December 10, 2013

December 10, 2013

Dear Reader, 

 

Because he failed in getting anyone to talk with him and because he knew that he was absolutely not in the business of forcing people talk the way he wanted them to talk, slowly but surely, this author began to leave behind everyone who didn't want to talk with him. It was a painful and dragged-out process, which took many, many years to complete. This process of avoidance, which was stimulated by his discovery, led to an investigation of the communication in which the author tried to find out what constituted for him the perfect setting. 

Individuals from the meditation community the author was involved with at the time did not need to learn a new way of communicating, but rather, needed to recognize and avoid a kind of communication, which, according to this writer, was not meditative. Because he had the ability to distinguish one from the other, this writer kept trying to approach others with his discovery. However, nobody wanted to hear about it. In spite of being rejected, this writer went on to share his experience, which, as time went by, became more coherent. He was sure that he was on the right track, because there were always individuals who reinforced his findings. Whenever this happened, it was a happy and inspiring occasion for all those who were involved. 

Since this writer was approaching people hoping that he would be able to experience conscious communication, he was often unable to avoid unconscious communication. This made him a laughing stock to those, who were okay with forcing others to talk the way they wanted them to talk. Although he noticed again and again that he and others spoke in an unconscious, non-meditative manner, after escaping from such entanglements, he reoriented and went on exploring his meditative communication. As he became experienced in communicating the sound which he believed to be essential to this, his need to escape became less, because he became more accurate in predicting how others would respond to him. Thus, as escape and approach behaviors subsided, avoidance behavior became more important to him. 

   

By immigrating to the United States in 1999, he had left the people he had known and loved for so long but who were unwilling and unable to communicate with him in a SVB manner. His only interest was in conscious communication. He wanted to lay a scientific foundation for conscious spoken communication. He then studied psychology and was confident that scientists would be open to his findings, because they were replicable. However, no one seemed to be interested in doing the experiment with him. No one seemed to even have the time to talk with him, because supposedly they all had more important things to do. They needed to read, write and do research, but they did not want to experiment with conscious spoken communication. 

Although he achieved Masters of Arts and Masters of Science in Clinical Psychology, this writer withdrew from the Ph.D. program with great sadness, because there was no support for his interest. After he had withdrawn from his graduate work, he stumbled upon a book by B.F. Skinner. The book was about an ideal society “Walden Two,” in which people make optimal use of behavioral technology. This writer was vaguely familiar with Skinner's behaviorism, but it never really caught his attention. However, while reading this book everything fell into place. Skinner’s operant conditioning explained to him why he had gone through such an ordeal. He then read Skinner’s autobiography and noticed he had many behaviors in common with him. One of  Skinner’s bold statements was that if psychology in its current state could not acknowledge his lab results, then he would have to create his own science, even if this meant that he would have to remake the entire field. Skinner accomplished this and established the science of human behavior. Behavior is caused by a person's environment, but to this very day, it is completely misunderstood and misrepresented in most educational settings. Yet, the explanatory strength of Skinner’s empirical findings is untarnished. Once this writer quit his graduate study, he delved into Skinner’s works and realized with great delight that he had found in radical behaviorism his theoretical home.