From our last voyage, which should be completed before embarking upon this one, we have come to understand that we all possess unique sets of software filters which participate in and colour each and every engagement in our lives. The validity or "truth" of these beliefs appears secondary: our hardware, the human nervous system, does not differentiate between "true" beliefs and "false" beliefs - it deals in electrical realities which we can (but rarely do) control through awareness of our subconscious perceptions. (As a side note, the actual content doesn't seem as important as the structure of the belief. Gregory Bateson commented that the usefulness of our software maps doesn't so much lie in literal truthfulness, but in having a structure analogous to the territory. So that a culture that believes that sexually transmitted diseases involve evil spirits spurting from the man's penis, passing from one person to another during sexual intercourse may have just as effective a "map" for sexual health as one that substitutes microbes, genes or germs for evil spirits.) As should be obvious from the previous essay and common experience, varying perceptions can create different responses to identical stimuli:
 Our reality-tunnels do not only determine what we see, but also how our bodies react. The interconnected feedback loops of the human bodymind "read" these processed signals and respond accordingly. We can think up an infinite number of beliefs, and these perceptions can affect the body as surely as a physical sensation. In this way, we are constantly making decisions and chanting subconscious mantras about who we want to be, through our attitudes, approaches and habits, whether we realise it or not. Those with a confident attitude do not possess an invincible core, but rather a clever filtering mechanism that embraces that which confirms what they believe, and remains indifferent to other signals. Another person operating on a different filter can interpret the same gestures as confirmation of what they already believed; that they are insignificant and that no-one likes them. Even nice gestures tend to go un-noticed in this second filter, and the thinker will tend to "prove" that people are just doing these things because they feel sorry for him/her. In the second filter, more negative comments will be absorbed, thus confirming and re-enforcing the original belief. In the first filter, more positive comments will be absorbed, thus confirming and re-enforcing the original belief. Robert Anton Wilson sums this fundamental behaviour of the mind up in a simple phrase: What the Thinker Thinks, the Prover Proves The thinking part of the mind can think up anything, and if there is sufficient intent and belief, then the Prover, another aspect of the mind, will "prove" it by selectively interpreting sensory data and pumping certain perceptions into to the human feedback loop. Those who have witnessed a rapid character change or a boost in confidence often make a conscious decision to say "no" to a previous belief, a willed brain-change, which leads them to process information in a very different way. The filtering mechanism has been altered, and instead of picking up on negative signals, the re-wired brain-mind now thinks that they "are" worthwhile and confident, and so they go on to prove this by affirming and looking out for the signals that confirm the perception. These thoughts, if internalised throughout the whole mind (i.e. conscious and subconscious), can create changes just as real as the floor that supports us. The thinker, through awareness and then intent, can re-program something that once operated as a subconscious background program, an unquestioned reality. This changes the perception of the subject by changing what they allow to enter their consciousness and how they deal with it. The things themselves can become almost totally irrelevant; it is the response on behalf of the subject, the method of engagement, that creates the change, the way in which they meet and merge with different phenomenon. Most people are aware that we can easily have very different mental associations for the same activities. When Jean Liedloff observed a group consisting of Yequana Indians and Europeans trying to move a large canoe over some rocks on a river, she saw a clear split between the two groups. The natives made a big game of it, enjoying the challenge. The Europeans meanwhile became frustrated, seeing the issue as an ordeal that had to be resolved quickly. They were operating on different sets of reality-tunnels, which seem to have given them conflicting definitions of "work." Each reality-tunnel appeared equally real to each culture, and neither seems capable of being labelled "right" or "wrong." Self-fulfilling prophecies represent another label for other forms of interactive brain-programming. Studies have shown (and most teachers are aware) that a teacher can make a totally false prophecy about a student ("he will not pass this class"), but if the claim is made with authority, and most importantly believed by the student, the "bio-computer" of the student will often pick up on signals that confirm the belief, whilst ignoring or downplaying signals that go against it. These beliefs have the potential to make fully capable students fail classes that they intellectually have little problem with. The potential for such prophecies in childhood are much greater. Messages like "you are a dirty little boy", accompanied by spanking, often do not escape integration into the child's worldview and can surface in later years with "interesting" effects.  