Sushiksha

Note: The following article is just a thought-provoking Theory. I do not have any data to prove its validity nor do I claim for it to be scientifically accurate.

One of history’s most famous physicists, Albert Einstein one day dreamt that he was walking through a farm where he found a herd of cows huddled up against an electric fence. When the farmer suddenly switched the electric fence on, he saw the cows jump back at the same time – although the farmer saw them jump one by one in a Mexican wave. It is said, that that dream was what inspired Einstein’s Theory of Relativity – which states that events look different depending on where you’re standing, because of the time it takes the light to reach your eyes.

Take another story: In a dream, Niels Bohr saw the nucleus of the atom with the electrons spinning around it – like planets going around the sun. He had a gut feeling that it was an accurate representation of what he was working on, and he dedicated his research to prove this theory. Lo and behold! he was spot on and went on to win the Nobel Prize for Physics for his breakthrough!

One more: As a student, Larry Page had an irrational fear that he had been accepted into Stamford University by mistake – which trigged an anxiety dream. He imagined that he could download the entire web onto some old computers lying around at his home, so he got up in the middle of the night to do some math. When he realized it was actually plausible, he took two years out of studying to create what came to be known as Google! Imagine how different your daily life and indeed the modern world, would be if he hadn’t had that dream!

So, what exactly is the deal with people getting ideas in their dreams? Does God put these ideas in them? Or maybe fairies or spirits? That would be so great, wouldn’t it? But no, that is not the case. This is something called subconscious thinking, a technique that if harnessed correctly, can be the most powerful mode of your brain allowing you to think and work at a whole new level. A high-performance and high-efficiency mode for your brain!

What is the Subconscious Mind?

You might have heard about how the visible part of an iceberg is merely the tip of it, on an average 10% is what is visible to the naked eye whereas 90% of the remaining part of the iceberg lies under the water and is the main thing that causes the damage to many ships that dare to go near it. Our brain is also the same, the amount of brainpower we use in a day is hardly the amount the brain is capable of, not to mention the amount we waste every day on useless tasks that occupy the entire brain but don’t exactly do anything to improve it, a good example of which is gaming (no offense) although it is said to improve hand-eye coordination, there is no significant and long-term research on that. 

Have you ever wondered why and how is it that you can multitask several things together with ease and yet finish almost every task and yet not consider any of those as a ‘distraction’? Take me right now, I’m writing this blog, listening to music, and sipping tea all at the same time. Although my blog might be hierarchically more important in terms of brain attention, I don’t consider listening to music or sipping tea ‘distractions’ per se, but as stimulants that keep other parts of my brain engaged while I work with one part of it. Believe it or not, this actually limits the ‘scope’ of your distraction, keeping it to only the supplementary side task you were doing. 

Think of it this way: Let’s say I hit a mental roadblock while writing this blog. The way the brain works, I am bound to get distracted and lose focus soon if I don’t think of new content or a better way to present it. The scope for this distraction can be anything and everything. Right from breakfast, I had that morning to what might happen 10 years later, the scope of distraction is infinite. Now when I limit my scope of distraction by listening to music or focus sounds, my distraction will be limited to humming lyrics of the song only and not beyond that. Although one can argue that that can further branch out to the lyrics, the meaning of the lyrics, the singer, his life, etc. But you’ll be surprised to know that is mostly not the case and your focus remains intact. This is more so observed in nature sounds like rain, wheatfields, etc. Many phones have a dedicated focus mode these days that play these sounds while you study, work, or are just relaxing.

The main reason why this happens i.e., the brain associating rain or wheat field sounds to calmness or relaxation is due to the fact that we have subconsciously associated rain with the feeling of shelter and warmth. Whenever it rains, we tend to cozy up and relax. This has been a part of the subconscious training that our mind goes through throughout our life. It learns to associate sounds and scenes and then remember them in a way that isn’t actually perceivable, but still actable. The best way that was portrayed was in the movie ‘The Arrival’. In the movie, inter-planetary beings visit earth, but the only way they can communicate is by dishing out ink in certain shapes and humans – even though they know that these people possess supreme scientific knowledge for inter-planetary and possibly interstellar travel, they are forced to communicate by acting, not necessarily by understanding everything, but parts of it. The subconscious interacts with the conscious side in a similar way. It knows how to do it, but doesn’t know how to tell it to you. 

