| OUTLINE OF THE MIND DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM |
The Dimensions of Mind Development
We present a progressive series of home-study courses using proven methods - the result of 30 years research and testing - to accelerate the development of your mental powers and creative intelligence...
A cliché that's glibly made about 'brain power' is that we only use about 4 to 10 percent of our brain, whereas in fact all the brain cells are normally in use, at varying degrees of arousal. But in our culture with a typical upbringing and psychological development, we only normally use a small proportion of our potential mental abilities - those such as memory, speed-reading, intuition, creativity, rationality, awareness, cognitive and emotional intelligence, and so on.
These are skills that can be learned, rather than neurons magically coming to life. And in terms of the whole person, the mind is more than the brain and the spirit or total consciousness is more than the mind. There are indeed nervous system changes that accompany development of mental skills, such as increased development of the (normally under-used) corpus callosum (left-right hemispheric communication), inter-neural interconnections that result from a large and interactive knowledge net in long-term memory, changes in balance of brain-wavelength arousal, changes in ability to arouse particular brain centers consciously, changes in stress level (sympathetic vs parasympathetic arousal), and in neurotransmitter chemistry. Nutrition affects these factors too. There is a great deal of room for positive development!
These are the dimensions of mind expansion that Mind Development embraces:
- The unfinished business of childhood
Trauma and deprivation in childhood will result in high stress levels in adulthood. When this stress is released, I.Q. can increase by as much as 15 points. Exercises on these courses introduce you to the emotional power of words and how to clear muddy thinking. Methods of studying are introduced which help you to remember and apply what you have read about. You learn to be able to access all your lifetime memories with enjoyment of full perceptions and feelings. Powerful techniques to reduce tension and raise psychic energy are practiced. - The integration of the two hemispheres
Coherent synchrony of the right and left brain increases insight, self-perception and numerical literacy. The foundation of the work here is learning the skills of communication. The essence of relationships is communication; and yet, even between people who care deeply for each other, communication sometimes becomes blocked. We cannot put our feelings into words. Our partner speaks but we do not hear. We stare helplessly across an abyss of silence, or in frustration we hurl attacks that drive us further apart. Work on this level helps us to break through these sorts of impasse and the training provides the basic counseling skills that enable you to effectively help another person with difficulties in their life. You will learn to perceive clearly within your inner mind-space and to be able to create a continuous flow of ideas around any subject of contemplation. - The expansion of inner space
The remedy of inner space improves all forms of memory. Memory training then further enhances the specialized abilities of the two hemispheres and their inter-active communication. Speed reading with enhanced comprehension is another invaluable skill learned on our courses, which further enhances the whole-brain control and enhanced functioning that we are aiming for. Creative analysis of problems is a further important skill you will learn. - The integration of mind and body
When the body and mind are integrated as a body-mind, coordination is improved and emotions are easily expressed. When insights are put into practice and translated to everyday behavior, new and improved patterns replace the less-effective habits of a lifetime. Mind-body exercises and practice of learned skills help you to connect-up in this way, and you will deal with all the mental factors (such as inhibitions and fixed ideas) that limit your ability to achieve your ambitions in life. - Mental fluency and intuition
Increased mental fluency is the key to intuitive thinking. This aspect of our courses involves revolutionary new techniques that speed-up your mental processes, permanently opening up parallel pathways of information flow within your brain, so that intuitive thought (without the restraint of inner-speech) becomes possible and access to the cognitive unconscious (which similarly "thinks" in this conceptual way) becomes a transparent process. - Freeing oneself from the process
Here one is concerned with the application of all the techniques that have been mastered during the Mind Development courses, in the pursuit of knowledge or the exercise of one's talents and skills. One is putting the new capacity to good use. One learns to encompass the objective world in one's own perception by a detailed analysis of its qualities. When this has been accomplished the internal thought form can then be modified creatively. The final step is to project the mental image upon the real world and make it take visible form. - Gnosis - discovery of the Higher Self
At this point one s advanced on the spiritual path is entered. The methods taught in the Transforming the Mind online book are tools with which progress on the spiritual path may be supported.
Among others, Mind Development has drawn on the depth psychologists Freud, Adler, Jung, Rank and Assagioli - and more recently the clinical psychologists such as Weiner and Branden - for much of its subject matter. What each of the psychologists have described are robust and demonstrable phenomena and put together cover a large part of the jigsaw puzzle which is the mind - a structure that is as complex as the physiology of the brain. This is an ongoing process, but from these understandings we have been able to derive practical developmental techniques which are workable, because they are in accord with the function and structure of the mind and brain.
To attain the higher mind of transpersonal awareness and deep insight we must be released from the thrall of the lower cognitive mind. This cannot occur with any stability (other than "peak experiences") until work on the lower mind is complete. While large areas of our brain lay unused because of their repressed content, there is a potential Achilles heel to any postulated state of satori.
Mind Development is not a form of healing or psychotherapy and it is not designed to provide an escape from life by providing pleasurable inner states. The meditative processes which form a small part of the courses are not utilized for these purposes. The concept behind our program is to awaken people to their innate powers of mind. The ends to which these can be applied lie within the hands of the student.
