4/14/2005
The other day an esteemed colleague of mine e-mailed me the following test. Take it, you might find it quite interesting.
PSYCHO TEST:Read this question, come up with an answer and then scroll down to the bottom for the result. This is not a trick question. It is as it reads.
The Story:A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met this guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing, so much her dream guy she believed him to be just that! She fell in love with him right there, but never asked for his number, and after much effort, could not find him.
Several days later she killed her sister.
The Question: What is her motive in killing her sister?
Give this some thought before you answer.
NOW SCROLL DOWN.
The Answer:She was hoping that the guy would appear at the funeral again.
If you answered this correctly, you think like a psychopath. This was a test given by a famous American Psychologist used to test if one has the same mentality as a killer. Many arrested serial killers took part in the test and answered the question correctly. If you didn't answer the question correctly good for you.
Now I thought about this for awhile and, before you get the wrong idea, I got it wrong. The best I could come up with was maybe the sister was having an affair with this guy, etc. The “correct” solution never occurred to me. Whoosh, that’s a relief.
But it made me think about another test. It is not from any psychologist or any sanctioned medical body. Just right off the top of my head.
I call it an “Enlightenment Test.”
Take it, if you dare, but only if you can handle the truth.
Enlightenment Test:Read this question, come up with an answer and then scroll down to the bottom for the result just like the last test with a slight difference. The other exercise required you to ponder the question and try to deduce a solution logically. This is more like the old Freudian “Word Association” method. In other words,
DO NOT THINK ABOUT YOUR ANSWER!!!Whatever is the first response that pops in your head IS your answer. Remember, there are NO CORRECT ANSWERS, so if you want your truthful score, rate yourself on your TRUE ANSWER. This is not a trick question. It is as it reads.
The Question:What mental image do you see when you hear the following description?
“So I’m on the subway, minding my own business, when all of a sudden this ChinaMan in a two dollar tie sits down next to me.”
DO NOT THINK!!!!Do you have an image?
If so, scroll down.
You probably came up with one of three answers:1) Did you picture something remotely like this? If so, you have, at least, the building blocks to achieve some sort of Nirvana. Your mind is uninhibited.
Or
2)You didn’t really come up with any kind of picture at all because you were hung up on my use of the archaic term “ChinaMan” to describe a “Man of Asian Descent.” If so, you have a long way to go because you are stuck “in the box.”
Or
3)Although you were told twice in bold type not to, before you scrolled down, you thought about your answer anyway. If this is the case you are even further away because you are more concerned about what people think of you than achieving any kind of spiritual truth.
Ok, before you get too angry or accuse me of racism or idiocy or both, let me explain.
This test is not making any judgments or observations about
your character. It should not be used to gauge
what you think but used as a tool to describe
how you think. The meanest red-neck ignoramus might give the first response while the nicest guy in the world might answer the question with the second or third response. I know what you are thinking. You are asking,
“Am I suggesting that the meanest backward thinking jerk whose idea of a good time is drinking beer for hours on end, childishly ridiculing anybody he thinks deserves it, gratifying any petty physical needs and then finally passing out in a pool of his own urine is closer to enlightenment than a person whose spends their weekends reading to blind kids and helping out at soup kitchens?”
In this case, my answer is yes.
Behavior such as what I described above, or general racist attitudes are
learned, either culturally, through one’s immediate family and surroundings or direct negative experiences. So, logically speaking, that means they can be “unlearned” or taught over. Although, at the moment, they are stuck in what can be described as very “un-cosmopolitan” like schematas, they are, more importantly, processing information straight with no filters which is the first step in understanding life and the universe.
The person who is thinking about the actual terms being used is thinking conventionally and not conceptually which is the bare minimum for achieving transcendence. Let me illustrate my point with the above example. The word “ChinaMan” in the 1800s was a generic, generally accepted, term to describe people who today would be described with the word “Asian.” In the 1950s or 1960s, the word “oriental” would have been used with no one being offended. My guess is in ten or twenty years, people will realize the term “Asian” is patently ridiculous (Mahatma Ghandi was an Asian) and might even be considered insulting. Maybe the scientific term “Mongoloid” will come back into vogue. Who knows?
In other words, I just spent time writing a paragraph on something that had
absolutely nothing to do with what I was originally trying to convey, which was an image of me and an Asian guy sitting side by side on a subway car, for no other reason then a self-imposed barrier that was between what
I was saying and the way
you thought I should have said it. Not only did neither of us grow from that pointless exercise but intellectual energy was actually
wasted on something that is completely meaningless. I would have rather applied that energy to further understanding.
You can fill your head with great paintings, lyrical music, majestic films, insightful literature or beautiful poetry but until you cross the threshold from conventional into conceptual, you are just waiting for someone to tell you what to think. Lenny Bruce understood this.
But enough of this philosophising, I want to get back to my subway story which is actually quite funny:
So after the ChinaMan sits down he starts arguing with this colored guy...
Free Your Mind and the Rest Will Follow
Sixth Army
