ANCESTRAL KNOWLEDGE

By Gregory Mitchell

Ancestral knowledge is a notable passive skill that grants additional intelligence by drawing on the implicit knowledge stored in our unconscious. Our personal ancestry story begins with the shared story of our human ancestry. Access to ancestral knowledge makes knowledge and intelligence depend on wisdom. Ancestral knowledge uses nature and the wilderness as its classroom, in order to learn the ancient skills of our past. The intelligence attribute is a measure of a character’s knowledge and mental acuity. Additionally, real intelligence eventually compels one beyond the ‘how and now’ and into the ‘why’, by linking the past to the future. Intelligence is order, and how you take a picture of order, then it allows you to stop thinking about it, motivation will become more elaborate with the rise of intelligence.

There is something of a paradox confounding intelligence and knowledge, we have also been delinquent and incorrect in rejecting the distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that. But in truth, both intelligence and the two types of knowledge aforementioned are part and parcel of one another. This new intelligence and knowledge will manifest under stresses, such as major disasters including war, and the solution to novel problems. These experiences will frequently form much of your character. This will give you confidence in yourself, then no voice but your own will speak to you from the depths, and no influence but your own will raise you in time of peace and time of war. You will hear all, but attend only to that which concerns you.

How can knowledge about our ancestors empower us in the present? A number of studies have shown that thinking or writing about their recent or distant ancestors has led students to actually perform better on a range of intelligence tests, including verbal and spatial tasks. Students who traced their personal family trees from parents to grandparents and distant ancestors raised their IQ by an average of 14 points. An empowering reminder about our ancestors can significantly increase intellectual performance.

Should you believe that your ability to learn in a particular domain is fixed, a destined fate of your genes or IQ? Or should you believe that you can improve? Interestingly, there’s research on this too. Carol Dweck has studied people across many dimensions on whether they have what she terms a “fixed mindset” or a “growth mindset”. The difference is striking—those that follow a growth mindset outperform those with a fixed mindset in almost every case.

As an example of confirming evidence within my own experience, I was recently told by a Baroness, who currently has to work for a living, because the family fortune was spent, that the difference between the Aristocracy and the Upper Middle Class was not so much a matter of a difference in IQ. It was often high, but at most was less than 10 points higher as a result of their upbringing and their cultural niche, and sometimes less than nothing; less than that of the Liberal Professions by a long way. However, many members of the Aristocracy also knew their family history for several hundred years back, whereas most people did not. This knowledge gave them a foundation, from which they gained more confidence than most people: They felt much more certainty in their identity and the goals they sought. Much more than money, this family history contributed to the longevity of their line, and their ability in many cases to climb back from relative poverty to the status of their parents or grandparents. The researchers above call this process, having a “promotion orientation”. They show our present day thinking needs to be inclusive of the legacy of our ancestors, such as what skills they had and what they knew, much of which now has become lost technology.

Why, then, should we be interested in our ancestors? What is the logic of family pride or a family name? The question of ancestry has been of human concern in virtually all cultures and over all times of which we have any knowledge. For example, knitting is an expression of creativity, intelligence, and wisdom for Wayu culture. It’s also a way of recovering their ancestral knowledge. When we have curiosity about our family history, we understand ourselves better if we know our ancestors, then we, within ourselves, reflect properties that have come to us by an unbroken line from past generations. Also the knowledge about the personal characteristics of ancestors who have never directly entered into our lives is relevant to our own formation. An indifference, however, to ancestry is sometimes taken as a rejection of one’s “real” identity, even of “self-hatred.”

During the 18th, 19th and early 20th century both our familial ancestors and our ancestors in general had knowledge, practical skills for survival and types of intelligence. “Normally, our ancestors managed to overcome a multitude of personal and society problems, such as severe illnesses, wars, loss of loved ones or severe economic declines,” the researchers said. “So, when we think about them, we are reminded that humans who are genetically similar to us can successfully overcome a multitude of problems and adversities. So we are reminded that humans who are genetically similar to us can successfully overcome a multitude of problems and adversities. For the most part because we have relied too much on others to supply our needs, and we have been too protected, especially from reality. Most have little knowledge of the real world, most of their knowledge is comprised of the opinions of others, many other aspects of life, including our capacity for personal interactions have changed for the worse. We have only this now as a foundation. These are examples of the ultimate irony of only having a personal history, starting with your birth: much wisdom has been lost.

