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Think And Grow Rich - by Napoleon Hill

This is one of the most famous self help books ever published. This inspirational book was first published back in 1937.

Hill studied the characteristics of a large number of individuals who achieved great wealth during their lifetimes and developed 15 "laws" of success intended to be applied by anybody to achieve success.

How To Be Happy - by Michael Anthony

Michael Anthony says that true and lasting happiness always comes from within. Anthony's writing reveals simple, yet profound insights that can help everyone that uses them to live a more fulfilled and happier life.

As A Man Thinketh - by James Allen This inspirational literary work from James Allen was first published in 1902. The book focuses on the power of our thoughts, and embraces the idea that we become what we think about.

The term mind power and the subconscious mind power are described in many different ways. In the psychosomatic sense mind power is labeled as ability to have emotions, imagination, memory, and will; and subconscious mind power is labeled as part of the normal individual’s personality in which mental processes function without consciousness under normal waking conditions.

Contents

1. How Mind Power and Subconscious Mind Power work
2. How to use Subconscious Mind for success

Mind power is our conscious mind, the way we think. The mind is similar to a constantly flowing spring however a natural spring cannot send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening, nor yield both salt water and fresh. So it is with the mind and its thoughts; it cannot equally think negative and positive thoughts at the same time. One will rule the other.

Since the mind reflects habitual thoughts, it is therefore our responsibility to influence our mind and brain with positive emotions, thoughts and energy as the dominating factors in our mind. Mind power is beyond positive thinking or brain power, it is thinking than believing what you think that will manifest your reality. Since this mind power is power of thought and beliefs, and these thoughts and beliefs will create the outcome of your now, you will want to stay aware to the reflections you are thinking.

Now mind power is a dual system that includes your power of thought(brain) and your subconscious mind. We all have subconscious mind power; it can be as small as smiling at your boss in the hopes of improving the odds of acquiring a raise.

It can be the way you unconsciously handle a situation whether appropriately or not. Power of the subconscious mind comes from the thoughts and beliefs of your the power of the your mind. However you think and believe is what your subconscious mind power will produce. This is done continuously, one minute at a time. Every thought nourished regularly by your mind power will activate your subconscious mind to generate those thoughts and energy whether good or bad into your life. This is how you’re present and future is created.

Your mind power and your subconscious mind work together and they fashion your reality. Let’s use a parallel to help you visualize how this works. Your subconscious mind power is similar to fertile soil that consents to any seed planted inside it. Your habitual thoughts and beliefs are the seeds which are being continually sown and they will eventually produce a crop. So if you plant weeds you will get weeds, if you plant fruit, you will get fruit. In other words, you reap what you sow. Now the conscious mind is the gardener, and it is the mind power to choose what reaches our inner garden- the subconscious.

Unfortunately, most of us do not have green thumbs because of lack of knowledge of this law, the psychology behind this success and because of this ignorance we have allowed all kinds of seeds, both good and bad, to enter. So our subconscious mind power will manifest failure, ill health and all kinds of misfortunes just as effortlessly as it will manifest success and abundance. However, it cannot manifest it both at the same time, which is why the need to constantly actuate the positive until the fertile soil of your subconscious mind power reaps only abundance. Success is only a choice away.

There are studies on the power of our subconscious mind on one of the most deadliest disease known to mankind, which is cancer. From numerous statistics, the following:

American Health Magazine reported these findings from a comparison study.

• Psychoanalysis: Creates a 38% recovery after 600 sessions
• Behavior Therapy: Creates a 72% recovery after 22 sessions
• Hypnosis: Creates a 93% recovery after 6 sessions

As seen, hypnosis is the most effective method other than medicines to healing our diseases. With a success rate of 93%, it surges foward any other therapy like behaviour therapy and psychoanalysis.

Hypnosis is a important healing process that uses all aspects of healthcare and also a method to stay in touch with your subconscious mind. Hypnosis is very focus on the patient, aiming only on the origin of the person’s problems. Through hypnosis, it gets the person to be in touch with the unconscious mind. It then gives the practitioner the ability to empower the patient to faster recovery and live the life the patient always dream of.

This study confirms—Hypnosis is more effective and works more quickly than traditional talk-therapy or psychoanalysis and even medicines. In a hypnotic state, you are able to accept new strategies, ideas and you can more effectively and efficiently process the emotions linked to the experiences, which created pain, fear.

Through Hypnosis you communicate with your subconscious mind power, which puts YOU in control of your subconscious mind—the most powerful and the most dangerous tool in your body. You can build positive beliefs in your subconscious mind or negative beliefs. Thus, always stay in touch with your subconscious mind.

