r_45/46/47_ _Your Key to a Better Life.:::.Is There an Infinite Storehouse of Ideas, Knowledge, andPower?

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POCKET BOOKS, a Simon & Schuster division of
GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020
Copyright © 1960 by Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Published by arrangement with Prentice-Hall, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 07632
ISBN: 0-671-80628-9
First Pocket Books printing May, 1969
33rd printing
Trademarks registered in the United States and other countries.
Printed in the U.S.A.

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PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS

Your Key to a Better Life

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British neurophysicist W. Grey Walter has said that at
least ten billion electronic cells would be needed to build
a facsimile of man's brain. These cells would occupy
about a million and a half cubic feet, and several additional
millions of cubic feet would be needed for the
DISCOVERING YOUR SUCCESS MECHANISM 23
"nerves" or wiring. Power required to operate it would
be one billion watts.
A Look at the Automatic Mechanism in Action
We marvel at the awesomeness of interceptor missiles
which can compute in a flash the point of interception of
another missile and "be there" at the correct instant to
make contact.

Yet, are we not witnessing something just as wonderful
each time we see a center fielder catch a fly ball? In order
to compute where the ball will fall, or where the "point
of interception" will be, he must take into account the
speed of the ball, its curvature of fall, its direction, windage,
initial velocity and the rate of progressive decrease
in velocity. He must make these computations so fast that
he will be able to "take off" at the crack of the bat. Next,
he must compute just how fast he must run, and in what
direction in order to arrive at the point of interception at
the same time the ball does. The center fielder doesn't even
think about this. His built-in goal-striving mechanism
computes it for him from data which he feeds it through
his eyes and ears. The computer in his brain takes this information,
compares it with stored data (memories of
other successes and failures in catching fly balls). All
necessary computations are made in a flash and orders
are issued to his leg muscles—and he "just runs."
Science Can Build the Computer but Not the Operator
Dr. Wiener has said that at no time in the foreseeable
future will scientists be able to construct an electronic
brain anywhere near comparable to the human brain. "I
think that our gadget-conscious public has shown an unawareness
of the special advantages and special disadvantages
of electronic machinery, as compared with the
human brain," he says. "The number of switching devices
24 PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS
in the human brain vastly exceeds the number in any
computing machine yet developed, or even thought of for
design in the near future."

But even should such a machine be built, it would lack
an "operator." A computer does not have a forebrain, nor
an "I." It cannot pose problems to itself. It has no imagination
and cannot set goals for itself. It cannot determine
which goals are worthwhile and which are not. It has no
emotions. It cannot "feel." It works only on new data fed
to it by an operator, by feedback data it secures from its
own "sense organs" and from information previously
stored.

Is There an Infinite Storehouse of Ideas, Knowledge, and
Power?

Many great thinkers of all ages have believed that man's
"stored information" is not limited to his own memories
of past experiences, and learned facts. 

"There is one mind
common to all individual men," said Emerson, who compared
our individual minds to the inlets in an ocean of
universal mind.

Edison believed that he got some of his ideas from a
source outside himself. Once, when complimented for a
creative idea, he disclaimed credit, saying that "ideas are
in the air," and if he had not discovered it, someone else
would have.

Dr. J. B. Rhine, head of Duke University's Parapsychology
Laboratory, has proved experimentally that
man has access to knowledge, facts, and ideas, other than
his own individual memory or stored information from
learning or experience.

 Telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition
have been established by scientific laboratory experiments.
His findings, that man possesses some "extra sensory
factor," which he calls "Psi," are no longer doubted
by scientists who have seriously reviewed his work. As
Professor R. H. Thouless of Cambridge University says,
"The reality of the phenomena must be regarded as
DISCOVERING YOUR SUCCESS MECHANISM 25
proved as certainly as anything in scientific research can
be proved."

"We have found," says Dr. Rhine, "that there is a capacity
for acquiring knowledge that transcends the sensory
functions. This extra sensory capacity can give us
knowledge certainly of objective and very likely of subjective
states, knowledge of matter and most probably of
minds."

Schubert is said to have told a friend that his own
creative process consisted in "remembering a melody" that
neither he nor anyone else had ever thought of before.

Many creative artists, as well as psychologists who have
made a study of the creative process, have been impressed
by the similarity of creative inspiration, sudden revelation,
intuition, etc., and ordinary human memory.

Searching for a new idea, or an answer to a problem,
is in fact, very similar to searching memory for a name
you have forgotten. You know that the name is "there,"
or else you would not search. The scanner in your brain
scans back over stored memories until the desired name is
"recognized" or "discovered."

The Answer Exists Now
In much the same way, when we set out to find a new
idea, or the answer to a problem, we must assume that
the answer exists already—somewhere, and set out to find
it. Dr. Norbert Wiener has said, "Once a scientist attacks
a problem which he knows to have an answer, his entire
attitude is changed. He is already some fifty per cent of
his way toward that answer." (Norbert Wiener, The
Human Use of Human Beings, Houghton Mifflin, New
York.)

When you set out to do creative work—whether in the
field of selling, managing a business, writing a sonnet, improving
human relations, or whatever, you begin with a
goal in mind, an end to be achieved, a "target" answer,
which, although perhaps somewhat vague, will be "recog26
PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS

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