Dear All, I read all the comments and ideas about the photoreading system (reviews, comments, feedback) my concern is whether this technique is safe for the human brain, might there be any harmful side effects ? Due to the enormous amount of information that our brain absorbs for such a short time ? Sorry about that question guys but I could not find any information whether this system has proven to be safe for us ? I am very interested in that approach but to be honest I am a bit affraid to try it out, so any feedback from you would be really helpfull for me to make up my mind.

Has anyone EVER reached a limit? BTW since I asked THAT question, has anyone here learned a language in a week? I use a week, because one person supposedly learned icelandik in a week, and I once memorized over 1300 words of french in one DAY. It is unfortunate that I didn't try harder to maintain it. Still, through such things, I know such feats are possible. And kim peak apparently does it all naturally.(it is unfortunate that he can't really use it)

Steve

Seasoned,
Daniel Tammet? He's amazing, I read a book on him a few weeks ago. Really tremendous stuff.

Reaching a limit? I doubt it. It's like how you process loads of information while driving in a car near the countryside, or by a forest. Has anyone reached a limit from doing that? No, at least not that I know of. It's just processing of visual information, no matter if it's text or images.

Kim Peak is a savant. I think he can do it because of the way information goes into his brain. The lack of a corpus collasum? Maybe it's caused him to only take in information through his right brain. But he can recall, which is amazing.


Captain,
The brains purpose is to lead its system to survival. If it wasn't safe to process so much information at once, I doubt that many nerves would be in place to process the information.
It is safe, and I've been doing it for over a year. So far nothing bad has happened to me.
Pete Bissonette has been photoreading since 1985, and I'm sure he would stop if he found something wrong with it, and would either fix it with Scheele or would notify us to stop.

-JackTuff13

My first experiment to see if the brain fries was to sit down and PhotoRead 40 books in an hour. Then I PhotoRead over 100 books in a bookshop (from there selected 10 really interesting books) I'm still here

Now Paul Scheele is a PhotoReader for more than 21 years. He's gone on and developed quite a few course that probably wouldn't be around if it wasn't for his ability to PhotoRead.

AlexK

I've been photoreading for 1 year 15-20 books daily, had numerous spontaneous activations, and I haven't been ill since then, so, that's all about the dangers of Photoreading.
Anyway, Photoreading is definetly healthy, because you won't have to spend hours and hours on preparing for an exam, mugging
sometimes foolish thaories, and do badly on an exam. Instead, you will have plenty of time for other healthy activities like doing sports, you will have good marks, and last but not least, no stress, which is also again, healthy.

yes, there is one guy who've learned during just one week a language of an european country & then was plan to show up his skills during the main Tv news.

He has a photographic memory thanks to an accident.

I'v seen this on a very well-know french national channel (ARTE)



HOW ? Photoreading ? seems Incredible !

NOPE, I studied it about 10 words at a time, and tried to do the whole thing in such a way that I rehearsed the older stuff at a consistant pace, etc...

Frankly, the idea of reliably reading 2 pages at once with great comprehension sounds GREAT. I know a LOT of stuff I don't care about AT ALL, and constantly study trying to learn stuff I DO care about.

Hey,

Just something I found the other day that I wanted to share.

On the note of "enormous amount of information" :

Assuming that each neuron would be 1 byte, using memory units of a computer, the brain would be able to store 500-1000 terabytes of information. Most desktop computers only hold between 100 and 300 gigabytes. Each terabyte is about 1000 gigabytes. Each gigabyte is about 1000 megabytes, each megabyte about 1000 kilobytes and each kilobyte 1000 bytes (I think the correct measurement is 1024 for each of them but it's not much of a difference).

Just to show you how much information the brain is capable of holding. I doubt you'd be able to fill it to it's capacity if you were to photoread even 50 books a day for the rest of your life.

-JackTuff13

And I would say, the mind records by mathematics, not words so it would compress down those 1 million books to much less storage space...

It has been obvious to me for some time, and vera birkenbihl said as much, that the brain basically remembers connections to ideas. That is why if you learn that a word, that you already knew, is associated with another language, you might remember it quickly and practically forever while a new word takes longer. That in itself compresses things a lot. As for each neuron being a byte, who knows? We also remember things without realizing it, so there may be more to remember.