But the vital aspect of why they recover so fast is the realization that they can actually choose to feel in a totally upbeat and positive way. You too can make use of the healing power of the mind. Let me show you how.

1) Admit and accept that you have an illness. (the hardest and most important step

You may think that I am absurd but life’s problems are not solved by denying their existence. Many people actually find it hard to admit to themselves they have an illness. The most important step you can take in healing would be to accept your present circumstance, but to positively expect that you can heal yourself using the powers of your mind and live life again.

2) Commit yourselves to it and take action

Seek treatment that suits you and do the necessary individual research on you illness like the diet you should be eating. Getting treatment lets you assume control over your life again. This lightens the feeling of helplessness; hence, you can think better and make the right and necessary decisions.

3) Take comfort in a Higher Power.

It would even better for your recovery if you seek comfort from you religion. It gives you the power and confidence in battling your illness.

The power of your mind can be used as a medicine or a poison. Stay in positive touch with your mind, and it becomes your medicine. On the contrary, neglect your mind, it becomes your poison.

Subconscious mind power is being aware of what information enters your mind. This is critical as the subconscious mind runs on auto pilot and whatever information enters it is what it will process.

Positive Affirmation is a declaration that what one is declaring will happen or will be. Positive affirmation is a way to plant positive seeds of hope, courage and victory into the subconscious mind. It is believed that faith is a form of affirmation as one believes the desires have already happened though it is not manifested yet. In other words faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the confidence of things not seen as though they were or are.

Subconscious mind power is gaining victory over negative thoughts and with this victory overcoming our setbacks and failures. The subconscious mind is powerful and can alter your decisions in a negative way if allowed to do so. Even though something may be true your subconscious does not deal with if it’s true, it deals with what it believes is true.

Daily affirmations or declarations are a form of feeding the subconscious mind with proper food for thought that will manifest positive situations in one’s life. Proclaiming one’s faith without ceasing is one technique for daily affirmation. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world-our faith.

MANTRA..satu perkataan yang dikaitkan dengan upacara/ritual didalam agama hindu & buddha, tapi apakah sebenarnya maksud MANTRA ni?

Definition # 1: Mantras are energy-based sounds.

Saying any word produces an actual physical vibration. Over time, if we know what the effect of that vibration is, then the word may come to have meaning associated with the effect of saying that vibration or word. This is one level of energy basis for words.

Another level is intent. If the actual physical vibration is coupled with a mental intention, the vibration then contains an additional mental component which influences the result of saying it. The sound is the carrier wave and the intent is overlaid upon the wave form, just as a colored gel influences the appearance and effect of a white light.

In either instance, the word is based upon energy. Nowhere is this idea more true than for Sanskrit mantra. For although there is a general meaning which comes to be associated with mantras, the only lasting definition is the result or effect of saying the mantra.

Definition #2: Mantras create thought-energy waves.

The human consciousness is really a collection of states of consciousness which distributively exist throughout the physical and subtle bodies. Each organ has a primitive consciousness of its own. That primitive consciousness allows it to perform functions specific to it. Then come the various systems. The cardio-vascular system, the reproductive system and other systems have various organs or body parts working at slightly different stages of a single process. Like the organs, there is a primitive consciousness also associated with each system. And these are just within the physical body. Similar functions and states of consciousness exist within the subtle body as well. So individual organ consciousness is overlaid by system consciousness, overlaid again by subtle body counterparts and consciousness, and so ad infinitum.

The ego with its self-defined "I" ness assumes a pre-eminent state among the subtle din of random, semi-conscious thoughts which pulse through our organism. And of course, our organism can "pick up" the vibration of other organisms nearby. The result is that there are myriad vibrations riding in and through the subconscious mind at any given time.

Mantras start a powerful vibration which corresponds to both a specific spiritual energy frequency and a state of consciousness in seed form. Over time, the mantra process begins to override all of the other smaller vibrations, which eventually become absorbed by the mantra. After a length of time which varies from individual to individual, the great wave of the mantra stills all other vibrations. Ultimately, the mantra produces a state where the organism vibrates at the rate completely in tune with the energy and spiritual state represented by and contained within the mantra.

At this point, a change of state occurs in the organism. The organism becomes subtly different. Just as a laser is light which is coherent in a new way, the person who becomes one with the state produced by the mantra is also coherent in a way which did not exist prior to the conscious undertaking of repetition of the mantra.

Definition #3: Mantras are tools of power and tools for power.

They are formidable. They are ancient. They work. The word "mantra" is derived from two Sanskrit words. The first is "manas" or "mind," which provides the "man" syllable. The second syllable is drawn from the Sanskrit word "trai" meaning to "protect" or to "free from." Therefore, the word mantra in its most literal sense means "to free from the mind." Mantra is, at its core, a tool used by the mind which eventually frees one from the vagaries of the mind.

