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area of the cortex with a surgical instrument. At once the patient exclaimed that she was "reliving" an
incident from her childhood, which she had consciously forgotten. Further experiments along this line
brought the same results.
When certain areas of the cortex were touched, patients did not merely "remember" past experiences,
they "relived" them, experiencing as very real all the sights, sounds and sensations of the original
experience. It was just as if past experiences had been recorded on a tape recorder and played back.
Just how a mechanism as small as the human brain can store such a vast amount of information is still
a mystery.
British neurophysicist W. Grey Walter has said that at least ten billion electronic cells would be needed
to build a facsimile of man's brain. These cells would occupy about a million and a half cubic feet, and
several additional millions of cubic feet would be needed for the "nerves" or wiring. Power required to
operate it would be one billion watts.
A Look at the Automatic Mechanism in Action
We marvel at the awesomeness of interceptor missiles which can compute in a flash the point of
interception of another missile and "be there" at the correct instant to make contact.
Yet, are we not witnessing something just as wonderful each time we see a centre fielder catch a fly
ball? In order to compute where the ball will fall, or where the "point of interception" will be, he must
take into account the speed of the ball, its curvature of fall, its direction, windage, initial velocity and
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the rate of progressive decrease in velocity. He must make these computations so fast that he will be
able to "take off" at the crack of the bat.
Next, he must compute just how fast he must run, and in what direction in order to arrive at the point
of interception at the same time the ball does. The centre fielder doesn't even think about this. His builtin
goal-striving mechanism computes it for him from data which he feeds it through his eyes and ears.
The computer in his brain takes this information, compares it with stored data (memories of other
successes and failures in catching fly balls). All necessary computations are made in a flash and orders
are issued to his leg muscles and he "just runs".
Science Can Build the Computer but Not the Operator
Dr. Weiner has said that at no time in the foreseeable future will scientists be able to construct an
electronic brain anywhere near comparable to the human brain. "I think that our gadget-conscious
public has shown an unawareness of the special advantages and special disadvantages of electronic
machinery, as compared with the human brain," he says. "The number of switching devices in the
human brain vastly exceeds the number in any computing machine yet developed, or even thought of
for design in the near future."
But even should such a machine be built, it would lack an "operator". A computer does not have a forebrain,
not an "I". It cannot pose problems to itself. It has no imagination and cannot set goals for itself.
It cannot determine which goals are worthwhile and which are not. It has no emotions. It cannot "feel".
It works only on new data fed to it by an operator, by feedback data it secures from its own "sense
organs" and from information previously stored.
Is There an Infinite Storehouse of Ideas, Knowledge, and Power?
Many great thinkers of all ages have believed that man's "stored information" is not limited to his own
memories of past experiences, and learned facts. "There is one mind common to all individual men,"
said Emerson, who compared our individual minds to the inlets in an ocean of universal mind.
Edison believed that he got some of his ideas from a source outside himself. Once, when
complimented for a creative idea, he disclaimed credit, saying that "ideas are in the air", and if he had
not discovered it, someone else would have.
Dr. J.B. Rhine, head of Duke University's Parapsychology Laboratory, has proved experimentally that
man has access to knowledge, facts, and ideas, other than his own individual memory or stored
information from learning or experience. Telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition have been established
by scientific laboratory experiments. His findings, that man possesses some "extra sensory factor",
which he calls "Psi", are no longer doubted by scientists who have seriously reviewed his work. As
Professor R.H. Thouless of Cambridge University says, "The reality of the phenomena must be
regarded as proved as certainly as anything in scientific research can be proved".
"We have found," says Dr. Rhine, "that there is a capacity for acquiring knowledge that transcends the
sensory functions. This extra sensory capacity can give us knowledge certainly of objective and very
likely of subjective states, knowledge of matter and most probably of minds."
Shubert is said to have told a friend that his own creative process consisted in "remembering a melody"
that neither he nor anyone else had ever thought of before.
Many creative artists, as well as psychologists who have made a study of the creative process, have
been impressed by the similarity of creative inspiration, sudden revelation, intuition, etc., and ordinary
human memory.
Searching for a new idea, or an answer to a problem, is in fact, very similar to searching memory for a
name you have forgotten. You know that the name is "there", or else you would not search. The
scanner in your brain scans back over stored memories until the desired name is "recognised" or
"discovered".
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The Answer Exists Now
In much the same way, when we set out to find a new idea, or the answer to a problem, we must
assume that the answer exists already somewhere, and set out to find it. Dr. Norbert Wiener has
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