Understanding how our mind works requires going back to prehistory

Before I share more about what I'm learning in James Doty's book, Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything, here's a revelation that I found germane to Doty's message.

In a recent issue of New Scientist, there was an article about what happened to the Neanderthals. You know, our prehistoric relations who aren't around any longer but live on in the fact that most humans of non-African ancestry have a genetic makeup that's about 1-4 % Neanderthal, which shows that us Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred.

The article said that recent archaeological discoveries, notably from a cave in France, indicate that the last Neanderthal died about 42,000 to 45,000 years ago. Prior to that, Neanderthals and early humans took turns living in the cave over a lengthy span of time, many thousands of years.

This brought home to me an important fact: the brain and body of us modern humans are essentially unchanged from that of our ancestors who lived in the French cave along with Neanderthals. What's changed is human culture, technology, and such, not how our brain and body function. 

As noted in a post on my HinesSight blog, Doty points out that the sympathetic nervous system evolved to aid prehistoric humans in dealing with the many threats that endangered them long ago. Speaking of the autonomic nervous system, he says:

This part of the nervous system developed early in our evolution as a species and has two divisions. The first to evolve was the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), whose job it is to ensure our physical survival and the survival of our genes, and whose primary activity is to engage the fight, flight, or freeze response. 

...Because it evolved to act in life-or-death situations, it moves along very short neurons and therefore has the power to completely commandeer our physical and emotional resources in a split second, filling our body with stress hormones like cortisol and tensing our muscles for action.

Later, the human nervous system evolved further with the addition of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), also known as the rest-and-digest response, whose job is to return the body to a peaceful resting state, a process known as homeostasis. 

The switch to rest-and-digest is accompanied by a wide variety of physiological changes to promote balance and harmony: our muscles relax, our heart rate and blood pressure decrease, and we produce more saliva for digestion.

We still have a bias toward negativity, in line with the fact that fight, flight, or freeze responses were an earlier evolutionary adaptation than rest-and-digest responses.

This helps explain why voters appeared to be so swayed by Donald Trump's appeals to fear and anxiety: Migrants are streaming across the border raping and killing Americans! (ignoring the fact that migrants have lower crime rates than other people); Your child can go to school as a boy and come back as a girl! (ignoring the fact that parents have to give approval for transgender operations and these are very rare in childhood).

So it takes more effort to overcome that negativity bias than to give in to it. This applies to our negativity toward ourselves, as when we want to improve our life in some way and come up short. If our weight loss program doesn't work, we blame our lack of willpower. Ditto for exercising more, being less stressed at work, or other goals we might have.

That's why Doty, along with other neuroscientists, is big on positive affirmations and visualizations. These send a signal to our mind about what is important in our life. I like his analogy about the filing clerk and the bloodhound.

We teach our subconscious what is important through repetition and and positive emotion. As we repeat our rituals and visualizations, we enter a state of flow, or complete absorption in our inner activity. Deep experiences of positive emotion, whether from real or imagined experiences, teach our subconscious to associate the goals we wish to pursue with the biological reward systems of our bodies.

In this state, our sense of self-consciousness is dialed down and we transcend the limiting beliefs of our mental habits and invite guidance from our deeper resources, such as our capacity for compassion or the creations of our imagination. Absorption in our inner vision is the state that connects us to creativity and clarifies our intention in our subconscious.

The magic is that, as we go about our daily lives, while we may not be directly thinking about our inner intention with our conscious mind, the subconscious goes on processing it and attuning toward it.

We might think of the subconscious as comprised of a filing clerk and a bloodhound. The filing clerk oversees a limited filing cabinet governed by the brain's conservation of energy and the needs we've placed on it. Once the filing clerk places a file in the cabinet, the bloodhound gets the scent and relentlessly scans our environment for the slightest whiff of it.

The bloodhound will then be on the trail at the subconscious level, attending to manifesting our intention around the clock, employing whatever powers, focus, or opportunities it can find. This is the experience of synchronicity, when seemingly unexpected connections begin to appear in service of a particular desire. This is a fundamental component of manifesting.

