Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ PhotoReading, Memory Optimizer amazon.com review

The following is one of 59 reviews for the Photo Reading Whole Mind System book at amazon.com. It is not a typical review, there are loads of very positive reviews there as well. I did find it interesting, however, and as someone not yet fully convinced, I would like your comments on this one. I haven't got a clue as to whether what he's talking about is true or what, so please help if you can. This guy might be clever, but note that he writes "subconscience" instead of "subconscious" so he could be a dumb no-brainer. So could I, of course.
Well, here it goes:

Cognitive Science, March 15, 2001
Reviewer: Jim Carnell from OK
You are reading this. The letters are about ~18" away from you. The photoreptors on the back of your eye (rods and cones) have a specific density (closeness together). Imagine a whole bunch of circles inside one another (like a target). The closer to the center the more dense. In other words you can't read out of the corner of your eyes because it is your peripheral vision. The density of the rods and cones is not dense enough to be able to read anything more than about ~3" inches away from the focal point of what you are reading (20/20 vision, font size=12, distance from source ~18"). It can't hit your subconscience because your senses can't even ascertain the detail needed to capture the details. Find legitimate scientific (empirical) studies and prove me wrong.

Johnson
I am not sure how to interprete the review.
What I can tell you is that I spent 3 days (about 1-1:30 hrs each day) reading the PhotoReading book; in the following 2 days I was practicing the techniques and on Saturday (that's last Saturday), I tried PhotoReading my first book (on the subject of flying/pilots/planes/air health/security which I borrowed and had no idea about). My friend asked me a few questions and guess what.....not only I got the main concepts correctly but I could answer a question concerning specific details. In total I spent about 1:15-1:30. That's during my first week. I keep practicing. I have nothing to loose.

Good luck
Y.

well, nice argument. i'm not an optometrist but i'll give it my best shot.

big talk doesnt always have a big meaning :

"In other words you can't read out of the corner of your eyes because it is your peripheral vision"
i'll translate what he said into plain english:
he said that if you hard focus on something your brain can't perceive in an accurate manner the meanning of the surroundings (words in our case). because an object which is beyond a certain distance of your eye's focal point loses its clarity and therefore, your brain won't be able to extract any useful meanning of it. so in plain illustration, if i look you straight in the eye i can't look at someone else's eye because the muscles of my eye are arranged in a manner that allow me only to look you in the eye in a clear way at this moment. so if i want to look at someone else's eye i will have to hard focus on that person's eye in order to see it clearly.

obviously this person didn't read the book.
using photofocus i am able to notice and read words which are in my peripheral vision without looking straight or hard focusing directly at them. every one who tried to use photofocus and was relaxed enough in a manner he/she could notice that the words are clear and readable (but the words are in the peripheral vision which is far from the 'noraml hardfocus' focal point which renders his argument useless).

the reviewer said that you can't understand a meanning of a word which you arent hard focusing at. true , i agree that in normal reading fashion it's truly impossible. but when i photoread i am not hardfocusing at it . so i can read, notice and comprehend words which are in my peripheral vision and so is every other human which uses photofocus.

or in eye language:
when using photofocus you don't hardfocus on a particular word. you look beyond the book so the structure and density of your eye changes to a more separated form allowing you to expand the periphery of your focal point and catch the pages of a book in a soft expensive gaze. this soft gaze makes the rods the prime visual receptor. the rods do the job and the cons get out of the way (you don't have to understand the last paragraph it's just an answer in his language).

basically, just think of the eye as a len (which most of it really is). every person that learned optics might understand photofocus better that way. this issue is more plain optics than human biology (optics is a tiny subject in physics), if you know optics i presume you understand that for your eye to percieve something the rays of light must reach your eyes focal point for a figure to be perceived in your brain (just as a rays must cross to create a figure when projected on a len ).
so near and far sighted people are people which their eye's focal point is too near or too far from it's original place so only a part of the rays reach it, causing a blurred figure to be precieved by the brain...just an interesting comment.

sorry if i was carried out a little
hope this solves your question.

Sincerely,
Raanan Hadar

There is an extensive amount of research in the area of peripheral perception and subconscious acquisition of information, including tests where information is flashed on a screen for durations shorter than what the conscious mind can perceive, or from distances further than what is resolvable by the conscious mind (such research extends from the 1890s with Boris Sidis up until the present day). The research findings have shown a general trend to "priming" - the information is somehow absorbed and does lead to modification of behavior based on that information. For example, in one experiment a list of words was flashed briefly on a screen - far faster than could be consciously perceived, and when a second list was displayed and the subjects asked to choose words on the screen, there was a definite correlation between the words chosen and the words that had been previously flashed on the screen - a "priming" of the subject had occured.

