Chapter 7. Attention, Dirigation, and the Newest ... - ElmerGates.com

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Origin and Development of the Art of Mind-Using[page 115]“local sign” in mind. To obtain a local sign, a conscious feelingmust first be experienced in some bodily part or organ in order tolocate it mentally. An organ like the pancreas or spleen can belocated only from pain in it caused by ill-ness, or from specialmedicines given to locate the organ.Everyone has noticed without doubt the increased pain due topaying attention to a toothache, nausea, or inflammation.Professor W. B. Carpenter, taking his cue from Harvey, spoke ofthe tingling sensation produced by “thinking” of some part of thebody. However, Gates observed that Professor Carpenter hadcarried it no further, and that its significance was not understood.After eight months’ practice Gates could quickly get an intensefeeling in any bodily part selected. Another form of practice waschanging the dirigation from one part to another, which gavegreater control over his body, and later gave a chance to study thevolitional factor of conation. The mind, as it were, took consciouspossession of parts over which it previously had but littlegoverning power, and the health of every part was augmented. Atfirst the feeling dirigatively aroused seemed simple and of onequality, but after a few years’ practice it appeared as a complex ofseveral different kinds of feeling that varied with the part. Byintrospectively selecting one feeling out of this complex anddirigating to it alone, a different local effect was produced with afeeling different from the whole. Dirigation to certain of thesefeelings definitely and measurably augmented the flow of bloodand metabolism in the part. Mosso, the Italian physiologist, at alater date measured the increased weight of the head due toaugmented blood supply during dreams and mental excitement, butElmer Gates approached this from another standpoint, traced itsrelations to voluntary effort, and studied its general effects on bodyand mind.Regular dirigation augmented the growth of a bodily part. Asan example, a patient who was taught to dirigate was able toincrease measurably the girth of one arm. Also abnormally smallorgans could slowly be increased in size, and it[page 116]became evident that dirigation had applications in curing certaindiseases and underdeveloped organs, as well as in training theattention. It was not difficult, after sufficient practice, bydirigation to produce emesis, catharsis, enuresis, salivation,lactation, lachrymation, and even sudoresis. But dirigation maypsychologically produce physiological effects; it may causeappetite and laughter, healthy skin and cheerfulness, strength andexhilaration.Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using© 1971 Donald Edson Gates
Origin and Development of the Art of Mind-UsingGates also found that dirigation to sensory nerve-endings of thespecial senses, such as those of touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing,warmth, and cold, greatly increased the discriminative capacity.Thus after sufficient dirigation to the hearing organs he could hearfainter sounds and detect more minute differences between slightlydiffering pitches and amplitudes. (He recorded his upper limit ofhearing as 55,000 c.p.s.) After having dirigated to hearing, if hedirigated to seeing he could feel something that seemed to leavethe hearing organs and centers and go to the sight centers. Heconcluded that he felt the innervation and vasomotor blooddominancy leaving one set of structures and going to the other.Finally he found that he could dirigate not only to the nerveendings of a special sense but to its functional center in the brain.To locate mentally its local sign required persistently continuedpractice until a feeling of fatigue was noticed. Dirigation to thenerve endings increased their sensitiveness as instruments forresponding to their stimuli, while dirigation to the brain-centerincreased the discriminative powers of the introspective andanalytic attention and augmented the natural functional activity ofthose parts.When dirigation was to a sensory brain-center, it causedspontaneous “memoriam” images of a kind corresponding to theparticular sense: when to the cerebral sight-center, pictures andvisions; when to the hearing center, auditory images of voices andtones; when to a motor-center, images of walking and flying; andso on.If dirigation was intense, frequent, and prolonged it produced afunctional hyperesthesia that aroused images of more than[page 117]usual vividness—a “dream-like” vividness and a self-active sort ofspontaneity that was less subject to volitional modification than thememorial images. If these dreamlike images were dirigated towith sufficient intensity and frequency, there resulted not only anincreased hyperesthesia but also a vasomotor surcharging of thefunctionally active organs, producing a hyperemia that createdsomething still more vivid, phantasms, which were so seeminglyreal and so little susceptible to modification by voluntary effortthat they were apt to be mistaken for reality. The image is thoughtto be an apparition. If this dirigation was continued, the hyperemiawould not subside and the phantasm would become permanent,and the result would be delusional insanity, as happens inmonomania.Gates then found he could shift the dirigative dominancy fromsensating to imaging, and thus he gradually learned to dirigate tothe cortical image areas of each sense; and from that state toElmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using© 1971 Donald Edson Gates
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Chapter 7. Attention, Dirigation, and the Newest ... - ElmerGates.com

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