The Transcendence Institute

The human species is a deeply social one. You exist, to be sure, in a world made of objects and devices and weather and tools, a very physical world. However in a very real sense, you exist primarily in a world made up of other people. To attain happiness, to achieve your goals, even just to stay alive, you depend on the people around you. All those people also exist in a world made up of each other, and of you.

As such, we all spend much of our lives influencing and being influenced by each other. Most of this influence is a good thing, we teach each other valuable lessons, cooperate on difficult tasks, band together for reasons personal, political and practical. Each one of us a link in the massive human social network. Each influencing the other beings we come into contact with. Evolution has selected us for these tasks. Both for being easily influenced, so that we can learn from and be helped by others, and for influencing others so that we can teach others and profit from cooperation.

This month we’ll be talking about ways you can learn to more effectively influence others, hopefully for mutual beneficial gain.

Gut Thinking

People are deeply emotional beings, who do most of their thinking with their gut. Not in a literal sense, of course. The gut is good for digestion but doesn’t do any actual thinking at all. However the gut is also a metaphor for an emotional sizing up, a rough heuristic. Your emotions tell you though what can feel like your gut how you respond to a problem, a suggestion, a person, a sight, a sound, a taste, indeed just about anything. People trust their guts, and so they should. These emotional responses have evolved over millions of years, longer than we have been human, to rapidly assess and evaluate things and drive the actions of creatures large and small. Higher level conscious rational thought is much slower, and often even less reliable, certainly requires training and time and deep introspection to master.

All of which means that if you wish to influence others, your appeals to them need to be directed towards the systems in their brain which they will actually use to judge whether or not to act on and be influenced by those appeals. You need to direct your attempts not at a person’s best interest, not at their calculating economic models, but at their gut. To influence another being you need to change the way they feel, not just explain their mis-logic or irrational steps. Indeed, trying to show how somebody is wrong will likely be counter-productive, it will make them feel defensive, get their gander up, fill them with negative emotions making them want to withdraw from you not advance towards your coalition.

Association Matrix

As we’ve mentioned many times in the Transcendence Institute literature, human minds can be modeled very effectively as association machines. Your task isn’t to explain why your desired outcome is the most rational, or the most cost effective, or the most useful or even the most sane. It’s to associate your desired outcome with positive emotions which will make those you seek to influence feel good about that outcome, to want it with their guts. To make them feel good about you, personally to feel as though you are on their side, to want to please you because it will feel emotionally satisfying for them to do so.

Next week we’ll discuss some ways to lead the emotions of the people you come into contact with. How to try to produce these positive emotional associations in their minds.

Despite all we have said above, human beings aren’t just emotional association devices. They also do have a thinking side, and once you have made them want to cooperate with you, you’ll likely need to give them reasons for doing so. Perhaps even logically convince them. In week three of this month we’ll talk a little about argumentation. An argument can only augment the emotional appeals and associations you’ll have already given to those you wish to cooperate with, those things which they will actually use to make up their minds. However, it can also provide a forum for presenting those subtle emotional appeals and certainly can sway a person who’s feeling equally good about two courses of action.

Finally, in the fourth week this month we’ll present a guided lucid dream in which you’ll practice these emotional skills and argumentation techniques, practising them to improve your abilities and further grow to understand them. In a gut-thinking sense, rather than a linguistic one.

Last week we pointed out that that effective persuasion is directed primarily at the emotions of the people that you may be trying to influence. The important thing is to make those people feel good about your desired course of action. The task isn’t to prove the logical necessity of your desired outcome, nor even it’s likelihood to produce a mutually beneficial outcome. The task is to build associative networks in their brains which will generate positive emotions when pondering your desired outcome, and perhaps negative ones when pondering the alternatives.

Luckily, assuming your intentions are honest, all that’s really needed to do this is to tell the truth, and more importantly to tell it in an emotionally evocative way.

Rapport

Before you can really effectively emotionally influence another human being, you need to connect with them on an emotional level, to build rapport. If you wish to lead someone towards your way of thinking, first you must go and meet them at their own position in order to take them through the steps that lead them to yours. A big bonus of doing that is that, in order to build rapport, you need to first understand their position, their emotional responses to the issue at hand. This is useful because you may not be right, and understanding someone else’s position could let them influence you, helping you to correct any errors in your own judgement.