We receive and act upon thousands of mini-prophecies every day. If Pam in my workplace gives me a few more smiles than I am used to because she has misheard some information (I actually fancied a ham sandwich), my confidence might jump, in turn leading me to become less reserved and more friendly, which could easily confirm Pam's original sexual suspicions. If Harry seems un-willing to help because he unfairly believes I "am" stupid, I might creatively interpret these signals and construct a situation where I become more reserved and cautious, making nervous blunders which come to confirm Harry's original belief that I "was" stupid. These prophecies are not limited to words, but also body language (I'll leave the details of Pam's body language to your imagination.) In instances such as these, the feedback loop of the individual has undergone temporary re-programming. People can create positive feedback (more encourages more) on negative ideas, so that with each negative possibility, the evidence is increased, and thus there is more and more evidence each time, giving way to a downward spiral of negativity. This is affectionately named a Loser script by some psychologists. Techniques for overcoming depression, lack of confidence or simple personal improvement can change this behaviour so that positive feedback loops are installed on positive signals. Each positive signal increases the confidence, and gradually builds more and more confidence which confirms more and more of the positive belief: a Winner script. Our powerful gift can also be our greatest enemy. With such a highly-developed nervous system, we can internalise and fully believe all kinds of rubbish that has no relation to outside facts. This plasticity means that the misjudgements of others can easily be imprinted upon our own neurons as self-evident "truth." In our current Information Age, this danger is more pronounced than ever, with the majority receiving the bulk of their knowledge not from their own participation in life, but from sensationalist newspapers and corporate sponsored news stations which manufacture and sell trash so that people can believe and live by trash. The power of thought, the programming potential of the human "bio-computer", has also been well-documented to expand into to people thinking themselves ill and thinking themselves well. Most people recognise this phenomenon under the category of the "placebo effect." A scientific understanding of such potential has slowly developed, revealing the intricate feedback loops between thoughts/emotions and biological changes, but outright denial of the subject's experience is still regularly employed. (Scientists are humans too! What the Thinker Thinks, the Prover Proves has equal application to all of us.) Studies by Kirsch (2002) highlighted the phenomenal role of the "placebo effect" in trials to test anti-depressant drugs. In such studies, the FDA requires that all drugs be tested against placebos to prove medical benefit: Kirsch requested the complete files on the six most widely prescribed antidepressants approved between 1987 and 1999: Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Effexor, Serzone, and Celexa -- drugs that together had $8.3 billion in worldwide sales in 2002. Within a month, he had an even less drug-friendly story than the one told in the journals. In "The Emperor's New Drugs," published in the July 2002 issue of the American Psychological Association's Prevention & Treatment, Kirsch's team presented their findings: Of the 47 trials conducted for the six drugs, only 20 of them showed any measurable advantage of drugs over placebos, a much lower number than turns up in published research. This was not entirely unexpected -- "publication bias" has long been known to be a problem in assessing the effectiveness of drugs -- and Kirsch is quick to point out that even these meager numbers "leave no doubt that there is a difference between drug and placebo. But I was surprised at how small the difference was in clinical terms. The studies all used the same measure" -- the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, the nearly universal way clinicians assess a patient's level of depression -- "so it was easy to see how much clinical improvement there really was." And there really wasn't much at all: The average patient on drugs improved by about 10 points on the 52-point Hamilton, while a placebo patient improved by a little more than eight. "A two-point difference on the Hamilton -- it's just clinically meaningless. Trivial," Kirsch says. "You can get that from having an improvement in sleep patterns, and if one of the side effects of the drugs is to induce drowsiness, the whole difference could be right there." (Indeed, critics say the Hamilton is skewed toward physical symptoms of depression, those most likely to be affected by medication.) In other words, around 80% of the effects of these anti-depressant trials could be attributed to non-drug related self-improvement, to people awakening some mechanism through which they could "think" themselves well. These are not conventional magicians or mystics, but people who seem to be unconsciously harnessing the effects of brain-programming, psycho-biological feedback, intention and belief, to affect their well-being. Researchers who have studied the history of medicine have also found older traces of such potential. Before the reign of medical science, healing aids and remedies were concocted by a range of people who had very little scientific know-how. This lead to remedies such as treating wounds with arsenic, or treating nervous illness with moss from the skull of a hanged man. Some ancient cures have eventually been found to have beneficial effects, but many of these strange cures had no medically-useful properties. In spite of this, many people still witnessed improved health from many of these treatments, even the ones now shown to be dangerous to health. A 2002 study into knee surgery for people with osteoarthritis confirmed that this form of self-healing extends far beyond the placebo sugar pills commonly used. The lead author, Dr. Bruce Moseley, knew that his knee