As we can see, the real estate of the subconscious is precious and has the power to shape our destiny. What the subconscious seeks, the conscious mind finds. So, if we feel threatened and believe on a subconscious level that we live in a threatening world that is out to harm us, our bloodhound will scan for threats and we will find ourselves discovering more and more threatening elements in our outer environment. 

If we have taught our subconscious mind to seek connection, joy, fulfillment, and thriving, we will naturally find ourselves discovering more and more opportunities to experience those positive emotions in reality. 

...The important thing to understand about the subconscious is that it responds to repetition. The more we focus on a particular outcome, visualize it, imaginatively experience it with our five senses, and repeat the desire to ourselves and to the world, the more the filing clerk will catch on to the salience of our desire and the more our bloodhound will get to work to have our mind manifest our intention.

...As long as the SNS [sympathetic nervous system] is curating the subconscious, the filing cabinet will be filled with fears, phobias, insecurities, and habitual beliefs that will be skewing our experience of life to the negative, the frightening, and the limited. Before we bring the light of awareness to our subconscious, we must see that it is really the domain of our survival fears and desires, the legacy of our evolutionary inheritance.

And so the first step in harnessing the power of our subconscious is to sublimate all the whims and wants of the SNS. In practice, this means recognizing that our tendencies to be stressed and anxious derive from the experiences of evolutionary predecessors that have been embedded in the subconscious and become the default software. 

As we learn how the subconscious works, this gives us the power to get information into the system. We begin to put the information we choose into the subconscious and thereby replace the information it is getting by default from the SNS. We are manifesting our own agency.

What we are doing is using the cortex, the higher level control system in the brain, and changing how the vagus nerve responds to our intentions on a conscious level. By doing so we are creating a direct neural route to influencing the subconscious. 

When we consciously practice repetitive visualization techniques and rituals to conjure powerful positive emotions around our desired outcomes, we are increasing the power of the PNS [parasympathetic nervous system] and diminishing that of the SNS.

The subconscious has both expansive and contractive sides. In other words, the SNS has the power to subconsciously influence the subconscious, while the cortex has the power to consciously influence the subconscious. 

As we access this power, we begin to break up the SNS's unholy monopoly on our subconscious, freeing ourselves from the grip of survival fears that we find hard to ignore and that distract us from our deepest intentions. Using practices of suggestibility and conscious repetition, we limit the SNS's own direct path to the subconscious and gain the power to positively choose its contents.

Comments

[sant64]

He just can't stop. He just can't stop.

"I believe in democracy! This election is about saving democracy!"

But when the election doesn't go his way, he doesn't celebrate democracy in action. Oh, no.

He calls the voters Neanderthals. Troglodytes. Stupid cavemen who aren't wise, as he is.

To be clear, he's not calling some voters stupid cavemen. He's saying the majority of voters in the United States are knuckle-dragging cave dwellers.

What a sore loser you are. What a snob.

[Jim Sutherland]

Actually, we are a Democratic Republic, not a Democracy. Democrats hate having an Electoral College, which makes us a Democratic Republic, instead of a Democracy. They prefer the Mob Rule of a Democracy. But this Election wouldn’t have made any difference, because Trump won , both the Electoral College plus the Popular majority Votes of the Mob. Plus, Republicans taking both the Senate and House clears the way for Trump to fast track his entire Agenda, ignoring the push backs of the looser Progressives who will still be stalking Trump like a dog with their bone! But it isn’t going to work this time. Come Jan. 20, 2025, the poop is going to hit the fan where the rubber meets the road! Americans have had enough of Progressive’s Anti American Woke agenda. The Border Czar is rallying the Troops to round up the ilegals to start deporting them on day one of Trump’s new Administration. There will be a new Sheriff in town! It’s gonna be more blissful to watch, than ………..revisit santmat64’s post , of him saying watching Trump’s win was better than reaching Sach Khand or having Kundalini! Haha.
I can’t top that, other than saying, it would have been more enjoyable to drink a gallon of Buzzard vomit and die with the drizzling trots, than to have woken up reading that Kamala Harris had won!!!
Hahahahahahhhaw!

