| Beneath the Threshold of Perception
with Eldon Taylor, Ph.D
by Paula Peterson . Author of several books including Thinking without Thinking: Who's in Control of Your Mind?, Eldon Taylor's pioneering work and breakthrough technology have been cited in Newsweek and other national press sources. Here, he talks with us about subliminal sound: what it is, how it is created, and the effect that information heard subliminally has upon our mind and emotions.
Paula: What brought you to studying subliminal information processing?
Eldon: I started out in law enforcement. My upbringing had been blue-collar. In World War II, my father actually turned down a field commission because of his hard-working, blue-collar, Teddy Roosevelt-style ethic.
So as a young man, I was like my father: angry, hostile, aggressive, and bigoted. I found myself in law enforcement because that was a marvelous way to sublimate that anger in a socially acceptable way. I carried a gun, and was a practicing criminalist in the state prison system, specializing in physical security, lie detection, forensic hypnosis, and intelligence.
During that time, I came across subliminal information processing in a study done by the Los Angeles Police Department, designed around a terrorist-abduction theme. And the bottom line was, I did not believe that processing information without conscious awareness could influence someone in the way that was claimed, so I wanted to do hard research.
In those cynical days, I didn't believe there was any such thing as rehabilitation. And since I was known for having that type of attitude, doors opened for me when I approached the Utah State Prison authorities about conducting a study for rehabilitation using subliminal information processing. The psycholgists and the custodial people were both happy to have this done.
This experience completely changed my life.
My epiphany really came when I realized that the same basic mechanism underlying the inmates' justifications operated in me. Blaming others and society for everything that went wrong in their own lives was one of the main viewpoints we were trying to correct. And in seeing this, I also saw that my own anger, hostility, and blame were tying me up just as effectively they were tying up the inmate population.
As long as we can blame, we do not need to take responsibility. Like the prisoners in our study, I had literally disenfranchised myself from all that is available to the self-responsible.
And as I worked with subliminal technology, the first thing I realized clinically was that we literally are what we think. We experience exactly what we expect to experience.
Paula: What is a subliminal message and how can it influence behavior?
Eldon: Subliminal perception refers to the processing of stimuli too weak in intensity or too brief in duration to be identified consciously. The term "unconscious perception" is used to describe all cases when responses are governed by stimuli of which the recipient is unaware, while "subliminal perception" is reserved for those cases where the stimulus is below some independently determined threshold. The absolute threshold is defined as the intensity at which a particular sound is just barely discernable from silence on a given percentage of trials.
Investigation into the effects of subliminal influence on behavior and physiological response dates back to the 19th century. The research demonstrates that we do respond to what psychologists term "subliminal perception." In other words, we can respond to events without consciously noticing and remembering them.
And we need to be able to respond in this way. We could not even stand up, let alone walk, if we had to consciously perceive, remember, and respond to all the necessary information of balance, pressure, muscular contractions, relaxations, and visceral sensation that are required in order to perform these tasks.
Paula: There seems to be a lot of controversy regarding use of sublimininals. Would you talk about this?
Eldon: It's true, research into subliminal auditory stimuli has been filled with controversy and debate. However, considerable evidence is available to support the assertion that subliminal auditory stimuli are capable of inducing behavioral and physiological change. Subliminal perception is a real phenomenon. Questions relating to the kinds and levels of effects that can be obtained by this method remain to be resolved.
But research does prove that auditory suggestions of an intensity below the recognition threshold influence physiological responses. In tests, activating suggestions have induced higher heart rate and skin-conductance levels than when no suggestions were present, or when deactivating suggestions had been given.
So the evidence thus far supports the assertion that subliminal auditory stimulus has the potential to affect physiological processes. The degree to which this is true is still unknown because of the limited scope of the research that's been conducted.
Paula: How are auditory subliminals generated?
Not many people know about this. For a message to be subliminal, its sound level needs to vary between 50 and 60 decibels below the sound level of the primary carrier: music or nature sounds, for example.
Sounds that low would be inaudible �?even subliminally �?over the average sound system. So in the prison study we did something called "dichotic masking." This means delivering two different sets of messages simultaneously. One set is aimed at the left hemisphere, and one is aimed at the right. The messages are divided according to the hemisphere's task orientation.
Paula: What kind of subliminals worked best for the prison inmates?
Eldon: At the time, I asked myself, "What do I say to these inmates? What kind of affirmations do I put on here as a subliminal message?"
Psychology research circa 1980 basically talked about replicating Lloyd Silverman's work at New York State University, where he used two symbiotic messages: "Mommy and I are one," and "It's okay to do better than Daddy."
He used those messages for everything from improving dart-throwing abilities to ameliorating schizophrenic pathology. But he always presented these messages in a visual environment, which is entirely different from an audio environment.
