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I am pleased to meet you, Bryn Mawr community. I arrived here after sending Prof. Grobstein this e-mail:
Dear Professor Grobstein,

In the last two days, I have come across several web sites that have been comforting. They are the site of the John Templeton Foundation, and the Serendip web-site. Comforting because I see that the issues of perception, consciousness and morality that I constantly ponder in my amateurish way, are in fact valid courses of study. I feel revved up to do some serious delving. I won’t say
more because I don’t know what I’m talking about except I’ll mention a marvelous technique for problem solving that I came upon.

It involves the command to oneself to submit the problem to the subconscious . After defining a problem, I will purposely not think about it in “internal dialog mode”, but silence my brain and just wait. Quite often, whole solutions will just float up out of nowhere as if by magic. As a simple example, I was faced with coming up with a new slogan for a volunteer Fire Dept. I quieted my brain, trusted in the technique, and seconds late the phrase “Come on Baby Fight my Fire” came to me. Thank you Jim Morrison. (I did not win the contest because the phase implied that there actually might be a fire which terrified the Chief).

I find this rather amazing that one can solve problems in the background and the solutions can have a richness that one could not have thought your way into.

Robert Johnson - 161 Reservoir Avenue - Randolph, NJ 07869

Paul suggested that I, if I wished, post the email here.

Starting Point: I work as an electronics engineer but my degrees are in Fine Arts and Physics with a Master's in Industrial Design. I've finally concluded that both of my hemispheres are recessive.

I often jog, and while jogging I find that ideas float up that truly seem to come from some alien source. They are usually mildly humorous (debatable) one-liners that I can tell I have not heard before.

"My parents left it to me to figure out how great I was."
"I want to go from idiocy to wisdom, then return triumphantous."
"I'd rather let something go than have it taken away."
"New Coca-Cola campaign. Coax the best out of Life."
"Every person should take responsibility for another, and then start by fixing themselves."
"I want to become a Buddhist without really trying."
"In my world, reason blends into metaphor."
"I want to run myself through a self-improvement wringer, against my will."
"An instant of sublime exhilaration can last a lifetime."
"My brain is effervescing."
"Robert is a genius. He sees connections where none exist."
"Something is burning inside me melting my shell."
"There are no steps to follow when you're on a roll."
< there are more >

I found that the more unusual and creative, the more ephemeral they were. I would forget them as quickly as they appeared. I then started carrying a recorder with me. That worked. Then I noticed if I simply spoke into my hand, I would remember them too, so I ditched the recorder.

What I am interested in is exploring whether the meditative aspect of jogging that produced these insights can be created by willing myself to stop one's internal dialog and see what ideas float up (like watching the magic eight-ball with the little window).

Actually my bigger interest is in learning to view the world as a baby might before they learn the words for things and thus then take objects for granted and believe them to be real.

"I find it useful to consider the world as perceived energy rather than a collection of objects to be craved or criticized."

Here's my question. Does the visual cortex and whatever part of the brain that "names" objects that are seen, always active simultaeously? If one could train to break that link, might one instead exercise the part of the brain that is active during the phenomenon of Blind Sight. Maybe learning to process the world with that part could imbue one with something approaching wisdom independent of words.