Jim Sutherland

[777]

Much older Jim
Golden Yuga was our predecessors on another Planet
@another Star
While competing their Voyage
and ordered their 99999 IQ Cyborgs
to bring their the double helix Chakra System here

They are still here during 4.6 Billion years of Evolution
Their bas is the constructed mppn, Ganymedes, IAPETUS and Phobos
They play d somewhat with NavyPilotw lately
They "live" also within earth (remember Admiral Byrd

I said a lot on X ANKHATON plus videos

Shame U can t go there

777

and last month created a cave of 5 miles around
8 miles under the White House

Yesterday they appeared there a long time

The are blocking's N Xeapons since long
all over our planet

The Pentagon call them Dempns
and others call them Angels

We both and many were will come back
to see the results
and work with the 5 Holy Masters

777
Read my lips

[Ron E.]

Doty points out that the sympathetic nervous system evolved to aid prehistoric humans in dealing with the many threats that endangered them long ago. Speaking of the autonomic nervous system, he says:
"This part of the nervous system developed early in our evolution as a species and has two divisions. The first to evolve was the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), whose job it is to ensure our physical survival and the survival of our genes, and whose primary activity is to engage the fight, flight, or freeze response.
Later, the human nervous system evolved further with the addition of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), also known as the rest-and-digest response, whose job is to return the body to a peaceful resting state, a process known as homeostasis.”
***
It’s always interesting to have a new widow that allows further understanding of how the human organism works, especially how our brains are programmed to respond to life situations – and also interesting to confirm that we can reprogramme (I’d say through awareness) our brain’s automatic response to have a more positive effect on our lives.

I understand that the fight or flight response goes way back, millions of years to quite primitive creatures and that it has developed to the present stage in human beings where we have the reflective means to influence its effects.

Yes, it does seem that as individuals and groups we are often led to react via quite primitive survival mechanisms – although very useful and necessary in times of danger. But it does often seem that, in spite of having hugely evolved abilities to influence how we respond, we still react from our more primitive survival instincts.

Whether this can be applied to the likes of Trump and his followers I don’t know, but it is apparent throughout history and still common today how we look up to and elevate individuals who appear to offer appealing solutions that in actuality, we have created for ourselves (and continue to create) basically through our fears, greed and insecurities.

[Ron E.]

I get a regular newsletter from the Krishnamurti Foundation which I’ve just opened to find a pertinent quotation from K’s book Commentaries on Living: -

‘How can there be a deep revolution of values if it does not begin with ourselves? To help in the present crisis, must one look for a new ideology, a new economic plan? Or must one begin to understand the conflict and confusion within oneself, which, in its projection, is the world?’

Pertinent because similar to Doty’s ‘Mind magic’ – but of course, devoid of the neuroscientist’s knowledge - J. K. is talking here about non-judgemental awareness, similar to what J. Tollifson calls ‘nonjudgmental attention, dissolving the sense of separation, seeing through habitual thought patterns and stories, questioning beliefs.’

Both J.K. and Tollifson, in their own non-dualistic and non-scientific way, are referring to taking responsibility for what information occupies one’s mind. Do we let the various authorities, priests, leaders and so forth with their promises of the good life whether here on Earth or their particular heavens determine who and what we are, or do we take responsibility for ourselves?

[um]

Well ...

Just for a moment reflect on how we got informed about the world, by learning language and education..

The late MCS said in relation to education ..Give them an good example and let them grow.

Now have a look in a nearby pond [ .i.. in a couple of month ...hahaha] and see what happens with the ducks and its offspring. Or go to a specialize chimpanzee zoo and watch how they learn.

So both by nature AND culture, being an imagined replica of nature, we are informed from the outside ...we are FEED with information like food so the idea is there that everything has to come from outside [food] and food-for-the-mind, information about how to survive in nature and in culture, the public domain.

Little attention is given to the capacity of every single person to DIGEST, food and information..

Much is written about apples being good for you ...in general ....but that same apple might not be good for you at all

Invest in the consumer, inj coinsumption and not what is on themarket to be consumed.

[Appreciative Reader]

“This is the experience of synchronicity, when seemingly unexpected connections begin to appear in service of a particular desire. This is a fundamental component of manifesting.”

This is the sort of thing I’d meant, in my comment on the other thread, when I said that while by and large Doty’s message is reasonable, but still there’s elements of woo to it.