But the journey from mantra to freedom is a wondrous one. The mind expands, deepens and widens and eventually dips into the essence of cosmic existence. On its journey, the mind comes to understand much about the essence of the vibration of things. And knowledge, as we all know, is power. In the case of mantra, this power is tangible and wieldable.

THE STRUGGLE FOR A BETTER LIFE

When identical same-sex twins are brought up in exactly the same environment and treated exactly the same (clothing included), they usually behave and feel much the same.

But identical same-sex twins brought up as individuals have different personalities, are different people. Usually one is more dominant while the other is more emotional.

It is apparently easier for people who are 'cold and calculating' to be dominant, to dominate those who are 'emotional'.

Add that those dominating others may in this way acquire power over others, or social and economic gains from using, and from misusing, people.

Such a system rewards primitive inhuman brutal (beastlike) behaviour (acquiring territory by force, might is right), held in check only by the fear of consequences.

We also see that dominating others is conditioned, that is unnatural, behaviour which is destructive of humane behaviour. A throw-back to the level of the unthinking unfeeling primitive animal.

Humane behaviour is based on feelings of care and affection for the young and for the family, and then for other people and the community. From this emerges a sense of social responsibility: people matter and are important, need to be treated well and looked after, are entitled to share equally. Backed up by knowledge, understanding and reason.

And, in the hostile environment in which humanity finds itself, what is also needed is dedicated effort, strength and power to achieve a humane way of living, to achieve a good standard of living and a high quality of life.

Part of the hostile environment is an almost intentional-seeming conditioning which frequently portrays brutal behaviour as a norm, by media and other opinion-forming sources. This has the effect of brutalising society, seemingly legalising, making acceptable, inconsiderate and unfeeling behaviour towards other people.

What we see is a world-wide struggle for a humane life which shows people struggling to achieve a humane way of life, each struggling to advance at their own level of development and achievement, struggling against those who wish to dominate others, against those who wish to exploit others, against those who wish to oppress so as to exploit.

Struggling to achieve the satisfaction of needs which are entirely in line with what we have seen here in this report about the evolution and development of the human brain and human mind. Needs and wants such as those for survival (food, shelter, clothing) and secure existence, affection and esteem, friendly and trustful co-operation and companionship, independence from domination by others, high quality of life and living, self-realisation and development. And "people will co-operate with each other and work hard and well to satisfy these needs and gain much satisfaction from doing so".

EVALUATION AND UNDERSTANDING

Behaviour of the primitive animals from which human beings evolved is instinctive. Which means that behaviour relating to survival, such as attack, defence or sexual, is automatic. Territory is acquired by force and defended. Might is right.

The mammalian brain includes the older reptilian brain and is linked to it. With the mammalian brain emerged feelings such as attachment, fear and anger together with associated behavioural response patterns. Mammalian behaviour is less rigidly controlled by instincts.

The human brain (see Figure 3 'The Human Brain') includes the mammalian brain and human emotional responses depend on neuronal pathways which link the right hemisphere to the mammalian brain.

It takes human beings many years to bring up their children and it is the right hemisphere which is concerned with a wide range of emotions and feelings of care and affection for the young and for the family, and then for other people and the community.

Figure 3 The Human Brain

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For human beings, primitive (reptilian) instinctive urges and behaviour are overlaid by mammalian care and affection for one's young and human care and affection for one's family and community. Behaviour is aimed at survival of the young and of the family, and then is for the good of family, other people, community.

The right hemisphere is linked to the primitive older part of the brain which has no verbal, semantic or reasoning ability and so functions subconsciously (below the level of consciousness). Hence the right hemisphere communicates with the 'subconscious' functions of the older part of the brain by using images. Communicating by using images is fast.

And so the right hemisphere communicates using images (pictures) and has highly developed spatial abilities, is intuitive and imaginative, is concerned with emotions and feelings.

Speech, that is thinking and communicating by using words, seems to have evolved later. The left hemisphere communicates by using words, has highly developed verbal and semantic abilities, is logical and systematic, concerned with matters as they are. Images may be described, or transformed into a narrative, by the left hemisphere.

Hence behaviour is not only determined by feelings but also by knowledge, understanding and reason.

So the human brain includes the processing and memorising of images and of their components, and the development of language and corresponding mental processing connected with memory and memorising. It also includes a wide range of emotions, of feelings, of care and affection, and the capability for objective and logical thinking and evaluation. And the later development of written languages and artificial images.