Harnessing the power of the Subconscious Mind

I was really curious about how powerful this side of the brain is when I visited Tirupati recently after almost a gap of 12 years. On the outskirts of the temple, several speakers play devotional music. Apparently, we took a photo near one of these speakers, and that memory and the place were still stuck in my head. When I saw the same spot after 12 years, I could still faintly remember the Telugu song, well the tune at least, that fascinated me so as to how powerful the top floor of the body had to be to associate a thing for so long and still be powerful enough to recollect such a far-off memory. 

This got me thinking on we can harness this part of the brain where we control the subconscious to some extent and use it to do some work that probably our conscious can’t handle or is stuck with some problem for a long time. And it struck me one day when I was stuck on a programming problem for a long time and it finally struck me. Now, this method works for me 50-60% of the time and has been surprisingly accurate. So here goes:

1)      Priming your mind: The Subconscious is like a dormant state of the mind that does not act until there are intense or extreme situations. Reflexes for example are usually subconscious by nature. To receive constant input from the subconscious brain – that is a workable amount long as to make decisions for us, we have to subject it to an extreme or at least an away from the conform-zone condition where it can stay constantly activated. Surprisingly, it is easier than it sounds. Sleep Deprivation. You may have heard that sleep deprivation causes people to hallucinate and not be able to think clearly. I found this especially surprising since hallucination that is seeing something that isn’t there requires a higher state of mind yet people not being able to do simple motor tasks is confusing. This happens when the conscious brain is tired and exhausted to perform basic tasks, the subconscious however is tired, but not completely and starts stepping in to compensate for the conscious mind but like I pointed out earlier, it knows how to do things, but cannot tell you how to do it, it resorts to things like causing hallucinations which are usually totally unrelated but still relevant to you. 

To harness this, however, you need not go to this extreme. For me, gradually reducing my sleep hours from 7.5 to 8 to around 5.5 to 6 hours still worked. The objective is to tire your brain, but not allow it to recover triggering the subconscious compensation. Next, we use this compensation for our good

2)      Fitting an objective: Now this probably is the trickiest part. Fitting an objective into the brain so much so that it’s all you think about all day and night. This was in the case of Niels Bohr when he was so into the theory, he was researching that when he saw the dream, he instantly related it to the theory which eventually turned out to be right. This constant thinking is what is necessary for the brain to fixate on the objective. When you are so fixated on one issue or problem that you are constantly thinking of it, the brain also starts finding answers for you. The minimum time it took me was 2 days. Depending on the complexity, this time frame can change and will change. 

3)      Putting it together – From here on you let the brain do the work. You can either sleep late and wake up early or sleep early and wake up even early to have the minimum sleep deprivation. Once this happens, when you are in a sleepy semi-conscious state, you can now go back to sleeping at a different location. But this is where you have to be careful, you cannot drift to sleep, you have to remain in this semi-conscious state thinking about the problem that you wanted a solution to. Gradually you realize that your state of thinking has been botched up. Even though your body feels weak, your mind is in a state of overdrive. This is the same subconscious mind compensating for the fatigue of the conscious mind. It is surprising how powerful the brain is that little interference from its side can act as a steroidal boost and help you answer even the complex of questions. 

This also is the same for dreaming. During your dreaming process, it is the subconscious brain that is the most active. If there’s a thought that has been bothering you, the subconscious brain ‘helps’ or ‘assists’ the conscious brain in solving, hence people think they’re having visions while most of the time, it's just like a turbo mode of the brain occasionally enhancing the thinking power and taking it to a higher mode.

Summary

To summarize, to enhance the thinking of your brain, we have to use the subconscious brain. Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult to do due to biological reasons. There is a way out – By tapping on the border when the conscious and subconscious brain are briefly interacting with each other. This is best seen when a person is sleep-deprived, even mildly. Continuously stressing on the brain with a question or a problem will result in the subconscious trying to solve it or assist in solving it the next time both sides of the brain interact. In this way, you can try to harness the power of the subconscious brain and put your brain into a ‘turbo’ mode for brief amounts of time.