Altered States (11 page)

On a number of occasions this book that I’d rediscovered had helped me decide what path to take or helped me find answers to some question or other. Before you take me for some religious zealot, let me reassure you that this book is not the Bible or any other holy text. Although, maybe it could be offered as an atheist’s scripture; a collection of secular teaching tales for the non-spiritual.

The world doesn’t need gods, just guiding words.

Whatever it was, the idea got lodged in my mind that this book was a guiding mascot, and so for evermore I was stuck with it – like a set of bad lottery numbers. Heaven forbid I ever lose the damn thing.

I hadn’t really paid any attention to it for ages. It was just an object in my life that I unconsciously transported from one place to another – like my bladder. On this occasion, for whatever reason, I paid it greater heed.

Its cover was dated, in a way that made you wonder if anyone twenty years ago had any aesthetic appreciation at all; like looking at photos of your parents in their youth. The cover was a sickly pale green, framed with garish blue and white triangles, and adorned with large blue lettering in a selection of ugly fonts.

The hand of fashion is indeed far-reaching. Not just hairstyles and clothes, but bathrooms and corporate logos and, yes, book covers. It made me wonder how I could look upon something with disgust today that a room full of designers twenty years before thought looked pretty swish.

Had
we
changed? Or had the
world
?

Anyway, I sat down and thumbed through the book. I stopped on a story and read the first paragraph. The tale immediately leapt back into my mind. It was about a boy dying from polio. He overhears doctors telling his mother that he will be dead by morning, and knowing this he gets his mother to manoeuvre the dresser in his bedroom such that via the mirror on top he would be able to see the sunset one last time. When the sunset comes he watches it so intently that all obstacles in its way are blanked out by his mind.

The message of this tale is that you must always have a goal. No matter what your situation, you must always have an aim. The fact that this was a true story made it all the more potent.

But there was
another
message – for me, at least. One that was far more important. For me, it was not the tale that was most pertinent, but who it was about. And, crucially, what he became. I knew a little about him, but soon I would realise I needed to know more.

It was all to become clear the next day, with the girl in the café, when thoughts of the story would return to me and coalesce in my mind; and change the direction of my life forever.

The café was pretty busy. I’d just acquired my over-priced beverage and was looking for a place to sit, worthy of the eat-in supplement. I made my way toward a small clearing at the far side of the room. At the same time a young woman did likewise from a different direction. There was an awkward moment of polite motionings until we eventually arranged ourselves about two small tables that were virtually touching.

I wasn’t sure if this was one of those situations where it was acceptable to actually say something to another person. In most cases it seems to be a social faux pas to initiate unsolicited discourse with a stranger. This activity is considered the domain of weirdos and charity muggers.

Regardless, I was not endowed with sufficient social bravery to do so anyway. So I merely observed her in my periphery.

If you’ve ever spent time watching people in a coffee shop you’ll have noticed that generally everyone comes prepared with a ‘primary activity’. If they are not talking to someone, they will be tapping away at a laptop, or reading a book. No one ever just drinks coffee.

She was just drinking coffee.

She hadn’t even stripped herself of coat and scarf. She was just cupping her beverage with both hands and staring out of the window – her eyes focused way into the distance.

It didn’t take much skill to know that she was distracted. But there was so much I
didn’t
know. Was she unhappy? Did she want company? Did she need help?

These were odd questions to be asking oneself, and the fact that I was asking them made me feel that at least some of the answers were yes. But I didn’t know why I felt this. Maybe it was something about her demeanour – the way her body was angled slightly toward mine; the way she didn’t busy herself with a ‘primary activity’; the way she had placed her bags on the seat such that they slightly encroached on my space. I didn’t know; it was just a gut feeling, and so I couldn’t be sure.

I wondered whether, if I had been a cleverer man, I could have constructed a non-threatening way of establishing the details I sought. Then, maybe, if she was unhappy, I’d know what to say to make her feel better.

Being able to read people and manipulate people in this way was suddenly becoming very important to me. Manipulate is a word with such negative undertones, but unjustly so. When you pay someone a compliment you make them feel better. You’ve affected their mood, their state of being – you’ve manipulated them in a
good
way.

I sorely wished I had this skill at this moment. I felt that I could have helped this girl. At some level I could hear her crying out to me, but I wasn’t sure enough. And as I couldn’t be sure, I did the noble thing. I finished up my coffee and walked away. And I never saw her again.

About fifty yards down the street I became drenched in a sense of failure. I knew this was ridiculous. I had no responsibility toward this girl, whoever she was. Or did I? Should we all accept responsibility for whoever is in need? Maybe so.

But walking away is so much easier to do.

At that moment, I finally decided what the next step in my life was going to be. At that moment, my story began.

Seeding Genius

Shortly after my coffee-induced epiphany I made my way to the campus library for a spot of research. This was exactly the second time I had visited the library in my university career to date. The first time was to shelter from the rain. It’s true, libraries are not so frequented as they once were, even by students.

The great thing about the modern information landscape is that it is so incredibly easy to hone in on the very nugget of information you require, with virtually no physical or intellectual effort. This seems like a good thing, and mostly it is; but the downside comes when the aforementioned nugget of information equates to half a paragraph of a four-hundred page book. In such cases you tend to lose a spot of context – like three hundred and ninety-nine pages of context.

This pattern repeats itself throughout our lives. We are forever foregoing context, for a quick hit of concentrated information. Be it daily news or exam revision, espresso info is what we seek.