We are continually gaining information by learning, by reading or studying, learning from the experiences of others, gaining verbal information and pictorial images from external memory. The mind evaluates this incoming information and decides what is to be retained and memorised, rejecting the remainder. Information about what has been happening to oneself is treated in the same way.

And when something is happening to oneself, when one is doing something or planning to do something, we recall relevant information from memory, add other available information, and before taking action we evaluate all the information we now have. What happens as a result of the action we took is again evaluated and memorised for later use.

So we are continually evaluating information and this is a key feature of the human mind. Evaluation means estimating significance, relevance and reliability. In other words, estimating meaning and importance, bearing on or reference to the matter in hand, whether it can be relied on. In this way continually becoming more aware of explanations and causes, gaining understanding.

We memorise both verbal and image information. However, we do not memorise feelings, possibly because they may originate within the earlier mammalian parts of the brain . What is recalled is how we felt at the time, the actual feeling is not reproduced, cannot be recalled.

And memorising images is fast and this would seem to apply to their component parts and to associating. The eidetic memory of young children usually changes to linear memory as they become more adult. It appears that as we grow older so we start evaluating and then cease merely to take in such information as we come across. As we become adult we start to evaluate and develop and extend our evaluating skills. In other words, as adults what we memorise and how we recall and use recalled information is then governed by reason and aids understanding.

Continually associating new information with older information, and older information with other older information, is much more than random cross-referencing.

It is because of the meaningful way in which we associate over such large volumes of stored information, that the process of associating amounts also to the seeking of meaningful associations.

So to me it seems that all the information we take in and retain results in a more comprehensive view and understanding of the world in which we live, of our social organisation and physical environment. And thus, in the end, at some time and in some way, the information we have taken in affects and changes what we do, changes our behaviour.

ADAPTING TO THE ENVIRONMENT: CHANGING INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOUR

A key feature which distinguishes mammals from the reptiles from which they evolved would seem to be that the mammalian brain contains organs for the experience-based recognition of danger and for responding to this according to past experience. And for some conscious feelings about events.

Millions of neural pathways connect the organs which generate experience-based memories, and also those which generate conscious feelings with associated behavioural response patterns, to the reptilian parts of the mammalian brain.

It seems that feelings such as attachment, anger and fear have emerged with associated behavioural response patterns, and that behaviour is less rigidly controlled by instincts.

So it seems that instinctive behaviour can be modified by feelings of care and affection and also by experience, particularly when repeated frequently.

Neural pathways are created and strengthened by being used, others weakened by not being used. We react accordingly and it seems as if memories are being created which modify instinctive behavioural responses.

It also seems that instinctive behaviour has to be controlled, and modified according to the environment in which we find ourselves, in every generation, and that the mammalian and human parts of the brain play a major part in this.

ADAPTING TO THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE: CHANGING BEHAVIOUR PATTERNS

We adapt to the world in which we live in much the same way. What happens to us and what we do, and what happens as a result, changes neural pathways. A trace is left, neural pathways are changed, memories are formed.

Playing is one way of learning how to behave, of learning about social co-operation and conflict, about family relations and about bringing up a family. From infant through child and adolescence to being an adult, we go through a long period in which we learn through playing and by experience. And learning by experience and by gaining knowledge continues while we are alive.

Social responsibility, the caring, giving and sharing with others, the taking on of responsibility for others, including conflict management, can be and is being taught.

What human beings do, what happens to us, is also memorised if thought relevant. These memories can be recalled when required and in this way will affect our future behaviour.

Additionally we also absorb information from external memory, from the mass of information now available to us from sources external to ourselves. And the action we take, what we do, depends on evaluating the situation, what we know and how we feel about it. The outcome itself is evaluated and becomes part of our memories.

It seems that on the whole people may not be able to recall feelings, that most people can only recall how they felt about something at the time.

Each new experience adds to our knowledge and plays a part in shaping our view of the community and society in which we live, of the world at large, and helps to determine our behaviour.

COMMUNICATING NON-VERBALLY: CONVEYING INFORMATION BY USING IMAGES

Instinctive Behaviour

Dreaming trains animals and human beings in instinctive responses and then keeps instinctive behaviour fully trained.

Dreaming does so by generating situations which require responses of the fight, flight, affection kind. A dream produces a corresponding response which, however, is not translated into action as the dreamer's body is normally paralysed by the mind for duration of dreaming (REM) sleep.

Frequent replaying strengthens corresponding neural pathways and so trains the individual to respond and to respond quickly.

Subconscious Behaviour (Functioning)

As mammals evolved from reptiles, the added functions included organs such as the autonomic nervous system for the automatic control of body functions, of functions such as digestion, the fluid balance, body temperature and blood pressure.