So what was I going to give these prison inmates? Was I going to give them the "Mommy" message? I didn't think that would cut it.
After we tested everybody who'd volunteered to participate, we learned that we had two common denominators among the test population: high scores in self-alienation, and high scores in social alienation.
The scores in self-alienation were no surprise. Self-alienation is basically low self-esteem. The self-alienation adaptation was, "I'm going to do it to you because look at what you've done to me. I ain't no good and you ain't no good either."
However, when we briefed the inmates that showed up with high social alienation, we discovered a basic belief structure that went something like this: "Daddy was an alcoholic, Mommy was a prostitute, and the neighbor boy hung hell on me when I was eight years old. If that happened to you, you'd be in here, too."
The basic point is that the social-alienation group had displaced responsibility by blaming everything that had happened in their lives on someone or something else, including society. And as I said, I also realized that this dynamic was operating in me, as well. So how could we undo this?
The answer seemed to lie in the area of forgiveness. Many of my colleagues, peers, and others were doubtful about this, claiming that it sounded like religion. This was long before so many magazine articles were talking about the power of forgiveness. But our focus was, "How do I stop blaming?" And the only answer was, "By forgiving."
Paula: How did you put that into a subliminal process?
Eldon: We created three messages: One, "I forgive myself." Two, "I forgive all others." Three, "I am forgiven."
Those three messages create self-responsibility and undo your ability to blame someone. If you forgive them, you can't blame them. And you can't forgive yourself without assuming self-responsibility.
The next thing we needed to do was change the mindset of life-sucks-and-then-you-die. Across the board �?whether it was in a prison setting, a hospice center, or a dental facility �?we added the gratitude messages: "I have a gratitude attitude. I am grateful. Life is wonderful."
We built a profile around those two principles: forgiveness and gratitude. And it completely changed the lives of those prison inmates. The prison system was impressed enough to put voluntary sublimininal libraries throughout the system.
Paula: That's amazing. How long does a person need to listen to a subliminal program before its effects are experienced?
Eldon: It varies from person to person, and not everyone fits within the general data.
Let's use the example of a study we ran in Colorado with clinically depressed patients. These were patients who had been under the care of psychologists or psychiatrists for at least a year and had not responded. Some were receiving psychotherapy, psychology talk, or cognitive intervention. Some were receiving drugs. And some were receiving both therapy and drugs. But none of the patients had responded.
We created one subliminal program, and listening to that program for one hour each day was the only difference between the study group and the control gruop. Them we evaluated both groups using the Beck depression scale, and found that every single patient who listened to the subliminal program for seventeen hours �?one hour each day �?experienced a statistically significant decrease in depression symptoms.
We continued to see significant data changes from seventeen hours on out to thirty hours, or thirty days, which was the period of the study.
I still say to use subliminal programs for a minimum of one hour a day every day for thirty days. But we expect some response in seventeen days.
Paula: Can subliminal suggestion cause a person to behave contrary to their nature?
Eldon: The popular notion is that it won't. This notion is sold very hard to a number of people who are opponents to subliminal information processing, some of whom are and have been paid spokespersons for organizations that do a lot of subliminal advertising. They will tell you that subliminal information processing cannot cause you to do something that you would not otherwise do. They claim that subliminal messages are a hoax and a fraud.
If these detractors laugh hard enough, they can get people to go along with them and ignore the hard research.
But from the hard research, including meta-analysis of all of the studies that were recently done by Robert Bornstein, subliminal messages can cause people to do things that they would not otherwise do.
For example, we ran a study at the Bremen University in Germany under Peter Krus, one of the pre-eminent psychologists on the planet. The study was designed to see if it was possible to shift people's value systems.
The question was: Can we move people toward capitalism or communism without their conscious awareness?
And the answer was: Yes, we can do that. The study clearly showed that this value could be shifted either way using subliminal messages.
Paula: How does this work in our society today?
Eldon: People are "messaged" every day. Our society has become outraged over 9/11, and so it should be. But if you look at the problems we have with school violence and many of the reactions that are going on regarding 9/11, they have a common denominator that has become a new cultural ethic.
This new ethic has been sold to all of us. It has been snuck right by us. Most people aren't even aware that they have this ethic. It's certainly not something they would admit to.
This new ethic says: It's okay to get even.
Behind all the rhetoric and passion there is that emerging cultural assumption. This is not a subliminal message in the sense of being "below the level of hearing," but it's subliminal in that it's not being stated so it bypasses conscious evaluation.
Paula: And I notice that it's the same assumption that the socially alienated prison inmates had, right? If you don't like what's going on, blame someone else, something else?