I’ve made a note of all of the woo stuff he’s got going, but, like I said in my comment, there’s no call for me to go flooding your blogspace with my notes, not unless anyone’s particularly interested in those. But I’ll now bring up one other woo aspect of Doty’s message, before getting back to the synchronicity thing you quote:

Vibrations. In that long detailed interview vid, Doty claims we all emit vibrations, bio-chemical oscillations that come from our heart. And the kind of vibrations you emit are a function of the state of mind you’re in. And these vibrations attract like vibrations back to you. So that, if you’re in a state of calm positivity and gratefulness, then you’ll attract back good positive things into your life. And if you’re in state of mind that is, in a word, negative, then negative vibrations will be attracted back to you. (And no, he most definitely does not say that figuratively! He actually says that science has shown that the heart emits these oscillations.)

I’m afraid that sounds complete woo to me. Now Dr Doty’s a bona fide scientist: but he wouldn’t be the first scientist to include some woo in his repertoire of beliefs. And his overall message is generally good and sane, sure, absolutely: but no, not that bit about the vibrations, which is a crucial part of his manifestation message per se.

(Of course, if it is actually true, if science actually bears out that we do emit “biochemical oscillations from the heart”, which depend on the state of mind we’re in, and which attract back vibrations of a similar kind from other people --- well then, I’m happy to accept that, and happy to update my own worldview accordingly, if that’s the case. But I’ll need hard evidence in order to believe that kind of airy-fairy sounding talk. To me it sounds like woo.)

----------

Likewise this synchronicity thing.

Synchronicity is an established trope in the decidedly woo-ic world of “spiritual” thinking. It’s when the universe conspires to have good things happen to you, when you’re operating from a positive space. And the opposite of that, when you’re in a negative space.

Well, that’s exactly what Dr Doty’s saying here, that when you’re onto your parasympathetic nervous system, and operating from a place of calm --- which of course is a good thing, a sensible place to be in, in and of itself --- then your subconscious takes over, and synchronicity happens.

Again, this synchronicity thing? That’s woo. Unless of course there’s hard evidence there, that shows that this synchronicity business is real, and shown by science to be real. If there’s such evidence, then naturally I’m happy to update my worldview accordingly. But absent such hard evidence, I’m going with woo.

----------

That’s what I’d found disconcerting about Doty’s message. First, because the route to manifestation per se, in his message, seems very iffy --- even as his general message is good and positive, so that I’m happy to go on with that message should he just drop that manifestation label. And second, because in the midst of a bunch of perfectly good and reasonable things he’s going about discussing, he suddenly slips in these woo things as well.

We mustn’t simply not our heads in agreement, just because a bona fide scientist says something. Even generally good competent scientists are sometimes given to some amount of woo. On the other hand, naturally, we shouldn’t be hidebound in our skepticism either, and must be prepared to embrace as reality what we’d initially thought of as woo, should hard evidence point that way, should science show that to be the case. But what we’ll then need to insist on is hard evidence, not merely someone’s say-so, not even a scientist’s bald say-so.

---------

I’m saying, by all means let’s applaud Doty’s general overall message. But let’s take a good hard look at these things he suddenly springs on us: things like “Synchronicity”, and “Biochemical oscillations from the heart that are a function of the state of our mind, and that attract back like vibrations onto us”. Let’s not swallow these specifics unquestioningly just because the guy making those claims is himself a bona fide scientist, and overall a good guy who’s generally saying good, positive things. Let’s not take our eye off when, in the midst of perfectly reasonable messages, and under cover of perfectly reasonable messages, woo is suddenly sprung on us like that.

[Karim W. Rahmaan]

"Golden Yuga was our predecessors on another Planet"

Posted by: 777 | November 29, 2024 at 04:21 PM

When I first read this blog. I wondered to myself, "Why don't many here converse like this chap?"

I must admit, you truly study the Path,
I've been struggling trying to calm my own 'sympathetic nervous system (SNS)'.

Simran, always has been difficult for me.
Translating the words to English, I never did well in English class. Perhaps the sleeping African tongue.
Or, the meaning of the Hindi terminology, or are the words in Urdu?

But every once in a while I find new inspiration to meditate more, here from this blog thanks to you!

[Jim Sutherland]

Trump’s pick for FBI Director , Kash Patel, will really set Democrat’s hair on fire! Kash knows exactly where the alligators in the Swamp are hiding. He even names many of them, in his new book, Government Gangsters. He was interviewed by Shawn Ryan a couple of months before the election, if any one is interested in hearing exactly who Kash Patel is, as an American. It’s on YouTube. A great pick, to help Trump drain the Swamp.
Jim Sutherland

[um]

@ Karim

Over time in surprised me more and more the differences between the transmission of a practice between the different schools.

The sant mat guidelines for meditation, using a mantra, the position etc are almost the opposite of the minute detailed instructions of other schools as far as the FORM is concerned.

A Sant Mat practitioner, if interested can gather some additional information from reading books and listening carefully to the Q&A sessions or some interview or letter.

The advice given to do the simran with "love and devotion" points to the per-former, the one that gives form to simran.; his attitude, etc.

If one has some coffee and gazing outside the window, letting pass the many single activities we perform in a day, we might notice that performing this or that activity goes with a certain inner awareness of a feeling of attraction or resistance.

One can than try to figure out where these feelings of attraction and resistance come from as they are not at all related to the activity itself. ..WE are the ones that attribute meaning and value.

So if the simran is difficult, as it seems to be for many if not most people, one could ask the question, "why is such a simple thing is so difficult for me?" ...the late MCS would stress that the simran is as simple as having a tune in mind by a little child happily skipping to school [if that is the right way of saying in english].

There is nothing wrong with the simram, the problem and the solution lies within the per-former.

Simran is a MEANS to an end. It can be compared with the steel rod to which mountaineers, can hold to when climbing a mountain. They are not there for the steel rod etc but for the climbing and ultimately for themselves.

It seems to me in retrospect that far too much attention is given to simran, to the form at the cost of the per-former.

The late MCS often stated that if no progress is made ..as expected in terms of lights etc ...the per-former should look over his shoulder and see from where he has come and how he changed over time.

It is my understanding of the day to day activities in a zen monastery that ALL activities can be done with the SAME awareness , not hindered by subjective feelings towards that activity.

There is that lovely Zen story, in which a young student gets punished for his job and punished again for quitting his job of making the veranda snow free. Upon expressing his frustration being punished for acting and not-acting, it is made clear to him that he should act ...obvious ..acting in a different way then before.

And as far as the meaning is concerned ...overtime I came to think that the simran is not a totality of lose words but a kind of sentence ...a sentence that in 5 steps answers the question "Who am I" ..."what is it all for"?? ...it is the climbing of the mountain, and the rot is just there to make, for those that need it, climbing more comfortable and easy. ....the real thing comes after simran ...the receptive attitude of listening.

P.S.
Whatever I write has nothing to do with any preference for whatever practice or what I do and prefer ..it is just writing down an personal understanding, opinion, psychological insight, on meditation = manipulation the mind-body structure in order to attain a given goal.

It is all about the person that meditates, not the practice, or the narrative behind it.

[um]

Or ...

Meditating, you get to know yourself, understand yourself, coming in terms with yourself ...and ...letting go of many things that stands in the way, mental obstacles created during life.

It is coming back to where it all started ..as a childlike awareness.

And ..yes de-programming ..is not that easy for each and every one. especially those with an analytical mindset and deep conditioning

Becoming aware of how you meditate, where your attention is, how it wanders around in the body etc ..observe, observe .....and each and every time return to the steel rod, that what your practice offers as focus in practice.

[Appreciative Reader]

SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS ON MANIFESTATION, AND SOME QUESTIONS

I keep returning to this, because I find the idea of manifestation fascinating. Both in the abstract, as a philosophical idea. As well as a general method, technique, to glean about, in general terms. And also as something to maybe actually incorporate that into my own personal life: because I certainly am not above having things I’d like manifested, should that actually be possible.

And clearly you’re very interested in this subject, as well, Brian. Please do keep posting your further reviews on Dr Doty’s book. If there does turn out to be real substance in his manifestation after all, then that’ll be pure gold. But even otherwise, it’ll be very interesting to clearly learn about what exactly he’s got to say on it, and the details of his methods and techniques, and all of that.

