Джон Харгрейв - Mind Hacking [How to Change Your Mind for Good in 21 Days]

Now, let’s get hacking!

PART ONE

ANALYZING

[1.1]

“When people look at it . . . it looks crazy. That’s a very natural thing. Sometimes when we look at it, it looks crazy. It is the result of reasoned, engineering thought. But it still looks crazy.”

—Adam Steltzner, NASA engineer

On August 5, 2012, the engineers at NASA endured seven minutes of adrenaline-pumping terror.

They were monitoring the descent of Curiosity , a robotic rover the size of a car, as it landed on the surface of Mars. Hanging in the balance—and in the Martian atmosphere—was years of effort, the reputation of the agency, and $2.5 billion of research money. 1The NASA control room was eerily silent, a high-stakes gamble on the engineering talent of everyone in the room.

The lead engineer, Adam Steltzner, represented a new breed of that talent. With pierced ears, snakeskin boots, and an Elvis haircut, 2he looked more like a rocker than an engineer. He had overseen the complicated entry, descent, and landing sequence, in which Curiosity would have to brake from 13,000 miles an hour to zero in a perfect, tightly coordinated landing—all under its own automatic guidance systems.

Steltzner was also media-savvy, creating a short film before Curiosity ’s descent, in which he explained the seven minutes of terror. “From the top of the atmosphere down to the surface,” he explained, “it takes us seven minutes. It takes fourteen minutes or so for the signal from the spacecraft to make it to Earth; that’s how far Mars is away from us. So, when we first get word that we’ve touched the top of the atmosphere, the vehicle has been alive, or dead , on the surface, for at least seven minutes.” 3

During that seven minutes, Curiosity ’s heat shields would burn up to 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Its parachute would deploy, withstanding 65,000 pounds of force and slowing the descent to 200 miles per hour. Then the rover would cut the parachute and start the rockets, first diverting the rover away from the parachute, then looking for its targeted landing spot, a deep crater next to a 3.5-mile-high mountain.

Because the rockets would kick up a blinding dust cloud, they were attached to a “bridle,” or platform, that would stabilize about 65 feet above the surface of Mars, then lower the rover down gently, tethered by a long robotic umbilical cord. The rockets would then cut themselves free, shoot themselves out of the way, and Curiosity would phone home.

Or not.

Steltzner and his team, along with geeks all over the world, held their breath. For seven excruciating minutes, long rows of blue-shirted engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory monitored the data on a seven-minute space/time delay.

Suddenly the entire room erupted in applause and celebration. Engineers leapt out of their seats, hugging each other, taking off their glasses, and wiping their balding heads. They were laughing, whooping, and hollering. Curiosity had landed safely.

Over the official broadcast, the mission controller was also shouting for joy. After a few moments he regained his composure. When you watch the video, you can still hear the excitement in his voice as he speaks the words: “It’s time to see where Curiosity will take us.”

In the ensuing years Curiosity has done extensive biological, chemical, and geological exploration of the planet. It has discovered that Mars may have once supported microbial life. 4It is even preparing the way for human exploration of Mars. 5All this controlled by its human masters from their command center back on Earth.

In a weird way, you are a kind of rover—not on Mars but on Earth. Instead of cameras and thermometers, your sensory data comes in via eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin. Like Curiosity , you are able to process this data through a layer of software called your “mind.” Through this mind, you are able to direct specific commands, as NASA engineers are able to direct Curiosity : “raise arm,” “practice banjo,” “execute perfect three-point parking maneuver.”

Imagine for a moment that you are the one controlling Curiosity via a high-tech, virtual-reality control room. Your eyesight is wired to its Martian cameras, your muscle movements control its robotic arms and sensors, your very thought propels its motorized treads along the planet’s rocky surface. In a sense, that’s what’s happening right now, in the Earth rover that is your body.

But if the mind is the software layer, then who’s controlling the mind? Who’s the Adam Steltzner of your mind, the one who engineered it in the first place?

You are.

You Are Not Your Mind

This is the message I want to shout from the rooftops: You are not your mind!

Close your eyes and think about your own mind for just a moment. The fact that you can observe your mind, and think about it objectively, shows there is a “mind,” and then an “observer of the mind,” which we’ll call “you.” In other words, you can separate “your mind” (which you have just pictured) with “you” (the one who is doing the picturing).

Got it? You’ve probably got it. But this idea is so fundamental to mind hacking, and yet so foreign to our everyday experience , that I will illustrate it via several different analogies. These analogies will serve as handy tools for peeling away “you” from “your mind,” which a mind hacker must be able to do at will.

If you’re a movie geek like me, perhaps you’ve had the experience of deconstructing a movie as you’re watching it. It’s the opening credits of The Lord of the Rings , and you’re watching the title sequence, analyzing the music. Now comes the first scene, and you’re evaluating the actors, admiring the cinematography, imagining the director orchestrating the action. And then . . . if it’s a good movie, you quickly get lost in it, losing your perspective. You forget to analyze the movie, because you’re in it .

Your mind is like that movie. Just as in the movie theater there is “you” watching a “movie,” in your own head there is “you” watching your “mind.” And like a great piece of cinema, you are absorbed in the movie of your mind: the thoughts, emotions, memories served up in a constant stream.

But the mind is no ordinary movie. It’s a 3-D IMAX, Oculus Rift, full-on Sensurround-with-THX epic beamed directly into your head. And it’s been playing since birth . So it’s no wonder that we’re so accustomed to watching it. It’s a lifetime habit, and no one’s ever told us, “Hey, you’re watching a movie.” Instead, they’ve told us, “ This is reality .”

I sometimes picture a virtual reality mask that you pull on, with the headphones and goggles, but also with electrodes that tape to your forehead, beaming thoughts and emotions directly into your brain. After twenty, thirty, forty years of living that way, how would you even remember that you’re in a simulation?

This is why it is so difficult for us to “pull ourselves out of the movie” for very long. If you think it’s tough to run out of the movie theater to take a bathroom break, just try stopping the mind movie. In fact, just try being aware that you’re watching a mind movie. Yet, being aware of this mind movie is the first step to mind hacking: we must learn to analyzethe mind, with all its amazing cinematography, before we can hack it.

MIND GAME

What Was My Mind Just Thinking?

For the rest of the day, start building up awareness of your mind by asking yourself, as frequently as possible, “What was my mind just thinking?” 6

Keep track of how many times you remember to “check in” on your mind. At the end of the day, record your final score in the practice sheet at the end of the book.