A key finding of this report is that the right hemisphere of the human brain is able to communicate by using images with the brain's older and more primitive component organs which have no verbal skills. And this enables us to communicate intentionally (that is 'consciously') with our autonomic nervous system and ask it by visualising to control body functions and to affect our body's immune system. Any or all our senses can be included when visualising.

Clinical trials have shown remarkable success in areas such as the treatment of cancer and heart disease.

Communicating with one's autonomic nervous system by visualising is a conscious activity.

Hence it is possible to direct and use the mind's subconscious maintenance and control capabilities, and so enable environmental experience and knowledge to be applied for one's benefit. That is, one's knowledge and experience can be consciously applied towards modifying the mind's subconscious control of body functions for the benefit of the individual.

Memorising

It is while REM sleeping that dreams are generated and that we appear to be filing away (memorising) memories for later use.

Much of dreaming may then be the creating and recalling of associations. As the night progresses this process seems to become more intuitive, delving deeper into stored memories and associations, associating with earlier memories and their aspects, tending to go back in time towards childhood.

Becoming more intuitive by going through likely or apparently associated filed images or other stored memory components (aspects) in their different locations.

In this way keeping long-term memories intact and relevant by continually associating and reassociating their various parts.

So we are strengthening neural pathways or associations by frequently using or recalling them.

This process at the same time would seem to weaken those memory components we are not thinking about or which are not being used.

INSTINCTS AND INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOUR

We saw that instincts are an innate form of behaviour, that is a form of behaviour which is not learned but which the animal performs from birth, without being trained to do so.

Behaviour relating to survival of a species, such as attack, defence and sexual behaviour, is instinctive and responses are automatic. Territory is acquired by force and defended. Might is right.

CONSCIOUS BEHAVIOUR: LEARNING AND EVALUATING, MEMORY AND MEMORISING

As mammals evolved from reptiles, there evolved the ability for storing new experiences as they happen and so creating a store of experience-based memories.

A primitive animal's memory seems to be largely procedural. Both procedural and declarative memories are long-term memories, but declarative memory is located and used in a different way.

Human beings are learning all the time, memorising information and then recalling it when it is required.

What is being memorised includes what we are taught, what happens to us and to others and any lessons learned as a result. And when it happened and the sequence in which it happened. Including also the meaning of words and what is implied. And in addition we have the vast mass of externally prepared and stored information which is accumulating at an accelerating pace.

Massive volumes of information are being received. The incoming information is evaluated and we memorise only information which seems to matter. Some is retained, the rest rejected. Retained short-term (working) memories are converted to long-term memories. So only a part of the incoming information is retained and stored, that is memorised, so becoming available for recalling later when required.

Aspects of memories are stored in different locations. Aspects such as colour, shape, event, phrase, place, time, date. Aspects like shape of face, sound of voice, colour of hair.

Memories are associated, crossindexed if you like, with their different aspects and can be recalled by recalling an aspect associated with the memory one wishes to recall. Component memories are continually being associated with other old or new component memories, enormously increasing the range and flexibility of what can be recalled.

A process which continually keeps available memory components which relate to those of current interest, and memory components which are more frequently used than others.

Human beings store memories by means of changed neural pathways, by means of persistent modifications to the structure of neurons and their synaptic connections, by means of biochemical changes.

So we are strengthening neural pathways or associations by frequently using or recalling them, weakening memory components which are not being used.

Hence using neural pathways holds memories at higher, more easily accessible levels of memory, makes them more readily available. Infrequently recalled memories would seem to be overlaid by more frequently used ones, seem to be reduced to lower levels of awareness, of accessibility.

Some defines an animal's learning by "learning is a response by an animal to a novel situation such that, when confronted subsequently with a comparable situation, the animal's behaviour is reliably modified in such a way as to make its response more appropriate"

Pointing out that human memory is very different from that of a non-human animal, some says that "procedural memory dominates the lives of non-human animals, ... but declarative memory profoundly shapes our every act and thought." Our memory includes a verbal memory which "means the possibility of learning and remembering without manifest behaviour."

But our memory consists of much more than just verbal memories.

Continually associating new information with older information, and older information with other older information, is much more than random cross-referencing.

It is because of the meaningful way in which we associate over such large volumes of stored information, that the process of associating amounts also to the seeking of meaningful associations.

So to me it seems that all the information we take in and retain results in a more comprehensive view and deeper understanding of the world in which we live, of our social organisation and physical environment. Thus, in the end, at some time and in some way, the information we have taken in affects and changes what we do, changes our behaviour.

Much of what we are storing includes semantic information, that is information which consists of words and is about words, information relating to what words mean and imply.