Eldon: Exactly. And the truth is, it's never been okay to get even �?anywhere.
When we did our work on intervention, published papers, and created programs for school violence, we discovered that this one underlying common belief �?"it's okay to get even" �?overcame rational thought and replaced it with the drive to exact punishment.
We need to do what we need to do as a result of 9/11, which is to protect the innocent. That has always been the right use of power, to protect the innocent. But we're getting the message not to do just that. We're being told we need to "get even."
Paula: Could you talk more about the structure of subliminal suggestions?
Eldon: To do this, we need to stop for a minute and look at language semantics, on the one hand, and Jungian "archetypal" information.
Semantics refers to words, as in the affirmation, "I am forgiven." Archetypal information consists of symbols or images that hold the same meaning for all people across all languages and in all cultures. But we don't know what these symbols mean until we experience them. Often, archetypal information and semantics are combined in our dreams.
But most of us construct our conscious, waking lives by talking to ourselves in what's called "a stream of consciousness." We rehearse conversations we've had, thinking about what we could have said, how we could have said it better, what we might have said. Coming up with one-liners. All of these strategies are semantic in nature, and they are hard-wired into the human condition together with what we call the fight-or-flight response. That's the semantic anchoring that's in every one of us, in all languages, as a matter of being human on this planet today.
Paula: What about archetypal strategies. Can you give us an example we can relate to?
Eldon: Sure. You can do this exercise yourself using a simple muscle-testing method.
Have someone stand in front of you and tell him to hold his arm straight out to the side as though flexing the biceps, but not actually doing that, just holding the arm up. Tell him that you're just going to take hold of his wrist and he's going to resist as you pull gently down on it to see how much strength he has. Be sure to say that it's not a contest of strength.
Now, say, "I want you to imagine a grey or brown light entering the top of your head. Imagine really pulling it in." Then pull on the wrist again. You will see that the strength has grown less.
Then say, "I want you to imagine pulling in a pure white light." When you pull down on the wrist this time, you will find that the strength is much greater than it was initially.
That's a simple experiment that demonstrates archetypal information. Grey or brown light versus pure white light have meanings that cross cultural and language boundaries and are the same for all.
It's often like the language of dreams �?and I'm talking about Jungian archetypes here, not the Freudian interpretation of dreams. As we wake from a dream, we have images. But what do they mean? We may not have the meaning, but we know how the dream felt.
There are many archetypal forms of communication that are outside the realm of our ability to linguistically communicate them. Most of these influence the human condition. Among them, geometry is the best way to describe much of the archetypal information.
Einstein, indeed, made it very clear in his writing that he never would have been able to reason if he hadn't been able first to imagine. In our work, it's about bringing reason and imagination together. Whether it's to stop smoking, lose weight, or find a higher power within us and a new purpose, a new path, and a passion for life �?all the semantics that hold those conditions in place exist in languaging.
But what if we also added emotion to the subliminal process?
Because of my interest in this, and because I had a hobby for years in geometry, I noticed a correspondence between mandalas and mantras.
If, for example, you take a picture of the sound of Om, you will find that it's a circle with triangles inside of it. You can see that picture in one of my books. In earlier studies of the pictures of sound, an old turntable was used, covered with a fine, 50-mesh powder, along with a stylus that would vibrate according to the frequency strain on the turn table.
As the turntable revolved, we would get a picture. Handel's Messiah and the Alleluia Chorus gave us a five-pointed star. Is that coincidental? It always gave us a five-pointed star, regardless of who was singing.
The sound of Om always gave us a circle with those triangles on the inside. Looking at Native American mandalas, we see graphics of typical geometry. And when we look at the sound of their dances and songs, we find that same geometry.
Paula: In your opinion, then, could geometry be the master language of the universe?
Eldon: If you take the geometry of an expression and emotion, pump it up, and put it on an audio, say on an FM carrier or extra light frequency, will the brain respond to that language? That's the work we're involved with right now. It may take five or ten years to prove whether it will or not.
Paula: I note that the natural sounds �?wind blowing, water flowing, wind chimes, and so on �?are popular. Can you comment on why many people seem deeply affected by these sounds?
Eldon: The sound of water running produces some really interesting geometry. You can have ocean sounds that will display gorgeous geometry �?but you also can have nature sounds that are discordant. All gardens of worship throughout Japan have running water: waterfalls, fountains, miniature manmade streams. Stones are placed very carefully inside the waters, because each stone will give rise to a different sound.
For years and years, these kinds of ideas have been used in the Orient. Now in the Western world we refer to them as Feng Shui �?meaning, the flow of energy.
Paula: Are nature sounds used in your own subliminal messages?
