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.Marathon runners, by comparison, travel at an average oftwelve miles an hour, but only for just over two hours at a time on good roads.Another useful Tibetan custom is tumo.This accomplishment is aimed at combating cold, and in acountry that is almost entirely above ten thousand feet altitude, it is a talent greatly respected.Initiateslearn a complex set of breathing and meditational exercises and retire to a remote area to train.Eachday they bathe in icy streams and sit naked in the snow thinking of internal fires.When the training iscomplete, a test is made on a windy winter night by wrapping the student in a sheet that has beendipped into the river through a hole in the ice and has to be completely dried just by body heat at leastthree times during the night.After qualification, the adept never again wears anything more than asingle cotton garment in all seasons and at any height.Several Everest expeditions have even reportedseeing completely naked hermits living well up among the permanent snows.The insistence of both Tibetan and Indian cults of mind and body on the importance of breathing is aninteresting one.Ancient yoga texts proclaim that 'Life is in the breath' and that the body absorbs 'lifeforce' or 'prana' from the air.(152) Deep breathing, of course, causes hyperventilation and canproduce hallucination and even unconsciousness, but there is more to it than that.The biologistsworking at the Kazakh State University on the Kirlian process have discovered that the flares in theskin glow more brightly when the lungs of the subject are filled with pure oxygen - and the effect iseven more impressive with ionised air.(233) So it looks as though surplus electrons from oxygen mayactually provide fuel for the energy in the life field.If it is possible to exert conscious control over unconscious processes, then the reverse is also boundto occur.It shows up in fact in all the psychosomatic disorders that surround us.At least half of all theills of mankind can be diagnosed as originating in the mind.Witch doctors always treat all diseases bymagic as well as by herbal cures, and their success rate with skin complaints, blood-pressuredifficulties, peptic ulcer, incipient coronary thrombosis, and hysterical blindness is as high as, if not higher than, that of specially trained and magnificently equipped Harley Street surgeons.Even'accidental' injuries such as broken limbs can often be attributed to psychological causes.Recentresearch shows that the statements 'It happened by accident' and 'It happened by chance' are notsynonymous, and that some people at certain times really are accident prone.(212) Personality traits,psychological conditions, and even physiological patterns can be identified in individuals who arenothing more than 'accidents looking for a place to happen'.Taken to its limit, autosuggestion can even kill.Every year thousands of people die simply becausethey believe that it is inevitable.Witchcraft may have powers that are truly supernatural, but it doesnot need them while people are capable of wishing themselves to death.It is not even necessary toconsciously believe in forces of evil; the unconscious can manage very well on its own.There arevivid and graphic descriptions of otherwise rational people in New York and London wasting awaywhen they have been told that someone is abusing a doll constructed in their image - and of thesesame people making rapid and complete recoveries when they knew, or even thought, that the doll hadbeen destroyed.(302)Witches and witch doctors often depend upon crowd reactions to work their magic, because if anumber of people are involved they reinforce each other's suggestibility by a process of socialfacilitation.All farmers know that a solitary pig never gets fat and that several pigs together each eatfar more than they would alone.The same is true of many aspects of behavior.The emotional tensionof a magic session or a political meeting or a revivalist gathering quickly communicates itself to allpresent and allows a leader to put across ideas that individually and under normal circumstances fewof the audience would accept.Much has been written about 'mass hypnotism' and the ability of certain people to create widespreadhysteria or common hallucinations.While it is entirely possible to hypnotise a small group ofcarefully selected suggestible subjects simultaneously, only about one in twenty people fall into thiscategory, and the odds against a crowd being composed entirely of such people are overwhelming.Sothere has never been an authenticated demonstration of the Indian rope trick in public.(69) But thefact remains that in the infectious frenzy that can be produced by facilitation in a large crowd, thebarriers of reason and conscious free will are lowered and simple ideas spread rapidly and take rootwherever they fall.Contagious activity of this kind is equally common in other species.The adoption of a ritual posture by one bird in a dense colony of gulls often spreads in ripplesthroughout the entire area.If one penguin on a beach raises its beak, stiffens up in an 'ecstasy display',and gives the rallying call of its species, the whole seething mass all the way around the bay take upthe cry.The spacing of individual fish in a shoal is determined by the vortexes that each fish sets up inthe water around him and that are appreciated by the lateral-line sense organs of his immediateneighbors.(39) Part of the communication of intentions is certainly carried out through these organsas well, but the cohesion within a school is too good for this to be the only explanation.It may be that all dynamic groups of this kind, including wheeling flocks of starlings and vast floodsof lemmings, are in a state of mild hysteria that enables them to act almost as a single organism.In asense, all instinctive social communication is similar to hypnosis in that it depends on an unconsciousresponse being made to a special stimulus.When the system was being set up, the stimulus must have been repeated insistently, like the light flashes or the repeated instructions of the hypnotist, before theappropriate response became almost automatic.Familiarity with this kind of conditioning may wellaccount for the predisposition of all animals to immobilisation techniques and for man's susceptibilityto hypnosis and suggestion.In man the unconscious has become very much more than that part of the brain which looks aftermundane domestic physiology.The greater part of all Western psychiatry is based on the existence ofthe 'unconscious' of the Freudians or the 'collective unconscious' of Jung [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Marathon runners, by comparison, travel at an average oftwelve miles an hour, but only for just over two hours at a time on good roads.Another useful Tibetan custom is tumo.This accomplishment is aimed at combating cold, and in acountry that is almost entirely above ten thousand feet altitude, it is a talent greatly respected.Initiateslearn a complex set of breathing and meditational exercises and retire to a remote area to train.Eachday they bathe in icy streams and sit naked in the snow thinking of internal fires.When the training iscomplete, a test is made on a windy winter night by wrapping the student in a sheet that has beendipped into the river through a hole in the ice and has to be completely dried just by body heat at leastthree times during the night.After qualification, the adept never again wears anything more than asingle cotton garment in all seasons and at any height.Several Everest expeditions have even reportedseeing completely naked hermits living well up among the permanent snows.The insistence of both Tibetan and Indian cults of mind and body on the importance of breathing is aninteresting one.Ancient yoga texts proclaim that 'Life is in the breath' and that the body absorbs 'lifeforce' or 'prana' from the air.(152) Deep breathing, of course, causes hyperventilation and canproduce hallucination and even unconsciousness, but there is more to it than that.The biologistsworking at the Kazakh State University on the Kirlian process have discovered that the flares in theskin glow more brightly when the lungs of the subject are filled with pure oxygen - and the effect iseven more impressive with ionised air.(233) So it looks as though surplus electrons from oxygen mayactually provide fuel for the energy in the life field.If it is possible to exert conscious control over unconscious processes, then the reverse is also boundto occur.It shows up in fact in all the psychosomatic disorders that surround us.At least half of all theills of mankind can be diagnosed as originating in the mind.Witch doctors always treat all diseases bymagic as well as by herbal cures, and their success rate with skin complaints, blood-pressuredifficulties, peptic ulcer, incipient coronary thrombosis, and hysterical blindness is as high as, if not higher than, that of specially trained and magnificently equipped Harley Street surgeons.Even'accidental' injuries such as broken limbs can often be attributed to psychological causes.Recentresearch shows that the statements 'It happened by accident' and 'It happened by chance' are notsynonymous, and that some people at certain times really are accident prone.(212) Personality traits,psychological conditions, and even physiological patterns can be identified in individuals who arenothing more than 'accidents looking for a place to happen'.Taken to its limit, autosuggestion can even kill.Every year thousands of people die simply becausethey believe that it is inevitable.Witchcraft may have powers that are truly supernatural, but it doesnot need them while people are capable of wishing themselves to death.It is not even necessary toconsciously believe in forces of evil; the unconscious can manage very well on its own.There arevivid and graphic descriptions of otherwise rational people in New York and London wasting awaywhen they have been told that someone is abusing a doll constructed in their image - and of thesesame people making rapid and complete recoveries when they knew, or even thought, that the doll hadbeen destroyed.(302)Witches and witch doctors often depend upon crowd reactions to work their magic, because if anumber of people are involved they reinforce each other's suggestibility by a process of socialfacilitation.All farmers know that a solitary pig never gets fat and that several pigs together each eatfar more than they would alone.The same is true of many aspects of behavior.The emotional tensionof a magic session or a political meeting or a revivalist gathering quickly communicates itself to allpresent and allows a leader to put across ideas that individually and under normal circumstances fewof the audience would accept.Much has been written about 'mass hypnotism' and the ability of certain people to create widespreadhysteria or common hallucinations.While it is entirely possible to hypnotise a small group ofcarefully selected suggestible subjects simultaneously, only about one in twenty people fall into thiscategory, and the odds against a crowd being composed entirely of such people are overwhelming.Sothere has never been an authenticated demonstration of the Indian rope trick in public.(69) But thefact remains that in the infectious frenzy that can be produced by facilitation in a large crowd, thebarriers of reason and conscious free will are lowered and simple ideas spread rapidly and take rootwherever they fall.Contagious activity of this kind is equally common in other species.The adoption of a ritual posture by one bird in a dense colony of gulls often spreads in ripplesthroughout the entire area.If one penguin on a beach raises its beak, stiffens up in an 'ecstasy display',and gives the rallying call of its species, the whole seething mass all the way around the bay take upthe cry.The spacing of individual fish in a shoal is determined by the vortexes that each fish sets up inthe water around him and that are appreciated by the lateral-line sense organs of his immediateneighbors.(39) Part of the communication of intentions is certainly carried out through these organsas well, but the cohesion within a school is too good for this to be the only explanation.It may be that all dynamic groups of this kind, including wheeling flocks of starlings and vast floodsof lemmings, are in a state of mild hysteria that enables them to act almost as a single organism.In asense, all instinctive social communication is similar to hypnosis in that it depends on an unconsciousresponse being made to a special stimulus.When the system was being set up, the stimulus must have been repeated insistently, like the light flashes or the repeated instructions of the hypnotist, before theappropriate response became almost automatic.Familiarity with this kind of conditioning may wellaccount for the predisposition of all animals to immobilisation techniques and for man's susceptibilityto hypnosis and suggestion.In man the unconscious has become very much more than that part of the brain which looks aftermundane domestic physiology.The greater part of all Western psychiatry is based on the existence ofthe 'unconscious' of the Freudians or the 'collective unconscious' of Jung [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]