Magical appearances
Published: Wed, 10/16/13
I can make cars appear out of nowhere. I did it earlier this year
with Peugeot 205s and I did it a few years ago with Citroen C15
vans and I did it the other day in a Hombase car park with a
Leyland Maestro. At least I think I made these vehicles appear, I
don't recall these vehicles being around until I owned one
myself and suddenly they were everywhere. Actually Maestros are
pretty rare these days but I wonder how many people visiting the
store would have noticed it? I did because I owned one for about 5
years having bought it off my father who had had it for about 8
years before that.
Apparently there is a mechanism in the brain called the reticular
activating cortex which filters the information received in image
form from your eyes. If you could replay the footage from a visual
recording as if the eyes were security cameras then you could
'see' everything that the eyes looked at. That Maestro was
definitely seen by everyone who walked across the car park while
the old car was parked there. However the majority of security
camera footage is never watched unless there is likely to have been
some good reason. Even when tape is reviewed following an incident
the person examining it needs to know what to look for.
So our RAC is a bit like a guard who is supposed to know what to
look for that will be of interest to us and ignore what is not
applicable. It doesn't just apply to vision either. Ever been
in a crowded room with all kinds of people talking about lots of
different things and you talking to one person and suddenly you
pick up a conversation on the other side of the room along the
lines of. "...you know, he was in that gangster film in the
80's with the Queen and that film about girls doing nude shows
with M from James Bond and..." and you may, or may not, yell
across the room 'Bob Hoskins' (substitute footballers,
politicians, Strictly Come Dancing participants for your own
version of this) again that is the RAC in action, filtering nearly
everything and just flagging up something of interest to you.
It is interesting to try and understand how we unconsciously
trained our RAC, in some cases it is obvious, as in the case of
owning a specific model of car, sometimes it takes a bit of
digging. Once you realise that you have a RAC and that it can be
trained it opens up all kinds of possibilities for seeing new
things.
As a Stav teacher I have to be able to see whether or not someone
is training correctly. These days it happens pretty much
unconsciously, I just seem to know if someone needs some assistance
and guidance. If you want to see me in action then two more
opportunities this year http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/train.html
regards
Graham