CHAPTER 1

THE MIND AND MEMORY

The Mind

This is the faculty contained within each one of our brain cells that allows us to think, reason, memorize, imagine, learn, feel, choose, etc. Because there is an infinitely greater number of cells in our brain than in the rest of our body, we get the sensation that our mind resides there, and this is correct to a certain degree.

The mind is complex. It has conscious and subconscious capacities, and, therefore, functions on these two levels.

We use the conscious mind exclusively for reasoning, choosing, and sometimes thinking (thought is mainly controlled by our subconscious).

On the other hand, different sensations control what goes on in the subconscious mind. This is where memory, feelings, and imagination mainly reside, which is why we are going to focus particularly on this area.

We can define the unconscious mind as part of the aforementioned subconscious mind, which is difficult to access. This is where past traumas are stored as defense mechanisms.

Memory

This is the mental capacity that allows us to store or retain information or a group of facts.

Memory is intrinsically related to the concept of learning—this being the knowledge and reasoning of that which is memorized.

Memory acts as a storage room (facts go in and out continuously) and, as I said before, memory resides in the part of the mind we refer to as the subconscious. Evidence of this is that everything we see or detect with any of our senses is unconsciously stored or memorized. We don’t provoke this to happen, nor are we aware of it as it occurs.

At any time of day, we can easily remember what we have been doing during the last few hours, or even days, and we remember this with ease, because we have been memorizing these events as time has gone by. This is possible thanks to a totally unconscious memory process.

Another way of demonstrating that the mind’s capacity to store data resides in the subconscious is how we are unable to control our memory under certain circumstances. For example, when we take important exams, many people suffer from a sort of cerebral paralysis, or mental block. This is caused by excess pressure and emotional tension, which can impede our memory (and other mental faculties) from working correctly.

If our memory were used and controlled consciously, we would never draw a blank, nor would it play tricks on us. How many times have you had something on the tip of your tongue? The harder you try to think of it, the harder it is to remember. Who hasn’t been fooled by his or her own memory?

Because our memory resides in our subconscious, we will never be able to dominate it 100 percent of the time. However, with practice and training we will be able to control it 99 percent of the time.

Well, we know that the memory is a storage room that stores information. It doesn’t matter if the information stored is visual, audio, or any other type of data. What really concerns us now is how to get the key to the storage room and, with that, gain absolute access to and control over this information. Thus, we are going to come to know its mechanisms, how it works, and the reason why it fails us at times. In summary, we are talking about getting the best performance out of memory and using it in the most efficient way.

Types of Memory

We can classify memory two different ways:

A)The duration of time we are able to retain memorized information:

1. SHORT-TERM MEMORY. For example: when someone tells us all the digits of a telephone number, many of us experience the following:

• If we don’t jot it down immediately we will forget it.

• We are only able to retain the digits for a few seconds.

• Sometimes we repeat the number to ourselves incessantly, in order to hear it from our own voice and thus remember it better until we can write it down.

2. MID-TERM MEMORY. This occurs when information is retained for one or two days maximum.

3. LONG-TERM MEMORY. This occurs when information is retained over months or years and only requires the slightest stimulus to keep it sharp in our memory. An example of this could be the city in which we were born, the image of a sibling’s face, or our father’s voice.

B)The senses are another way in which we perceive the information to be memorized. Therefore, memory can be:

VISUAL. The most important and powerful of all. Thanks to this, we can remember the things we see. A student reading a book can transform the written words into images, which we call photographic memory (not to be confused with eidetic memory). Individuals will develop a photographic memory if and when they have developed the necessary skills to do so.

While we are reading, a more or less logical series of links to all of the information we are reading is being produced. This is interpreted by the subconscious mind together with the data we had previously memorized or had already acquired in the past. We will refer to the understanding of the data, or facts, that the mind is able to retain or assimilate, as learning.

Students only learn when they are able to reason and understand what they are memorizing. This is only possible if they are working with what we will call sequential facts, which you will study later on. There are other types of facts (called pure facts) that cannot be reasoned and therefore cannot be learned, although they can be easily and deeply memorized in our long-term memory. We will also take a look at these soon.

Look closely at how we clearly distinguish between the concepts of memorizing and learning. Many people can memorize facts, but they may not even know what they have memorized, which means that they have not learned anything at all. In order to learn, you must be able to understand and reason what you have memorized, and also have a clear consciousness of these facts. The act of learning creates experience. That is to say, those of us who have learned something will be able to draw inferences from our knowledge in the future, at will, thus being able to make use of it. On the other hand, someone who has just memorized something without really understanding it will not be able to respond correctly when asked a question that is worded differently from how it was memorized.