Moreover, this lost knowledge, when regained, is not simply arising from our conscious knowledge about those ancestors who possessed it, but from a deeper source, our genetic inheritance, which also would operate to form us in part in the “Now”, and transforming ourselves in the future irrespective of our consciousness of the past. The consciousness of being a member of any genetically related group somehow tells us something fundamental about who we really are, about the solution to our quest for self-knowledge. It requires that one actively embraces that “ancestry,” and that one could and should learn about it, then fashion oneself according to its cultural principles, by taking the best, then rejecting the rest, thereby transforming ancestry into an authentic identity or self-hood.

Intelligence is our ability to recognize the significance in what we know, and to understand, reason and learn. Collective intelligence, gained from knowing our family for several generations back, strongly contributes to the formation of this intelligence and to a positive shift in knowledge and power. A shared history makes us “proud.” Preening ourselves before the glass of history seems less egotistical than inspecting our images in the glass of fashion, and more conducive to the development of intelligence and wisdom. These cultural teachings are passed on to us from our ancestors.

It has been argued that human evolution was accelerated because we are in possession of “genes for high intelligence” - vital duplicate genes, which are believed to have driven intelligences that were latent, until there is an external trigger for their manifestation. New types of intelligence may well have been manifested when there were extreme challenges, resulting from sudden changes in the environment, especially when these new forms of intelligence were demanded to solve the twin problems of new stresses and the problems of survival. Vital duplicate genes, which are believed to have driven intelligence, have become latent and part of our genome for a long time. Our development of intelligence genes “probably occurred in a world where every individual was exposed to nature’s raw selective mechanisms on a daily basis.” The pressure of others’ intelligence drove our minds in a forward spiral.

We gained advantages for ourselves and our children. But the same pressures do not apply today. Intelligence and the capacity for abstract thought evolved in our prehistoric ancestors living in Africa between 50,000 and 500,000 years ago, but humans probably reached a peak of intelligence more than 2,000 years ago and perhaps reached a peak as long as 6,000 years ago. Intelligence possibly started to decrease for the intelligentsia of that time because of the invention of writing, that downgraded the importance of memory, much in the same way that calculators have destroyed the ability of people under fifty to do mental arithmetic, in the current day. I don’t think the Ancient Greeks or Romans were any more stupid than we are today, within the limits of their culture and availability of resources, indeed the Romans invented concrete more than a thousand years before we did. It has even been suggested that the Ancient Greeks could have gone to the Moon by 1500 at the latest had there not been a break in cultural continuity. Just look at what they did 2,500 years ago, then extrapolate from they had already done to what they could have done.

We are not more publicly intelligent than our ancestors - we are much less so. The “Flynn Effect” is a fiction in the European Culture. It’s not yet settled whether this corresponds to real gains in important intellectual functions, and it probably only applies only to developing cultures, if it applies at all. Intelligence levels have probably been on a plateau, or very slowly falling over several thousand years. In the 19th century many ordinary people would attend scientific lectures - the lecture halls were packed. There were no cinemas until the end of that century, there was neither pop music as we experience it today nor was there television, “The Idiots Lantern” as both Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells said. Computers were just a theory of Babbage and the symbolic logic needed to go with them was just a book written by Boole, which, at that time had but little practical application. There was little in the way of distraction.

Over the last 80 to 100 years, however, intelligence levels have been falling more and more rapidly. This seems recently to be happening even among highly educated people. There has been a break in cultural continuity since the “Generation Gap” was invented by the Americans at the end of the 1940s. This was done as part of the “Dumbing Down Process” prevalent in all European types of society, even in Albania, a Muslim country. This has been done largely by the Americans whose goal is the Americanization of as much of the world as possible, in order to make young people conform in their tastes for mass produced products, because the young, by and large, have the most disposable income. A new market, has been created; a market of ‘sheeple.’

Positive Intelligence doesn’t play a very significant a role in our present society, as lust, cunning, and consumerism have taken much of its place. There are more and more sheeple with every passing year, and more than some of whom have a significant degree of Negative Intelligence. This is an ability to make bigger and better mistakes more rapidly. In short, destructivity rather than creativity.

This sociological research echoes concerns Einstein had when he supposedly said, “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

Much can be done to reverse this process by studying primitive peoples, such as the Aborigines in Australia, and the Negroes in Africa, who still live, as they have done for thousands of years. These peoples still possess talents, skills and types of intelligence that for all practical purposes ceased to exist in European cultures. Meditating on these abilities, in conjunction with intense practice, will start to awaken these capacities again.

