Mind Manipulation. Dr. Haha Lung

physical entity of the U.S.A. is, all it takes is seeing a flag with stars and stripes, a scowling poster of Uncle Sam, or hearing a patriotic song on the radio for our brains to visualize the U.S.A. in all its glory.

      Mind-masters, from Army recruiters to political spin-doctors, know the value of symbols that cause our minds to involuntarily form thoughts and images, symbols that trigger responses within us whether we want our minds to or not!

      The Power of Visualization

      Recent research conducted at Stanford University has verified what master mind manipulators have known for centuries: that mentally picturing doing an action in our minds causes our nervous system to react as if we were actually doing the action being imagined.

      World-class athletes know the positive potential of such deliberate voluntary mental visualization training. In fact, an estimated 90 percent of sports figures practice some form of visualization. Shadow boxing employs visualization, as do ritual forms (kata) of martial arts.

      On the more sinister side, unscrupulous mind-slayers know that involuntary visualization (e.g. reliving a catastrophic failure or traumatic assault over and over in the mind) serves only to perpetuate feelings of powerlessness and self-loathing.

      Mind-slayers also know that simple words or even gestures can be used to purposely trigger involuntary images in another’s mind. If you doubt this, flip a stranger “the bird” and see how quickly your single raised middle finger affects that stranger’s mood. Why? Not because the digit itself is threatening, but because of the images the person forms in his mind when seeing that single finger.

      Visualization works because, contrary to popular conception, our eyes are not cameras perfectly recording all the things that cross in front of our eyes. For example, when we look at an object, say a tree, we are not actually seeing the tree perfectly reflected off some mirror in our brain. What we are seeing in our mind’s eye is our brain’s reassembled image of that tree.

      Like Star Trek’s matter-transporter, our eyes “disassemble” the tree into manageable data-bytes (with information relating to the object’s shape, size, color, etc.) and then “beam” (relay) that information in the form of electrical impulses into our brain, where an image of the tree is then reassembled.

      Between breaking down the image into storable data bytes and reassembling those data bytes inside our heads, dozens of different filters affect how accurately we reassemble those data bytes.

      These filters include:

      • Physical defects in the structure of sense organs (such as colorblindness, poor hearing, or lack of taste buds);

      • Defects in the brain itself (chemical imbalances, either natural or self-induced);

      • Strong emotion and psychological concerns (e.g. fear, lust, or jealousy);

      • Socially-imposed constraints and taboos (e.g. religious or racial prejudices).

      These filters affect how accurately an object (or an idea, for that matter) is reassembled inside our heads.

      Killer Symbols

      What teenager hasn’t experienced an embarrassing wet dream? How is it that nightmares make our hearts beat faster? Why does merely thinking about asking the prom queen out on a date, asking the boss for a raise, or having to prepare for an important speech make us literally break out in a cold sweat?

      It is because images from our internal world, our mind, can affect us externally by making us physically ill or ill at ease.

      It is no secret that mental symbols can cause physical symptoms. For example, racist symbols may excite us, frighten us, or piss us off, causing us to tremble with rage. Likewise, patriotic symbols and team emblems stir our blood, causing our chests to swell with pride. In other words, a mental image or symbol can easily have physical consequence as significant as an actual physical experience.

      Some experts maintain that mental images and symbols can affect our health because they communicate at a cellular level, directly influencing physical tissues and organs. This is one explanation for the documented power of voodoo-type curses to kill.

      Medicine has documented the “placebo effect,” in which patients given sugar pills they believe to be powerful narcotics relieve their own pain through the power of suggestion. Less well known is the “nocebo effect,” in which patients, believing themselves to have terminal illnesses (or to be under curses) literally make themselves sick and die. In these instances, the patient’s belief sets off a chain of mental images that culminate in the person physically making himself sick, perhaps even dying from fright.

      Types of Symbols

      “. . . the mind of man contains only so many visions.”

      —Judith Hooper and Dick Teresi,

       The Three-Pound Universe

      How we respond to visualized symbols depends on the background and context in which the symbols appear and on the conditions under which we originally encountered their meaning.

      There are three types of symbols: universal symbols, cultural-religious symbols, and symbols that have purely personal meaning. Adept mind-slayers learn to recognize and wield these different kinds of symbols in order to mentally and physically affect others’ thoughts and actions.

      Universal Symbols

      Some symbols are universal and are found in all times, in all parts of the world. Psychology pioneer Carl Jung (1875-1961) called these universal symbols “archetypes.”

      For instance, in the 1920s, University of Chicago scientist Heinrich Kluver discovered four shapes that appeared in all mescaline hallucinations: the spiral, the tunnel (or funnel), the cobweb, and latticework (criss-crossing lines or honeycomb patterns). These “geometric constants” were subsequently verified in studies at UCLA in the 1970s.¹

      Such studies indicate that our brains are already hard-wired with certain universal symbols, the four discovered in these two studies, and perhaps others yet to be isolated.

      Cultural-Religious Symbols

      The meanings of other symbols are determined and defined by whatever particular culture or religion happens to be dominant at the time. Such symbols include religious figures and totems, tribal standards, and patriotic emblems.

      Often in a culture, a particular religious or political figure will take on importance as a symbol to others, either positive or negative (e.g. Hitler, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King).

      Personal Symbols

      The third type of symbol is based on our individual experiences, pleasurable or traumatic.

      Despite rationalizing, all of us respond to universal symbols and to cultural and political symbols. That’s why Madison Avenue and other mind manipulation adepts are so good at making us buy things we don’t need. In many instances however, personal interpretation of symbols seems able to override cultural, political, and even universal meanings of common symbols.

      Take for example the near-universal depiction of the Father/Creator/ God as a stern-faced old man with long white hair and a long white beard.

      Compare Michelangelo’s paintings of God with those of the Greco-Roman statues of Zeus and Jupiter, in turn, with those of Chinese “Immortals.”

      Although our logical adult brains might argue for God as a genderless, disembodied spirit, if we were raised under the scrutiny of a patriarchal culture or religion, this image of a wise and stern all-powerful father figure remains the symbol our brains “recognize” as God. This image in turn is compiled from, and associated with, images in our minds of omniscient wisdom and omnipotent authority.

      While this Father/God symbol is near-universal, and is culturally and