Now I would like to undo the myth behind what is normally understood as photographic memory. Supposedly this is something that people possess, and with this they can magically, in the blink of an eye, take photographs of everything they see—for example, of a room—and retain a sharp image of this information in their memory as if they were really seeing it again. This is a completely false idea and nobody can do this, myself included, of course.

It is true that we all have the ability to create or remember small photographic flashes. Although these only last a few tenths of a second in our memory, they can be developed with training. These make up the eidetic memory.

In any case, the strongest memories are those based on images, and even stronger if they are composed of moving images, which I call mental video. This is, without a doubt, the greatest weapon that all human beings possess not only for memorizing, but also for developing the ability to read quickly. For example, think about how well we remember information we watch on our home video or DVD. This is due to the fact that we are seeing these images in reality. So, being able to force the appearance of these mental images increases our reading speed, as well as our memorization speed, by leaps and bounds.

The rest of our senses can also help us memorize information, but these are really much less effective. Continuing with these senses and in order of importance, in second place we would find memory that works through hearing, which is called Aural, memory that we use very often every day and that allows us, for example, to memorize and remember a song.

Notice that in the first place we memorize, and then later we remember, which logically means that we cannot remember anything that we haven’t previously memorized. Sometimes it can be difficult to remember something that we have already memorized due to certain subconscious censorship mechanisms that we have. These are really defense mechanisms that our mind uses from time to time (for some people, more often than they would like).

• TASTE. This is self-explanatory. Who can’t remember the flavor of their favorite food? Especially when they are eating it again.

• OLFACTORY. Thanks to our sense of smell we can memorize and remember odors.

• TACTILE. Remembering sensations we perceive through our skin by touching something.

Finally there is another interesting type of memory that we call kinesthetic. This allows us to carry out all sorts of actions and muscular movements that we have already assimilated through inertia and unconsciously (for example, walking, writing, or driving an automobile).

It is very important for students who have to take practical exams to realize that the best way to develop this type of memory, kinesthetic memory, is precisely by practicing these activities over and over. Our goal here is to make them automatic, with little thought about what one is doing. And, why not have fun with it!

Memorizable Information

We have begun to discover the exciting world of the memory. But, what type of information is memorizable? What can we really memorize?

We can only memorize one thing: facts. Facts are the components of information, and the most simple information could be made up of only one fact. For example, if I say:

The capital of France is Paris.

Here I am showing you a basic piece of information, composed of only one fact. I am giving you one fact about France, which is that its capital is Paris.

This information is composed of two parts (or focal points) which are France and Paris; and capital is a link between them. The link is the relation between the second focal point (Paris) and the first one (France). In this case, and as I have expressed this sentence, France is the source or origin of the fact (it is written first) and thus represents the starting focal point. Paris is the end or destination focal point of the fact.

Although it may seem the same, it wouldn’t be the same to memorize the facts backward, changing the focal points and saying: Paris is the capital of France. The starting focal point should always be the one that is of greater magnitude, and in this case France is greater with respect to Paris.

Therefore, the correct way to put these facts in order so as to memorize them better would be:

France, capital: Paris

This type of fact is really a pure fact (we will look at this more). Don’t forget from now on that in order to memorize pure facts, it is always better to make the focal point of greater magnitude or greater importance, the source or origin of the fact. In this case, and as I mentioned before, it is evident that France is of greater magnitude because it is a nation and Paris is only a city. Therefore, whenever it is possible, we should memorize the information in the correct order:

Major focal point, link, minor focal point.

Observe and compare this order with the one we mentioned at the beginning when we said, The capital of France is Paris. In this case, the information is more dif ficult to memorize because it appears as such:

Link (capital), major focal point (France), minor focal point (Paris).

If the order of the facts had been Paris is the capital of France, we would have seen the minor focal point first, Paris as the starting point of the facts, and at the same time France as the end point. In this case, it would be better to change the order as I have explained before.

This may seem a bit complicated, or maybe strange, but it is necessary for you to understand it well and familiarize yourself with this in order to successfully continue on through the book.

NOTE: KEEP IN MIND THAT THE USAGE OF THE TERMS THAT YOU HAVE READ (FOCAL POINTS, LINKS, ETC.) AS WELL AS THOSE YOU WILL READ THROUGHOUT THE REST OF THE BOOK (PURE FACTS, SEQUENTIAL FACTS...), ARE MY OWN COINED PHRASES, WHICH CAME ABOUT AS A RESULT OF PROFOUND INVESTIGATION. As THEY MAY BE NEW TO YOU, IT IS NORMAL FOR THEM TO SEEM COMPLICATED AT FIRST. HOWEVER, THEY ARE VERY LOGICAL AND WELL-FOUNDED, AND YOU WILL SOON FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH THEM AND FEEL COMFORTABLE WORKING WITH THEM.