And images, that is scenes, including events and sequences of events, and their components.

Including what happened, when it happened and the sequence in which it happened.

People with an eidetic (image-retaining) memory remember images, often clearly and in detail . "Many, if not all, young children apparently do normally see and remember eidetically, but this capacity is lost to most as they grow up. What is in young children an apparently general capacity has become a remarkable rarity in adults."

The information one receives may be fact or fiction, right or wrong, intended to inform or to mislead, understood or misunderstood. Even so, what is stored is the perceived content of the received information.

Associating Memories and their Components

Suppose we remember a person saying something. The component parts of this memory, components such as shape of face, sound of voice, colour of hair, are stored in different locations. They are associated with each other, cross-indexed if you like, so that a memory can be recalled from remembering just one of its components. Component memories are continually being associated with other old or new component memories, enormously increasing the range and flexibility of what can be recalled.

And so we may be able to recall a person's name by remembering the colour of his hair, or the shape of his face.

Working Memory

The working memory enables the brain to evaluate the mass of incoming information and select what is to be retained and memorised and what is to be rejected.

External Memory

In addition we have the vast mass of externally prepared and stored information which is accumulating. It has accumulated ever since people told stories to their young who in turn retold them to later generations and ever since writing was invented and the printed word accumulated, followed by pictures, photographs, films and videos, television and computerised manipulation of text and images. All of which spread and proliferated together with corresponding search (recall, retrieval, associating and selecting) procedures.

Receiving, Storing and Recalling

Human beings are learning all the time, storing information and then recalling it when it is required.

Massive volumes of information are being received continually. But only some of this information is selected and stored, and so becomes available for recalling later when required. Selection seems to be necessary as otherwise it may take far too long to recall any specific memory or possibly because we may not have sufficient capacity for storing everything in our brain.

But on the other hand we may not be able to recall a specific memory when we want to remember it, some stored information may have been forgotten.

TYPES OF MEMORY

Memory and memories have been defined or classified in different ways. Established is that there are two main types of memory, namely 'procedural memory' with information about how to proceed when doing something, and 'declarative memory' which contains what we know.

Both procedural and declarative memories are long-term memories and we also have a working (short-term) memory which enables the brain to evaluate the mass of incoming information and select what is to be retained and memorised and what is to be rejected.

Distinctions have been drawn also between different kinds of memory and memories, such as semantic (verbal), episodic (events as part of a sequence), eidetic (detailed mental images) and visual (images as seen). In addition to what we see, we also remember other sensory information such as sounds, smells, tastes and what we touch.

Procedural Memory

This memory stores information about how to proceed when doing something, stores information such as how to drive a car, play football or play an instrument.

This type of memory is long-lasting. The memories are actions, habits or skills which are learned by repetition and which can be changed by many repetitions, by training.

Declarative Memory

This is long-term memory and it contains all you have experienced or learned, all the information gained by you from childhood onwards.

No one really knows where this enormous database is located but it seems that each type of component memory is located in a kind of memory location of its own.

Role Of Deep Sleep

We saw that Deep sleep appeared about 180 million to 130 million years ago in mammals as they evolved from reptiles. And that during Deep sleep the body's muscles are relaxed and heart beat and breathing are slow and regular. In Deep sleep 'one is not dreaming but thinking'.

As reptiles evolved into mammals and mammals into human beings, complicated and interrelated physiological and biological changes took place. And it seems as if body maintenance and development takes place during Deep sleep.

For example, "during sleep, the endocrine organs come to life and secrete into the bloodstream hormones that affect the entire body" .

Role Of REM Sleep

"If REM sleep is prevented, it takes precedence over other kinds of sleep until the lack of REM sleep has been made good, at least to some extent. So human beings need REM sleep."

Professor Lavie heads Haifa Technion's Sleep Laboratory. He reports "that in some way or other, we can maintain contact with reality during REM sleep and even decide when to wake up with the help of internal signals", and that "REM sleep allows a smooth and rapid transition from sleep to wakefulness, and so can be viewed as a gate to wakefulness during sleep."

"Further findings at the Technion Sleep Laboratory demonstrated an additional advantage in awakening from REM sleep. When we examined how people functioned after awakening from REM sleep, we found that they performed very well at tasks which included orientation in space. These tasks, which are controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, were performed with a lesser success rate after awakening from the Deep sleep of stages 3 and 4. In other words, a person awakening from REM sleep is immediately orientated in his surroundings, which is of cardinal importance to a smooth transition from sleep to wakefulness."

Which suggests to me that the left hemisphere is involved in Deep sleep 'dreaming' and the right hemisphere in REM sleep dreaming.

