A Chinese proverb says that if a man can hold only one thought in his head for ten minutes, he can rule the world. In other words, if he can do this he has mastered the art of concentration. And it is concentration which separates the winners from the losers.

When one holds a single thought, all other random thoughts are kept out. But, under normal circumstances, when you try to concentrate or meditate, all those random thoughts keep popping up, making that "only one thought" impossible.

But being able to cancel out those random thoughts is indeed the key to success. The inability to keep those nagging, unwanted thoughts out is a guarantee of failure, or at least, mediocrity.

You have probably seen the movie "Carbine Williams", starring Jimmy Stewart. In it, Marshal Williams is an uncooperative, belligerent prisoner. He is thrown into "the hole", for pure punishment, where he can neither stand up nor lie down. It is also dark and all he gets for refreshment is bread and water.

The only way a convict can get out is to beg and promise to be good. No one had lasted more than a week but Williams lasted a month and had to be ordered out. But he was having great fun there, because he had learned to concentrate. When he showed his warden the diagram of his carbine, he explained that a person can think of one thing at a time. While he was thinking of how much he hurt, he could not think of anything else. When he switched his thinking to something else, he did not feel the pain. He then learned to focus all his thoughts to a gun mechanism. Bit by bit he designed the M1 Carbine in his mind. So intent was he that he stopped feeling the pain and discomfort. So, after a month, his body was in bad shape but his mind was sharper than it had ever been. When he was released from prison, he continued to invent and filed over 100 patents on gun mechanisms and such.

A while after I had the accident which ruined by left hand, I had to get the sutures removed. There was an incredible amount of constant pain and I dreaded the visit to the doctor. When he began to work, for some reason, I closed by eyes and visualized a beach in Hawaii. I followed the waves and filled in the skyline so I had a complete picture of the area. I concentrated so hard I barely felt a thing.

My doctor commented on the fact that I didn't yell. I told him what I had been doing and he answered that that was simply an example of self-hypnosis.

Thereafter, when my hand was really hurting, I concentrated on researching my first Poor Man's James Bond. That, too, was a kind of self-hypnosis as it kept me from feeling the pain. Even now when I set to work I blank out all other sensations, only keeping the subject in mind. Thus preoccupied, I keep out most random thoughts and get the work done, during a kind of self-hypnosis.

Actually, hypnosis is a poor and even misleading term. Hypnosis is Greek for sleep. "Sleep" is a term used to describe various levels of unconsciousness as "awake" is a term used to describe various levels of consciousness. But the hypnotized person, self or otherwise, is not unconscious. He is indeed aware of all that is going on. But he is concentrating so completely on a focal point or idea that any random happenings going on around him, or even to him, are of no importance.

Consider a football player running down the field with the ball. He is set upon by members of the opposing team. He is indeed aware of the body blocks and attempts to tackle him. He is concentrating on the goal posts ahead. So he hardly feels the blows which would leave him in a heap if a careless jogger should run into him off the field.

Only after the game is over does he limp to the aid station to get his ribs taped, his ankle splinted and his bruises and sprains treated with liniment. Then he can hurt and groan at his leisure.

In battle, a soldier may suffer several flesh-wounds without being stopped. There are even cases of mortal wounds being suffered without attention from the victim until he had destroyed his objective.

However, combat puts the soldier more in a state of shock than concentration. The fight-or-flight syndrome is automatically put into play while his conscious mind is dulled. So he falls back on his training or even his instinct. Even so, the difference between shock and deep concentration may only be relative, as the result is often the same.

Thus you have people under hypnosis being stuck with pins or otherwise violated. Usually such atrocities are remembered and dealt with or at least cause no actual harm. But do not expect to get sex by inducing deep concentration in a subject. The subject might just decide to drop the concentration and bring you before the law.

At any rate, I am generally opposed to any sort of "mind control" by another. Leave "hypnotism" to professional therapists who know what they are doing.

But getting back to my experiences; over the years I noticed others with much better educations than I who were losers. They just could not take advantage of their backgrounds. I built up a theory that my success was due to the loss of the fingers of my left hand. I noted certain people who had also risen above tragedies and were more productive than before. I believed that their loss of certain physical abilities forced them to develop their minds.

I even criticized certain of my friends who were highly intelligent but unproductive. I would ask them if they would have to lose an arm or a leg and thus be forced to use their minds.

I seemed to have a good theory but I also noticed that a lot of the seriously handicapped went out for sports. They climbed mountains, crawled across country and tried out for the Cripple Olympics to prove to themselves that they could rise above their handicaps.

I had nothing but contempt for these last, since I considered them mindless buffoons. Since their handicaps had not forced them to develop their brains, which they needed even more now that their bodies were impaired.

Finally, I realized my theory was wrong. My mental abilities had not been strengthened by a decrease in my physical abilities. They had been strengthened by my unconscious use of concentration, meditation, or self-hypnosis, all of which are the same phenomenon. Those handicapped who became more productive were simply practicing the same principles as was I. So one does not need to be crippled or in pain to develop his mind.

To understand self-hypnosis, etc., you need to have an idea of how the mind works. A general theory is that the human mind has three facets; the conscious, subconscious and superconscious.

To get a picture of the three facets, visualize a fully-equipped soldier. Compare the conscious mind to his uniform, boots, helmet and weapons. These he has and uses all the time. Next, compare the subconscious mind to the training he underwent to use his equipment. Now, imagine the superconscious as the overview the top soldier has, whereby he has an instinct which carries him to his objective, dodging dangers, being unafraid and calm and doing just the right thing while certain of his comrades step on mines, walk into ambushes, etc.

