Studies Show Evidence for Psychic Intuition
I found the following study from University College in London amazingly interesting. I brough to mind what I learned in a Silva class 15 years ago, that we can learn to tap into our inner intuition to help us get guidance to solve major problems in life. And that this intuition is often the first thought entering our mind, and subsequent thoughts are more logical and often not as right. The study below mentions how these "first thoughts" about a given situation are often far more correct than than logical thoughts. Strong evidence for the existance of ESP in all of us.
A University College London (UCL) study has found that you are more likely to perform well if you do not think too hard and instead trust your instincts. Appearing in the journal Current Biology, the research shows that instinctive snap decisions are sometimes more reliable than decisions taken using higher-level cognitive processes.
The experiment involved subjects picking the odd symbol (a rotated version) out of over 650 identical symbols presented on a computer screen. Tracking participants' eye movements, the researchers controlled the time allotted to each individual's search for their target. The visual display screen was switched off at various time intervals either before or after the subjects' eyes landed on the target (between 0 and 1.5 seconds). They then had to decide whether the odd one out was on the left or the right-hand side of the screen.
Intriguingly, the researchers found that participants scored better if they were given no scrutinizing time at all. With only a tiny fraction of a second for scrutinizing the target, subjects performed with 95 percent accuracy. With over a second to scrutinize the image, subjects were only 70 percent accurate. Accuracy was recovered if scrutinizing was allowed to run for more than 4 seconds.
"This finding seems counter-intuitive. You would expect people to make more accurate decisions when given the time to look properly. Instead they performed better when given almost no time to think. The conscious or top-level function of the brain, when active, vetoes our initial subconscious decision - even when it is correct - leaving us unaware or distrustful of our instincts and at an immediate disadvantage.
Falling back on our inbuilt, involuntary subconscious processes for certain tasks is actually more effective than using our higher-level cognitive functions," explained Dr Li Zhaoping, of the UCL Department of Psychology.
The researchers say the instinctive decisions were more likely to be correct because the subconscious brain recognizes a rotated version of the same object as different from the original, whereas the conscious brain sees the two objects as identical. For the conscious brain, an apple is still an apple whether rotated or not.
So while the lower-level cognitive process spots the rotated image as the odd one out, the higher-level functions override that decision and dismiss the rotated object because it is the same as all the other symbols. When subjects were given the time to engage their higher-level functions, their decisions were therefore more likely to be wrong.
"If our higher-level and lower-level cognitive processes are leading us to the same conclusions, there is no issue. Often though, our instincts and higher-level functions are in conflict and in this case our instincts are often silenced by our reasoning conscious mind. Participants would have improved their performance if they had been able to switch off their higher-level cognition by, for example, acting quickly," explained Dr Zhaoping. "
Our eye movements are often involuntary. What seems like a random darting of the eye is often an essential subconscious scanning technique that allows us to pick out unique and distinctive features in a crowd - such as color or orientation. Soon after our eyes have fixed on a target, the conscious or top-down part of cognition engages and examines whether the candidate really is the target or not. If the target is not distinctive enough in the 'eyes' of the conscious, failure of identification can occur."
Source: University College London. Discovered via Scienceagogo.com
February 19th, 2007 at 4:28 am
I believe that this information is common knowledge to the purveyors of mainstream media and other propaganda. Instead of following our better instincts in making snap decisions, our 'higher' mind patterns are trained to accept the situation at hand. We are trained to accept corporate decisions about terrorism, war, bird flu and the like instead of following our insight.
Further proof of our intuitive insight is in the following exercise: In the ideal world, we would be able to latch onto our psychic impressions immediately and consciously. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world. Most of our psychic knowledge remains buried in the subconscious mind. By its nature, the subconscious mind is more in tune with the etheric body (the superconscious mind networked to all other etheric elements in this reality) where a lot of data lays and whithers. By meditation and self hypnosis, we can get in touch with the subconscious, but at the price of being unable to record the data. Nostril breathing, being a form of radiesthsia or 'dowsing,' removes that problem. This form of psychic impression is very different from 'dowsing' for ley lines. Perhaps, you have heard of pendulums and ouija boards which have been surrounded by a cloud of complete and utter mystic nonsense in contacting the spirit world.
Nostril breathing IS the most exact form of psychic 'dowsing' in knowing the LIVING WORLD. When a question is asked, the subconscious mind, which knows the answer, will try to get into contact with the conscious mind (i.e. gut feelings, intuition). The conscious mind, however, is too busy or discursive to listen to the answer and gets lost in the noise. There are nerves which do listen to the subconscious and respond.
Under normal circumstances, we do not notice this response because the messages of these nerves, like that of the subconscious, cannot get through. These nerves create minute muscular responses and create well defined patterns in the autonomic functions of the body.
Try this experiment. The next time you visit a friend and you do not know if he will be home, place your fingertips beneath your nostrils and breathe normally. If your right nostril is dominant, your friend will be home when you arrive. If your left nostril is dominant, he will not.
The same thing is true of anything involving an element of chance. Yogis say that if your right nostril is dominant, the venture will be successful, but if the left is dominant, it will not.