The result of this skim-reading is the continual erosion of our depth of knowledge, and indeed our personalities. We are, as a society, shallower now than we have ever been before in the history of our race. The quality of our TV is testament to this fact. We are all sound-bite and no substance.

Hence, this seemingly innocuous trip to the library was a noteworthy occurrence in my development. No longer was I going to skim the web for paraphrased titbits. I was actually going to study – I was going to learn something. I was going to read a text-book from page
one
. No, I was even going to read the preface bit that everyone skips. Note to authors: if you want someone to read a page, don’t put Roman numerals at the bottom of it.

And from where did this new-found fervour originate? Over the previous few years I had grown despondent that I clearly hadn’t become the genius I always assumed I’d grow into. I just didn’t
have what it took
. And that irked me. I was irked by the unfairness at which genius is doled out. I didn’t feel it fair that those born with a natural gift should be awarded wealth and acclaim for what amounted to little more than fortuity. Whilst us average Joes had to make do with our average remunerations.

Not that I saw any other way. I never found a solution to the inequality of the gene pool. If you think about it too hard you end up following the redbrick road to communism; and that road has never led to any solutions.

But as it turns out ... maybe we don’t need any.

I was obsessed with genius for so long, but it had never occurred to me to
read
about it. Not until my epiphany episode in the café. After that I dug up some research on the topic, and it led me to an enlightening discovery. Enlightening to the extent that it should be on the school curriculum. No, it should be a school mantra, chanted in morning assembly.

As it is not a school mantra then now is your only chance. If you take nothing else from my story – if you never even get beyond page one hundred and twelve – then take this simple fact, and believe it...

Geniuses are
made
... not born.

This is true. The quality we call genius – or extreme natural talent – arises not from innate gifts but from an interplay of the following three ingredients:

–
Average
natural ability;

– Quality instruction;

– And a mountain of hard work.

By way of example consider New York City’s Hunter College Elementary School, which only accepts students with IQs in the top
one
percentile of the population, and boasts an average IQ that maybe only one in five thousand people exhibit. A study of graduates from this school showed that not
one
of them – none, zilch, zero, nada – went on to be superstars in any field.

Even Stephen Hawking himself – one of the greatest theoretical physicists of all time – was of only
middling
intelligence and achievement until his mid-twenties. Only at this point, when he grew obsessive about black holes, did he catch fire. It was the obsession that was key.

The truth is, the successful elite are rarely more gifted than the also-rans, but they almost invariably outworked them on the way up.

That’s not to say that there are
no
natural prodigies out there, for there are. But the majority of our great masters, from Mozart to Einstein to whomever may be your sporting hero, made it to the top of their game more through hard work and good tutelage than through innate talent.

And what does this mean? It means something very profound. It means you can be who you want to be.
If
you are willing to put in the hours.

– Two: if an individual wants to do remarkable things ...
they have to put their mind to it
!

The difference between these two points is subtle, but massively important.

It was now when it all came together, when I gained the unquestioning belief that this was an attainable goal: to understand people; to read them and to rewrite them. I had faith in this in a way I had never had in anything before.

This was not about winning poker or picking up girls – not entirely – it was about being ... well, superhuman, in a way. It was about walking down the street and knowing I had a ‘skill’. And a worthy skill at that, not some arbitrary skill like hitting a ball into a hole with a metal stick.

I wasn’t clear how my worthy skill was going to benefit mankind, but I knew it could. I knew it had the potential, and that was good enough for now.

Learning to Read

I lost count of how many books I ploughed through when I began my learned journey. Dozens certainly, hundreds maybe. On topics as diverse as body language, face reading, cold reading, hypnotism, suggestion, cognitive therapy, even magic. I traced my way back through a trail of bibliographies to where the source of these topics began; quickly learning to avoid any modern books, which paraphrased and simplified and distilled until all meaningful content was lost.

I tracked down second-hand, out-of-print books, coming to associate the musty smell of aged pages with the kind of sincere knowledge that seemed all too scarce since commercialism had taken hold.

These tomes were home to a wealth of fascinating characters who, by rights, should be the icons and heroes of our age, but who have been all but forgotten. One such character I need to tell you about is a man named Silvan Tomkins.

But first I need to explain a pattern I noticed during the early phase of my studies. For it appeared to me that each advancement of human understanding to date had occurred in three stages: Prodigy, Professor, and Scholar.

The Prodigy is someone with such a natural insight that even she – for want of a gender neutral pronoun – does not know from where her skill or knowledge arises. She will be the first person to know something or the first to be able to do something. But her gift is so innate that she cannot put into words what she does such that others might learn. Her talent would disappear and be forgotten if it were not for who comes next.

The Professor will make it his life’s work to painstakingly study the Prodigy and others like her, and over time may uncover the mechanisms at work, and may even learn to employ them himself. The Professor will be best placed to articulate the workings of which he studies.

And so then come the Scholars, who can learn at their leisure, standing on the shoulders of giants.

In the subject of face-reading I was the Scholar, still at kindergarten. Few would argue that a man called Paul Ekman took the role of Professor in this domain. And
he
would not argue that a remarkable man named Silvan Tomkins was the Prodigy.

Tomkins was born in Philadelphia in 1911, the son of a dentist from Russia. He was short, and slightly thick around the middle, with a wild mane of white hair and huge black-rimmed glasses. And he just may have been the best face reader there ever was.