Choices and Illusions (12 page)

psychological Defense Mechanisms

A close-up outlining the sexual and taboo embeds:

Figure 18

59

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 59

6/20/13 3:41 PM

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 60

6/20/13 3:41 PM

psychological Defense Mechanisms

The outline of the embeds alone:

Figure 19

(Note: this ad was used in 1975. For a link to see it as it appeared back then, and to several other ads that are very similar, please visit
www.eldontaylor.com/choicesandillusions
.)

61

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 61

6/20/13 3:41 PM

CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS

Once these embeds are pointed out, they are hard to miss, yet

they are almost impossible to see when they have not been pointed

out. In part this is due to various defense mechanisms—who wants

to be accused of having a dirty mind? The most important factor

here is that although this information passed beneath your con-

scious level of perception, it did not get past your subconscious

level of perception. Advertisers use subliminals in this way to get you to take a greater interest in their ads, but that is not the focus of our attention now. (For a detailed analysis of this and other

ads deploying sexual and demonic images, see my book
Mind

Programming.
) Our purpose here is to be aware of just how much information and technology are being used to influence our beliefs, preferences, and choices.

It is also important to know that a number of other mecha-

nisms can conceal information from conscious awareness. Indeed,

one of the most interesting to me is how stress, distress, and trauma can virtually hide experience from the conscious mind.

Forensic Hypnosis

For years I practiced criminalistics, and one of my tools was

forensic hypnosis. I will never forget receiving a phone call one

evening from a local police department. There had been an armed

robbery involving a night deposit by a local theater manager. The

manager was only able to tell authorities that a “big gun” was

pushed into his face just as he was about to pass the money from

the driver’s side of his vehicle into the night-deposit drawer. The manager surrendered the money and remained still as instructed

for several minutes until the thief escaped. Under hypnosis, this

same manager was able to tell us in detail about the automobile

used by the perpetrators. As it turned out, this manager had for-

merly been a manager for Hertz and knew automobiles very well.

He had seen the car for an instant in his rear-view mirror, as the

dome light went on when it pulled in behind him and the gun-

man jumped from the car while the driver waited for a quick get-

away. Under hypnosis, the theater manager provided a complete

62

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 62

6/20/13 3:41 PM

psychological Defense Mechanisms

description of both men, the automobile, and even a partial license plate. The money was recovered, and the suspects were appre-hended within a few hours.

Even under the influence of drugs and alcohol, the subcon-

scious remembers. One case I was involved with proved this to me.

I was asked to run a lie-detection test and do forensic hypnosis on a young man incarcerated in the state prison for the murder of his

mother. He claimed that he confessed to the crime only because of

duress and promises of no prison time. He passed the lie-detection

test, but that did not necessarily mean anything to me. during

hypnosis, however, he was able to provide vivid details regarding

his whereabouts at the time of the crime—details that included

hiding in the park from police while they searched the trash on

an unrelated matter. The time of the homicide, a rather brutal one

involving a sex crime as well, made it impossible for this young

man to be where he said he was and also to be the perpetrator. The

information he had could not have been obtained from any outside

source available to him. The police log and other sources confirmed the information, and in a new hearing he was acquitted. On the

evening in question, he had been using drugs and alcohol and had

no conscious recollection of anything between leaving a party and

finding his mother’s body, whereupon he phoned law enforcement.

Without the aid of hypnosis, he would still be serving time.

numerous mechanics underlie our perception, or at least our

awareness of what we perceive. That is the important point. If all

of the information we process, including the so-called no/don’ts we are typically raised with and all of the negative input we receive, both explicit and implied, remains in our subconscious minds,

it is no wonder that our thinking and our choices can seem so

predisposed. The fact is, we
are
predisposed, and that is the crux of the matter.

let us now look at your thoughts, how they got there, and

whether or not you would choose to think differently.

63

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 63

6/20/13 3:41 PM

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 64

6/20/13 3:41 PM

who owns Your

ThoughTs anYwaY?

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth,

so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.

To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again.

To make a deep mental path, we must think over and

over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

— h e n r y d A v i d t h o r e A u

As I mentioned earlier, my favorite question to ask these days

is, “What was your last truly original thought?” If you listen to my radio show,
Provocative Enlightenment,
or read my books and articles, then you know that I am convinced most people are unable to

provide an answer to this question without taking hours to think

about it, and some are unable to answer it at all. When you realize that your every ambition, the way you walk, your hand gestures,

your clothing, and even your daydreams are built from the ideas

of others, then you begin to grasp the issue.