Another example might be in an office. The conscious mind could be compared to the desk and its drawers with everything commonly used right there. The subconscious would be the file cabinets. The superconscious would be the files stored in the basement, used only when there is a real problem that cannot be settled without a diligent search of the background facts.

Then there is the reincarnationist theory. Again, the conscious mind is the day-to-day information. The subconscious has all the information collected in this life. The superconscious would then be the total record of all past lives, in which just about every answer to a question could be gotten.

The object is to relax, shove aside all those inrushing random thoughts and either simply rest or examine otherwise hard-to-get information in your sub and superconscious.

What keeps one from resting or concentrating are the numerous unresolved thoughts, actions and conflicts which keep popping up. Each seems to say "Pay attention to me. I'm most important". And as they clamor for attention, you only get anxious and confused, or if trying to go to sleep, you toss and turn and get more restless the harder you try to relax.

The key to relaxation, followed by concentration, is something to focus your conscious mind on, to the exclusion of all outside stimuli. This may be a swinging watch, a metronome or other, usually bright object. But the best of all is the spiral disc, revolving and seeming to pull your conscious mind into a kind of whirlpool. This whirlpool will shut out all conscious trivia, allowing you to go to the core of a problem without distraction.

My purpose is to give you a way in which you can clean out the cobwebs and nonessential stimuli from your own subconscious. As you learn to use this to go deeper and deeper into concentration, you can perhaps establish a controlled contact with your superconscious.

When you get your tape, wait until a quiet time when you are alone and will not be disturbed. Turn off your phone and do not have your radio on, especially to rock-n-roll. You do not want any suggestions coming at you while you are concentrating.

Just settle down and get comfortable, but close enough to easily get the full impact of the spiraling disc.

Start the tape and first watch the fish. The tank is pretty, the fish are pretty; just mellow out and let yourself go.

A lot of people have aquariums just to relax. The fish do not do anything. In fact, they are boring. But as you look at them you feel your tension going. And so many of those nagging thoughts go, only to be replaced by the fascinating sight of that dumb fish standing on his head, picking at the gravel.

After a while, even if you try, you will be hard put to remember what you were thinking about before you focused your attention on that stupid fish. If you should remember, you will see how unimportant was that thought compared to the mindless drifting of that gourami, beta or tetra.

Just with this, you will have experienced a level of self-hypnosis. Now that you are more relaxed, look at the slowly revolving spiraling disc. You have seen the same or one like it often on TV or in the movies. But you never see it shown revolving for more than a few brief seconds. The reason for this is that it would put too many viewers into a hypnotic trance.

It would not do for Mrs. McGillicuddy to let here stew boil over on the stove. Of course, she would know it was burning but it would not be important, at least, not so important as zeroing in on the big secret the revolving disc was just about to reveal to her.

Now this is an example of what can happen to an overly-susceptible person and especially when he or she is listening to a commercial or something else that will plant commands in the mind. That is why you should not have the radio on or be listening to any music with lyrics. If you do it right, you will not get any impressions you have not put in.

Actually, you should just relax and let go. After you have brushed aside all the day's random thoughts, at first, you will just get drowsy and should soon fall into a very refreshing sleep. As you get used to the disc, you can think of some problem you want resolved. Then, as you go deeper into your subconscious, every bit of information related to the problem will pop up and you can choose the most likely solution.

But you probably will not remember making any choices at all. Most likely, the right choice will occur to you the next day and you will wonder why you did not think of that before.

What has happened can be best explained by imagining a stack of correspondence relating to a specific subject. Some of it is good but most of it is irrelevant or incorrect. So you sort through the pile and throw away the irrelevant and incorrect and file the good stuff.

So with the disc, you give a command to your subconscious to submit its information on a specific subject. Usually, when you are floundering around for an answer, your subconscious will submit the good with the garbage. But in your conscious state you have little control and the submissions are just a confusing mishmash.

But in your concentrated state with the disc, you examine each submission and choose the good and discard the bad. And the bad, or useless, are indeed discarded. They are no longer in your subconscious file cabinet. Also, unlike the unprepared and commercially bombarded Mrs. McGillicuddy, you are not conscious of any ideas until the next day. Then, the chosen ideas just pop up, ready for use.

Your subconscious also holds the stored information which may have caused you to gain weight, become addicted to drugs or any number of self-destructive habits. By looking at the disc and concentrating on your problem, you can weed out the negative information and thus rid yourself of the destructive impulses.

There are real possibilities of curing yourself of more serious health problems, if they are psychosomatic. However, I would advise against throwing away any medications you are on until your doctor pronounces you cured.

As you master this technique, you may even learn to tap your superconscious. Here we come into the realm of seeming magic and miracles. But before dwelling on this aspect, you should consider the hypno-disc only as an aid to relaxation, meditation, concentration, etc.

I cannot explain how this works but it does, even without any effort to concentrate. It may be that the spiral disc automatically draws the eye to it and focuses the mind inward toward whatever has been causing anxiety.

When you have had the tape for a couple of weeks, I would appreciate some feedback. There should be no disturbing side effects or after effects. But I would like to share with other readers the benefit to individuals and any special techniques used in gaining those benefits.

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The Idiocy of Space Capsule Survivalism