I’ll try to put together my thoughts overall, so far, on Dr Doty’s Manifestation. And note down five questions, as they occur to me, with the detailed context for each. I believe these questions might be important in properly understanding and evaluating this Manifestation thing. Of course, whether or not they can be clearly answered will depend on whether these matters have been clearly discussed in his book.

--------------------

1. What is manifestation?

That should be the starting point of this exercise. That is, Dr Doty is certainly free to present his ideas in whatever order he likes, for expository and/or pedagogic reasons: but our understanding of his Manifestation ideas and techniques must begin with clearly understanding this.

So, does Dr Doty actually define that clearly? I haven’t seen such definition so far, neither in any of your review pieces so far, Brian, and nor in the detailed video interview I’ve watched and commented on here. If he does define it clearly in the rest of his book, then do please share that with us here!

Here’s how I’d define Manifestation: and it’s straightforward enough: It’s …manifesting, actualizing, realizing specific desires you might have. Certainly including material desires --- things, certainly, but people also, activities also, things like career and health also, and popularity and acclaim, all of that.

Here’s a for-instance, a specific example taken from Dr Doty’s own life: When he was twelve years old, which was when he had his life-changing encounter with that lady, he was poor, as in seriously poor, with no promising prospects: and, at that time, what he’d very strongly wanted to manifested was his own Rolex and Porsche. …Which is fair enough, to each their own.

So, does Dr Doty’s method actually help the twelve-year-old Doty to manifest his Rolex and his Porsche? It did, in his case, clearly: but that’s just anecdotal, and to take that single instance as evidence would be no more than a blatant Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. Does what does Dr Doty teach actually help poor twelve-year-olds, and for that matter poor twenty and thirty year olds, to manifest Rolexes and Porsches, should they actually want them as badly as the twelve-year-old Doty did? …If it doesn’t, then what Dr Doty teaches is many things, many very good things: but Manifestation it is not.

So, coming from that context, my first question would be a clear understanding of how Dr Doty himself defines Manifestation.

----------

2. The woo elements:

Manifestation typically refers to your prayers being answered by God, or to your wishes being granted by the Universe. Dr Doty emphasizes that his methods don’t do that. Which is cool.

However, he does bring in two seemingly woo elements: First, vibrations. He claims the heart emits actual vibrations, whose nature is a function of the nature of our mindspace, and which attract back vibrations of similar nature --- positive or negative, as the case may be --- from others. And two, synchronicity. He claims that once our subconscious is fully attuned to our deeply held desires, then somehow our subconscious makes it so synchronicities spontaneously happen, that help us manifest our desires.

Sounds completely woo. But we’ll see if, further down in his book, Dr Doty defends these ideas and shows them to be rational and valid after all.

So that is my second question: Is Dr Doty clearly able to defend these two apparently woo elements in his teachings, Synchronicity and the Vibrations thing?

----------

3. The sane, positive elements:

Lots of those. Heaps of those. Dr Doty’s message is very positive, very affirming, very healthy. He suggests we operate from our parasympathetic nervous system, our heart mode; and he shows us specific techniques how we might do that. He teaches us to get rid of our cravings. He teaches us to realize that the Porshe and the Rolex, while nice to have, aren’t really the important things in life. And so on.

While all of that is great, but this is the important point: Those do not describe a route to manifestation. On the contrary, in many cases they describe a route away from manifestation. They may make for a sane healthy personality, and maybe a happy person, but they might, in many cases, actually impede manifestation of specific desires.

So that’s my third question: How exactly does Dr Doty’s method, as he describes it, lead to manifestation? So far I’ve found two elements to how that might happen: Vibrations, and Synchronicity. And both are woo, or at least, seemingly woo. Well, what else? How does manifestation per se happen, as he discusses it?

----------

4. Two specifics about Dr Doty’s personal history: The first is this:

For a poor underprivileged boy --- or man --- who desires Rolexes and Porsches, like the child Doty did, to actually actualize those, might often necessarily require him to work his sympathetic nervous system, to crave and to desperately work towards satisfying that craving, to trade happiness for so-called success, to trade a healthy personality for an overstriving, overachieving, dysfunctionally workaholic personality. To eschew that kind of dysfunctionality is great, in general terms, which is what Dr Doty teaches: but it does not make for actualizing of Rolexes and Porsches. To learn to understand that Rolexes and Porsches are not necessary for happiness, which is also what Dr Doty teaches, is great, but again, that understanding typically does not make for actualizing those objects, not for a poor underprivileged kid, not typically.