REM sleep appeared when, as we saw already, mammals evolved into giving birth directly from the womb, their young being born alive after having been developed for a considerable period within the womb. The young have to grow and learn much for a long time before they can survive independently, for many years in the case of human beings. Which applies particularly to the brain which now has much greater learning capacity.

During the first few days after birth the actual amount of REM sleep is very great and Lavie concluded that "it plays a vital role in the maturing stage of the nervous system" and that "it is possible that REM sleep is particularly important for procedural types of learning in which humans acquire motor and perceptual skills. Since during the first few months of life infants are busy acquiring new motor and perceptual skills, these findings may also explain the abundance of REM sleep at that particular time in our life".

Lavie also reports that REM sleep in cats "seems to be training their neural networks in mainly instinctive behaviour" and that "several studies have indicated a possibility that the consolidation of memory traces for at least certain types of learning occurs during REM sleep".

So the role of REM sleep appears to be that of generating dreams, of filing away memories for later use, and to enable us to wake up quickly and fully orientated.

Deep sleep and REM sleep are the core sleep activities, each taking up about 20 to 25 percent of the night's sleep, the remainder being taken up by shallow transition sleep periods.

On the whole we Deep sleep during the first half of the night, and REM sleep during the second. Deep sleep and REM sleep are divided up into shorter sleep periods which alternate.

So now we can list the characteristics of Deep sleep and of REM sleep, as follows:

Deep Sleep

Deep sleep appeared at about the time warm blooded mammals evolved from their cold-blooded reptilian ancestors by developing the ability to maintain a constant body temperature by biological processes.

As we progress from being awake through sleeping to being awake again, the frequency of the brain waves drops, reaching its lowest point while in Deep sleep and then rises again to the wide-awake level.

During Deep Sleep the body's muscles are relaxed and heart beat and breathing are slow and regular.

Deep sleep 'dream-like experiences are more like ordinary everyday thoughts and are usually rather banal and repetitive in content'. During Deep sleep 'one is not dreaming but thinking.'

REM Sleep (Rapid-Eye-Movement sleep)

REM sleep also appeared at about the time warm blooded mammals evolved from their cold-blooded reptilian ancestors by developing the ability to maintain a constant level of body temperature by biological processes.

At this constant level there is a small but closely controlled body temperature rhythm (we tend to go to sleep after our body temperature has began to fall and tend to wake up after it has started to rise) and the body-temperature clock also controls the appearance of REM sleep.

On the whole we REM sleep during the second half of the night, after Deep sleep and before waking up through relaxing to being fully awake.

In REM sleep the body's muscles are paralysed while heart-beat and breathing fluctuate as they would during emotional upsets in waking life. Brain waves look like the waking pattern. The eyes move rapidly and continuously.

Persistent rapid eye movement shows that dreaming is taking place and the brain paralyses the sleeper so that the dreams cannot be acted out.

Dreams tend to consist of "sensory illusions or hallucinated dramas" (imagined feelings or awarenesses), are not usually remembered unless the dreamer wakes up from the dream itself. "The length of time taken to dream of certain events is about the same as the time it would take to experience those events in waking reality."

Electroencephalograph (EEG)

The EEG measures electrical activity of the brain using pairs of electrodes placed at different (internationally specified) points on the scalp. It is used by doctors for diagnosis and research.

It seemed that the EEG would provide the key to understanding how the brain functions, but it proved very difficult to interpret these brain waves, or to deduce from where in the brain they originated.

Magnetoencephalograph (MEG)

The MEG, however, can measure

the oscillating millisecond fluxes of the brain in real time. Furthermore, unlike the EEG, granted enough mathematical sophistication and computing power, you get a good idea of the location of the electromagnetic source in the brain.

And it can be used to

record magnetic and electrical fields within the brain simultaneously, tracking impulses moving (a distance of) a few millimetres at up to 200 miles per hour.

In real time, that is 'in perhaps 10 milliseconds'. And 'usually accurate to within one or two millimetres in pre-surgical mapping'.

And in this way enabling responses to be tracked within the brain.

The brain functions by sending electrical signals from one place to another. Very small charges pass between nerve cells, accompanied by changes in electrical potential, in voltage.

This activity can be measured and displayed as a wave form called brain wave or brain rhythm. The height of the wave is a measure of the potential difference, its frequency is a measure of the rate at which electrical charges pass through a nerve cell or nerve fibre.

A person's brain is active all the time, waking and sleeping, producing and shifting between distinct wave forms which are commonly grouped as follows:

Table 1

Brain Waves

When delta waves predominate then one is said to be in a delta state.