If you question this assertion, take a look at people from dif-

ferent cultures. You will soon find great similarities in expressions, posture, mannerisms, and even handwriting. Once you see this in

others, it’s a lot easier to look at yourself and find the same thing.

This is not to say that it is a cultural issue, but rather to highlight that you too are influenced by everyone around you.

do you want a particular car because you have been hooked

by some sound bite, some photo, some TV commercial? do you

65

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 65

6/20/13 3:41 PM

CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS

change your behavior when you change your clothes from dressed

up to dressed down, since you expect to behave differently when

dressed differently? do you use the information that you consume

as the primary mode by which you reason? Is your perception

conditioned in such a manner that it forms your expectations, and

therefore your perception becomes circular, dependent upon your

expectation? In other words, if you expect to see gods walking on

water because of a prophecy, as mentioned earlier with the Aztecs,

is that what you interpret the conquistador to be? due to the fact

that you have not seen boats of the kind the conquistadors are in or helmets that shine as if made of gold, do you interpret them according to your expectation? Are your interpretations necessary or

conditional—necessary in the sense that they occur automatically

without critical analysis or conditional based on your evaluating

before determining? In what way do you evaluate your perceptions,

the beliefs that predispose your perceptions, your thinking, or for that matter your whole stream of consciousness?

Conditioned Perceptions

One of my favorite ways to demonstrate conditioned percep-

tions is known as the chessboard illusion. As unbelievable as it

might sound, we are all so conditioned to see dark/light, dark/

light, dark/light on a chessboard, that when two identically colored squares are placed on the board in positions agreeing with our

dark/light expectation, we see dark/light despite the fact that they are the same color. That may seem unbelievable, but look at Figure

20. The square marked A and the square marked B are actually the

same color! When I first showed this to my wife, she could not, or

would not, believe it. However, you can test this out for yourself

by making a couple of photocopies of Figure 20 and cutting the

A and B squares out of one of the copies. Place these two squares

on the white part of the page and you will see they are the same.

Slide them onto the board to their respective positions, and all of a sudden they will appear different. now, if you play around with

the cutouts and move them to different positions on the board, it

66

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 66

6/20/13 3:41 PM

Who Owns Your thoughts anyway?

may seem as if this dark/light/dark concept does not always hold

constant. It is true that the shadow effect does play a role in how you perceive the colors on this board, but all of this only goes to prove quite how easily your perceptions can be manipulated. If

you can be deceived this easily, simply by using the chess board

and a slight shadow, what other subtle techniques are being used

to influence you?

Figure 20

(Reprinted courtesy of Professor Edward H. Adelson, John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Vision Science, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT. Website:
http://persci.mit.edu/people/adelson
.)

The Investment in Our Minds

It would amaze and horrify you to know the extent to which

others engineer our thoughts. Billions and billions of dollars have been spent by governments and marketing researchers to determine exactly how our minds work, especially our unconscious or

subconscious (I use those two terms in this instance as synonyms).

What have they learned? Here are just a few of the discoveries made by those in the field of what today is known as
scientific marketing.

67

Choices and Illusions Interior.indd 67

6/20/13 3:41 PM

CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS

Using fMRI to view the brain functioning in real time, it has

been demonstrated that showing a smoker the surgeon general’s

warning on a pack of cigarettes excites a reward center in the brain that motivates them to smoke more. Message: put the warning on

more sides of the pack and make it bold.

It has been shown that subliminally flashing a smiling face on a

foreign flag predisposes one to feel more favorably about the coun-

try the flag represents.1 Marketers know that if a beautiful woman

is draped over an automobile hood, men will judge that automobile

to be faster than others. Researchers have found that incorporating death and dying themes into advertisements excites the Thanatos

urge and leads to arousal. (The Thanatos urge is a Freudian con-

cept, also known as the death instinct, and some activities are seen as death defying and therefore very exciting and inviting.) They

know that sexual embeds that are placed in advertisements are not

consciously perceived, but they nevertheless cause arousal, which is most often interpreted as positive. In one study, it was found that when men crossing a dangerous bridge are met by a young woman,