The Smart Transplantation
I was listening earlier in the week to a BBC Radio 4 play, called "Heart Transplant" by Jonathan Holloway. It told the story of the world's first heart transplant operation, carried out in Cape Town in 1967 by a team led by Professor Christiaan Barnard.
It was a deeply engaging story of how Barnard transplanted the heart of a young girl called Denise Darvall, who had recently been critically injured in a car accident, into an older man called Louis Washkansky.
(It was the first time in human history that this complex operation had ever been done. And it was... partially successful. The recipient lived for 19 days afterwards before succumbing to pneummonia.)
Anyway, this got me thinking about whether it would be possible to transplant the thinking ability of one person into another: a kind of "Smart Transplant" instead of "Heart Transplant", if you will.
I guess communication is a way of transplanting your thinking into another person -- and vice versa. The whole ethos of teaching as we know it in the West seems to be about pourring knowledge into empty vessels -- transplanting the tried and tested into virgin mental territory to sustain the known and the status quo.
I've read of various futurists who speculate on a time when you will able to download your consciousness, like some massive data file, onto a computer and sustain your existence indefinitely either on some kind of virtual reality computer, or into some kind of cyborg or clone of yourself. You can just picture a kind of 'body shop' where you choose from a range of human body models, and once you've made your choice and purchase, you can upload your consciousness into this brand new body (built or grown for this purpose). When it wears out or you get tired of it, you choose a new one.
(I wonder how that ever changing body image would affect your consciousness? Or how your consciousness would affect that body? Would it start to mould it so you started to look like you used to?)
But that is really all about sustaining the same consciousness. What I am getting at is finding out if there is a way to change your mind, so that you no longer think like YOU. Can you can break out of the limited parameters of thinking that you have become used to (your way of thinking), and find a way to think in a completely unique or at least different way?
There are different degrees of creative thinking.
There is a mild sort of pragmatic daily life creative thinking. Eg. What shall I do today? What can I get Mom for her birthday? How can I improve the look of this webpage?
There is a focussed kind of purpose-driven creative thinking. Eg. We need to design a new marketing campaign to sell these Mexican beans. I want to write a popular thriller novel about a pornstar bank robber, called Stick It Up. The XYZ Corporation need to find ways of reducing employee absenteeism.
There is field-specific breakthrough creative thinking. Eg. James Joyce's Ulysses; Picasso's cubism.
Then there is life-changing, revolutionary creative thinking. Care to suggest any examples that fall into that category?
It is this latter category that interests me most of all. What would it be like to think outside of yourself, to think outside of all your conditioning, to think outside of what your society and the world at this time considers to be important and the right things to do?
How could you cut out the "normal thinking" part of you and tranplant into its place an extraodinary, raw, unfettered creative thinking ability?
Setting aside the metaphor for a moment, how can you be free enough to think in the most extraodinary way conceivable?
It seems to me that we need to find that out asap. We need some radical thinking to re-question the tried and true to keep invigorating it with fresh blood and keep it evolving.
The areas in which we need fresh "out of this world" (forget out of the box!) thinking are obvious: Environment; Energy; Education; Morality; Meaning; Relationships; MONEY; Health; Population; Transport... and more.
The Smarter Transplant
I'm not sure when those futurists I spoke of might be free to upload their consciousness to a biobot or pre-grown clone of themselves. And I'm not sure when those people who have their brains frozen at death in the hope of getting ressurrected by a future brain or whole-body transplant operation will be thawed out. What I do know, or suspect, is that you need ways to break out of normal thinking and access your genius super thinking abilities.
One of the better ways of achieving this 'smart transplant', where you can suddenly think with the brain of one of the greatest minds of all times, is a technique described by Win Wenger in his book, The Einstein Factor. (Also available on audio: The Einstein Factor ). It's called "Putting on Heads". Basically it involves getting into a deeply relaxed state either through progressive relaxation exercises, self-hypnosis or guided visualisation, practicing Win Wenger's imagestreaming technique, and then imaging yourself in a beautiful garden. You then call up some great thinker that you know or admire. It could be anyone from Mozart, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Tesla, Buckminster Fuller, Alexander the Great, Lao Tsu, Jesus ...whoever.
