Aphantasia

As a person with aphantasia I often "know"[intuition] things, but I can't easily describe them because there is no visualization. I am 76 but only became aware of my aphantasia two years ago.

Behind many visualizations are "concepts", which is a right hemisphere subconscious view of a visual fact known by the left hemisphere. Most people don't go deeper than the visual awareness of the left hemisphere, because they don't need to. They can set goals, make plans to achieve those goals and then visualize the outcome. The problem with using awareness and the left hemisphere is that it uses words processing at 40 bits per second. Concepts can be processed sub-consciously using electrical energy at 40 million bits per second.

The work of Iain McGilchrist in his 2021 book "The Matter with Things" explains so many concepts which lie behind the physical world of time, space and matter.

I have only realized that for all of my life I have been using concepts to develop ideas and solve issues. The separate concepts are linked in the "mind-wandering" state or when entering sleep at the theta level, resulting in solutions to problems when the mind-wandering ends or in the awaken state.

For me the greatest period of developing concepts was at 57 years of age when my business partner developed a product to be fitted to an air compressor that would reduce global electricity consumption by 3%.

The task was to work out how to set up IP [Intellectual Property protection], finance, manufacturing, marketing, distribution and after sales service throughout Europe and the USA. I came up with the concept of outsourcing everything. The process was to gather information, understand the concepts behind the information, then pass it over to the subconscious mind using mind-wandering to come up with the solution. This process took place between 2006-2009 and involved high levels of hypo-mania and hyper-focus. It cuts out the process of comparative thinking, which is a slow left hemisphere process. See below.

During the 2006-9 period the business won various Australian awards, including the Australia Export Award for the Best Small Business in Australia. The business was valued at $18 Million in 2008 before it crashed during the global financial crisis of 2009. This process was a high risk strategy and it taught me that it mainly works in a positive environment and not in a crisis.