matters, Beyond Teaching And Learning. With any of
the eight sets of methods, you may learn in only days (and sometimes only in
hours!) proficiencies which normally require years to learn. --And learn more
effectively, with far richer understanding and command, than if you went the
route which took years. In 1997, Beyond Teaching And Learning is only
$29.95 + shipping, from Project Renaissance at the address below.
Einsteinian Discovery technique applied directly to discovering! -- that is
the gist of our book for not only scientists and engineers and designers, but
entrepreneurs and for supposedly "ordinary" human beings: Techniques of
Original, Inspired Scientific Discovery, Technical Invention, and
Innovation, published in 1997, only $29.95 + shipping from Project
Renaissance at the address below.
Before we ever developed this combination of Socratic and Einsteinian
methods, we had already worked out a powerful system for reworking the
subroutines of the human brain in order to better support its higher functions.
This book of mainly sensori-motor procedures, How To Increase Your
Intelligence is temporarily out of print.
--But you don't need the above books. All you need to know to give yourself
(or your loved ones) the cited benefits, is contained in these pages now between
your hands, and in the resources between your ears.
No one has failed to "get pix" and so to start harvesting the benefits
of Image-Streaming, out of thousands trained locally and thousands more trained
at that state university in Minnesota. No one has "run the gauntlet" of serious
press application of the 23 above back-up procedures without getting pix
and starting to reap the benefits. Intelligence is earnable. Here is equal
opportunity in the fullest sense. If building 20, 40 or 100 more "I.Q." points
higher intelligence is "elitist," make the most of it! If absolutely everyone
who wishes to can fly with the eagles, don't tell me to stay down
here in the mud!
- You are brighter than you think!
- It's easier to fly than you ever dreamed!
- The universe is richer/wilder/weirder/more wonderful than
you ever dreamed!
- Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more!
PS--these were two
procedures for improving intelligence. We now know of more than 40 different
systems of method for doing so. Enjoy!
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©1998 by Project Renaissance (regarding this internet version only, other
copyrights may apply). While we encourage the free distribution of this article
(complete text only, including this notice and acknowledgment of source), we do
require that expressed permission be granted by Project Renaissance for any
major republication. For minor printing and sharing, we only request that you
You may reach Win Wenger via email at Project Renaissance.
You may reach Win via telephone at (301)948-1122.
You may reach Project Renaissance via groundmail at Box 332, Gaithersburg, MD 20884-0332 USA
This version originally published by Matthew Turco at Anakin's Brain (now Genius by Design). Adapted for access via Project Renaissance's website, October 30, 2000.