I agree with the argument that was cited - you cannot "read" in the PhotoFocus state. Yes, the words are blurred and concious comprehension is probably not going to occur. However, perhaps what is occuring is that there is enough information perceived by the eyes, coupled with the brain's working knowledge of the shape of letters, that even with the letters blurred the brain is able to make "best guess" matches on what each of the letters are and thereby "absorb the correct words". The brain is a master pattern making instrument and, given scant bits of information, will create patterns that are meaningful to it. Given the context (a book that is being read), training of the brain in reading(PhotoReading is designed for ages 13 and up - part of that might include the necessary training of the brain in understanding sentence structure and letter shape recognition), and pattern recognition skills of the brain I would believe that there would be little or no problem with the brain properly decoding information that is on the printed page that is being PhotoRead. Also remember - when you're PhotoReading the text is generally only about 10-20 degrees off of the main line of sight, not something like 60 degrees. I would imagine that for fine processing of detail and information the more off-center the text is the more difficult it would be for the brain to fill in missing information and thereby create the correct gestalt.

With all of the above said, I am probably wrong. I don't know diddly about neurophysiology, psychology, or the structure of the eye.

Great comments from both Raanan and ckerins. Thanks for such insightful (pardon the pun) connections in reply to Johnson Brasil.

I agree that the Amazon reviewer didn't read the book well enough to get the concept of PhotoReading or PhotoFocus whereas the two who replied did.

In fact, there IS a VERY important study that came out of City University Department of Optometry and Visual Science, Department of Anatomy at University College, and Hammersmith Hospital; all in London. It was published in Brain, an important international journal of neurophysiology. The article by Barbur, Watson, Frackowiak and Zeki, (1993, Vol. 116) is titled "Conscious Visual Perception without V1." In it they prove something we've been saying all along in PhotoReading. That the primary visual cortex (V1), what we know of as the receptor of the conscious foveal visual input (that the Amazon reviewer knows he "reads" with) is not required in order for the brain to process visual information.

To quote the article, "The results showed that area V5 was active without parallel activation of area V1, implying that the visual input can reach V5 without passing first through V1 and that such input is sufficient for both the discrimination and the conscious awareness of the visual stimulus."

Prior to that study, any scientist would have said what the Amazon reviewer said..."impossible!"

So, I salute everyone who is willing to look to impossible or implausible explanations to explain what we experience subjectively.

Keep PhotoReading!!!

I was so amazed at my personal experience of PhRing that i called Dana and asked him if anyone else had experienced PhRing as a kind of spiritual experience. Honest! I was so unnerved by practically effortless results that it felt like some kind of awakening to me. Dana said that others had remarked to him about a similar feeling.

I am still unnerved by the experiences i have w/ regard to PhRing. I lost a tiny ear ring & just went into Photo focus & i bent down & picked it up w/o my glasses on from a dark blue persian oriental rug. I pick up a book and state my purpose w/o even previewing and end up picking up just what i asked for. IT DEFINITELY BLOWS YOUR MIND. But then again, i know that PhRing has to do w/ the OTHER THAN CONSCIOUS MIND.

Really, PhRing changed my life forever. The amount of $$$ i spent on the course has been returned a 1000 fold and it keeps increasing.

One other thing that i've recently enjoyed as a result of Phring is this: It is SOOOO easy to go back to books for additional info. There is no heavy feeling that i'll have to plow thru the book searching. I just state my purpose & start to PhR. Many times i find myself stopping naturally on the material i need. There is NO feeling of wasting time. I also enjoy knowing that all my books are still accessible to me. There is no sense that i'm done w/ any of them.

I wish everyone could experience the terrific happenings i've had w/ PhRing.

Guys,
thanks for your efforts. I was especially happy to see you, Mr. Scheele, respond to this yourself.
Seems to me that Mr. Carnell has had good reason to believe what he did, although a major problem at Amazon.com is that lots of people review books they have yet too read. Pretty dumb, but that's what you get, I suppose...

I'm slowly getting convinced here, guys. Seems like PhotoReading is not the scam I first thought it to be. To that I can only say... WOW!