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Individual and Cultural Implications of Brain Activity
Mapping and
Training
James V. Hardt, Ph.D.
Feedback changes any system to which it is
added. From engineering we know that adding feedback to a mechanical
or electronic system endows the system with new and often surprising
properties. When American culture received the first televised
feedback from the cultural activity known as war [Vietnam, 1970s], the
culture was rapidly changed by that feedback in ways that surprised
the government.
When individuals receive Brain Activity Feedback,
they can change in ways which give them greater objectivity, increased
self-honesty, greater self-responsibility, more choices, and a degree
of freedom from cultural conditioning, all of which changes can have
surprising consequences, and beneficial consequences. With appropriate
Brain Activity Training, individuals can improve their skills and
their abilities, and they can learn both how to have new desirable
experiences [happiness, vigor, contentment] and how to stop having
undesirable old experiences [like anxiety, depression,
paranoia].
Indeed, people can learn how to change the core
dimensions of their personality, by changing their brain activity,
just as a computer's basic characteristics can be changed by loading a
new operating system. By changing their brain activity, people can
change their behavioral characteristics and they can learn how to
regulate almost any process in their minds and their bodies. An
individual with such a range of capabilities is far outside the range
of the cultural norms.
The appearance of such individuals, even in small
numbers, will have an enormous impact on established cultural values
and cultural institutions, and will rapidly redefine our cultural
beliefs about what is possible and desirable, and what is normal. A
culture of consciously self-regulating individuals will bear little
resemblance to any culture as we know it, and it is beyond our current
abilities to fully imagine.
We know from physics that harmonic oscillators
brought into resonance will exhibit "emergent properties", which are
new properties which cannot be observed or inferred by study of the
individual oscillators. As the oscillations in different regions of a
person's brain are aided by feedback in coming into resonance, there
will be emergent properties of mind. As brain scientists who are using
this powerful new tool of brain activity feedback, we must prepare to
accept as real, to carefully study, and to communicate to our culture
about these emergent properties, these paranormal abilities which we
will be assisting our trainees to develop. And beyond the individual
paranormal mind skills, there will also be new collective mind
abilities.
Brain activity feedback can become the nervous
system which connects together the human brains, which are the neurons
of the Global Brain. A superconscious awareness emerging out of a
neural net composed of suitably interconnected human brains will
constitute a new stage of human evolution. We can speculate about how
many people need to be connected together, and in what types of
connections, to create a higher order noetic entity. Our research will
discover the enabling details, such as the minimum number of brains
required, maximum allowable transmission delay times in the
interconnection network, required bandwidth of the interconnections,
etc. Once we can reliably create higher order collective noetic
entities, we can attempt to measure the effective IQ of the collective
superconsciousness thus formed, and we can begin to wonder what
intentions our new creations will have.
All sentient beings have intentions, including
continuity of consciousness. How will the collective conscious
awareness "feel" about its "neurons" disconnecting from the network
and going away to separate homes at the end of the day? Would the
collective awareness view the departure of its "neurons" in the same
way we view a brain tumor? Is this individual action by the "neurons"
to the detriment of the "brain" and the consciousness arising in the
"brain" a comparable example at our current level of integration? By
considering a few detailed examples of the transformations possible
with brain activity feedback, we will begin to see the likelihood, of
changes so rapid and so vast as to quickly produce alternative futures
beyond our present comprehension. We shall also see the likelihood and
the means for a correspondingly rapid increase in our abilities of
comprehension.
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