People can think of relaxing and so strengthen alpha waves, or can do mental arithmetic and so weaken them. This enables people 'to perform an on-off decision, switching a light on or off or moving a cursor on a screen'.

And the mammalian brain became the human brain by adding the massive grey matter (neocortex) which envelopes most of the earlier brain and amounts to about 85 per cent of the human brain mass.

This massive addition consists mostly of two hemispheres which are covered by an outer layer and interconnected by a string of nerve fibres.

The brain is actually divided into its 'hemispheres' by a prominent groove. At the base of this groove lies the thick bundle of nerve fibres which enable these two halves of the brain to communicate with each other.

But the left hemisphere usually controls movement and sensation in the right side of the body, while the right hemisphere similarly controls the left side of the body.

We saw that with the mammalian brain emerged feelings such as attachment, fear and anger and associated behavioural response patterns.

And human emotional responses depend on neuronal pathways which link the right hemisphere to the mammalian brain which in turn is linked to the even older reptilian brain.

Fascinating is the way in which work is divided between the two halves of the brain, their different functions and the way in which they supplement and co-operate with each other.

Most people (about 80 per cent) are right-handed and in the vast majority of right-handed people, the ability to organise speech and the ability to speak are predominantly localised in the left side of the brain. But the right side can understand written and spoken language to some extent at least.

"Appreciating spatial perceptions depends more on the right hemisphere, although there is a left hemisphere contribution. This is especially true when handling objects" and concerning abstract geometric shapes and music.

Roger Sperry, Michael Gazzaniga and their colleagues found that, when presented with a stimulus, both hemispheres were active and could recognise the nature of visual stimuli as well as spoken words.

But while the left hemisphere can express itself by verbally describing a stimulus, the right hemisphere can express itself non-verbally by selecting the matching stimulus.

The left hemisphere deals with word choice, rules of grammar, and the meaning of words. The right hemisphere apparently determines the emotional content of speech.

So a general overview of the functional division of activities between the two hemispheres would be:

Left Hemisphere

Communicates by using words, has highly developed verbal abilities, is logical and systematic, concerned with matters as they are.

Right Hemisphere

Communicates using images (pictures), has highly developed spatial abilities, is intuitive and imaginative, concerned with emotions and feelings.

But the two hemispheres are interconnected and communicate, the human mind brings together these abilities and skills into a comprehensive whole whose operation depends on the way in which its parts contribute and co-operate with each other.

The right hemisphere links to the primitive older part of the brain, and I consider that it communicates using images with its primitive 'unconscious' functions. Thinking in pictures is fast. Think of how long it takes to describe a picture, a scene, in words and compare this with the speed of taking it in by looking at it. But images may be described, or transformed into a narrative, by the left hemisphere.

Language is both spoken as well as written, verbal and visual. And speech and language and associated pictures, images and memories appear to be located all over the brain. Cognition of meaning (knowing and understanding sentences, for example) is high level processing which includes both semantic and visual processing. And behaviour involves the integration of activities in many different parts of the brain.

So now the human brain includes the processing and memorising of images and of their components. And the development of language and corresponding mental processing connected with memory and memorising. As well as the development of a wide range of emotions, of feelings, of care and affection, and the capability for objective and logical thinking and evaluation. And the later development of written languages and artificial images.

Reptilian Brain

Innermost in our brain is what is called the reptilian brain, its oldest and most primitive part. The reptilian brain appears to be largely unchanged by evolution and we share it with all other animals which have a backbone.

This reptilian brain controls body functions required for sustaining life such as breathing and body temperature. Reptiles are cold-blooded animals which are warmed by the daylight sun and conserve energy by restricting activities when it is dark. The biological clock (controller) for their activity-rest cycle is located in the eye itself .

At this level of evolution, behaviour relating to survival of the species, such as sexual behaviour, is instinctive and responses are automatic. Territory is acquired by force and defended. Might is right.

Mammalian Brain

Next to evolve from the reptilian brain was the mammalian brain. An enormous change took place as mammals evolved from reptiles, the mammalian brain containing organs :

For the automatic control of body functions such as digestion, the fluid balance, body temperature and blood pressure (autonomic nervous system, hypothalamus).

For filing new experiences as they happen and so creating a store of experience-based memories (hippocampus).

For experience-based recognition of danger and for responding to this according to past experience. And for some conscious feelings about events (amygdala).

To this extent the mammal is more consciously aware of itself in relation to the environment. Millions of neural pathways connect the hippocampal and amygdala structures to the reptilian brain and behaviour is less rigidly controlled by instincts. It seems that feelings such as attachment, anger and fear have emerged with associated behavioural response patterns of care, fight or flight.