The apparent contradiction may be very well attributed to a missing piece. I should first say that mgrego2 did a great job of explaining important components of both the Memory Optimizer and the PhotoReading course.
The idea that we can PhotoRead and then draw the full text into conscious recall by some mystical magical technique of activation has long kept people spell bound. That myth is neither what we teach nor advocate.
Let me clarify.
PhotoReading exposes the text to your neural circuitry at rates that exceed the conscious mind's abilities to think. The human eye and brain can process 10,000,000 bits of information per second, yet the conscious mind only receives 40 bits/sec. We are using the brain's ability to acquire information nonconsciously and process it for our conscious use. The goal is to process all of it quickly, then consciously take what we need for our reading purposes.
After PhotoReading you are, in essence, asking the mind, "Okay, where should I go to accomplish my purpose?" At that point you don't sit there and think up the book, you OPEN THE BOOK and receive the guidance from you inner mind to quickly locate and bring the information into conscious awareness.
That effect of the brain sending your conscious mind to the right place is persistent. As far as we can tell, for any given book you PhotoRead, it does not fade. But more importantly, the 4-11% of the text you activate consciously will be connected to the other 89-96% of the text you PhotoRead but don't activate.
The metaphor is actually consistent with the Birkenbihl approach. She says that of the 11 miles of nonconscious neural netting, only 15 inches is available to consciousness. The only way to make it conscious is to construct neural pathways to it. The building of auxiliary threads to tie new information into the existing knowledge web is not unlike the activation procedures to bring important information into conscious use.
