Inner Awareness Can our mind control electrical devices? By Jaime T.

Licauco Philippine Daily Inquirer 11:24 pm | Monday, April 29th, 2013 27 249 11 A RECENT item in Yahoo News caught my attention. It says that Samsung is doing r esearch that would allow users to control a computing device with their thoughts alone. It is a project at the company s Emerging Technology Lab, in partnership with Rooz beh Jafari, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University o f Texas. According to the news, the research has already enabled test subjects to launch a pps on a tablet, pick a song on a playlist or a contact from an address book, an d power up the device. MIT Technology Review was the first to report the revolutionary project. In order to control the tablet with their minds alone, users need to wear a cap full of EEG (electro encephalograph) electrodes on the head. Shades of an X-men movie, isn t it? The idea of the human mind controlling electronic devices is not really new. Abo ut 15 years ago, Associated Press reported that Australian scientists had discov ered how to use brain waves to switch on a light bulb. According to this item, by putting two electrodes on the skull and connecting the m to an amplifier and transmitter, a person can use the minute voltage in their brainwaves to control electric devices. The Australian scientists explained that they were not controlling thought pattern, merely the brainwaves. Signals Health Science Professor Ashley Craig at Sydney s University of Technology said th at what they have done is to identify signals within the brain which everyone can control, and devised some novel technology to pick up and analyze those signals . He believes that once analyzed, these signals can be made to activate any device such as a household appliance. The idea of an electrical device being controlled by the mind is not really farfetched or an impossible process. Even prior to the release or the above news it em, I was in former Soviet Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), where I met Dr. Zdeneck Rejdak, head of the Psychotronics Society in Prague, and he told me that they have developed a motor called the Pavlita Motor, which could be turned on or off with the mind. Unfortunately, I was not able to see this motor, as I had only two days in Pragu e. I had to get back immediately to Munich, Germany, for a talk I was scheduled to give at the Max Planck Institute about the Philippine phenomenon of Psychic S urgery. Reading about these amazingly rapid technological developments reminds me of how Western comic book writers had anticipated many inventions, long before they be came a reality. For example, Dick Tracy had a wristwatch that functioned as a radio transmitter and receiver. Now, there is in the works a cellphone as small as a wristwatch, t he least function of which is to tell the time.

In the early science fiction comics Flash Gordon, there was a machine that could t ransmit information from distant places through a series of connected tubes. Thi s was the forerunner of the fax machine, long before it became a reality many, m any years later. In the same comic-book story, Flash Gordon had a backpack type of rocket that en abled him to fly upwards. The same idea was developed by the Americans and used during the Vietnam War to enable soldiers to hurdle high barriers and even fly b ehind enemy lines. So, what else is next a brain transplant? Who knows? On May 1, Art of Living Foundation founder, the world-renowned Sri Sri Ravi Shan kar, will speak on The Secret to Health and Happiness, an Evening of Wisdom and Meditation, 6-8 p.m. at AIM, 123 Paseo de Roxas, Makati City. Fee is only P300. F or more details, contact 0917-8408833 or 0917-8484898. See you there! The next Practical Mind Dynamics Seminar is on May 11-12, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., at Rm . 308 Prince Plaza I, Legazpi St., Greenbelt, Makati. For more details call tel. 8107245, 8159890, 0908-3537885 or 0929-4187011; e-mail jaimetlicauco@yahoo.com ; visit www.jimmylicauco.com. Read more: http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/101129/can-our-mind-control-electricaldevices#ixzz2jYCX6Wlg Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook