Copyright 1995 Steve Murray, under the GNU public license. Introduction DISTRIBUTING LICENSE You are encouraged to update, fix, develop, distribute and make the most of this program. The program is free, as indeed the author would like to see all of the available information in hypnosis, NLP, self-improvement and popular psychology generally become freely available and distributed on the net. Please read the GNU public license enclosed, under the terms of which the program and information files should be distributed. FREE SOFTWARE / INFORMATION PRINCIPLE This program will not achieve that by itself, but with the excellent usenet newsgroups alt.hypnosis, alt.psychology.nlp & alt.self-improve coming on nicely and archives now available there is now a real body of free information which can allow those interested to get a good background before taking the plunge into the commercially available trainings and books - It is my hope that freely available information will make inquirers in general more interested rather than less and more likely to read the excellent commercial books available on hypnosis, NLP & self-improvement and take full advantage of the equally excellent therapy and trainings offered. INFO GULF Having acquired over a hundred IMO truly excellent popular psychology books I have found that a tremendous gulf exists between commonly accepted wisdom and the 'beyond reasonable doubt' paradigm shifts contained in these books. If this program achieves no more than to stimulate some interest in these and in the usenet newsgroups mentioned then it will have been worthwhile - what I would like to see though is the gulf, [which has already begun to close thanks to the generous efforts of professionals in the groups who have given of their time information & expertise] to be filled once and for all by an avalanche of GNU freeware text and multimedia information on the internet, on the WWW and gradually in the world at large. Speed reading & computer mind-mapping are two of my own pet interests but it is in computer hypnosis and 'combinatorial psychology' that I have a worthwhile contribution to make. I would be lying though if I claimed that I had gone about writing Hypnomap with any kind of coherent organisation, I did not - It has been chaotic; however I have IMO managed to do the one thing I set out to do, which is to nail down and make available the knowledge of the paradigm shifts and accidents which allowed me to succeed with computer hypnosis in the first place. THE GNU PRINCIPLE That the GNU principle has been of great benefit to computing generally is fairly undeniable now; it can also be used to allow everyone to catch up with the great leaps in knowledge in hypnosis, NLP and self-improvement so that we can all contribute our own knowledge from a higher level. Please support it and make your own knowledge available as GNU freeware. INFOSEEK At the time of writing I have been very pleased indeed to see the new 'Infoseek' search catalog containing Usenet news. At the moment they are offering free trials & I would encourage anyone to try this service out; it allows people who would not otherwise have access to the news to see for themselves how useful the news is and decide for themselves whether or not it should be preserved. I have asked them if they would consider releasing CD-Rom archives of the news, perhaps of old copies of their database [I gather at the moment they store a months' worth for people to search] - this would represent a huge blow for freedom of information and preserve at a stroke the critical mass of subjective information wherein the proof of most of the claims I have made lies. SOME PRELIMINARY SHOCKING ADMISSIONS Allow me then, before I begin properly, to nail my own colours to the mast. I am a liar - I have always been, and hold out little hope that I will ever completely change that. I say things which arent true, in the hope that people will like me. Sometimes I say something which sounds right only to realise that it's a crock, but because I've committed myself I follow it through rather than take the social quality loss. I portray things in the best possible light for me, and choose information sources which maintain my own paradigms. I put up with ambushes and fingers-in-the-pie of all sorts and use the available ones to grab my own dose of 'social quality'*. I avoid obvious anomalies in my picture of the world and deny even to myself that they exist. I do not really know why I do what I do, and what I think and say changes from one day to the next - after all these shocking admissions I have the cheek to ask you, the reader, to believe that I am sincere in making all this information available and I am trying to do something good with the program - and also that the things I say are worthwhile, and at least honestly thought by me at the time of writing. I think of things when speaking to friends, family and others which are to my mind accurate and likely but which are so outrageous that to utter them would be to completely wreck those peoples' opinion of me and close many doors which I'd rather leave open, to do with fingers-in-the-pie I have, and generally wanting people to keep having a good opinion of me. And yet I feel sad when I realise how few people I can actually say what I really think to without fear of reprisals through loss of social quality. The one thing that is not likely to change is that I am a Christian, and that I am trying to do my best. I say these things because to pretend otherwise and that I have somehow managed to become a shining, perfect example of Christianity or anything else is just not true - and that will no doubt become apparent in the reading of my opinions. My only defence is that I am doing my best, and if there is someone somewhere who has managed to overcome these problems I would really appreciate it if they'd let me know how on earth they managed it. In this writing, I have written as if I were addressing myself, and tried not to dress things up with the veiling language of political correctness or social acceptability. I have not even bothered to explain many of the terms I have used which I've invented myself or pinched from other people's books - for this I refer the reader to my mind-map / hyperbook 'Combinatorial Psychology;. I know this is rather unreasonable but the alternative is to never get this finished at all, and it is already long overdue. A better way to get across everything I want to say would be to distribute 20 audio cassette tapes with a complete rant of everything I think on them. Indeed, I have just acquired a dictation / personal stereo machine so that I can record my opinions verbally as well as mind-map them, and I intend at some point in the not too distant future to carry out my threat to write CD-Roms with compressed 8-bit 11Khz audio files on them, with which I should be able to get the cost of storing all my opinions in audio down to a few British pounds per CD. And I'll do it too, if anyone wants them. Until then I will be using the machine to dictate my own opinions of the mind-maps and store absolutely every idea that comes into my head for assimilation into the mind map collection. TAKE THE ?GOOD? OUT OF IT The main thing I would ask the reader to do is to 'take the ?good? out of it'* with all the information they acquire - think how they themselves would have expressed or wrestled with the terminological minefields, ambushes downright lies, 'lazy manipulations'* and fingers-in-the-pie; and translate the PSR-shifts* and intuitive leaps into their own master 'mind-map'* of the world. And if you can see a better way to do it than I have used, please let me know and I will adopt it - better still, do it yourself and make it GNU freeware. There is a great window of opportunity now with the openness of the internet and the WWW; I doubt it will last for much longer before censorship rears it's ugly head once more. Now is the time IMO to use the GNU principle to build up a critical mass of free 'way it is' information which would be so hard to dislodge that no-one will dare try. BURNING THE BOOKS AGAIN? To those who will not read on now, I would like to ask some awkward questions; Do you know how to "Use Your Head" (Tony Buzan)? Do you throw 'Verbal Abuse' at people? [Dr Grace Ketterman] ? And "what DO you say after you say 'Hello'"? (Eric Berne) When you say 'no', do you feel guilty? (Manuel J Smith). Do my opinions have no 'Quality'? (Robert Pirsig) And did you learn all you really needed to know in Kindergarten (Robert Fulghum). If you can honestly answer yes to these questions then please accept my apology for wasting your time. If however you dont really know what I mean by this, that's not necessarily your fault, I know - up till now. Lastly I would ask those who feel my admissions disqualify my opinions as worthwhile reading to read the section 'throwing the books away'* in 'Combinatorial Psychology'*. ---- USE YOUR HEAD Tony Buzan says in his excellent 'The Mind Map Book' that he walked into a library while at university and asked where he could find books on how to use his brain, and was promptly directed to the medical section of the library - on saying that he wanted to use it, not operate on it, he was told that there were no such books available. Most people shrug their shoulders and give up when faced with this kind of travesty, but Buzan was clever enough to take the ?good? out of the situation - he realised that if such books really did not exist, rather than resigning himself to being fobbed off by this shocking crime of 'lazy' manipulation against humanity he could do something about it. He could write them