surgery had helped patients, but he wasn't sure which part was providing the relief. The study divided 180 people into three groups. For the first group, Moseley shaved the damaged cartilage in the knee, and for the second group he flushed out the knee joint, removing material thought to be causing the pain. The third group were sedated, surface incisions were made, but the surgeons did nothing else. After 40 minutes of acting as if they were performing the surgery, Moseley and his assisting surgeons mended the incisions and let the patients go on their way, all three groups receiving the same post-operative care and exercise programs. As was expected, the groups who received surgery improved, but the placebo group, who had received no surgery, experienced the same levels of success in curing their osteoarthritis. One of the fake-surgery patients was later shown in a documentary to be walking and playing basketball, where before he had walked with a cane. Moseley concluded: "My skill as a surgeon had no benefit on these patients. The entire benefit of surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee was the placebo effect." The dynamics of the placebo effect, of faith healing and of "psychosomatic" healing, are complicated. My aim here is not in pushing any particular conclusions on the phenomena, but simply raising awareness that 1) it exists all around and within us, and 2) that we can harness it for our own well-being. The above study appeared to have been so successful because the surgeon "knew" beforehand that his surgery was helping, because of the theatrical "fake" surgeries, and because the placebo patients were not told for two years that they hadn't had real surgery. The lack of doubt seemed to optimise the innate healing power of the patients. We know that belief can also falter or improve at certain stages. If placebo patients believe they are witnessing a side effect of a drug (and some have, having only ingested a sugar pull) then the placebo effect, the potential of their innate response mechanism, increases. If they decide that they have been given a fake pill (regardless of the truth), then the potential can be diminished. Some of you may remember faking illness in school so well that you eventually felt physical illness - I remember inducing a few headaches this way. The human nervous system does not differentiate between 'true' beliefs and 'false' beliefs - it deals in electrical realities which we can (but rarely do) control through awareness of our subconscious perceptions. We know that this potential can also work the other way around, as suggested by negative self-fulfilling prophecies. It may even extend to fatal belief. This has been recognised in cases where patients have been misdiagnosed with a fatal illness. Shortly after, they die, but autopsy shows that the diagnoses was incorrect: there was no fatal disease, and the doctors are left perplexed. Clifton Meade, a physician who witnessed such a case was left wondering "I thought he had cancer. He thought he had cancer. Everybody around him thought he had cancer... did I remove hope in some way?" This brief medical detour is only one area that highlights the never-ending dance between beliefs and the human body. Whole books have been dedicated to examples of spontaneous remissions, distance healing, energy medicine, placebo effects, and the effects of attitudes in shaping healing potential. Wilhelm Reich, originally a student of Freud, studied the similar but more gradual effects of attitude and anxiety on a person's physical structure. He found that people with emotional conflict and repression developed a muscular armour, such as hunched shoulders, tight jaws and stiff diaphragms, to "protect" themselves from the intrusions of others, as well as the powerful emotions inside themselves which they were yet to confront and accept. The human feedback loop is a beautiful tool that can create heaven or hell depending on how we approach it. If we ignore it and leave it be, it has a habit of grabbing whatever it impressions it can, tossing them into a swirling cauldron of unconscious fantasy, and then conjuring fixed perceptions from inherited preconceptions. Only through persisting in awareness and attention can we begin to truly understand our mechanics, eventually giving us the opportunity to transform and re-create ourselves.  The idea that we function as reasoned objective observers of a fixed external reality lingers as an artefact of an outdated system that sees the universe as a massive machine. In the past we tried to find our objective frames of reference to record our objective data, but as we crept up on our dream it turned into a room full of mirrors and we were left looking back at ourselves again. As a child who cannot explore the house without trashing it, we found that everywhere we turned we were caught up in the messy, imprecise, and often un-controllable dance of life. Werner Heisenberg concluded that "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." Physical existence cannot be separated from the consciousness that assimilates the world around us into something we can understand, an acknowledgement of the person-specific lenses that each of us project onto the world, and the power of our ideas and beliefs in shaping our being, and the world that often belittles us. We don't see the world as it is, we see the world as we are. - Supposedly a Talmud saying, but 7 gazillion other people also claim "ownership" of it.
Or in our modern language: we don't perceive our environments without any artistic merit; each nervous system interprets, and in effect, creates the perceived phenomenon through a unique merger/orgasm/yoga of the software-hardware reality-tunnel and the "external" stimulus. I think the Talmud saying has a better ring to it. Further Reading
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