At first, this may appear to be a serious weakness in the human system. It is, of course, the chief reason for inaccuracies in the "REALITY" structure, but it need not be regarded as a weakness or fault in the system. Quite the contrary. In fact, it was the recognition and understanding of this quality of the mental processes which led me to realize that deliberate conscious control of the inevitable process of change in human behavior is possible. The basic method for personal growth and de- velopment which I will describe in detail in Chapter 10, "Constructive Imagination," is based upon this principle. I want to increase the probability that this idea is sufficiently clear.
Can you think of a time when you have experienced something so vividly in your imagination that it has become a part of your "REALITY"? Do you recall the surprise you felt when you found that your image of that situation was inaccurate?
This can happen with a dream. Sometimes a dream is so vivid—so real—that you are later quite certain that it actually happened. You not only recall the event that you dreamed about, but all of the emotions seem real, too.
Have you read a book—a novel or perhaps a mystery story—which was so well written that you became a part of the story? It might be more accurate to say that the story became a part of you. The author developed such vivid descriptions of the characters, their thoughts,
appearance, and activities that you felt that you actually knew them. You knew how they walked, talked, ate and drank, their innermost thoughts and feelings. You may even have felt a tinge of sorrow as you finished the book because you were saying goodbye to some close friends. To some degree that book, and the people in it, became a part of your experience files—your "REALITY."
Then you went to the movie which was made from the book. How did that feel? Uncomfortable? Irritating? "Well, the movie was okay, but it wasn't as good as the book!" This very common reaction was probably at least partly because what you were watching on the screen did not match the way it "really" happened in your mental processes—in your imagination—as you read the book.
Here is another example. Have you listened to a voice on the radio day after day? A newscaster or disc jockey while you rode to work each morning, perhaps. As you heard that voice, you imagined a face to go with it. That is part of the association process.
As the days went by, your image became more vivid, more real. Then you saw his photograph in the news- paper. Did you find yourself thinking that the newspaper made a mistake? "That's not what he looks like at all!" Your imagination did the distorting, not the newspaper. A very dramatic example of how the imagination can build a "REALITY" which then affects behavior hap- pened in 1938, on Halloween, when the Mercury Radio Theater presented Orson Welles9
version of H.G. Wells' story The War of the Worlds on the Columbia Broad- casting System.
So vividly and realistically did that radio drama stim- ulate the imagination of thousands of listeners that there was near panic on the Eastern seaboard—especially in New Jersey and New York. Some of the people who tuned their radios to that broadcast "knew" that we were actually being invaded by hostile, destructive creatures from Mars. Highways were jammed, police switchboards couldn't handle the incoming calls, people were behaving in a manner that was entirely consistent with their cur- rently dominant "REALITY" about what was happening and what was likely to happen next.
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One more illustration with which you may be able to identify: can you recall anything that happened in your family before you were born? I mean remember it just as though you had been there watching it happen, even though you know, logically, that you couldn't possibly have seen it happen?
I can remember an incident that happened when my brother, Bill, was about five or six years old. He was playing with Dickie Bancroft who lived down the street. My brother was at the upstairs window and Dickie was standing down below, looking up at Bill. My brother dropped a sharply pointed metal object—a milk bottle cap remover—for Dickie to catch. Dickie missed catch- ing it, but it hit him in the face, about a half-inch from his eye. Blood all over the place and lots of yelling, cry- ing, and furor.
The peculiar part of this is that Bill is ten years older than I am and I couldn't possibly have been there to see that all happen. It seems like it though. I can recall it so vividly that it seems like it is happening all over again. Of course, the reason is that that story was told dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times when I was a child. Every time my brothers or I were seen playing with a sharp object, Mother would re-play the story about how Dickie Bancroft almost lost an eye. She told it with a lot of vividness and emotion, too. Put that with the lively imagination of a child and it's easy to see how it became a part of my reference file of experiences.
Computer programmers have a simple way of express- ing this idea: GIGO. It stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out! If false information is programmed into a com- puter, we will almost surely get some strange answers from the mechanism. You and I function in much the same way—except that we have the added dimension of emotion which causes many of the false inputs to have an even more profound impact on behavior.