himself, and that is exactly what he has done. ARE YOU OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A READER OF USENET? I suffered from a similar incredulity when I found to my horror that the excellent news postings to Usenet in the newsgroups I've mentioned were just being thrown away. No archives! Priceless information, being discarded. And why? the answer I was given was 'because it's all a load of crap and it wouldnt be worth keeping'. This is a ?lie?. The information posted to the groups I've mentioned is IMO priceless and so insanely useful that were it all assimilated properly into one book it would blow away a great many of the fallacies and misconceptions which limit people and wreck lives. The new Infoseek search engine may go some way to showing people that. LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL? We have professionals and leaders in the field posting to the alt. groups, and the sheer amount of useful information recently has been such that I for one have been able only to keep up with saving the posts, never mind being able to read or respond properly. But Buzan's actions inspired me to do something about it, and I decided to save all the posts so that at some point I would be able to make them available. This has now been done thanks to Tad James' generosity in making them available at his excellent site at www.hypnosis.com. As well as making good material for speed-reading, they contain IMO a critical mass of subjective information which constitutes an objective proof of the worth of this news. Dont stand for this travesty of throwing the news away - if we just let that happen we may find in a few years time the same librarian Buzan referred to pointing people to the History section of the library when they enquire about NLP or hypnosis. The World Wide Web sites dedicated to hypnosis and NLP represent a huge leap forward for availability of useful information too, and I am very grateful to all those who have made their own work available on the net. I would particularly like to thank Roy Hunter, Todd Stark, Tad James, Jouni Smed, Rex & Carolyn Sikes, Dale Kirby, David Pascal, Loren Larsen , Stever Robbins, Keith Fail, Ross Jeffries*, Leslie Schmidt, Jeff Oliver, Thomas Cox, & all the other people who have made so much priceless information available on the internet. AIMS OF THE PROGRAM Hypnomap is intended to perform a similar function to the excellent 1988 'HELPER' program ,i.e. to allow one to perform a self-hypnosis induction and suggestion phase on oneself, and also to allow speed-reading of ascii text files and also normal books, in a similar way to the 'Photo-reading' technique invented by Paul Scheele of Minneapolis. SELF HYPNOSIS - SELF PROGRAM The whole program is designed to be easily modifiable and understandable - it runs under Visible Pascal, a free pascal compiler from 1984 (!) . The compiler can be distributed with the program and it makes altering the program parameters or adding new functions very simple indeed. The simple & powerful nature of batch files is exploited also to allow the main hypnomap.bat program to call just about anything to allow the user to run other programs, read text pages etc. and to add in new options very easily. Pascal source code is by nature easy to read and understand, but I have tried to make the whole design so non-cryptic and intuitive that I hope anyone will be able to edit and change any of the program parameters they want to, and to add in new functions and make improvements. CHEAP AND CHEERFUL Hypnomap relies on a host of text files containing the induction suggestions, suggestion phase phrases, speed reading text and some configuration files, and it uses exclusively plain ascii files for maximum portability and ease of construction. This throws the program wide open to possible covert tampering and for this and other reasons it is crucial that users know how self hypnosis works and know exactly what they are doing. The program is designed as an aid for the user who already knows how to perform a self-hypnosis induction - it is NOT intended to be anyone's first use of hypnosis. The program is intended to allow the user to perform a 'direct' induction on themselves rather than being limited to the relaxation induction which self hypnosis is usually limited to. It also allows stealth to be used (by the user on him or herself!) , and eliminates the common problem of 'sync' with a tape or one's own suggestions. PRIOR KNOWLEDGISM In the author's sincere opinion the best way to use the program is to know beforehand how an induction works and how post-hypnotic suggestions work, the best way to achieve this is by visiting a good therapist. Most therapists are willing to hypnotise clients and implant a basic post hypnotic suggestion to help bring the user back down into trance quickly; The author strongly recommends the implantation of a verbal [rather than physical] suggestion such as my own 'Back Down Now' suggestion which can be used repeatedly - vagueness in implanting the suggestion as to whether it is to be used once or repeatedly is useful, since then it can be used in a manner akin to repeated hammer blows to bring one down into trance deeper. [One or two might miss but sooner or later you hit yourself on the head with it....] CRY WOLF - A GENUINE PLEA FOR SANITY I would like to stress that I do not recommend seeing a good hypnotherapist or hypnoanalyst merely as an afterthought or to pay lip service to it; Hypnosis is so powerful and useful that it's proper use can IMO change the life of anyone who applies it safely and intelligently to their particular situation, but sadly experience has shown time and again that people will try self hypnosis unprepared, be thwarted by not knowing exactly what to do or not having a clear enough picture of their exact goals & outcomes at the start, or encounter any of a myriad of unexpected but terminal practical problems which stifle their efforts. Prior Knowledgism* is IMO an overriding necessity for success with combinatorial hypnosis- the fact that it is ignored and treated as irrelevant makes it more important to have it rather than less. IF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED, CHEAT. Hypnotherapists know these problems well and can allow one to never have to face them by implanting a post-hypnotic suggestion. The guidance of a good hypnotherapist is IMO crucial to achieving the confidence and 'prior knowledgism' necessary to succeed in self hypnosis. I will add though that this is not always possible, since some people are not able to find a hypnotherapist who can implant a post-hypnotic suggestion well enough in their own particular circumstances and for whatever reason. It is my own opinion that these post-hypnotic suggestions should be implanted with the question of compounding left vague, and then they should be compounded as much as needed to cause a rapid return to trance. To be ?precise?, they should be random-access multiple-use presuppositional post-hypnotic suggestions. COMBINATORIAL SUGGESTIONS I would recommend my own 'Back down now' suggestion as a very potent one, and it has a second finer quality in that it is what I term a 'double edged sword' suggestion - it is a suggestion in its' own right whether or not it has been implanted as a post-hypnotic suggestion - this means that if it doesnt 'hit' first time, there's no problem - no embarassment or loss of 'quality' for the induction - since it's perfectly OK just to 'swing' it again and again until it hits. And it will... provided it was implanted OK in the first place. ACCIDENTAL PROGRESS The 'back down now' suggestion caused another accident in that I used 'deeper down now' once since I wasnt sure if I had been as deep as I was in during one particular induction , and thought to myself 'well how can I come "back" down if I've never been in this deep?' So I changed it to 'deeper down now' and it worked nicely. I only realised afterwards that I hadnt implanted the second form, only the first- so my subconscious must have decided to accept the change. I experimented another time with the suggestion 'back down open', meaning that I should go down deeper into trance without the involuntary eye closing. This worked, but I prefer using the normal suggestion and using my eye clearing suggestion to alternate and go deeper into trance. I will come then to the core post-hypnotic suggestions I use. This brings a can of worms into the open, but my defence is that it was not I who tinned them and given that, this is IMO the best solution . PANDORA'S BOX I have found that my health is very closely linked to the level of my immune system. Nothing too outrageous about that statement, but the 'devil is in the detail'... WHICH IS 'NORMAL' - ELATION or DEPRESSION By 'health' I refer to how fast I think, my poise, articulation, body language, physical energy, agility, mental ability, recall, dexterity, strength, and more; The difference in me has shocked a lot of people, scared others and caused me to go from being in a depressive, frequently ill rut to being vibrant, in control and able to elaborate spontaneously what I think in conversation as well as in print - and finally able to say what I mean at the core level, including explaining my Christian faith, without being embarassed. I have noticed a huge shift in people's perceptions of me and have nailed it down to my physical appearance having changed in terms of my facial expression, assertive body language, fine control over the tone, speed and emphasis of my voice, and the fact that I now tend to smile and look and feel 'happy' all the time rather than my previous depressed look. SOCIAL QUALITY Shop assistants smile and chat to me now ,although I havent changed at all what I say or do - previously they would tend to absolutely loath me, performing all the 'leeway manipulations' they could to make that clear in their own body language & 'games'. In my lectures [I teach basic IT skills to students] I have had overwhelmingly good feedback and almost exclusively captivated & genuinely interested students - although there is no real good reason for why this should be different from the old situation I had where they would tolerate me, and put up with me because they perceived that I was trying to be a nice guy and help them, but my unappealing manner and lack of physical and verbal attractiveness actually turned them off the subject matter too. MR COOL What is striking though is the difference in the power relationship; Previously I had great difficulty keeping people quiet, and with confrontational situations - I knew what to do and prevailed in the end but had to go quite far up the scale most of the time to do that. Now no-one dares to give me an ounce of trouble; I think this is partly to do with the 'Knowing what to do' principle, but the effect has been truly striking. I could write a book all about this. [and probably will :-)] STRUCTURE OF INTERNAL POWER By 'level' I mean as perceived by my subconscious mind - and in fact I have found that I can influence and control this [to be more accurate I should say raise, since I've never tried to lower it] directly through hypnotic suggestions to 'raise your immune system', 'your immune system will keep rising'. I have found that the effects are cumulative, and have taken to using the second example given since it is vague enough to keep working indefinitely. The effect is to produce all the good effects described above, instantly - and I really do mean instantly - when I accept the final suggestion to wake up. I have found that the effects are cumulative, i.e. if I start a session in a bad way I will end it feeling better, but probably not as good as if I had started it in that state. CUMULATIVE EFFECT & BOOTSTRAPPING The good news is that I can then immediately repeat the session and at the end of that one, I tend to feel even better than if I had just done one session having started in a good state; I am convinced that our 'level' is determined solely by the subconscious mind and that repeated application is the best way to bring a bad state up to optimum level. CHICKEN AND THE EGG I further believe that it is a vital thing to do - that the optimum health level, i.e feeling truly wonderful all the time as opposed to 'OK' is entirely necessary for long term preservation of optimum health. "THE STARVING WOLF AND THE THREE BIG FAT PIGS" This is because I view optimum health not as a mystical state such as a drug-induced high, but rather as 'normality' - the way one ought to feel all the time if one has been able to conquer all 'the problems' and remove all the negative influences. For this ?PSR-shift?* a mathematical analogy has proved useful to me: Optimum Health = Prob. Absence 1 + Prob Absence 2 +.... +Prob. Absence n where n is the number of problems one has which make one feel bad. Now some of these problems are solvable through hypnosis and immune system control and some arent; if we are ?honest? with ourselves, IMO vital for hypnotic success, some of these 'problems' will be things we are not prepared to tell anyone, even friends and family- because of ambushes*, fingers-in-the-pie* and social quality pits* . Some we are not even prepared to admit to ourselves. But in my experience it is usually those ones which we hold back and wont admit to which cause most of the problems; the mind is very good at fixing on the one thing we have held back and using it to wreck our efforts to convince ourselves that things are OK - but it need not be so. Say m < n of these problems are 'secret' and not addressable by a given person, hypnotist or whatever therapy they receive. Their effect can still be overcome if one or more of the problems which can be addressed has an overriding effect on the immune system. Relief may be temporary or partial, but once one has achieved an improvement in one's health state one is then in a better position to tackle the other problems. CUTTING THE CRAP With myself I had a bad problem - irritable bowel syndrome caused by stress. I found out about vitamin C and took that on the offchance it might make me feel a little better, and it made me feel *hugely* better; this gave me the ability to think clearly enough to tackle hypnosis and get my ?NLP-words? sorted into a coherent strategy for remaining 'OK' through most social quality attacks. Once I took the plunge with hypnosis and raised my immune system, everything else crumbled and with my new speed and clarity of thought I was able to nuke other problems I hadnt even known existed. I also dared to address the core problems I have had all my life and to my extreme shock they crumbled and fell almost instantly against the weight of evidence I threw at them with my 'it all makes perfect sense' cheat-sheet*. I never did get time to let that shock subside yet, but I have been trying to press on and not let myself wallow in the quality of it. PARADIGM SHIFT A year ago I couldnt have written an instruction manual for a crisp packet, never mind a book on combinatorial psychology- but by gradually creating problem absences and with a great deal of luck [although I do not really believe in luck, but that is another story] I can now rant continuously on just about anything, knowing that it 'all makes perfect sense'. How very arrogant this must sound, look & feel - It is hard to describe powerful feelings without seeming to boast, and if that is the impression I give here then I apologise for it. GENERALISATION It is my belief that most people are like this, i.e. have some secret or other which they will not divulge and which limits them in many ways - it occupies a place in our minds and hearts and puts up a 'no-entry' sign to the conscious mind when we try to address it. I myself had one whopper of one of these 'secret' problems, and it ruined my life for ten years until I finally faced it. I overcame it by 'accident', and to see it completely blown away has been truly shocking - it is only now, a few months on, that the full implications are beginning to sink in. The following then is a description of how I removed this problem for myself - in doing so I have come to believe that it is the key to the immune system, and that it overrides a great many other influences. A phrase I have coined to describe this is that using what I describe here is like picking up the cue in a game of pool or snooker - to try to achieve optimum health through hypnosis [or any other method for that matter] is in my opinion like trying to use rests, chalk , a whisky or a comfortable chair to play the game but with using ones thumb to hit the balls rather than the cue. QUALITY REASSURANCE By 'closely linked' I mean that the subconscious deliberately alters the level of the immune system according to what level of subconscious ?quality?* see "Combinatorial Psychology" for more details]. The chief form of ?quality? which IMO overrides all the others in influencing the immune system is that of 'deep true love' . I am not talking of the sexual act itself, nor even of the emotion or concept- I am talking about ?romantic quality? , i.e. that form of quality perceived by the subconscious mind which is to do with 'deep true love'. CORE LEVEL AMBUSH Before anyone throws this away in disgust, can I point out the following:- THE CASE FOR THE DEFENCE - I am not claiming to have found the secret of love, nor to be suggesting that one can just 'create' it. What I am claiming is that the concept of love itself and the effect that it has on the subconscious mind are not the same thing; that the subconscious mind has this 'idea' of ?subconscious quality?* which determines how 'good' we feel, the level of our immune system and all the other benefits I described above which make all the difference in how well we think, look and act. I am further claiming that the subset of this ?subconscious quality? I term ?romantic quality? is an overriding factor in that if one gets that one right, it is *so* overwhelmingly powerful that it can overcome most if not all of the 'secret' or unreachable problems which prevent optimum health. The crucial factor in my whole claim is that one can trick the subconscious mind into 'being in deep true love' or perceiving a large amount of positive ?romantic quality?, to create the following effects:- SHEER OVERWHELMING POWER -hugely raised immune system -thinking 3 or more times faster than normal -higher level understanding of everything; ability to see the big picture. -'jumping' with energy - hugely greater physical control, agility, poise - hugely greater control over tone and articulation of voice - huge shift in body language [speed, precision, assertiveness] - shift in physical appearance, to do with 'all sorted and satisfied' look - huge difference in ease of smiling and laughing - being generally 'happy' all the time - *ability to make and nail down PSR and paradigm shifts. COMBINATORIAL PROOF Ever heard of SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder? Well I had... and it sounded as though I might have it, when I read the book about a year back. It mentioned states of elation and depression, and I shall quote directly from the description of the mania state:- [Winter Depression by Angela Smythe: Chapter 14, 'Spring Fever'. Page entitled 'Recognise the symptoms of mania':- - You feel full of energy, confidence and new ideas, you feel you could take on the world. - You talk fast, holding forth in company, you make jokes and are witty. - You rush about doing things, you start many projects but dont finish any of them. - You feel irritated by anyone who does not keep up or who tries to slow you down - You are disinhibited; you say things which may be embarassing or hurtful to others without thinking. - You have grandiose ideas about yourself and your abilities - You form new relationships with people you wouldnt normally get on with. - You look for sexual excitement, a new partner or an affair. - You go to bed late, and wake early. - You dont eat much. - You spend lots of money, regardless of whether you can afford it. end of quoted passage] And this is supposed to be a disease????? I read this page with amusement at first which turned to disbelief when I realised what had happened, which revelation I have now managed to nail down beyond reasonable doubt. This isnt describing 'mania' at all, or if it is then 'mania' in this case is in fact just good old optimum health, rearing it's head in response to sunlight stimulation of the immune system, subconscious quality & perhaps other causes. There's a presupposed theme of negativity in the descriptions above - see how I would describe them in myself, bearing in mind that I'm like this all the time due to being able to produce the same state of high subconscious quality and raised immune system:- -" You feel full of energy, confidence and new ideas, you feel you could take on the world. "- Well yes... you do have lots of energy, you do get the confidence which you ought to have and yes you CAN take on the world. - "You talk fast, holding forth in company, you make jokes and are witty." Talking at least 3 times faster than before IMO, and being able to come up with jokes accordingly since you have time to think in the pauses of conversation. Since you can check and refine what you say a couple of times before saying it and still appear to be replying spontaneously, you seem sophisticated and witty when you are 'just' thinking faster than your conversation partner. But this is one of these unfair uses of the word 'just' - thinking a little faster than the other makes a huge difference since you effectively control the conversation and get all the benefit out of it; since we are usually all 'just' waiting for our chance to speak anyway IMO, this allows us to actually consider what the other person says [even better if you have a personal stereo recorder] as well as getting our two penniesworth in. And if we feel like making jokes, not only do we have time to construct them before appearing to come out with them spontaneously - which is IMO crucial -but we can understand why they are actually funny in the first place by having time for combinatorial thought as well. - "You rush about doing things, you start many projects but dont finish any of them." Well yes, if you have a useless filing system - because you come up with lots of deep realisations and fundamental ideas which could change your life and bootstrap the good feelings, but which are stifled and forgotten by our rigid sequential habits, terrible abuse of our brains and memories and the hugely limiting straight jackets of social quality, disqualification* and all the other ambushes which prevent paradigm shifts being made. I would be very surprised indeed if I managed to finish a project without it spawning new and larger ones in the process these days. -" You feel irritated by anyone who does not keep up or who tries to slow you down" Again, yes- except what Smythe fails to mention is that this includes almost everyone, and that people will tend to do almost anything to slow you down or avoid acknowledging that you're better than 'normal' at what you're doing. That Le Chatelier's principle of equilibrium - that the system will shift to negate the effect of any change in balance - applies very well to any attempt at social recognition, and that the truth of whether or not someone really is thinking faster and feeling better is usually the last thing considered. In fact, it's more than likely IMO that people will say you're suffering from mania! And they're right, of course... it's just that it's the negative facial expressions, tone's of voice and social pressure are the overriding factor, when in fact in the cold light of day if this effect is 'just' 'mania', then 'mania' is the best thing since sliced bread IMO. - "You are disinhibited; you say things which may be embarassing or hurtful to others without thinking." Hmmm... maybe, yes- but mostly as a symptom of annoyance from the realisation that one's newfound abilities are neither acknowledged nor welcome. And it is entirely likely that these 'embarassing' or 'hurtful' statements are symptomatic of a naive attempt at being honest- the greatest sin against political correctness of them all. -" You have grandiose ideas about yourself and your abilities " They're only grandiose if they're pie-in-the-sky and wishful thinking. Usually they're actually less grand than just the truth about one's full potential IMO -but because people will do almost anything to stop someone from wising up and developing their skills anyway, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy; I guess the ideas are 'grandiose' if one is naive enough to think that one will be given a fair hearing and chance to develop one's skills. -" You form new relationships with people you wouldnt normally get on with. " Yes, because you 'qualify' in a lot more people's eyes - your new abilities are attractive and useful. Similarly people who would have threatened you before are much easier to get on with since one bypasses the disqualification barrier. -" You look for sexual excitement, a new partner or an affair. " No comment! -" You go to bed late, and wake early. " Yes, because you have more energy & dont need so much sleep. -" You dont eat much." I dont seem to compulsively eat as much - I dont have chocolate wrapper mountains any more. -" You spend lots of money, regardless of whether you can afford it." Guilty, but it's usually to fuel one's paradigm shifts; I've spent a lot on computer stuff and popular psychology books. I think there is a danger that you get carried away though. The point then, is that the optimum health state I describe has been described fairly accurately as the hypomania stage of SAD; and yet I can have it permanently and as a 'normal' state of health, rather than a druglike high. I fear that the whole idea of SAD has been victim to a core level ambush, in that it is not just a strange reaction to light with highs and lows; it's rather that sufferers are experiencing a series of periods of lowered subconscious quality, and are sometimes coming up to near optimum health due to sunlight stimulating their immune systems through subconscious quality. The tragedy of it is that the existing model does not indicate this, and that most sufferers will not realise that they can be cured via raising the immune system artificially through hypnosis, and generating optimum health - which should be normality, and is not a 'mania' or other form of illness - all year round. However, the fact that the SAD book has nailed down the very benefits I have produced myself through hypnosis and given them in an IMO beyond reasonable doubt proof of the associated traits has allowed me to nail down the validity of what I have been saying with a combinatorial proof, and for that at least I am very grateful. As a parting shot on SAD, I would say we are all sufferers - as indeed we are of non-optimum health until we have achieved control of subconscious quality. EGG AND THE CHICKEN AGAIN Some of these effects are circumstantial, in that if one is thinking faster than someone else one is far more likely to be able to use judgement and control over one's words, body language, tone of voice etc. and hence the effects and impression one creates are likely to be vastly different - hence some of these effects are merely byproducts of the others. But this is exactly my point - all these things are merely byproducts of the level of ?subconscious quality? perceived by the subconscious mind. And to kid oneself on that one can achieve them without considering ?romantic quality? is IMO the biggest social quality ambush of them all. WHAT PRICE TRUTH? I come then to the other reason I envisage why people may throw this away without further reading, and that is my inclusion of Ross Jeffries amongst the people I have thanked for making information freely available. However I am claiming to care about the Truth in writing 'Combinatorial Psychology', and to shove parts of it under the carpet in deference to social pressure would undermine my argument- more seriously, it would make me more of a liar than I already am. I will include a quick summary of my opinion of Jeffries' revelations. -It is my considered opinion that there are contained in Jeffries ideas some accurate descriptions and nail-downs of core level ambushes which have stifled and wrecked peoples' lives, including my own, for too long. Jeffries does not I think profess to define the secret of love either, but he provides evidence and practically testable exercises which will nail down one way or the other the claims he is making. The normal 'politically correct' condemnation of Jeffries ideas seems to be that what he says is degrading, offensive, immoral [rarely], 'unecological' [more often] , containing fallacies, breaking conventions and codes of practice, etc. etc.; However one person has dared to come out and pose the unthinkable question, David Pascal, namely 'Does it work'? For the record, I am afraid that in my honest opinion it does. I say 'am afraid that' because I really wish it were not so; I really wish that things were otherwise and that honest, open approaches to love worked better than Jeffries' methods - but in the cold light of day, the truth is that most of what Jeffries suggests works well. Extremely well. And the flamefest which has come about surrounding him does not focus on that fact - not in my opinion because it nails down the ambush of the secret of 'love'; but more because it exposes raw the far deeper ambush of 'Integrity'*. And that people in general dont seem to care too much about the raw cold truth, rather than the way things look. There are very few people I have known who have genuinely cared about the real truth of a situation without anyone watching, rather than the way things have looked. One notable exception to this was the girl who eventually caused me to become a Christian - and although I do not want to cause still more people to throw this away, I have to say that most people these days would rather consider Jeffries material as being valid than they would the bible - again because of what it would mean to them to admit the ambush which prevents them. IMPLICATIONS So am I suggesting that people go out and use Jeffries system? By no means. Am I suggesting they examine the cold hard facts and accept the hard truth of the situation rather than play games of censorship and paradigm maintaining? Most certainly.Because what Jeffries has done, whether he realises it or not IMO is to provide people finally with an opportunity to nail down for their own satisfaction whether or not they should let 'love' and the sexual instinct control their health, control their lives and lead them into / make them vulnerable to the patterns of behaviour Jeffries describes. COMBINATORIAL SOLUTION If nothing else, one should at least take on board the revelation that 'those who are hungry dont get fed', and approach 'love' with our batteries of ?subconscious quality? already coursing with power - for by artificially creating ?romantic quality? one can approach the game of 'love' from a stance of not actually needing it; and as has become all too clear in the employment market, this 'already having what one seeks' factor makes all the difference. And if you do fall head over heels for someone, you will be far, far, far more likely to succeed in getting them. Not only that, but it releases you from the guilt and the horrible feeling of lost rare opportunities when you make a mess of pursuing someone 'special' or receive rejection after rejection. It frees one from having to be devious, false and untrue with people and allows one to honestly have friends and help people without suspecting that one has an ulterior motive. And that freedom, that feeling of peace and happiness with the world and open forgiveness towards former objects of desire, rejection and pain - is worth standing up for the Truth to achieve. STORYBOOK LOVE The film "The Princess Bride" in my opinion best gives an example or approximation to what the physical or spiritual manifestation of it might be; this film, while highly amusing, has a charming quality in that it presents a fairy tale as it really might have been rather than the usual stuff - all the characters behave in a realistic real-world fashion. The trouble is IMO that most people have a 'Gone with the Wind' or 'Mills & Boon' impression of what real love is like. This film shows that one really can have 'deep true love', but that it just isnt that likely. One of the classic lines goes "You truly love each other, and so you might have been truly happy - not one couple in a century has that chance, no matter what the story books say ..." I rather agree with that, from my own miserable experience of the real world nature of love and the opportunities afforded for getting it without being devious. But I have it now -deep true love -or at least my subconscious has the huge amount of ?romantic quality? associated with it, and I have all the benefits I have described. I have modelled my own perception of 'deep true love' on this film, because it is realistic; I have a picture in my mind at this point of still more people throwing this away, since basing one's core theory on a feature film is not a socially 'sensible' thing to do, is it.... but if it is true, and I would say the ideas put forward are, then it is entirely necessary to nail down an advance wherever it comes from; this is one of the key principles of my idea of 'combinatorial psychology'. And so I take the ?good?* out of the film, out of the internet, out of Jeffries' material and out of everywhere I can find it. And then, and only then, 'it all makes perfect sense'.* Another point I am trying to make here is in my opinion a very important one- that it is not the actual existence of real 'deep true love' which is the key to the immune system; it is the subconscious mind's perception of it , or ?romantic quality?, which is. And the two are not the same, not by a long shot - the subconscious very often gets ?romantic quality? completely out of sync with what is going on in the real world. What I am saying is that one does not need to have the actual physical, social, or spiritual commodity of 'real' deep true love in order for one's subconscious mind to get the associated ?romantic quality? fix and send one's immune system into the stratosphere. It can happen by accident, it can happen in the most unlikely circumstances and when it happens the changes and manifestations I described take place. I have seen this in myself, I have seen it in my partner of years back and I have seen it in many other people since - and yet not once has anyone dared to come out and say it in anything I have seen or heard, until now. OBJECTIVE EXAMINATIONS? For years, I felt 'bad' all the time because I had a lowered immune system and perceived low amount of ?romantic quality?. Over the past ten years, up until 1994, I felt really good only occasionally and only for short periods of time - when I did feel 'really good' thought the results were striking, and people would remark that I just didnt seem like the same person - one of these periods was during my final school exams, and I did extremely well without having done much studying at all - straight A's. By contrast my final university exams for my first degree [in maths] were a disaster - because I was genuinely badly ill, yes; but the reason for that illness and the real reason I made such a mess of them was that I had just effectively lost the only woman I thought I had ever really 'loved' after 6 years, and I 'just didnt care' anymore. DELAYED REACTIONS The ironic thing was that I didnt really 'love' her - I just thought that I did. I was addicted to 'having' her, the idea of having her. We got on very well, and the friendship we had was very deep - but it wasnt real love. However, my subconscious mind didnt know that- it would feel 'good' whenever she gave some ground in showing affection, and would feel 'bad' when I was fobbed off by her. But the interesting thing is that it didnt happen immediately - it would take a couple of days. A really bad argument or a hurtful statement wouldnt take effect immediately, it would take a couple of days. Likewise an apparent 'success' or show of affection from her wouldnt necessarily make me feel any different right away - but if I didnt see her for a week after that I would be jumping with energy and enthusiasm for the entire week. It wasnt her that created the good feeling, nor a genuine emotion of 'love' - it was the perception of my subconscious mind that I either had or didnt have lots of ?romantic quality?. TEN YEARS DEPRESSION I went for years noticing that sometimes I would feel amazingly good, for a few days at a time or sometimes for a few weeks - but that each time it would subside without warning back into my depressive rut. When I felt 'amazingly good' I noticed the change in people in general's attitudes towards me - I could play the piano much better, instinctively battering out 6-finger chords for tunes I had only just heard whereas I would normally just be able to get by with the melody and a basic accompaniment. I just seemed to 'know' everything, able to articulate spontaneously exactly what I thought and often coming out with greater insights than I knew I had about things. Things which seemed like insurmountable mountains in my depressive state turned into easily flattenable molehills in my 'higher level state' as I have termed it. But each time, it sank back into my depressive rut and inferiority complex and I would forget that I had even been feeling better at all. UNFAIR ADVANTAGE That this went on for ten years doesnt say much for my qualifying as a good student of self-improvement, hypnosis , NLP or anything else for that matter, does it! :-) However the reason for that is something which stifles so many IMO, and it is the principle of 'prior knowledgism'* . I just didnt know; I suspected that something like this was going on, and fantasised about doing something marvellous about it like testing out my theories by picking up some gorgeous woman and recording the different feelings before and after; but it just didnt happen. WHAT PRICE TRUTH? The trouble was that the way things really are in the world and what I was told are two different things- I made all the classic blunders a man can make in trying to attract women. To those who may object to my including Ross Jeffries among the people I have thanked, I can only say that it is in my opinion better to stand up for the truth than to shove it under the carpet. David Pascal has described far better than I can how we ought to treat Jeffries' material, and I would urge those who will throw my information away on account of my endorsing Jeffries to read Pascal's articles. They are included with Mr Pascal's permission as part of this manual, and I would point out once more that without archives of the news normally these pieces of priceless wisdom would be gone forever. Abraham Lincoln was once called 'a damn fool' by one of his ministers, and he replied that if that was what this man had said then he (Lincoln) must be a damn fool for this particular minister was nearly always right. And Lincoln went to see him, and changed his mind accordingly about what he thought. {Taken from one of Dale Carnegie's outstanding books} So then should it be with David Pascal's articles- for he is nearly always right also IMO, and if we do not take heed of that we cheat ourselves and everyone else out of the truth. For if someone had explained Ross Jeffries information to me ten years ago, I would not have wasted a decade of my life. Nor would I have gone around trying to con or degrade women - not that I am accusing Jeffries of that - I would have rather accepted the truth about the situation and approached trying to find real love with a good, kind , honest girl who would not have thrown all the ambushes at me. And I would have known where to look, and what tricks and cons to avoid. And with both of us being able to honestly discuss it we would hopefully have been able to move on past the ambushes. But now... I do not know if a woman exists who could handle THIS; but that is OK, because I treat the women I do know with honest respect and friendship and on a good day, real Christian charity -whereas before there was always the unovercomable wish to get involved with them and manipulate things to bring that about, no matter how sincere or pure my motives seemed to be to myself. VICIOUS CIRCLE As it was I became bitter and neurotic, depressed, introverted, unable to articulate my real feelings and sank deeper into depression and hopelessness. Were it not for one of my Christian friends I would not still be alive -this person was a complete anomaly in my world, in that they did not fit in with my picture of people as being nasty, selfish and dishonest -they actually did care more about the truth than the way things looked or ?social quality? COMBINATORIAL DATING I digress -the point of this section is that I did in the end get fed up with the endless cycle of depressive rut - incident of perceived romantic quality gain - elation - sink back into depressive rut. Each incident would involve asking out or fantasising about some girl, and the good feeling would last until something went horribly wrong, as it invariably did, with her using one or other of the ambushes Jeffries describes against me. The good feeling would usually last another day or so, sometimes a bit longer, but then I would go back down to a depressive rut, get ill and forget all about how good I had been feeling. But finally at the end of 1993 I decided to do something about it - I decided to try an experiment. I joined the 'Dateline' dating agency in order to try and raise how good I felt - the idea being that if I was right about the 'cycle' I've described then I would feel amazingly good just through the idea of actually being going to meet some girl who was supposedly matched with me and [perish the thought ]actually wanted to meet me too. I got a match with a girl in the town I was working in, and arranged to meet her after sending a couple of letters to each other. MISPLACED QUALITY The actual meeting was an unmitigated disaster, but I felt amazingly good up until it and for a couple of days afterwards.During this time I performed very well in my work which I had been having great trouble coping with, and my colleagues noticed a huge change in my ability, appearance and potential. THE OBJECTIVE INTERVIEW :-) At the interview for that job I had been close to my best [at the time, I have since gone much further than that but ] mostly due to prolonged sunlight exposure on the train down to England & the company of a kindly elderly couple on the way down. The huge rise in ?subconscious quality? this caused didnt hit properly until the start of the two-day interview, and the 'amazingly good' feeling lasted for about three days; I blew away the various tests I was given, gave very good spontaneous answers to all the questions I was asked & performed extremely well in the group exercises and social situations as well -although I didnt know exactly what I was doing at the time, I used 'prior knowledgism' quite a lot to nonplus people and create the impression which got me the job. A pity for myself and the company that they never saw that person again after the interview! I was just not the same person they hired. TANGENT MAN I digress again - I have an innate ability to go off at a tangent to whatever has been said before, fixing on the object of a sentence and treating it as the subject for a new thread of conversation - I was known as 'Tangent Man' for a while while working down south accordingly . It has an interesting effect on the 'games people play'*., described superbly in Eric Berne's books. There, I've done it again... :-) I am somewhat grudgingly grateful to the inimitable Mr Kevin Albert Horne for noticing this & spawning this label; Kevin never met me at anything like an optimum level of ?health?, but I have learned a great deal from him. THE BEST LAID PLANS... My dateline experiment turned sour in that every other person I was matched with and contacted didnt ... er... write back at all. or phone back. *Every* *Single* *One*! By this time I had become a Christian and had other things to worry about, and let it go for a long while. But the loss of ?romantic quality? was instrumental if not critical to causing me to become badly ill with irritable bowel syndrome - so ill that I had to come back to Glasgow and give up my job in England. But that is another story; COMBINATORIAL JACKPOT This year, having taking a course in hypnotherapy & hypnoanalysis [I intend to take a longer, more comprehensive training shortly] and having made a great many paradigm & PSR-shifts* I have finally laid the problem to rest. I tried another experiment, this time with the full arsenal of my hypnosis & NLP knowledge, prior-knowledgism* & my ?NLP-word? suggestions in place - and I hit the jackpot, mostly by accident. SUBJECTIVE CRITICAL MASS After another bout of feeling *bad* about another ambushing by a girl I had been mildly interested in, I realised that the pattern over the last ten years was too convincingly consistent to be accidental - that it really was ?subconscious quality? which was determining how good I felt, and that now having severe Christian responsibilities I could not allow myself to go on as I was- I was letting people down and making a mess of things due to my getting depressed, and although I had come a long way with my ?NLP-words? I had not put my new hypnosis knowledge into practice; MONEY WHERE THE MOUTH IS I decided to take the plunge and have a go at breaking the link between ?romantic quality? and how good I felt. The results have been not just startling but ominously so - I have been in my present 'high level' state of optimum health for three months now -or is it four? - and have achieved more in this time in terms of understanding , learning and assimilating what I think than I have in the rest of my entire life. Part of this is that I think faster, probably at least 300% faster; Part of it is that 'It all makes perfect sense'* , and I can use my 'prior knowledgism'* cheat-sheet* to assimilate things very quickly indeed. Part of it is that the ambushes and ambushers which plagued me before have now fallen away, some through awe, some through fear , some through interest and some through my own actions. BEAR NECESSITIES Exactly what I did was this:- I used the HELPER program to hypnotise myself, and around the third time of trying managed to achieve a deep trance with it. just sitting in my armchair watching the screen and complying with the suggestions was sufficient to do this; I had the necessary knowledge of hypnosis from my training though to know what was going on and what would happen next as I went deeper into trance - I believe this to be crucial, and this is one of the many reasons why it is best to be hypnotised by a good therapist - as I was - as one's first experience of hypnosis. I used the following suggestion template file:- DEVIL IN THE DETAIL There are some practicals of computer hypnosis which I have discovered myself, but which have proved very important to me:- YOU ARE FEELING SLEEPY - automatic eye closing. When going back down into trance, particularly when using a PHS, my eyes tended to close. This meant I couldnt see the screen & this threw me, the worry causing lessening of trance. I developed the suggestion 'As your eyes clear you will go deeper into hypnosis' to cause the act of opening my eyes to help deepen the trance rather than lessen it; This was done as an experiment at first but it worked well, so well that I have adopted it as a standard procedure. Now when giving this suggestion my eyes clear very quickly, in under a second, and I can immediately give another 'back down now' suggestion. This means I can use a constant alternation of these suggestions and get back down into a deep trance very quickly. BLINKATHON -blinking; sore eyes can develop if one is staring too long without blinking. I suggest to myself that 'as you blink you will go deeper into hypnosis', and this has worked well since the blinking is an automatic response - now instead of being concerned that I am not as deep in trance as I would like, the blinking takes me deeper automatically without my worrying about it. TWITCH & ITCH -scratching; an itch during trance is best scratched IMO, but the necessary movement required to do so can lessen the trance; it need not be so, since the trance only gets lessened by the worry that this will happen & the fear that the itching will continue distracting the mind's attention - by using the suggestion 'as you scratch you relax, and as you relax you sink deeper into hypnosis' I've been able to scratch without lessening the trance. MOBILITY -movement: movement during trance can distract the attention, and it is apparently known that if one is fixed in the same position trance tends to come automatically; I used a post-hypnotic suggestion to immobilise myself once as an experiment, with the suggestion 'couldnt move if you wanted to' to prevent me from moving my arms, legs, hands or feet during trance and requiring a verbal command to remobilise - I then used this suggestion at the start of the induction to immobilise myself, and it worked nicely. I have now adopted this as standard. In fact, using this multiple times seems to immobilise my whole body and produce a greater feeling of numbness than just using it once;by the fifth time it's hard to talk and mumbling a sixth means it's difficult to verbalise 'mobilise' to cancel it; I've found that being immobile tends to increase still further the speed of descent into trance. KEEPING ON TRACK -gauging trance: It takes me about 5 minutes now to get into a deep trance using either hypnomap or the HELPER program, or without either of them. I actually discovered by accident that I did not need the program any more to use the 'back down now' suggestion, since I realised in one particular session that I hadnt actually looked at the screen for the whole of the induction phase. I then tested this without the program running at all and was surprised to find I could get into a deep trance in a couple of minutes even without the program by using the same suggestions. [I've always been able to get into a trance using a normal relaxation induction, but not with the speed and effect of the post hypnotic suggestions.] GETTING DOWN FASTER -trance deepeners. After using the program a few times and successfully implanting a post-hypnotic suggestion one does not need to watch the words as intently - one can instead close one's eyes for a while and perform some trance deepeners. I use staircases exclusively because I find them very effective; I go down four staircases in my mind, each to a particular level I have been at before. I will then leap into a 'pit' in my mind and use my primary boosting PHS a few times as I 'fall' to deeper hypnosis. I then open my eyes and watch the screen again until the suggestion phase, and sink deeper. RHUBARB PATCH -sync; the modular nature of the induction suggestions means that one does not need to try and stay in sync with the program -if the mind wanders or one doesnt comply with particular suggestions there is no problem, the next one will do just as well. This really takes the pressure off of the user, since not only does (s)he not need to remember the induction script, but it doesnt even matter if (s)he doesnt comply with some or even most of the suggestions. The jewel in the crown of this approach is that the user is also free to be able to devise dynamic and spontaneous lateral workarounds to particular problems which arise during the induction, e.g. if there is a knock at the door one can say 'not just now' or 'later' without forgetting induction words or worrying about losing one's place. The one thing which the user does need to know is how the induction really works, and that is another reason I recommend consulting a therapist. This taking the pressure completely off the user I term the 'Rhubarb' principle, and this is stolen from my IT teaching work; some of the courses I teach on and have helped to design are constructed so that the handouts and teaching materials are so good that even if the lecturer were to stand up at the front and talk about rhubarb for the entire hour, they would still be able to complete the work and would learn what they needed to in the long run just from practise with the excellent materials. This really takes the pressure off the lecturer and usually leads to good feedback even if there are glitches and disasters [particularly with Internet courses!] The principle lends itself well to computer hypnosis too. The pressure is usually on the person performing a self-hypnosis induction on themselves to remember all the rules and the induction and do everything - success or failure depends on how good they are at doing this. This is unfortunate, since sometimes for whatever reason they make a mess of it or are otherwise unable to achieve the desired effects. The benefits of computer hypnosis are such though in taking the load off of the user that one could almost think about rhubarb for the entire induction and get totally out of sync with the suggestions , and one would probably still be OK because of the modularisation and involuntary effects of the hypnospiral effect and direct nature of the hypnosis. VISIBLE LIMITATIONS The VISIBLE program has some limitations which can be easily gotten round by using multiple programs and this has been done - in fact the advantages of VISIBLE IMO far outweigh it's disadvantages and in terms of letting people use a program to their own best advantage I would say it is second to none. For allowing it's free distribution in the first place I am very grateful to the author, and that it has been written in 1984 (!) perplexes me somewhat that this excellent program could have escaped my notice for so long. INFORMATION OVERLOAD I have the shareware CD-Rom producing companies to thank for my enlightenment , and I am eternally grateful to Simtel, Walnut Creek, Minerva Information Systems, PDSL, Software Vault and the other perpetrators of my ridiculously long shareware and freeware program file listing. Also to the creator of the DOS 'grep' command which has allowed me to survive it, and to Elliot Whitby for showing me how to use it. I would say that possession of the CD-Roms Libris Brittania 4a and 4b is a great leap for combinatorial PC use in general since one has an entire tested and documented software library ready at hand. The other shareware CDs are equally useful but I find the catalogues insanely helpful in finding what I want; although I can split up a 1.5 meg file listing and read it, or wait until the contents come out in a grep, I find that I just dont. I read the catalogues and use that stuff instead. BURNING THE BOOKS AGAIN With this incredible resource of software now available on CD-Rom , one would hope that information would be available in this medium too - sadly those information sources I have found have proved woefully inadequate. To archive the usenet news on CD-Rom would represent an undeniable milestone in available, verifiable information - an objectively provable critical mass of subjective information. That it has not been done is the worst crime of 'lazy' censorship ever committed IMO - since to know that such information was and never could be available could be lived with. But to know that it's sitting there and just being thrown away senselessly is to my mind beyond the pale. CRITICAL SUBJECTIVE MASS OF INFORMATION Anyway, I digress. I have acquired a fair amount of material in my own net activities, most usefully from the newsgroups I have mentioned and from the World Wide Web;I have also bought a large collection of popular psychology and other books containing paradigm shifts which are IMO proven beyond reasonable doubt and ought to be made. 'DISCOVERCARD' WELCOME HERE... The validity of such a large body of concurring information is such IMO that it would be overwhelmingly convincing to anyone who had the time to read it all , honestly did so and was not ambushed by wrecking factors in the process. The trouble is that I am not convinced any such people exist, and I certainly do not myself qualify; People do not have time to read all of a book, or are free enough of their own needs and paradigms to take the same meaning from a book as was intended, or have the freedom to consider the ideas put forward without the realities of life ambushing them in the process. Add to that the fact that information is not free, let alone freely available, and that one cannot just look at the information one wants to without regard for cost, access, and other spanners in the works, and it is little wonder that people do not learn and make paradigm shifts. BE OBJECTIVE... In my own opinion if every PC owner had been given and shown how to use VISIBLE pascal in 1984 and encouraged to develop it, the body of programs and information available now would be gargantuan rather than [as it is now] just finally attaining critical mass where one can find a program to do just about anything. So it is then with books IMO, that if everyone was able to read everything they wanted to at any time, without regard for cost or paradigm-barriers, human knowledge would be enhanced a hundredfold. The historical opinion on this idea I believe to be the claim that this is a pie-in-the-sky sci-fi idea & , mixed with a nonverbal suggestion that the idea owner has been watching too much television. However it is now becoming feasible; electronic texts ARE becoming freely available and the old reasons for barring people from copying them are ceasing to make sense - if one can