This is key. If you wish to influence someone, you must be prepared to be influenced by them in return. Prepared to reach a compromise, to accept a solution which satisfies both of your desires, makes you both feel good. And why wouldn’t you? To wish otherwise isn’t to influence, it’s to control. To take away the freedom of another. Nobody will, or should, cooperate with someone who wishes to take away their freedom.

Your aim is to build a relationship of understanding, harmony, to put your mind where their mind is, to synch your thoughts and emotions. Not necessarily to agree, but certainly to understand each other’s point of view. Only when you have reached this common ground will you be able to lead from there towards the areas in which you both agree, the areas in which your influence will be helpful.

How do you build this mutual understanding?

Obviously you need to listen carefully, and to watch and allow yourself to respond to the emotional cues in their body language. To strive to understand their position, their way of seeing the world. To see, and indeed inhabit, their echo of the universe, their model of the world.

Mirroring

When two people start to build that rapport, that syncing of their emotional states, they mimic each other. Their body language, their gestures, even their blink and breathing rates, begin to match.

Some have suggested that simply consciously copying another will help to convince them that you have reached this rapport, but of course if it’s a deliberate ploy, a sham, then the rapport can’t be genuine. Being aware of how much you are mirroring your conversational partner’s body language will be a useful cue to how well you’re doing at achieving genuine rapport, but moving your body in the same pattern as your partner isn’t enough, you need to move your brain in synch with them too. To vicariously experience the emotions which led them move in that way, to feel along side them. Pulling the same faces as them is not enough, you need to feel the same emotions as them and allow that to subconsciously direct your face just as their emotions are subconsciously directing theirs.

Practice

Once again, the only way to really gain this skill is to practice it, often. Yes, pay attention to how your bodies are moving, the expression on your faces, the closeness of your movements, but see this not as the goal itself but only as an indicator of how well your emotional responses are matching. The goal, during your meeting of minds, is to allow your minds to meet, not just to pretend that you’re doing so.

You will attempt to practice this to some degree in your sleep, in lucid dreams, but this will only really build the associations which will remind you to do so in waking life. The minds of dream-people are automatically synced to yours, they are produced by your mind, to learn the skill in waking life it will need to be practised in waking life. You’ll learn to pay closer attention to these issues, which should help you improve.

Leading the way

Once you have established rapport with someone, truly synced your minds and are living inside a kind of mutual echo of the universe, responding emotionally in the same way that they are, you’ll need to start to copy the associative networks that lead you to believe your course of action is the right one over into their head.

Obviously to do this all you need to do is to speak the truth, to point out the emotional connections which are in your map that lead you to believe that your preferred course of action is the best one. When your minds are synchronised, when you are both living in a shared echo, a mutual emotional map of the universe, these emotional connections should be shared by whoever you’re trying to convince.

Your use of language will be important here, you’ll need to use emotionally evocative words, describe in detail the relevent issues which prompt emotional responses in you, and describe those emotions in grand, eloquent, lucid terms too.

The aim now is to activate and build neural connections between those issues and the emotions which you genuinely feel. To ensure that every time those issues come up in future, those you have influenced will feel the same way that you do about them. Repetition works. Vivid and visual imagery helps. Your conversation shouldn’t be explicitly trying to force anyone into believing the same as you, but associating the issues with the same emotional responses as you, yourself, have. If you are in rapport, their connections between those issues and your emotions will be reinforced. Repetition works. Don’t be afraid to re-state this connection, using different and ever more descriptive language. Try to actually feel those emotions yourself, so that the rapport you have built will encourage your partner to feel those same emotions themselves. Let the emotions show in your face, in your posture, in your language, feel them in your heart.

Don’t expect to win someone over in a single conversation. These emotional associations can take time to grow. They will grow when your partner dreams, after your conversation. They will grow over time. Repetition works. They will grow as you boost those associations over time, over multiple encounters. Persuasion can be a slow process. It takes time.

The aim of persuasion isn’t to get your way, completely, totally, 100% of the time. The aim is to grow closer together. If positions are entrenched, it’s to find an acceptable compromise. You should want to be influenced as much as you influence. To find a solution which makes everyone satisfied. Emotionally happy. The best solution isn’t always the one you first advocate, and you should certainly be prepared to seek out new solutions. You want to align you aims, your desires, more than you want to impose your will.

