See With Your Tongue

When we were small we were told that snakes can see with their tongue. Some of us dismissed it as old wives' tales and others believed it.

We had no way of verifying such facts on Internet those days, you see?

Turns out that the "fact" was not that far off.

Snakes use their tongue to obtain directional sense of smell, which is as good as seeing.

But what about humans? Here is an extract from The Answer by John Assaraf (yeah! the same guy from The Secret) and Murray Smith.

Except for the fact that she is the lead singer for her high school choir, the girl on the stage seems just like any other sixteen-year-old. As the concert proceeds, Beth keeps a close watch on the choir's conductor, intently picking up his every movement and gesture. ... but there is something about her that makes her different from all the other girls in the choir.

Beth is blind. In fact, she has been blind from birth. ... She is watching him with her tongue.

Beth is wearing a device designed by the late Paul Bach-y-Rita, a neuroscientist at the University of Winconsin at Madison, who devoted much of his entire career to researching and demonstrating the proposition that all senses are created equal. And not just equal, but pretty much interchangeable. ...

Bach-y-Rita's device starts with a video camera strapped to the user's head that feeds video information to the laptop, which reduces the image to a 144-pixel signal that is then fed through the electrodes to a grid that rests on the tongue, which reads the image as a sort of superlingual braille. ...

Wow! The human brain is better than we thought!

Anything that can be measured can be transported to the brain," said the scientist,"[and if] we can get it to the brain, the brain can learn how to use it."

Think about it!

Just one question that popped up in my head, and I am really curious to know this: how does Beth sing with that electrode resting on her tongue?

Brain, Mind, Consciousness and the Deception

The success of books like The Secret indicates that more than a few people believe in the hidden power of the brain. The Secret is not the first book to establish this though.

Here's what you can do. Go to Amazon and give a search for "subconscious" in books. At the time of typing this, it threw up a list of 551 books, and books like The Secret, Think and Grow Rich, Evolve Your Brain are not even in the list!

The recipe of all these books are more of less as follows:
a) Focus your conscious mind/brain (i.e, Cerebral Cortex) on something that you desire

b) Continuous focusing will transfer the thoughts to your subconscious mind/brain (i.e, Midbrain and the Cerebellum)

c) Expect miracles - as the subconscious works in mysterious ways.

a) and b) are facts. c) is not.

In one of the books I was horrified to read that one father lost his right hand because he had jokingly said that he would give his right hand to get his daughter cured of some skin disease. Soon after he lost his hand, the daughter was cured. The author then goes on to say that the subconscious does not understand jokes. It takes such instructions as truths and acts on it.

Just imagine!

The Secret is not so different. Once you have internalized your desires, your subconscious calls out to the universe and you get what you wish.

Agreed that we have not yet fathomed how good (or bad) things happen to us. There are times when the incidents in our life seem non-random, as if some force is driving the consequences. But to imagine that one gets cancer because s/he has asked for it is downright ridiculous (One of the 'philosophers' in The Secret actually says this).

It is therefore refreshing to read books that do not consider the human brain to be any different from ... well read it yourself:

As I see it, the only way of overcoming this magical view of what "I" and consciousness are is to keep on reminding oneself, unpleasant thought it may seem, that the "teetering bulb of dread and dream" that nestles safely inside one's own cranium is a purely physical object made up of completely sterile and inanimate components, all of which obey exactly the same laws as those that govern the rest of the universe, such as pieces of text, or CD-ROM's, or computers. Only if one keeps on bashing up against this disturbing fact can one slowly begin to develop a feel for the way out of the mystery of consciousness.

This is from the preface written by Douglas R. Hofstadter in the 20th-anniversary edition of his famous Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid popularly known as GEB.

I bet you have heard of this book. Many of you must have read this. Quoting from GEB used to be an in thing among 'intellectuals' (one of the reasons I never read the book for a very long, long time).

I recommend that you buy and read this book again. Especially because the author has written a 23 page preface. And going by what Hofstadter has written in his preface, not that many people have understood the book.

The book is extremely dense (as measured by ideas per page) and the preface from the author definitely helps.

Point to ponder: I have quoted from GEB in this post. Does that make me an intellectual? ;-)

How to become & remain rich

This spake Robert T. Kiyosaki:

I suspect there will be many booms and busts in the next 25 years ... I am concerned that too many people are focused on money and not their greatest wealth, which is their education. If people are prepared to be flexible, keep an open mind and learn, they will grow richer and richer through the changes. If they think money will solve problems, I am afraid those people will have a rough ride. Intelligence solves problems and produces money. Money without financial intelligence is money soon gone.

Most people fail to realize that in life, it's not how much money you make, it's how much money you keep.

Yeah! You got that right! Robert Kiyosaki is the same person who claimed, "Th[e] pattern of treating your home as an investment and the philosophy that a pay rise means you can buy a larger home or spend more is the foundation of today's debt-ridden society."

Both the above extracts are from his book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. This was written in 1997.

People would do well to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad instead of The Secret.

'The Secret' baffles me ... I find the relation between our sub-conscious and all-giving universe rather tenuous. (Opportunities seem to open up when you practice the secret; but did it open up because you kept your eyes open as you were aware of your goals or because the abundant universe decided to gift you with opportunities since you focused on your desires?)

'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' on the other hand is down to earth and makes lot more sense.

The Secret Solution To Success

As a philosophy I reject what The Secret stands for. The esoteric that this book advances as a theory is based on false notion that dreams manifest mainly because we ask for it with our hearts; while actually the opposite is often true. Dreams are fulfilled because of hard work and perseverance. And sometimes even that is not sufficient. No one can put his / her finger on one thing or a set of things and declare that this gives you what you want. Here's where the philosophy of The Secret steps in - the gap is apparently fulfilled by: ask and the universe will bestow upon you unimaginable gifts; with lots of pseudo-science thrown in.

However, diamonds are found in deep, dark mines. Here's one such diamond that The Secret hold with in its folds. It is a statement that is so very true that it stands apart from the rest of the book, but you wouldn't even know. This quote is by Jack Canfield, the co-author of Chicken Soup For The Soul:

Think of a car driving through the night. The headlights only go a hundred to two hundred feet forward, and you can make it all the way from California to New York driving through the dark, because all you have to see is the next two hundred feet. And that's how life tends to unfold before us. If we just trust that the next two hundred feet feet will unfold after that, and the next two hundred feet will unfold after that, your life will keep unfolding. And it will eventually get you to the destination of whatever it is you truly want, because you want it.

A most practical solution. Won't you agree?

On a complete different issue, I think this is how the world economy will recover: 200 ft by 200 ft, give or take an Obama or a Manmohan Singh.

Picture Courtesy: Kristian Rasmussen