take a book out of a library, why not an electronic text; they can be copied just the same. Either format can be effectively mind-mapped without going anywhere near a computer; the computer now offers the opportunity to store, order and assimilate them into one's mind though. Tangent man strikes again... :-) WINDOW ON THE WORLD With the world wide web, free electronic information is now superceding existing commercially available documents, books etc. In my home city of Glasgow there are freely available pirate CDs containing virtually every program ever written for the PC, commercial or not. Those who use these CDs gain a huge leap over those who do not. Given that nothing is done to stop this and the laughable situation of someone who apparently stole some item from one of the pirates' stalls being charged and taken away by the police, it is to my mind truly incredible that the argument against archiving usenet news which is commonly peddled is that it might encourage or legitimise fringe subjects. What nonsense - the people who are supposedly to be protected from this are off grabbing far more dodgy info and making themselves criminals in the process. ANIMAL FARM I rather fear that it is in fact precisely BECAUSE the information represents a critical mass of subjective information which disproves many of the ambushes and fingers in the pie of academics, scientists, doctors, politicians and just about everyone else you can point your finger at before they lock you up, that it is being thrown away - so forgive me when I dont cheer and feel proud when I watch films about the rise of the Nazis in the 1930's and those wonderful people who tried to preserve intellectual and academic freedom and protested about the burning of the books. Because I can hear an unpleasant sound amidst the VE day hype and the spam fritters - it sounds remarkably like the sound of people turning in their graves. GRAND SCHEME The ultimate aim of the Hypnomap program is to allow one to maintain an ongoing collection of mind-map files representing one's complete body of knowledge on any subject and indeed all subjects, using the 'Lila' filing system to organise the files and Hypnomap to assimilate them. COMBINATORIAL 'IT ALL MAKES PERFECT SENSE' IDEA ASSIMILATION The idea is that when one adds a new mind map the hypnomap program will scan the existing collection of maps for the contained words, and will produce a speed-reading input file composed of mind maps which can be used to 'review' the existing collection of maps into ones' mind and make the necessary mental associations to be able to make all the consequential paradigm shifts a new idea entails. It is also intended as a tool for performing the mind map reviewing recommended by Tony Buzan [the originator of the idea of mind maps] for maintaining ones' recall of information in the long-term memory. SMALL WORLD... Another key principle of 'combinatorial psychology' is that it's usually in the taboo areas or those which people have gone to great lengths to keep you away from where the truth lies. In Britain there is an author named David Icke who had a real hatchet job done on him for apparently claiming 'to be the son of god'. I was convinced that he was a complete nutter since I believed that this was what he had said & actually saw a clip of him defending himself on TV. What I realised with a horrible sense of deja vu on reading his book 'The Robots Rebellion' though was that I had just swallowed all the associated paradigms and associated loss of 'qualification' to do with him 'claiming to be the son of god'; The trouble is that he didnt, and that much of what he says is verifiably true in my own experience. The television clips I saw were IMO likely carefully selected to perpetuate the 'ridicule' impression, which has worked wonders- most people cant help sniggering at the mention of Icke's name. A chilling realisation though is that this can be done to anyone - merely by associating someone with something ridiculous one can remove any chance of people taking them seriously. Some things Icke says I wont consider myself since they are too close to my deepest fears - the truth is I have not dared to consider yet most of what he says. However, I will say that there are quite a few 'beyond reasonable doubt' paradigm shifts in his book and to deny that for fear of ridicule would not be right; moreover just because one has differences with someone at the deepest level is no good reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater in deciding if they are telling the truth. LEST WE FORGET [According to Buzan, if we do not review information we forget 80% of it permanently within 24 hours, whereas using his simple and practical review techniques we can recall 75% of it permanently in the long term memory. Hypnomap is intended to provide a 'free' review of all ones' existing mind maps as a new idea is assimilated; partly because in practise I myself have just not done my reviews- too many distractions - and know that others are by and large the same, no matter how good an idea it is - and partly because it is necessary IMO to review all one's existing paradigms as a new idea is assimilated to maintain a coherent picture of the way things are and without contradicting paradigms creeping in with new ideas. ZX80 LEVEL Hypnomap currently will only support this map assimilation with some hard grind construction of maps and manual jiggery-pokery; I have also not yet been able to implement a faithful model of the Lila filing system. Having recently seen the Info Map Lite program I admitted somewhat reluctantly that not to recommend it's use [rather than Hypnomap] for mind map construction would be a travesty since it is in my opinion so useful and so effective that it is far superior to my current forms of paper map construction. I have also just acquired a dictation / personal stereo device which allows me to take audio notes, which I have found can take info down even faster than Info Map Lite, which is saying something. I am now using this for all my unassimilated information at the moment. I will hopefully come up with a way of integrating the dictation machine tapes into the system - I currently have about 11 hours worth to transcribe- but I have been realising that the tapes represent a much faster way of recording information that is already in my head, or random thoughts, than mind maps do. However the sequential nature stifles being able to have an 'it all makes perfect sense' cheat sheet of the revelations I put on them. What I hope to do is to play back the tapes and write mind-maps as I do so, automatically assimilating these maps into the larger body of knowledge using the Hypnomap 'cycle' program; It wont do that at the moment, since the map construction routines arent good enough yet- but the basic process it uses at the moment could be extended quite easily into such a system - I hope to do this once I have acquired the commercial versions of Info Map and Mind Maps Plus. The usual problems of too much work and too little time have prevented me from doing so up till now, and naively hoping that Hypnomap might be good enough by itself for proper mind-map construction. It isnt, but I hope it will be before too long. In some tests I was able to mind-map a television documentary using Info Map Lite without having to rewind the tape, and without losing any of the important information. I have since used it to construct mind-maps of the contents of some of my books, and have found it insanely useful. Lacking a proper export facility until I acquire the commercial version I have resorted to transcribing my Info Map Lite maps into 'Notepad' files and then making primitive ascii versions of some of them to load into the 'Buildmap' utility of Hypnomap, but I hope that once I have acquired the commercial version I will be able to make ascii maps for speed-reading / assimilation directly. Since it has taken longer than I had intended to get the program into a reasonable state, I have decided to release it now rather than wait until the mind map facilities are properly implemented - I will try to do this myself in the next few months. It was originally intended to release the compiled version of Hypnomap as a C / C++ executable with many other features, e.g. sound file playing facility, stereogram speed-reading option, induction tape conversion utility [via Soundblaster port as with Spectrum emulator], video clip playing capability and more; this has proved time consuming and unproductive although a colleague and I hope to carry this out at a later date.Priotisation has forced me to concentrate on the things which are unique to my own knowledge and experience so that they at least are made available; there are plenty people in the world far better than me at programming and adding in extra feature - I hope this program and 'combinatorial psychology' may encourage them to do so under the GNU freeware principle. The program works, at least on me - it is not intended to be able to hypnotise people who have no knowledge of hypnosis or who have not been hypnotised before. I recommend strongly that people who use the induction stage of the program to hypnotise themselves do so with prior knowledge of how trance feels like, how to know when one is in deep and exactly how termination works. The best way to do this is to cheat and get someone who already knows all this to do it for you, much as in computing science- however one thing I have found is that hypnotherapists are in general good, decent people with a genuine wish to help people and I hope this program will increase their business rather than decrease it.