What is required of Students?
An open mind and a genuine desire to learn and expand. The major goal of Mind Development is to facilitate the development of self determined people taking full responsibility in their lives. (Indeed, we need to explore the unmapped territory of our minds and develop it to the full, if we are each to have the insight to be able to effectively cut through the blinkered thinking in our environments, and make an impact on what is happening to our world's social, economic and ecological systems).
Done at your own pace, with email support whenever you need it, an enthusiasm to learn will assure your progress throughout the courses. You study at home on the exercises, then incorporate the benefits into your everyday life.
About Mind Development Courses...
The aim of Mind Development is to awaken the innate powers of mind...
- to improve speed and accuracy of logical thought so the solutions to life's continual parade of problems are readily apparent
- to raise introspective awareness so that you are in touch with your full knowledge base and can access it intuitively and from simultaneous multiple perspectives
- and to remain mindful at all times so you are are not taken over by habits and conditioned programs nor by "fight or flight" emotional reactions.
1. Super Vision (develop sensory intelligence)
Home-study course to improve the mind's capacity for perception and integration between left and right brain, boosting memory, creativity, natural eyesight and drawing ability.
2. Effective Communication (communication skills course)
Learn 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.
3. Concentration: Developing Willpower (concentration course)
If you are concentrating you are awake and aware - your mental life is both intensified and broadened. Are there ways to improve your concentration directly? Yes, and this course teaches the best of them.
4. How to Study (foundation skills)
Learn how to study a subject quickly and well - with maximum comprehension, recall and ability to apply what you have learned effectively.
5. Power Reading (effective reading course)
Learn how to read both quickly and in depth over a wide range of subjects, and then to be able to appreciate, analyze and apply what you have read with clear and incisive intelligence.
6. Creative Memory (memory skills)
Memory is the key to cognitive enhancement. To further develop and memorize easily, we need to restore and integrate our creative right-brain processes of super memory.
7. Zen & the Art of Sprinting (body-mind power)
This course is on the periphery of Mind Development but nonetheless illustrates how closely mind and body function in co-ordination.
8. Zen & the Art of Calculation (no-mind power)
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.
Buy the Mind Development Courses 1-8 Package for just US$ 29.00!
"I would like to thank Gregory and Peter for your research and hard work. The groundbreaking information contained in the Mind Development courses is more valuable than anything I have learned in a classroom. The MD courses have helped me perform better in the classroom (I am a college student) and also help me in day to day activities, such as conversations and constructive arguments. I appreciate everything MD has done for me. I truly believe that these lessons need to be taught to everybody and hope that they will eventually make their way into traditional classrooms." --Nicholas Calarco
"Before doing any Mind Development courses I had a measured IQ of 101 and a reading speed of 180 words per minute, and a digit span of 6. In other words, I was average and as a result, not accomplishing anything of note in my life. The common wisdom is that IQ is a static inherited trait and one simply has to make the best of whatever one is blessed with. My experience differs dramatically...
At the end of several Basic Courses my IQ had increased to 109, with a reading speed of 315 words per minute and my digit span had increased to seven. It might not sound a lot but in practice, this opened up whole new avenues for me. I went on to study Reiki, Rolfing and some other healing methods and passed the exams with flying colors. Before I could never have spoken well in public - I did not have the confidence, because I knew I didn't have the necessary mental skills. After my Mind Development training, however, all this had changed for the better and I was able to give public talks on Reiki and Rolfing.
After further Mind Development training on the Intermediate Courses [not yet available online], my IQ increased still further to 124, my reading speed to 550 words per minute and my digit span to eight. I enrolled in the Open University and took a degree in Sociology. My life was now totally transformed and I have never looked back!" --Roland Alston
| MIND DEVELOPMENT COURSES 1-8 |
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.
Click here to learn more about the Super Student Course...
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.
Click here to learn more about the Super Vision course
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.
Click here to learn more about the Effective Communication course
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.
Click here to learn more about Concentration: Educating the Will
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.
Click here to learn more about the Power Reading Course
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.
Click here to learn more about the Creative Memory Course
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.
Click here to learn more about Zen & the Art of Sprinting
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.
Click here to learn more about Zen & the Art of Calculation
| ARTICLES |
Outline of the MD System
Architecture of Memory
Medium Term Memory
The Knowledge Net
Negative Intelligence
Ancestral Knowledge
Savant Consciousness
Educating the Paradoxical Minds of Man
The Road to Self-Actualization
The Software Approach to Cognitive Development
Adult Mental Development
Ego Autonomy Overcoming the Superego
Two Ways of Knowing
Negative Thinking
The Three Worlds
The Independent Mind
The Unique You
Freedom to Change
Growth of Understanding
Educating the Will
Lecture to the Theosophical Society
Are We Born Equal?
The Unconscious Mind
Cognitive Unconscious
The Triune Brain
The Power of Mind
The Importance of Drills
Freudian Psychoanalysis
Jungian Analytical Psychology
Adler's Individual Psychology
General Systems Theory
About Gregory Mitchell