Types of Memorizable Facts

When a student starts to read a text, anyone can easily see that the information or facts that they are perceiving can be of two types:

1.Pure Facts

These are the facts in which there is no existing relationship, nor logic between both focal points.

For example, if a person wants to memorize all of the capitals of the world, he or she will see that no logical relationship exists between a capital and its country.

Why is the capital of China called Peking? What type of logic is there to explain that? It really could be any other city, right?

I could never deduce the name of any given country’s capital by only using reason. If I repeat the name over and over I may be able to retain it for a few hours, or at most and in the best case, for a few days (very few days). However, I would finally and undoubtedly end up forgetting it or even worse, confusing the names of the capitals of dif ferent countries.

The facts whose focal points are not related in any logical nor predictable way, which we have decided to call pure facts (because they are purely and plainly just that: just facts), are predominately found on exams and tests.

They are also the most difficult to memorize for anyone who doesn’t know how to do so. Just the opposite of what will happen to us.

We can unequivocally say that the density of pure facts found in one topic—that is to say, the quantity or proportion of them—will determine how difficult it is for a student (who doesn’t know how to study) to memorize and retain the given subject matter.

Remember that for now, we are only testing the waters. For now, I am simply presenting these pure facts to you, but we still don’t know how to memorize them. That will come later.

Let’s take a look at the second and last type of facts we will find while we are reading, while we are studying, or while we are watching a documentary or a film on the television at home.

2.Sequential Facts

Among these there is a more or less logical and predictable interconnection, given that they follow a certain sequence, which can sometimes be easily rationalized or foreseen—hence the name-sequential.

For students, these facts make up the skeleton of all of the information in each subject matter. However, they don’t delve into them too deeply, nor do they provide many details.

There’s nothing better than a good example to help you understand what we are saying: Let’s suppose that we want to memorize the movie (or the plot of) Titanic, whose information is equivalent to that of quite a large book.

I’m giving such a familiar example so that the reader can most clearly understand what we are talking about and follow along easier.

In this film numerous logical facts appear, which fall into more or less predictable sequences. To keep the terminology similar to this word, I have decided to call these sequential facts.

Among these sequential facts, some more logical than others, (some of them we can memorize easily because they are really predictable), we can say that in the first place, and at the beginning of the movie, the passengers should board the ship, and then, after a luxurious journey, the ship crashes with an iceberg (for example, logically, it couldn’t crash with the iceberg before the journey began). After the crash, and only after it, is when water floods into the hull. Then the boat will sink, the survivors will be rescued, and so on.

Who can’t figure out or predict the logical order of these sequences?

It is difficult to get confused or lost with these sequential facts because they allow us to easily infer the order of the film.

In other words: Sequential facts are those that we are able to tell to a friend when we leave the theater, after having seen a movie. In other words, all of the information in the film that has been unconsciously recorded in our memory.

As I said before, these facts make up the skeleton of the information to be memorized (or already memorized)—in this case, that of the aforementioned film. They will not give us the more intricate details, nor those that go beyond logic or reason. Nor will it give us arbitrary details, like the distance that the ship has gone or the number of victims caused by the shipwreck.

On the other hand, however, there are also many pure facts in the movie, which are not logical nor related with each other. For example, the fact that the ship that came to rescue the fading ship called Carpathia, the fact that the Titanic sank on April 14, 1912, or that it was an Irish ship (it could have been English, or from any other country, right?), etc.

These are examples of pure facts, or those that lack all logic and those from which we cannot deduce nor predict any other information. On the contrary, with sequential facts we can deduce that the ship can sink only after having crashed with the iceberg, and not before.

Among the most common pure facts that we find are dates, numbers, measurements, amounts, and so on. These facts can only be memorized by using a technique that employs far-fetched or improbable actions or associations, but students all too often use the ineffective technique of repetition to memorize.

The repetition technique for memorizing pure facts leaves a lot to be desired. We could get to an exam, for example, without being able to remember if the aforementioned ship sunk on April 14, 1912, or on April 12, 1914.

This type of terrible doubt could come up despite having reviewed and repeated the date over and over again, while memorizing the subject matter, and despite having memorized it by heart. What student hasn’t experienced doubts like this?

As we can see, using the repetition technique for memorizing pure facts also proves to be quite a drag. It’s the same as repeating a date over and over again as if we were parrots, and as if that weren’t enough, we could end up drawing a blank on tests or any time we try to recall the information.

Further ahead I will explain how to effectively memorize these types of facts in detail and with examples, which is through making far-fetched associations.

Now, tell me, what happens when we see a film once or twice? We can memorize the majority of it easily and without much effort, can’t