You imagine that person before you. You greet them. Have them turn around and then you kind of step inside them and become that person. And you look out at the world through their eyes and try to think like they do.
This is really an ancient technique used by shamans for ages and ages. You know the sort of thing, the shamans dress up as animal spirits or as ancestral gods and this enables them to 'get into the spirit' of communicating with or as that entity that they are portraying.
Now whether they really do communicate with spirit or this act just unlocks their unconscious wisdom to use their own pure creativity is a question I leave to you. I don't really care. All that matters is that the mind seems to respond to these kind of sacred games, so let's use them....
There are some books and ideas that take this and apply it in daily life so you go around and meet your challenges and ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?" (Or Genghis Khan, Winston Churchill, or James Bond, whoever takes your fancy as a role model).
Another technique that comes to mind that relates to this concept of the smart transplant is something termed "artificial reincarnation". This is where subjects are hypnotised and then told that they are a great artist (a Van Gogh, Matisse etc) or writer (Shakespeare, Hemingway etc) or musician (Mozart, Beethoven, Bach etc) -- and then they paint, or write, or make music. And with this process their is a marked and measurable improvement in their artistic abilities. Somehow believing that they are this great writer, musician or artist frees part of them to behave and act as if they are really good -- and this does enable them to perform more creatively.
Human beings are born to emulate. It's hard-wired into us as part of our biological survival system. Often this defaults to thinking just like everybody else. We want to harness this behaviour so that we can emulate and think like the greatest thinkers that have ever lived.
Find out about great thinkers. Read about them. Try and read their own words. If they are alive today try and see them, hear them and get to know how they think differently, so that you can discover new ways to think.
You can give yourself a smart transplant by emulating great minds, by invoking their spirit in your work and trying to do it 'as them'. As you do this and grow in it, you will find that your own style and brilliance will come out. We stand on the shoulders of giants to climb higher. And we in turn may be the next giant -- but you still need to climb up and onto that shoulder and see the world as they do, and then reach higher still to see from an even greater perspective. The School of Thinking has this great little code, CVStoBVS, which stands for Current View of Situation to Better View of Situation. And that is the movement we want to establish everyday -- this constant evolution of our thinking -- pushing to make it greater and more incredible all the time.
Upwards and onwards,
Wily ;-)
It was a deeply engaging story of how Barnard transplanted the heart of a young girl called Denise Darvall, who had recently been critically injured in a car accident, into an older man called Louis Washkansky.
(It was the first time in human history that this complex operation had ever been done. And it was... partially successful. The recipient lived for 19 days afterwards before succumbing to pneummonia.)
Anyway, this got me thinking about whether it would be possible to transplant the thinking ability of one person into another: a kind of "Smart Transplant" instead of "Heart Transplant", if you will.
I guess communication is a way of transplanting your thinking into another person -- and vice versa. The whole ethos of teaching as we know it in the West seems to be about pourring knowledge into empty vessels -- transplanting the tried and tested into virgin mental territory to sustain the known and the status quo.
I've read of various futurists who speculate on a time when you will able to download your consciousness, like some massive data file, onto a computer and sustain your existence indefinitely either on some kind of virtual reality computer, or into some kind of cyborg or clone of yourself. You can just picture a kind of 'body shop' where you choose from a range of human body models, and once you've made your choice and purchase, you can upload your consciousness into this brand new body (built or grown for this purpose). When it wears out or you get tired of it, you choose a new one.
(I wonder how that ever changing body image would affect your consciousness? Or how your consciousness would affect that body? Would it start to mould it so you started to look like you used to?)
But that is really all about sustaining the same consciousness. What I am getting at is finding out if there is a way to change your mind, so that you no longer think like YOU. Can you can break out of the limited parameters of thinking that you have become used to (your way of thinking), and find a way to think in a completely unique or at least different way?
There are different degrees of creative thinking.
There is a mild sort of pragmatic daily life creative thinking. Eg. What shall I do today? What can I get Mom for her birthday? How can I improve the look of this webpage?
There is a focussed kind of purpose-driven creative thinking. Eg. We need to design a new marketing campaign to sell these Mexican beans. I want to write a popular thriller novel about a pornstar bank robber, called Stick It Up. The XYZ Corporation need to find ways of reducing employee absenteeism.