ALSO, KB is a computer term, and computers store things in round binary units. The closest unit to 1000 is 10bits, which is 1024. 9 is 512, and 11 is 2048. For mechanical storage, they feel they can get away with it, so they round down. So 120GB on a mechanical disk drive is REALLY only about 111GB.

Steve

Another interesting idea I picked up yesterday.

The neurons don't store memory, rather connect with other neurons to recreate the memory. The amount of different connections possible between the neurons in your brain is supposedly greater than the number of atoms in the universe.
Whether that's true or not, it obviously tells us that our brain has more potential than we think when it comes to memory.

Question is when you have a lot of information do you have the time to use it? To me it is not practical, and just to PhotoRead lots of books a day. Just because I can. I still find I want a purpose for reading. Not all information has the same value.

AlexK

I believe with full confidence that to be untrue. We probably have trillions or "million billions" of connections, but you probably want to read some Stephen Hawking before making a statement like that one. lol

Still, the brain is tremendously powerful, and is indeed capable of incredible things in terms of information processing. There are "side effects" of PhotoReading that I have written about in the past. For instance, many beginning PhotoReaders experience a sort of "high" after PhotoReading several books (or even one) for the first time. This is either a sensory illusion, or could be indication that some wicked neurological activity is taking place.

All information transmitted in our brains is done through electrochemical signals. Can you place much of a limit on the power of electricity? I cannot imagine one. Chemicals might have limits in speed, but the capability of neuronal networks to create reasoning is tremendous when our brains have so many connections to work with.

Vera Birkenbhil teaches this in the Memory Optimizer course. That memory is recreated each time we think about something. It's one reason why it is a good idea to work in short blocks of time for remembering things. What Vera calls piggybank time. You connect new ideads to knowledge that is already on your memory web 5 minutes at a time.

AlexK

Ok first of all youngprer, how would reading books by a theoretical physicist help me learn about the brain?
This was information taken from pyschologists/authors, credible people, not just made up by me.

Second, what are you even disagreeing with? I'm saying the brain has virtually unlimited storage, so are you.

Third, if you can put a limit on matter, you can put a limit on electricity, and if it's electrochemical, the limit on the chemical would effect this as well, not just the "unlimited" electricity, that's just logical reasoning in itself/

Fourth, the side effects can be psychological. It's something new, you're reaching a new state of consciousness and performing a new task on it as well.

Fifth, "wicked neurological activity" is happening all the time. Everything you process is processed in the neurological system, be it the brain or spinal cord, or whatever. All the feelings, non-conscious activity such as the heartbeat, digestion, even seeing and hearing things. That's already billions of pieces of information, reading a book is no different from looking around a room when photoreading. It's millions of pieces of information being processed at once.

And finally, just a question for Alex.
How do you know what information will never be of use to you? What if you will need information sometime soon, that's necessary, and you just don't know it yet?
That's what I find beneficial in reading everything I can. Whether I want it or not, I want to learn to better myself now, and in the future. Would you not agree?

-JackTuff13

I have no doubt that PRing is safe for the brain. The real question is whether a person is willing to invest the work required to activate, to train the non-conscious / conscious mind connection.

I recommend a few sips of water every few books.

I do not agree. I don't just read for the sake of reading. Anytime I need information I do not have I can seek it and with PhotoReading find it quickly. I choose my reading to serve my ongoing purpose in life. I look for what I need now and that now is already my future. I have no intention of becoming a doctor so I don't read books on operating procedures. Nor am I interested in becoming a mechanic I pay someone else do do those things. I PhotoRead and postview much that crosses my path but if it doesn't serve any immediate need I spend no more time with it. I trust myself and my mind to relocate the information if I do need it 3 weeks or 3 years down the track.

There is a lot of information out there. Much more than one person can understand in a life time. So what I select to read is what is of interest and relevant to me and the path I have chosen to take. There are too many things important to me that I am focused on right now that I want to devote my time to. And I trust my spirit that I will always have the knowledge I need or access to that knowledge to hande whatever is in front of me.

