Images, words and phrases are important to our survival. Generally they are used in ways to identify what we perceive with our five senses. This could be our personal feelings in response to winning a prize or physical experiences such as going outside on a cold day. I know it is cold outside when I blow air from my lungs and it creates an image of fog in the air. The fog is created by the heat from my breath and the cold air I feel, much like clouds are created in the sky. I am unable to see my breath or the cold air but I am aware I am alive and breathing and I do sense the cold through my skin. Images, words and phrases are also used to identify objects in our environment such as a chair or to identify mother’s behavior such as smiling or laughing when she is tending to the baby. These experiences are called perceptions in all our brains and they get mapped onto our brains by way of the neurons and synaptic connections to these neurons in our brains. Therefore, I create thoughts and ideas based on my perceptions of the world around me. A neuropsychologist who studies the brain and human behavior would call this normal. A linguist studies language and calls this process linguistics. Richard Bandler and John Grinder call it neuro-linguistics, often referred to as NLP. Tony Robbins calls it the ultimate power. Mom and Dad call it teaching the kids, when I do it to myself it’s called self talk.
To prevent one from having to physically experience many of life’s lessons television has been promoted as a safer means for acquiring certain experiences. It has been stated the human brain makes no distinction in what it is seeing on the television or computer screen, from what one sees in the real world. Knowledge and experience from sources such as television, music, and novels can become cumulative in the brain and mind if one fails to attend to the content. It is like the gutter on the eave of a house that collects water and channels it into the drain on the end of the roof. If the gutter gets full of leaves the debris will cause it to overflow. In the mind one can become disorganized and out of sync with reality. In Psychiatry they call this mental illness.
Moving on, there is potential for others to innocently alter our perceptions of our own personal reality through conversation and behavior. They too may use words and phrases in sharing experiences with us or we may view them engaging in certain behaviors. If we find them appealing or their behavior appealing, we may consciously or unconsciously internalize their behaviors, their styles or even mannerisms. If we are indifferent we might unconsciously re-create the behavior because it is mapped onto our brains. If the behavior is offensive we may repress the memory of the behavior and externalize it by projecting it onto others. Most casual communications we forget, so it is possible we might unconsciously act on the experiences of others if we fail to attend to these communications or else we get caught in the drift of verbal behavior that comes our way from day to day. In these instances one discovers the value of daily journaling or keeping a diary.
Novels are a lot like personal communications, we can unconsciously act on their content through the process of identification or introjection. The content of a novel could be harmful to us if we fail to attend to it or are unaware of what may have been put into our minds by chance from someone else reading a novel. There are also lots of others out there who desire to alter our perceptions of reality, such as advertisers marketing products for businesses, salespersons trying to sell us products, novelists, artists, film makers and musicians trying to convey a message or sell us on an idea. These are called persuasions and they may be good for us or they can be dangerous to us. These people will use images, words and phrases to alter our thinking so we think and believe what they think and believe or what they want us to think and believe about ourselves or even about others, much like politicians during an election. Politicians call their dialoguing rhetoric.
There really is no trick to it, as others can use images, words and phrases to alter our behavior as easily as we can, so we buy something, watch a particular film or read a particular book. Once the information is presented to us or spoken it gets into our brains, goes through the limbic system where it is assessed as a life or death issue. If we are made to believe it is critical, we store the information. If we decide it isn’t critical then we lose interest or alter the input to suit or own needs or dismiss it as I mentioned and might even project it onto someone else. Just as there is positive persuasion there is what I call, a negative kind of persuasion, often referred to as coercive persuasion. In coercive persuasion, physical, mental and emotional abuse may be used to undermine one’s self esteem and confidence. Attacking a person’s self confidence or self esteem may require no physical abuse at all. In these instances words and phrases can be used to disrupt positive feelings about the self. It may take the form of a constant barrage of negative statements rather than a casual attack as in a conversation with a sales person. With a salesperson one has an opportunity to disrupt the dialogue. In coercive persuasion one has little opportunity to interrupt the flow of attacks. Depending on the type of coercion, it may take the form of a more sophisticated approach, such as another taking control of one’s environment. This has often been portrayed in films as possessions, ghosts and hauntings. Some of these films do raise consciousness but then one has to cope with the images and dialogue. There are individuals who are capable of sensing the presence of another person. These individuals are unlikely to have viewed a great deal of television. They are called sentient individuals.
Taking control of another’s environment involves an entanglement. An entanglement is a psychic connection to another with whom one may be associated but is not part of your family. It could be an employer, fellow employees, casual friends, someone in your apartment building, or just a couple you encountered at the supermarket. Entanglements sound scary but generally they fail to be dangerous, unless one is unconscious of the potential. One now has a degree of consciousness. War veterans, medical and psychiatric practitioners, the legal profession, people who travel as part of their work, and even the bum on the street, have all experienced what has been stated above, though some may still be unaware of the origins of their behavior.
Many cases of multiple personality could be instances of multiple possessions through psychic entanglements. What the persons involved in these entanglements are doing determines the state of one’s mind. I question whether these entanglements snap back as easily as is mentioned in What The Bleep Do We Know.
This does bring one to question whether we are capable of free will. Just as there are levels of consciousness, I believe there are levels of free will. If one becomes more conscious, the individual will possess more free will. The more free will one possesses the more responsible one is for his or her behavior. One should seek consciousness in order to avoid being socially irresponsible.
About Behaviorism, B. F. Skinner
What the Bleep Do We Know, film
Ultimate Power, Tony Robbins
NLP, Bandler and Grinder
Coercive Persuasion and Attitude Change, Richard Ofshe, PH.D.
The Psychology of the Unconscious, C.G. Jung