In Dr Doty’s case, they did, apparently. Or did they?

That’s another thing I’m interested in finding out from your further reviews, Brian. How exactly did Dr Doty manage to pull himself up by his bootstraps, and drag himself from poverty and neglect, and become not only a successful neurosurgeon but also an exceptionally successful many-times-multi-millionaire entrepreneur? That factual detail would be very good to know!

I suspect he did that by going all-out, striving with teeth clenched, sympathetic-nervous-system-ing himself for all he was worth, chasing material goals for all he was worth --- and only afterwards, after having already done his materializing, settled down to his more sedate healthy understanding of life. So that his teachings are probably post-hoc rationalizing, and not actually effective how-to lessons.

But even if it is the case that he did incorporate his lessons from when he was a poor kid --- and I doubt that --- even so this is just one anecdotal case, and like I said a Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy to imagine this makes for a general lesson. That is, it does make for a great general lesson, but not a lesson for manifestation.

So anyway, my fourth question is: Given particularly this above context, and discussing these issues that I bring up here, how exactly was the poor underprivileged 12-year-old boy able to become this successful neurosurgeon and many-tens-of-times-multi-millionaire entrepreneur?

----------

5. Rhonda Byrne is a con artist. Operating well within the law, nothing at all illegal about what she’s done, but a con artist nevertheless. I’ve read and heard interviews of hers, back when, that discuss how she’d hit rock bottom, and had either become bankrupt and destitute, or was close to that situation: when, as she puts it, her law of attraction thing helped her turn her life around. What that actually translates to, is her book itself!! She managed to publish this book, at around that time, and it became a bestseller. So, her “Secret”, as it applies to her personal fortunes, amounts to basically managing to sell her empty spiel to enough gullible dupes. That, in my book, makes her a con artist.

Now Dr Doty, as far as I know so far, is a completely honest man. Transparently sincere. Genuinely compassionate, as far as I can see. A good man, in every sense of the word. Regardless of whether his methods to really amount to effecting “manifestation” per se, but his overall message is perfectly sane, healthy, positive, non-woo, affirming, good. And regardless of whether his methods do really amount to effecting “manifestation” per se, but his intentions are completely sincere.

However: there’s this: Dr Doty says he lost as much as 80 million during the dotcom bust, and found himself not only without his hard-won wealth, but actually deep in debt. He’s bounced back from that since, and is once again a very wealthy man, with multiple villas and apartments and hotshot cars strewn all around. Clearly that’s way beyond, what even a very successful neurosurgeon can make, particularly given his steep debt at that time.

So, did his climb-back essentially piggyback on his selling his Manifestation spiel? Was his financial turnaround the result of royalties from his bestselling books and lectures? If the answer is Yes, then in my book that detracts a great deal from the very positive image I have of the man. (And it absolutely may not be the case. Because he’d been an entrepreneur that had managed, once, to amass 80 million while starting from zero. Plus he’s a successful neurosurgeon as well. So sure, he may very well have rebuilt his massive wealth entirely independently of his Manifestation books and lectures. But I’d like to know if that is indeed the case, or if his financial recovery came from his Manifestation teachings.)

So, coming from that context, that’s my fifth and last question: How exactly did he climb back to plentiful wealth, after having lost his entire hard-won fortune of 80 million and ended up deep in debt? And what role, if any, did his Manifestation books and lectures play in that dramatic financial recovery of his?

--------------------

Sorry, looooong comment! But I wanted to clearly discuss the context behind those five questions of mine. Like I said, I’m very interested in this subject. And clearly you are, as well, Brian. So I thought you’d probably appreciate this detailed discussion of my take on his work so far, and find those five questions useful as you go ahead and further review his book.

[Brian Hines]

Appreciative Reader, you ask good questions. I'd prefer to respond to them after I finish Doty's book, just to be sure that I have all the information needed to answer them. I just have a couple of chapters to go, so that won't take long.