Hi Lewis, Thanks for describing that technique, and for the book reference. Going back to your point that "Up to 50% of "vision" is modified by traffic going in the other direction - back to the visual cortex" (and by the way, I'm currently digging into some literature on Systems Thinking, so I liked your suggestion that it should be seen as a loop!)... From my limited reading on neuroscience, I get the impression that the "traffic going in the other direction" is directed by "Attention" - i.e. it's composed of instructions like "Focus on that spot", "Move 20 degrees to the right", "Zoom out," "Check out that movement on the left", and so on. Is that a reasonably accurate impression, from your understanding? (I realise that Attention is a huge nominalisation, and have read that it can be subdivided into endogenous and exogenous - internally or externally generated) I think the point I'm clumsily trying to get to, is that the "traffic going in the other direction" is to a large extent (depending on skills of the user) under our control. I guess this goes back to the point John and Carmen have made, that one of the key characteristics of genius is Focus - the ability to control our endogenous attention, and limit our responses to exogenous stimuli. Perhaps the know-nothing state is kinda the opposite of Focus - we "switch off" our endogenous attention mechanisms (or the conscious ones, at least) and "open ourselves up" to exogenous stimuli? Hope that makes sense, and that your experiments in attaining high-performance states are progressing well! :-) Cheers, Jon