The first Homo Sapiens on this Earth were black. The Aborigines in Australia and the Negroes in Africa split about 50,000 years ago; they are all our cousins and distant ancestors, so we still carry latent genes, which if awakened would give us many of the special abilities that we no longer have. Some of these are described by Howard Gardner as Naturalist Intelligence (“Nature Smart”), which designates the human ability to discriminate among living things (plants, animals) as well as sensitivity to other features of the natural world; and Spiritual Intelligence, which may be defined as the ability to act with wisdom and compassion, while maintaining inner and outer peace, regardless of the circumstances. There are many different facets of intelligence that all make up your mind and being.

We may well need these special abilities in the future soon to come, as natural conditions are less favorable than they were for our ancestors - for example if the most easily exploitable coal, oil, and mineral resources have been depleted. After all, many of us want very much not to die (at least not yet) and to have the chance of becoming post-humans. Tune into your ancestral wisdom, an often silent history and find your way through the labyrinth of your own ancestral legacy... These ghosts of a distant past can extend beyond our remembered family and into the psychological histories of our ancestral memory, our far-reaching gene pool. Psychologists make their bread and butter from family of origins issues. Forgetting our ancestral legacy is way to repeat the mistakes of history, yet despite this, remembering can help us move freely forward. They are all an important part of our “Ancestral Heritage.”

MIND DEVELOPMENT COURSES 1-8

Super Student - Mind Development Course 1

Many people have bad experiences at school and perhaps later in life, when attempting to study a new subject. It is easy to quickly get bogged down with new terminology, and often, new concepts and procedures seem unclear. This situation can quickly get out of hand as the student gets left behind and the subject either becomes an ongoing struggle or it is abandoned. But none of that is necessary; it is possible to succeed with the study of any subject.

With this course you will learn how to study a subject with maximum comprehension, with excellent recall, and with the ability to apply what you have learned effectively.

You will also learn how to take notes at rapid pace from books or live lectures, and how best to represent that information with key words, mind maps and flow charts that aid memory and understanding.

These abilities will be useful for your home studies, at college or work, and for your study of further Mind Development courses. You will indeed be able to succeed at studying effectively those subjects you are interested in, even those that were difficult before.

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Super Vision - Mind Development Course 2
The first course in the Mind Development system is "Super Vision," a home-study course to improve the mind's capacity for visualization and integration between left and right brain, boosting memory, creativity, natural eyesight and drawing ability. This is a new way of seeing - and being.

The practical exercises offered in this course help to develop visual perception, which is one branch of non-verbal communication, and address the subject of breathing and relaxation. Adequate oxygenation of the brain and a relaxed state of being is necessary for further developing the mind.

The eyes and the ears are the main channels through which one gains information about the world. As with listening skills, training in visualization and looking makes you more aware. When you are more aware, the subconscious mind has less influence. This means you are more relaxed, less anxious, less easily upset, a better memorizer - and your vision is improved.

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Effective Communication - Mind Development Course 3
This course teaches powerful communication skills that enable you to be more effective at work and in those situations of everyday life where better communication can make all the difference.

The Effective Communication course offers a series of practical exercises which develop the skills of communication and help the student to apply the fruits of his or her learning here and now - both to his or her personal growth and to the practical issues of personal relationships and business.

Improvement in our ability to communicate externally is reflected by a similar gain in communication between parts of the brain. The practice exercises enable development of all areas of the brain, even those which have been long under-used. They affect, particularly, the integration of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Each hemisphere governs a different way of thinking and seeing the world. By doing the exercises thoroughly, the student can bring both halves of the brain into mutual communication, so that he or she is freer to think holistically and experience the world from an expanded point of view.

Communication is the vehicle for all further techniques, so communications skills are a vital aspect of Mind Development. The Effective Communication course includes practical exercises to enhance the person's capacity to listen attentively and comprehend. Following that, questioning skills are practiced, which have relevance to communication, memory and understanding. This will help the student to maintain control of communication in practical, social and business situations. You will also learn about practical problem solving and how to achieve your goals in life.

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Educating the Will - Mind Development Course 4
This course teaches the skills of concentration as a means of educating the will. Often, when we put our mind on something, we think of something else and this, in turn, reminds us of something else. The mind wanders from one thing to another by associations, until the original thing is forgotten. 'Concentration' means putting all one's attention on something, and keeping it there for as long as one wishes to. So if you concentrate on a book, you are aware of the book and you are not thinking, looking or listening to anything else. If you are concentrating you are awake and aware. In much of everyday life, most people are effectively day-dreaming - at worst they are sleep-walking automatons. Their minds flip mechanically from one thing to another, never resting on anything for very long or intentionally. This process may go on for the whole of their lives and they never learn or achieve anything of consequence.

