In the past, we have depended too much on our physical senses and have limited our knowledge to physical things that we could see, touch, weigh, and measure.
I believe we have entered the most marvelous of all ages an age that will teach us more about the intangible forces of the world about us. Perhaps we shall learn that there
is an “other self” that is more powerful than the physical self we see when we look in a mirror.
Many people do not take seriously such intangibles the things that they cannot perceive through any of their five senses. However, to belittle the idea of forces that are intangible or cannot be explained is to ignore the fact that all of us, every day, are controlled by forces that are unseen and intangible.
The whole of mankind has not the power to cope with, nor to control, the intangible force wrapped up in the rolling waves of the oceans. We still do not fully understand the intangible force of gravity, which keeps this little earth suspended in space and keeps us from falling from it, much less have the power to control that force. We are entirely subservient to the intangible force that comes with a thunderstorm, and we are just as helpless in the presence of the intangible force of electricity. We do not understand the intangible force (and intelligence) wrapped up in the soil of the earth the force that provides us with every morsel of food we eat, every article of clothing we wear, and every dollar we carry in our pockets.
Last, but not least, with all of our culture and education, we still understand little or nothing of the greatest of all the intangibles: thought. However, we have begun to learn a good deal about the intricate workings of the physical brain, and the results are stunning.
We know that the central switchboard of the human brain the number of lines that connect the brain cells to each other is written as the figure one followed by fifteen million zeros.
Dr. C. Judson Herrick of the University of Chicago says, “The figure is so stupendous that astronomical figures, dealing with hundreds of millions of light years, become insignificant by comparison. . . . It has been determined that there are from 10 billion to 14 billion nerve cells in the human cerebral cortex, and we know that these are arranged in definite patterns. These arrangements are not haphazard. They are orderly.”
It is inconceivable to me that such a network of intricate machinery should be in existence for the sole purpose of carrying on the physical functions connected with the growth and maintenance of the physical body. Is it not likely that the same system which gives billions of brain cells the media for communication, one with another, also provides the means of communication with other intangible forces?
COMMENTARY
In the time since Hill wrote the above comments, we have learned a great deal more about the physical brain and how it operates. We understand much about the chemistry of the brain; we can measure the energies it releases; we know which areas control the various functions of the body and which areas affect memory, emotions, reasoning, and many other subtleties related to the thinking process. Through scanning technologies we can even observe the changes that take place in the brain while it is working. Through surgery, medication, and other techniques we know how to prevent the brain from having certain kinds of thoughts, and we know how to encourage the brain to produce certain other kinds of thoughts when we want it to.
For instance, a specific area can be stimulated and you will have pleasurable thoughts but we cannot yet control what those pleasurable thoughts will be, and we have no idea what the bits and pieces of information are that go into your pleasurable thoughts.
With all of our advanced knowledge about the physical brain, we still don’t know how to make it have a specific thought or idea. Especially not an original thought or a creative idea. And medical science offers no better theory than Hill’s as to how we could have an intuition or hunch made up from information that we don’t have and were never exposed to.
In short, the physical properties of the brain confirm that it is where the thinking process takes place, but it does not offer the answer to the question of how it happens, or how thoughts from one brain might travel to another.
In previous commentaries we pointed to the laws of physics as they relate to Hill’s theory about the interconnectedness of all things. And although this is not meant to be a science lesson, it may reassure you to know that the work of renowned scientists lends support to the idea. Quantum theory deals with sub-atomic particles so miniscule that they are almost at the level of the basic “stuff” from which everything is made. Albert Einstein developed what is called the EPR effect (Einstein, Podolski, and Rosen), and Irish physicist John Stewart Bell proposed Bell’s Theorem, both of which pertain to the concept that when two linked subatomic particles are separated from each other, when a change is made to particle A, the same change will instantly happen in particle B, even though the two are distant from each other.
Another related concept is called the Holographic Brain or Holographic Universe, and is named after an unusual quality of holograms. It is a fact that if you cut a hologram in half, you don’t get two halves of a picture; you get two separate but complete pictures. Cut either one of those in half and you get another two complete pictures. Cut other pieces, and again you get whole images. Every part of a hologram has the whole of the information in the original.
In the 1970s Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist at Stanford University, announced the results of his studies which suggest that memory is not in a specific part of the brain but is spread throughout the brain like the image on a holographic plate: every part of the brain contains the same “stuff” as every other part of the brain. At almost the same time, renowned physicist David Bohm proposed that the workings of the universe were like a holographic image; that among all things there is total interconnectivity and that all things influence all other things. In effect, every part of the universe contains the whole of the universe.
That is probably more than enough science for most readers. The point is, Hill was not alone in his conclusion that through some intangible force your subconscious shares interconnectivity with everything else in the universe. Previously the example was given of the folds and bumps in a tablecloth all being different but all still tablecloth. Here is another way to envision the intangible interconnection of all things: Suppose you were to drill five holes in a wall and have someone outside the room put their fingers and thumb through the holes and wiggle them. If you then bring into the room someone who only believes in tangible things that he or she can see, that person will see five separate objects that can move independently of each other. You may tell the person that behind the wall the objects are connected and all part of the same hand, but because they cannot see the connection, and disbelieve anything they don’t understand, the person will not be convinced.
Neither modern medicine nor psychiatry nor technology can yet, conclusively, show us behind the wall. But the fact remains, we have all had a hunch about
somebody and it turns out to be right, a premonition that something will happen and it does, or a feeling that something isn’t right with someone who is not there with you and it turns out to be true. How does this information come to us?
As mentioned previously, psychologist Carl Jung called the intangible connection the collective unconscious (also called the universal subconscious). Others call it the Totally Unified Theory, the Great First Cause, the Universal Mind, or Spirit, and some see it as another way of describing God. Napoleon Hill calls it Infinite Intelligence and offers a common-sense explanation that allows you to work with the phenomenon even if it is not completely understood. And that, after all, is what Hill was aiming for: to give you a way to access intangible forces that will help you turn your desire into reality.
After this book had been written, just before the manuscript went to the publisher, the New York Times published an editorial showing that at least one great university, and one intelligent investigator in the field of mental phenomena, are carrying on an organized research through which conclusions have been reached that parallel many of those described in this and the following chapter. The editorial briefly analyzed the work carried on by Dr. J. B. Rhine and his associates at Duke University: