By Bhargav Shandilya.
The power of the human brain ranks among the most underrated and unused resource in the World. An ultra-rational outlook and general ignorance has probably caused one of the biggest energy crises in the World, far more so than the exhaustion of fossil fuels or water scarcity—the wasting of human potential. People simply choose to obey the education systems in which all development is confined to the left brain. Creativity is curbed and some very important parts of the brain do not develop in the right way. Excessive stress and fast-paced living where information is everything is now forcing neurologists to explore the true inner powers of the brain which has long since been left unattended to. The result of their research was genuinely shocking. It showed us that there was much more to how the brain works than what we believe it to be.
First we must ask ourselves: So what exactly is our brain capable of? Well, the conscious mind, the one that we use for all existential activities works at about 126 bits per second. That’s a pretty good number. Yet it is the unconscious brain that holds the true potential. It works at about 1420000 bits per second. Now that is more than 10000 times the processing speed of the conscious mind. Then again, if the subconscious was so potent, then why is it that the human species evolved in a way where the brain analyses its surrounding using only the conscious mind? This is simply because of the fact that subconscious perception is not required at all times. It makes no sense to use a smart-phone to decode a bunch of outdated Morse code signals. That’s somewhat how it is with our day-to-day lives. We do need enormous processing power for breathing, eating, walking or driving. The problem arises when we use the dreadfully plodding conscious mind to do other essential activities like learning, in-depth reading, developing new skills and many others of this nature. These are activities that require whole brain learning, mapping and a great deal of visualisation.
I talked about the left and right brain before. The picture above shows the various functions of the left and right brain. While the right brain relates to creativity and holistic thinking, the left brain is more about facts and logic. Whole brain learning is the process of combining both sides of the brain during learning so as to maximize the degree of comprehension. The left brain perceives logics and patterns from the given information while the right brain advances the information by building on it and creating new structures so that all the information gets stored permanently in the memory sector. Imagine simply studying the basics of functions and limits, and just with that, you will be able to rediscover the whole of calculus and understand it to the same level that its inventor Newton did. That is the power of whole brain learning.
The next obvious question is: If whole brain learning is such an effective process, then why don’t people usually do it. Two reasons:
- The modern education system is made to sustain itself, not to provide true knowledge to the people. Knowledge is bought and sold like a commodity. It loses its finesse and priceless nature. Unnecessary grading, competition for marks and a foolish attitude towards “studying” are the chief cause. Whole brain learning is never introduced.
- People generally don’t know about how to use their brain’s capacities. They do not understand anything beyond what their teachers tell them and keep plodding through book after book with low comprehension rates.
So how do we use Whole Brain learning to our advantage? The story of Einstein is a striking example. When he was asked how he formulated his theories in physics, he said that he had had a vision of travelling in space on a photon, as a beam of light. He had then observed the universe from the perspective of light. He was then able to translate this dream into a logical idea and put it forward as the famous Theory of Relativity. Einstein had used his unconscious and creative brain to give him the necessary vivid imagery. He was then able to decode this message with his left brain and build on it even more and formulate it with his right brain. Einstein was a true whole brain learner. There are a variety of methods. These include photoreading, lucid dreaming, image-streaming and meditation. Many of these are re-inventions of ancient Eastern methods of learning. Paul Scheele and other famous scientists and researchers have found ways to accelerate learning and store it in permanent memory. Each of the mentioned methods is huge topics in themselves and requires clear and complete descriptions which I cannot fit into this article. I leave it to the reader to research on these topics.
The powers of the human brain are fabulous and beyond any existing super-computer. It’s time we understood the importance of whole-brain learning and applied it to our general way of living so that we can have richer, fuller and more meaningful lives.