I am not going to attempt to look at the chemical or biological processes which are involved in the storage of your "REALITY" structure. There are still some major gaps in our understanding of the exact electrochemical processes which result in various kinds of "memory" activity. It is a fascinating scientific frontier; once again,
the more we learn about it, the more amazingly com- plex it appears to be.
If that aspect of our search intrigues you, there are some excellent reference books listed in the bibliog- raphy at the end of the book.
The third subconscious mental process has to do with conflict resolution.
To the degree that there is a conflict, or difference, between what you are perceiving and what you "know" to be "true," creativity and energy are released or acti- vated to resolve the conflict. Your mental system goes to work, automatically, to change what you are perceiving as "wrong" or to revise your "REALITY."
Consider the child who knows that there really is a Santa Claus—and remember, there is a lot of emotion
attached to that "truth." Then someone in the neighbor- hood says, "You don't believe that Santa Claus stuff, do you?" The child's first impulse is to cling to "REALITY," to reject the conflicting input, and perhaps even to expend some energy to force the person who made such a stupid statement to shape up!
Then, as more and more evidence is perceived which seems to indicate that Santa Claus truly is a myth, the evaluation process slowly begins to change and the "REALITY" structure is re-programmed. The "truth" about Santa Claus is superseded by a new "truth."
Sometimes, when there is a very strong emotional at- tachment to the earlier "REALITY," the re-program- ming is aided or assisted by some creative activity at a more subconscious level. One example of such sub- conscious creative re-programming is found in dream activity. Dreams are not just a way of passing the time while you are asleep. They are thought to perform a very important psychotherapeutic function—like having your own built-in therapist, working while you are asleep with creative psychodrama to help you cope with the conflicts in your life.
Dreams seem to be symbolically related to the up- heavals which are happening in your day-to-day world, and if you are deprived of dreams, the deprivation will eventually result in neurotic or even psychotic behavior. An example of an extreme conflict, with a great deal of emotion, is the sudden, unexpected death of a close loved one—your spouse, parent, child, brother, or sister. That other person had become a very important part of your environmental "REALITY." Then, one day, he (or she) isn't there any more. Your immediate impulse is to cling to your "REALITY," to reject the idea that the person you love is really gone. There must be some mis- take! You may feel a strange mixture of emotions as you are confronted with additional evidence that there really has been a death. Along with the grief there will be anger, and then guilt and frustration.
Meanwhile, at a subconscious level in your system, dream activity will be working to help revise the "REALITY" structure so that you can accept what has
happened as final, real, and something that you can live with. The creative subconscious re-programming process goes on all the time, not only when you are asleep.
Another application of this same process can be seen in action when you are- confronted with a business or personal "problem." When you perceive something that is not complete or finished, you tend to feel uncom- fortable. When something isn't "neat" or the way it is "supposed to be" there is that automatic impulse to get it "fixed."
Look at the illustration below.
Do you see a picture? You probably filled in the empty spaces and saw the figure of a dog. That happpened at a largely conscious level; the same sort of process occurs continuously in your mental system at a sub- conscious level.
In Chapter 17 we will look at some specific steps that you can take to make more productive use of this crea- tive process.
Another application of this third subconscious activi- ity—conflict resolution—can be seen in the goal-seeking function of your system. We will be looking at this area in considerable detail in Chapter 13.. For the present it is sufficient to note that when you set a goal and program
it into your "REALITY" structure, a conflict develops between "the way things are" and "the way things are supposed to be" which stimulates creativity and releases the necessary energy to achieve the goal.
There is one more aspect of the conflict resolution process which we do not yet clearly understand, but which should at least be mentioned.
Sometimes your mental system seems to be able to tap outside sources of information or inspiration through
some channel other than the conscious process of per- ception. This may be related to parapsychology—telepa- thy, clairvoyance etc.—or for some it may seem to have religious or spiritual implications. Carl Jung, the great
psychoanalytical theoretician, called it the Collective Un- conscious.
For lack of a better term, we will simply label this additional input channel the Eighth Arrow. A clearer understanding of the nature and function of this flow may well be one of the most exciting frontiers of the next half-century. We will look at it in a little more detail in Chapter 17.