Argument

These are the methods which will actually win you favour, which will actually convince and persuade. However the format of your conversation, the protocol under which it proceeds, especially if your two positions start out very opposed, will likely be that of an argument. Not a shouting-match, not a fight, but a debate. Next week we’ll discuss how this protocol is structured, how it’s arranged, how it’s constructed. A good argument is beneficial to all parties in that debate.

Last week we discussed the process of influence, how it actually works, what makes one person affect another person’s behaviour, the emotional connections and leading emotional associations which make two people more alike, more ready and willing and likely to agree.

If disagreement is noted, made conscious, your best chance to influence someone has already gone. As soon as the rational mind of those you wish to influence is pointed at the real crux of a disparity in your collective intended course of action, you will find yourself in an argument, and attitudes will tend to become entrenched.

You do not want this. You want to influence people before they become aware of their own position. You want to share with them with your values, your emotional associations, your point of view, so that you both already, naturally, come to the same conclusions as soon as you think about them.

However, an argument can still be ‘won’, for whatever that’s worth in terms of actually influencing people. An argument can still convince. Perhaps better than this, it can also be a forum which gives you time and opportunity to present different associations, evoke emotional references, that will actually change the mind of those you argue with.

Sometimes, people will just be arguing to find a reason to do whatever they already have decided to do. You can certainly provide that.

What is an argument

For two people to argue, they must have some things in common. They must each agree that to convince is better than simply to force a course of action. They must each agree on a language. They must each have a similar enough model of the universe inside their skulls that they can understand each other.

Indeed, the entire object of an argument is to find the disagreement between two peoples’ (or groups’) model of the world, their expectation, their motivation, their understanding, then to test which side in the argument is right. In an ideal world, someone would find the flaw in your argument, teach you to refine your model of the universe for the better, and you would agree to their course of action. Because they are right and the whole point of an argument is to determine who’s right.

The point of an argument must be to be convinced as much as it is to convince. Without that you are betraying the process of arguing itself. Unless you can agree on that, you are not properly arguing, there is no point unless you both agree you are not intractable.

How is an argument constructed

An argument is a way to substantiate a claim. This claim may be a proposed action, such as “We should buy a house” or “This country should go to war”. Alternatively it may just be a state of mind which you wish another to adopt like “The weather is inclement” or “West Bromwich has the best football team in the country.”

This claim is disputed among the people involved in the argument. If it not disputed, all sides have already ‘won’ the argument.

When an claim is disputed, an argument is constructed to attempt to validate that claim. That is, in order validate a claim, you construct an argument for it. To do this you break the claim down into premises.

These premises should ideally be claims which are undisputed between the two disputants. An ideal premiss is undeniable.

The premises are connected by a warrant. The “warrant” is a chain of reasoning which all disputants agree is steadfast. If the parties agree with this chain of reasoning, then they agree that if the premises are valid, then the claim is valid. As with the premises, you ideally wish to find warrants which all disputants will agree are valid.

If the warrant is undisputed, and all the premises are undisputed, then by definition the two parties agree.

If not, then each of the premises can be examined in turn. Many of these will also be undisputed of course, but eventually one of them may be found to be the source of disagreement. This premiss can then, in itself, become a disputed claim and so the subject of a sub-argument. The arguers may then proceed with the same procedure over this new, smaller, disputed claim.

In the event that all the premiss are agreed, but still the claim is disputed, it must be that the warrant is contested. Then, a whole new argument will branch off recursively which attempts to validate the claim that the warrant is in fact true.

In this way, the disputants hope to find the premiss, warrant or claim which most effectively conveys the dispute, and to find a way to resolve it through recursively drilling down to find where one of the disputant’s model of the universe contradicts reality and so help the one who’s wrong to change and become more right.

Example

This is all very abstract, but hopefully we can make it more clear with an example.

Imagine that you have made the claim that West Brom are the best football team ever, and that someone disputes this claim. You wish to form an argument which could convince them that you are, in fact, right and that in the real world West Brom are the best football team ever.