Eldon: Yes, we use nature sounds in almost everything we do. We have nature sounds along with music, and I'm very careful about the geometry of both. We never use something that is discordant.
Paula: Can it be said that nature sounds call to more of our primitive nature, to a time when we were more attuned to natural forces?
Eldon: I don't think so. Music soothes the savage beast. It's more than just a pat statement. Human beings are very complicated. Of course, we don't have the slightest grasp scientifically.
It's only within the last ten years or so that it's even been legitimate to make these kinds of inquiries into consciousness. Consciousness was thought to be a purely subjective matter. But with the inroads to artificial intelligence and the drives in the computer industry, inquiry into the nature of consciousness has become more legitimate.
The human being responds to multiple stimuli. I'm not sure you can say it responds more favorably to nature than to music or vice versa. They both can be soothing, and they both can be distressing.
Paula: It is well documented that your subliminal programs have greatly improved or even eliminated many serious health conditions, including cancer. Can subliminals help people with brain injuries, or conditions like autism?
Eldon: Anecdotally, I could say that some individuals suffering those conditions have had great success. Some conditions have been completely removed. Terminally-ill cancer patients given less than 30 days to live have survived for many more years and given credit to using subliminal tapes.
But the tapes are not what did it. That should be made really clear. The very best thing that a subliminal can do is to alter negative self-talk and self-limiting beliefs. The very best subliminal tapes can do, therefore, is to serve as an antidote to that chatter. To really fly, you still have to spread your wings.
But human has that power. When the artificial barriers are removed, flying is natural.
Behavior and memory play significant parts in the drama of disease. Subliminal beliefs actually may choose the type of illness one experiences. Conditioning can alter our experience of disease and even our susceptibility. Training the whole mind can increase vitality and promote longevity.
The role of mind as creator dictates that training the mind �?conditioning the mind �?has as much importance as teaching motor skills, reading, writing, math, or any form of higher learning. In our culture, this aspect of the human condition �?the mind as our creator �?has been overlooked, ignored, and even denied.
Paula: I notice that you do work with reverse speech. I feel that this is an amazing pioneering field, that it opens up a whole new arena for psychological research. Can you tell us about this?
Eldon: Of all the things I do, "reverse speech" is probably the most controversial, because of the dichotic masking that we do. "Dichotic masking," as we talked about earlier, involves the delivery of different types of messages to the left and right brain.
Using dichotic masking, we deliver a permissive statement to the left brain. That's because theoretically the left brain is the seat of rational reasoning.
Here's a typical left-brain line of reasoning: You say to me that I am good. I may say, "Good at what?" Or even, "What do you want?" So when I speak to the left hemisphere, instead of saying "You are good," I say, "It's okay to be good."
To the right hemisphere, the seat of the emotions and the unconscious, I give an authoritarian message, "I am good," in reverse speech.
The "reverse speech" is because I believe that this is the way the brain first recognizes language. In the early stages of childen's speech development, there comes a time when they are looking at you, speaking to you, and saying something meaningful, but you can't understand them. Every parent experiences this. And if you record that child's speech, play it in reverse, and slow it down about ten percent, you will get very meaningful language: "Mommy home?" "Daddy play?" I think it is through a mirroring process �?the right hemisphere mirroring the left hemisphere �?that we gain forward speech capability.
In certain religions, "speaking in tongues" becomes meaningful speech when recorded and played backwards. In deep states of religious experience, if one reverts to a tongue that is an earlier language, it would make perfect sense that we learned it in reverse and mirrored it forward.
I believe we will discover �?and it may be down the road yet �?that we develop our speech capabilities by first learning to mirror reverse speech �?just as our brain sees the world upside-down and corrects the image so that we see it right side up, and also just as the brain cannot see dead-center right down the middle and confabulates to fill in the space.
We built our patents largely on that principle, and we now have 109 claims behind the patents to our technology. We have made double-blind studies at major universities �?Stanford, Bremen, Munich, Colorado, Phoenix �?by independent researchers who have demonstrated their effectiveness. Governments, like Mexico, have also studied and demonstrated their effectiveness.
Paula: This is so interesting. In your opinion, why does the brain tend to process language in reverse?
Eldon: When you look at the universe and look at the human condition, it's all mirrored. My right arm is wired to my left brain, my left arm is wired to my right brain, and so forth: Everything is mirrored. There's an old, old teaching that I think of often: "As above, so below." It's all mirrors.
Paula: Is there anything else you would like to say to us in closing?
Eldon: Marvel at yourselves. Remember the awe and passion in exchanging with nature. There is nothing that you can experience that could give you a greater sense of contact, meaning, and purpose in life than coming to the aid of another.
Paula: Thank you so much, Eldon, for spending this time with us and sharing your explorations and amazing visionary work.
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