Unless we can wake ourselves up from this mechanicalness and sleep, we cannot begin work on ourselves and we cannot get things done in life. We must learn the mood of concentration - of actually BEING in the Here-and-Now, noticing and observing, and focused on our actions.

Concentration is a means to develop the will, so that life may be lived purposely and creatively, rather than as a reaction to the flow of sensations. Because you will not flit from one thing to another, like a butterfly, you will be able to choose to focus your mind on things, e.g., study or work, and will increase your skills and knowledge in these areas. Most importantly, you will be able to focus more clearly on your vision of what you want to achieve.

In short, your mental life is both intensified and broadened. The ability to concentrate is, therefore, a valuable skill which will enhance all other skills. Almost all the drills and exercises of Mind Development help develop your ability to concentrate. But are there are ways to improve your concentration directly? Yes, and this course teaches the best of them.

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Power Reading - Mind Development Course 5
This home study course can double your reading speed and supercharge your brain's capacity to digest, remember and implement huge amounts of information... essential ingredients to success in your professional and personal life.

We all learn to read at school, after a fashion. But for most of us, this is not an optimal use of our brain power. In this course you will learn to better use the left brain's focused attention combined with the right brain's peripheral attention, in close harmony. Good communication between the brain hemispheres is a prerequisite for creative thinking and also a sense of well-being, where thoughts and feelings are integrated.

Reading may be defined as an individual's total inter-relationship with symbolic information. Reading is a communication process requiring a series of skills. As such reading is a thinking process rather than an exercise in eye movements. Effective reading requires a logical sequence of thought patterns, and these patterns require practice to set them into the mind. The methods currently used in schools do not touch on the issues of speed, comprehension and critical analysis and indeed all those skills which can be described as advanced reading techniques. In short, most of your reading problems have not been dealt with during your initial education. By using appropriate techniques, the limitations of early education can be overcome and reading ability improved by 500% or more.

The course teaches in-depth reading techniques that greatly improve literary intelligence, so that you can clearly perceive the ideas and values that the writer is expressing and relate them to those of other authors and so be better able to make objective conclusions.

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Creative Memory - Mind Development Course 6
In most civilized societies the development of language centers in the left hemisphere of the brain will produce dominance on that side, while spatial, visual and intuitive problem-solving skills, which are based on right-hemisphere relational processes, will be underdeveloped.

Though a highly developed memory and intuitive skills are not essential for life in modern society, they were important survival skills for primitive man who had no reference books to look up when he forgot something, no maps to guide him on long journeys, and was often in perilous situations where intuitive insight made the difference between life and death. To further evolve, we need to reclaim this heritage, which depends on the restoration and integration of our right-brain processes.

Without memory there is no knowledge, without knowledge there is no certainty and without certainty there is no will. We need a good memory to be able to orient ourselves in a rich network of all that we know and understand, to make sense of it and to move forward to attain goals that are based in reality and true to our selves.

You will learn advanced memory techniques in the Creative Memory Course that utilize the amazing powers of the right brain, which enable you to "file away" any new piece of information so that it is readily accessible for future immediate access.

As you continue to use the methods of cumulative perception taught in this course, this kind of random access memory begins to become second nature. Many memory experts call this the "soft breakthrough" because it happens almost imperceptibly at first, instead of hitting you like a mental bolt of lightning. Everything you find important is given its own unique mental file. Just like the executive whose desk has been buried in paper for years, who suddenly discovers his computer can do a much better job of storing and arranging information, a filed, organized mind suddenly begins to perform impressive recall tasks on demand.

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Zen & the Art of Sprinting - Mind Development Course 7
This course by Gregory Mitchell is on the periphery of Mind Development but nonetheless illustrates how closely mind and body function in co-ordination.

Using these techniques Gregory was able to run 100 meters in a time that nearly matched the then British champion, with relatively little physical fitness preparation (60% or less compared with a typical athlete). You may not personally want to increase your sprinting speed, but the principles described here have many applications both for physical and mental development.

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Zen & the Art of Calculation - Mind Development Course 8
The Goal of Zen is the state of 'No-Mind'. This is an intuitive way of dealing with the world. The aim of this course is to enable a student to turn on a particular form of 'No-Mind' consciousness that can be applied to a practical task - that of arithmetical calculation. Habitual responses are set up which are the inverse of linearity. Several parts of the calculation have to be handled simultaneously; the result will be obtained about five times as fast, so it appears to be instantaneous.

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