AlexK

Hey Alex,

I definitely agree with a lot of what you're saying, I understand that there is a lot of information and just too little time to get it all, or nearly all of it, and so finding just what you want or need now is a good thing.

But let's take that operating procedure example you gave. See, I have no intention of becoming a doctor either, but what if sometime in the future, you're in an emergency situation in which someone needs medical attention, and there is no professional around to help? For example, if a plane you're flying in crashes and you and another survive. You're fine, yet the other one needs help.
That would be a specific reason for getting all the information you CAN. Not necessarily all of the information in the world.
But that is just an example of information you may need in the future, not necessarily in the present.

Stephen Hawking said, in his book A Brief History of Time, the estimate for the amount of particles in the universe is around 100, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

Even for the brain...this is kind of a big number. Reading books about physics will actually tell you about the brain by telling you what we know to be possible, or what we believe to be impossible.

I am not claiming you made it up. It sounds interesting. If you have the time, could you track down the ones making the claim?

EDIT: On second thought, logic tells me that in order for that to be true, let us imagine there is only a single human being alive. Their neurons would have to be tiny, tiny neurons in order for the total number of connections to surpass total atoms in the universe. Cell size would have be remarkably small, and that's just an intuitive sort of estimate!



I was not aware I was communicating ineffectively. I agree that the brain has "virtually unlimited storage." I was only disagreeing that there are a similar number of connections in the brain to the number of atoms in the universe, especially if we're talking about the inflationary model (which currently seems pretty credible to many physicists), where atoms and other sorts of particles can be created or put together from energy.



In the sense that all matter is created from energy, and that electrical charge can theoretically be imagined to be at unlimited amplitudes - I do not imagine there is a limit on the power of electricity. Knowing whether or not there is likely involves the same sort of process to what might eventually happen to successfully implement nuclear fusion. We have simply yet to understand certain things about the universe.

For instance, we know that there is such a thing as electricity, or gravity, but we do not know exactly why these things exist. If we could answer that question, we could probably figure out the secret to real anti-gravity! (OMG, that would be so AWESOME).

I think that electricity still remains a very mysterious thing. We know that electricity in the body and brain is limited in terms of amounts of amplitudes, but I think the more important detail is the limit of chemical substances in conductivity, and that's kind of the point I was getting at. The power of the brain lies its neural net, not the physical structures.



This would definitely fall into the category of a sensory illusion, which I stated. Sensory illusions can be created by the natural cognitive mechanisms of perception or they can also indeed be purely psychological, and subjective creations all their own.



I suppose that in asserting that there is "wicked neurological activity" I might want to rephrase that a little more accurately. Of course, what I would rephrase it with, I'm not certain. Neurological activity can be defined as many different things, and I do not think it is one single process that is actually becoming active on its own without the involvement of the other processes during PhotoReading.

Does your brain necessarily process advanced concepts regarding your surroundings? Some would argue that it does, but most often it would appear that we process our surroundings for the purposes of being within those surroundings. We might remember where a chair or couch is so that we do not run into it. But going back to my buddy Stephen Hawking - do you think my brain is looking at the symbols (language) on those pages the same way? I highly doubt it.

True cognition is likely taking place behind the curtain, and with the added conscious benefit of purpose - your mind is able to arrange the information in a particular way more suitable to you (and not just its natural exploratory whims).

I hope this helps to clarify what I was attempting to convey.

Wow great discourse!!

Electricity is thinking. God's Thought.

Intelligence resides in spirit and encompasses the whole all universes at once. God is One, Spirit is One and we are One.

Of course, now I have slipped into metaphysics...

i just start and i having trabel to photo read the dictionary i set down tell my purpose imagen the x for 5 minutes but nothing happen how can i ractice i dont want to quit e

PRing is probably good for the brain, by encouraging connections and giving it more work to do.

For that there is a first aid course. That purpose had already been taken care of. It's hardly hypothetical if you think about and decide it's something you need. There are over 60,000 books published each year. The information age is out of hand. It's necessary to be selective. Which is why I choose reflective and base my reading on what I need right now. I don't need to know everything right now.

AlexK