Obviously the “Claim” here is that the team refered to as “West Brom” are superior to any other team. This will need to be backed up with premises. As mentioned, ideally these will be statements of fact, things which are uncontestable. We might chose such premises as “West Brom scored the most points in the league this season” and “West Brom’s goalie let in the least goals of anyone in all the matches“. Obviously these two premises may be contested, but it should be a simple matter to look up the results and so it’s likely that, if true, they can be agreed by both parties to the argument.

Now of course it could be that your premises are invalid. That another goal keeper let in less goals than the West Brom keeper, say. This would then make this premiss the subject of a new argument. You and your disputant would need to argue over the truth of that claim.

However, even if all premises are agreed, there is more to the argument than this. There is also the warrant. The warrant, in this case, is the chain of reasoning which implies that “The team which wins the most points in the league, and who’s goal keeper lets in the least goals, is the best team”

Even with the premises agreed to, the warrant itself is a potential source of contention. Your disputant may say, “No, the best team is in fact the one which won the cup, not the league”, thus challenging your case by challenging your warrant.

The process of becoming good at argument, at debate, at essentially following these rules to best advantage, is beyond the scope of this course, but is essentially one of practice. Reading, learning, watching others argue, these will all improve your ability to home in on the point of disagreement between your map of reality and your disputant’s, and then find premises and warrants to show your side correct. We certainly encourage you to build this skill.

Remember Emotion

Although we’ve gone into some detail to describe the format in which an argument takes place, the logical path behind it, it’s worth remembering that this is a tiny fraction of the actual process of influence. Most influence is still affected not by the logical necessity addressed to the conscious brain, but by the processes we mentioned last week; Emotional significance, gut-feeling, excitement or fear.

This process is a game, a forum for us to play in, a logically undeniable contest but it does not actually convince people. At least not very often. There are always reasons to contest claims, to dispute warrants, to doubt premises. When constructing your case, unless you’re arguing against some sci-fi robot, a cyborg from the future, you should likely pay more attention to the emotional associations that you make than trying to find actual sources of disagreement. It’s changing those emotional associations which will actually influence people, not the person who ‘won’ a logical argument.

This month’s guided meditation is once again designed to be used in that hypnogogic lucid dream state first thing in the morning, to be set as an alarm clock to slowly and gently bring you to sleeping consciousness, to a full lucid dream.

The first minute or so, as usual, will slowly fade to an audible volume, smoothly helping you to notice that you are dreaming, and that you can take control of your dream, become fully lucid yet remaining asleep.

Remembering that the way to influence another is through syncing your emotional responses, putting you both into a common frame of mind, a common echo of the universe, you will then begin practising the skill of achieving that shared bond. Of course, since you are dreaming, it should be relatively easy to achieve this shared state of mind with anyone in your dream since they are, in fact, already sharing your mind. They are created by your mind within the dream. However, your brain is complex enough to simulate the experience fairly well. You’ll be encouraged to note how it feels to be slowly moving into that duel consciousness, the state in which you can be most easily influenced, and in which you can influence in return.

You’ll take special note of the emotional impressions formed as you grow towards a state of rapport, as the dream is filled with suggestions that you will become better at this task, that you’ll practice is more often and achieve better results in the waking world.

After a few minutes, when you have slipped into a state of shared conscious, you will begin to lead your dream partner, to tell the stories which have led you into your own personal view, to share the emotional experiences that those events had on you, to try and get them to share those emotional experiences and so affect their brain in the same ways that yours has been affected. Always remembering to check, to see that the rapport hasn’t broken and that your dream partner is in fact following you into these new emotional territories.

This section of the dream, too, is loaded with suggestions that you are becoming more skilled, more advanced, more transcended. That you will be able to perform this task more skilfully during the day after you have awoken.

Finally, you’ll spend a minute or two constructing an argument, breaking your claims down into premises backed by warrants, and learning to load these claims with emotional connections which reinforce the connections you have already given through your rapport with your dream partner.

You’ll fix these feelings, the way it feels from the inside to build a connection with another person, into your mind ready to ponder them once you awake.

Hopefully, once you awake, you’ll ponder those feelings as you do your morning ablutions, as you prepare for the day ahead.

Guided Meditation File 23 – Bio-Programming – Influence Backing Music “Shaolin” By DJ Inva