New education mantra
The mind business
By Kancha Ilaiah
Since reality is a perceptional problem, there is no one reality, but
many realities that occur to our senses at the same time.
The socio-psychological school of research and training is fast
growing across the world—particularly in the USA and Europe. This
school is focusing on mind change and personality development. The
modern technology is pushing people into enormous amount of stress.
Mind is the most critical organ that needs updating and training so
that it can adopt to changes that pose challenges. In this context the
psycho-analytical schools are working on several mind adjustment
agendas that are gaining a lot of importance.
Recently I was in Seattle, Washington state where there is an
institute called the Pacific Institute. It is working on developing a
mind change curriculum and disseminating it through lectures, videos
and other teaching aids. The co-founder of this institute is Lou Tice,
a psycho-analyst. He has developed a curriculum for training the
people to focus the mind on adapting to changes of life.
Lou Tice's training has acquired global attention in government
circles, education institutions, corporate companies and teachers who
believe in helping to develop a focused mind and achieving higher
targets or to develop a mind to 'bounce back' from failures.
About 15 members of the Truthseekers International group, including
this author, recently visited his institute for three days. He took us
by his jet to his ranch located in a beautiful valley of mountains on
the borders of USA and Canada. Living at this ranch was itself is an
experience.
To our pleasant surprise, he not only offered a free flight in his
luxurious small jet aircraft, but he and his wife Diane Tice were with
us all the three days. At 74, Lou Tice takes each session for four
hours at a stretch to teach the principles of mind change. His
teaching was a treat.
He starts with a detailed explanation of fundamental principles as to
how the mind perceives things. He takes the participants through a
journey of conscious, sub-conscious and creative sub-conscious process
of mind. He says that the fundamental problem of mind is formulating
pictures and translating those pictures into reality.
Since reality is a perceptional problem, he says, there is no one
reality but there are many realities that keep occurring to our senses
at a time. Because of scotomas ( mental black spots) some times many
minds do not perceive what they see. Overcoming scotomas is possible
only through a systematic training of the mind.
The mind change principles are based on the cognitive science and
social psychology. Lou Tice applies them to day-to-day process of
perception and explains quite lucidly that human beings' perception of
reality is based on his/her status and confidence levels.
Overcome backwardness
As an Indian group we were interested to learn how the caste mind
could be changed and a country like India could overcome the
backwardness; we were keen to locate that theory in Indian caste
context. I discovered that his teaching focuses more on achieving
targets in business and executive operations.
Social inequalities and training of mind to overcome such inequalities
is, though not part of his teaching exercise, he thinks that once the
lower castes of India overcome their low esteem they do not tolerate
iniquitous treatment.
If we apply his theory to our context one could, perhaps come to a
conclusion that the upper castes and lower castes suffer from several
scotomas, hence cannot perceive what they see around them as reality
and also its changeability.
At yet another level though the caste or the structures of
subordination of social forces are conditioned by social violence and
the theory of scotomas may not explain it. Lou Tice, however, thinks
that if his principles of 'mind change' are made part of Indian school
curriculum and the children of the oppressed castes are made to
overcome their inferior status they would move from a position of
caste to castelessness. But that is not an easy proposition. However,
it is good that India tries this curriculum.
For every thing he tries to find out solutions through his theory of
mind change, thus undercutting the role of violence in change.
All theories involve a principle of mind change in one form or the
other. For example, even Marxism also deals with mind change but that
change is seen as possible through a mass struggle against oppression.
Lou Tice operates within the capitalist paradigm of socio-psycho
analysis and does not approve of violent transformation or mass
action. His theory of mind change is individualistic. Though Mahatma
Phule and Ambedkar were not cognitive psychologists they too wanted to
change the Indian social system through a process of mind change.
Perhaps India should operate at two levels of mind change—-individual
and collective. Though Lou Tice recognises the role of collective
consciousness he does not approve of mass action—agitations, strikes
or of violent wars. If a modern theory produces a model for peaceful
transformation, we should welcome it. After all there is nothing that
science cannot achieve.
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