Blog #3, Ch. 7-9

I have found chapter seven to be the most relatable of all the chapters I have read so far in The Field. This chapter highlights William Braud, who studied the psychology and biochemistry of memory and learning. The opening thought really caught my attention: that our waking lives are false and it is what we dream that is reality. IS it true that we do not actually own our own thoughts and what we dream is a part of a collective unconscious? Coincidentally, I experienced a very vivid dream earlier today which is strange for me because I usually cannot recall my dreams.

In one of Braud’s experiments, he observed the effect of being stared at in an attempt to transmit thoughts. In one trial, the person being stared at was alone and did not know when they were being stared at. In another trial, the subjects were told to look into each other’s eyes while they were talking to one another in order to reduce discomfort at being stared at. These results yielded very interesting results, which were the complete opposite of the first trial. The subjects actually became more relaxed while they were being stared at and had begun to love it. This seemed to prove that people respond to remote attention when they weren’t aware that they were being stared at. This got me thinking about the type of person who loves attention, who is usually someone we tend to find rather annoying. Does this study suggest that if we practice staring people in the eye while communicating with them, we ourselves will begin to enjoy being looked at?

Braud found common factors between his experiments that tended to yield positive results: a relaxation technique, reduced sensory input, dreams or other internal states, and a reliance on right-brain functioning. He suggests a few times in this chapter that people who view everything as connected in a state of unity instead of seeing things as isolated and divisible, that they were more likely to succeed. In the highest meditative state, according to the Hindu bible, the Vedas, one can experience feelings of “omniscient knowing” and tap into “a deep well of alert receptivity.” So, by removing sensory stimuli and quieting the left brain, can one begin to open channels to The Field?

On page 139, Braud asks his most fundamental question, “Where does each of us end and where do we begin?” He emphasizes the importance of community and that well-intended relationships and thoughts were a communal process that created a healthy community. He uses the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania as an example of a coherent community, which is actually where my distant relatives settled when they came to America. My family (Ruggiero-Sabatino) immigrated to this area in Pennsylvania from Roseto Valfortore, which is a province in Foggia, Italy.