There is field-specific breakthrough creative thinking. Eg. James Joyce's Ulysses; Picasso's cubism.
Then there is life-changing, revolutionary creative thinking. Care to suggest any examples that fall into that category?
It is this latter category that interests me most of all. What would it be like to think outside of yourself, to think outside of all your conditioning, to think outside of what your society and the world at this time considers to be important and the right things to do?
How could you cut out the "normal thinking" part of you and tranplant into its place an extraodinary, raw, unfettered creative thinking ability?
Setting aside the metaphor for a moment, how can you be free enough to think in the most extraodinary way conceivable?
It seems to me that we need to find that out asap. We need some radical thinking to re-question the tried and true to keep invigorating it with fresh blood and keep it evolving.
The areas in which we need fresh "out of this world" (forget out of the box!) thinking are obvious: Environment; Energy; Education; Morality; Meaning; Relationships; MONEY; Health; Population; Transport... and more.
The Smarter Transplant
I'm not sure when those futurists I spoke of might be free to upload their consciousness to a biobot or pre-grown clone of themselves. And I'm not sure when those people who have their brains frozen at death in the hope of getting ressurrected by a future brain or whole-body transplant operation will be thawed out. What I do know, or suspect, is that you need ways to break out of normal thinking and access your genius super thinking abilities.
One of the better ways of achieving this 'smart transplant', where you can suddenly think with the brain of one of the greatest minds of all times, is a technique described by Win Wenger in his book, The Einstein Factor. (Also available on audio: The Einstein Factor ). It's called "Putting on Heads". Basically it involves getting into a deeply relaxed state either through progressive relaxation exercises, self-hypnosis or guided visualisation, practicing Win Wenger's imagestreaming technique, and then imaging yourself in a beautiful garden. You then call up some great thinker that you know or admire. It could be anyone from Mozart, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Tesla, Buckminster Fuller, Alexander the Great, Lao Tsu, Jesus ...whoever.
You imagine that person before you. You greet them. Have them turn around and then you kind of step inside them and become that person. And you look out at the world through their eyes and try to think like they do.
This is really an ancient technique used by shamans for ages and ages. You know the sort of thing, the shamans dress up as animal spirits or as ancestral gods and this enables them to 'get into the spirit' of communicating with or as that entity that they are portraying.
Now whether they really do communicate with spirit or this act just unlocks their unconscious wisdom to use their own pure creativity is a question I leave to you. I don't really care. All that matters is that the mind seems to respond to these kind of sacred games, so let's use them....
There are some books and ideas that take this and apply it in daily life so you go around and meet your challenges and ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?" (Or Genghis Khan, Winston Churchill, or James Bond, whoever takes your fancy as a role model).
Another technique that comes to mind that relates to this concept of the smart transplant is something termed "artificial reincarnation". This is where subjects are hypnotised and then told that they are a great artist (a Van Gogh, Matisse etc) or writer (Shakespeare, Hemingway etc) or musician (Mozart, Beethoven, Bach etc) -- and then they paint, or write, or make music. And with this process their is a marked and measurable improvement in their artistic abilities. Somehow believing that they are this great writer, musician or artist frees part of them to behave and act as if they are really good -- and this does enable them to perform more creatively.
Human beings are born to emulate. It's hard-wired into us as part of our biological survival system. Often this defaults to thinking just like everybody else. We want to harness this behaviour so that we can emulate and think like the greatest thinkers that have ever lived.
Find out about great thinkers. Read about them. Try and read their own words. If they are alive today try and see them, hear them and get to know how they think differently, so that you can discover new ways to think.
You can give yourself a smart transplant by emulating great minds, by invoking their spirit in your work and trying to do it 'as them'. As you do this and grow in it, you will find that your own style and brilliance will come out. We stand on the shoulders of giants to climb higher. And we in turn may be the next giant -- but you still need to climb up and onto that shoulder and see the world as they do, and then reach higher still to see from an even greater perspective. The School of Thinking has this great little code, CVStoBVS, which stands for Current View of Situation to Better View of Situation. And that is the movement we want to establish everyday -- this constant evolution of our thinking -- pushing to make it greater and more incredible all the time.
Upwards and onwards,
Wily ;-)
