Integrating the Speechless Mind with the Verbal Mind





John L. Waters



March 7, 2001



© Copyright 2001 by John L. Waters. All Rights

Reserved

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Integrating the Speechless Mind with the Verbal Mind



          Speechless autistic children suggest by

their repetitive circular movements that they are

continually sensing the ineffable sublime.  Normal

verbal-sociable adults can understand the autistic

sense by analyzing body movement which isn't produced

to reinforce speech.  This sense of the Divine can

then be understood in terms of mathematics.

          Around the age of five a child learns to

copy from a model.  The child makes drawing movements

and prints the alphanumeric symbols.  Printed letters

and numerals are made by combining graphs of straight

lines and curved lines.  Even as young children are

learning to print and draw, without realizing all that

they are doing they are moving their bodies to produce

mathematically precise graphs.  Each of these graphs

can be defined by an algebraic equation.  Printing

letters and numerals is drawing graphs of mathematical

equations.

          Consider the printed capital letter "A" the

way a first grader might print it.  On an eight and a

half by eleven inch piece of clean white paper draw a

straight line which has a positive slope of forty-five

degrees.  Stop after you've drawn an inch or two. 

Then, without lifting the pencil, begin drawing a

straight line which has a negative slope of forty-five

degrees. To finish the "A" lift your pen and draw a

horizontal line roughly halfway up this large inverted

"V".  The result will be a successfully constructed

printed letter "A."

          The letter "B" can be constructed by first

making the letter "E" and then connecting the

right-facing prongs with two circular arcs.  The two

arcs, the three prongs, and the single vertical

straight line all are defined by algebraic equations. 

All the other printed letters and the printed numerals

may be broken down to segments of straight lines and

curves, each of which is defined by an algebraic

equation.  However young bodies learn to produce these

graphs without young minds needing to study algebra

and plane geometry.  These subjects are studied

approximately ten years later.

          In printing a small letter "a", the child

learns to execute somewhat more subtle hand movements,

and the graphs produced aren't as simple as just a

straight line or a circular arc.  But the child learns

to imitate the graph of the small letter by copying

from the board or from the workbook.  Over weeks and

months, the other letters are learned by careful

practice.

          Cursive writing or handwriting is somewhat

more complicated, because a whole word is the

assemblage of many more different graphs than a single

printed letter or numeral is.  A printed word doesn't

illustrate this point but you can illustrate the point

by taking a piece of paper and writing your first name

in longhand. Notice how each letter is connected to

the letter that precedes it and the letter which

follows it.  The lines you have made can be

disassembled and treated as individual graphs. 

Individual algebraic equations define each of these

graphs.

          In art class each child copies from a model

drawing or physical specimen and learns to draw the

outline of an apple. The child then adds shading to

the figure and other lines which enable someone to see

that it is the drawing of an apple.  Each stroke of

the artist's pencil, pen, brush, or crayon is executed

with a graceful sweep which leaves one or more lines

on the paper.  In the case of a brush the sweeping

motion produces a wide path of color, not just a slim

line.  However the movement of the shoulder, arm, and

hand is the same, whether the child is holding a

one-inch brush or a needle-sharp, hard pencil.  It is

the body movement we are most interested in.   The

body movement is what makes the image of the apple,

the image of the printed letter "A" and all the other

images you see on a page of handwritten work.

          Human body movements can be recorded by a

video camera and then plotted by an electronic device

on a flat screen or on a piece of paper.  The curves

produced by a dancer are like the curves produced by a

child printing his or her name.  All these curves are

defined by algebraic equations.  Some movements are

more complicated than others, and many algebraic

equations would be needed to define the subtle body

movements of a tai-chi dancer or a professional boxer

or bricklayer.

          Rhoda Kellogg (1970) studied thousands of

art works produced by children and she observed that

the child's earliest drawing movements produced a

graph which she calls a mandala or circle.  This

mandala image is often combined with the image of a

cross.  Kellogg's young subjects came from many ethnic

groups.  The mandala-and-cross drawing movements were

similar in all of these children (p 14-32).

          Children learn to copy the letters, the

numerals, and other images they look at carefully. 

Kellogg observes that young children produce the

circle-and-cross image without trying to copy

anything.  This drawing comes from within the child,

not from the child's external environment.  The

drawing conveys information about what is inside the

child.  This image can be interpreted as a direct

communication from the child's body, body-mind,

kinesthetic intelligence, or unconscious mind.  And

this communication may be viewed as the graphic

representation of the algebraic equation for a circle

superimposed over the familiar Cartesian coordinate

system.  The X-axis or abscissa is the horizontal line

in the cross.  The Y-axis or ordinate is the vertical

line in the cross.  The circle is the graph the child

combines with the cross.  It's algebraic equation in

Cartesian coordinates is: X squared plus Y squared

equals the number one or unity.  In drawing the

mandala, what the nonverbal child's body is expressing

is its own attunement to mathematical language and to

the physical world of nature which is understood

precisely only by using mathematical language.

          Articulate children copy from role models

and move their bodies in subtle ways as they execute

the learned hand movements employed in handwriting and

in gestures accompanying conversation.  Handwriting

follows wordiness and the verbal brain.  However,

according to W.D. Webster et al (1980), certain less

articulate autistic children remain preoccupied with

circular movements, and with simple back and forth

cyclic-repetitive movements (237).  Other specialists,

including Baron-Cohen et al (1993) observe that

autistic children do not learn to use gestures easily

or learn to interact physically and verbally with

normal children who are not preoccupied with circular

or cyclic-repetitive body movements (p41- 45). 

Autistic children don't copy what other bodies are

doing as much as they express knowledge from within

their own bodies.

          Normal sociable, verbal, extroverted

children outgrow their own preverbal  and preschool

absorption in body movement and circularity. 

Non-autistic children soon learn to focus upon

listening, talking, reading, and writing, and all the

subtle learned movements associated with sociability

and wordiness.  Their focus is in their vocal

apparatus, in their hands, in their eyes and in other

body parts.  But what causes extroverted children to

rapidly develop what educators consider normal

intelligence and the conventional outer-directed

orientation rather than focus upon internal feeling

and expressing what is sensed from deep inside the

person?

          Ilene Serlin (1996) gives a clue in a report

by one of her students.  While executing circular

movements of the whole body this student reported

feeling centered, whole, soothed, gentle, and inspired

(p25-33).  This confidential report suggests that an

autistic child repeatedly employs circular body

movement to feel comforted or relieved of some

internal tension or stress, and/or to compensate for a

profound lack of comfort due to his or her profound

handicap.

          It's possible to argue that the pleasure

experienced during his or her own circular or

cyclic-repetitive body movement is so great that the

autistic child does not give it up.  If this is true,

then the pleasure reported by Serlin's student would

be felt even more intensely by a profoundly distracted

autistic child who isn't using his or her brain in

being attentive to people or to the wordiness which

preoccupies normal, verbal people.  In other words,

the autistic child is retarded mentally, socially and

verbally by his or her brain activity which features

responses to opioids produced by vigorous repetitious

circular or cyclic-repetitive body movements: what

Prabhupada (1972) and others have called "The

Reservoir of Pleasure", and given the name Sri

Krishna. (p. 226).  In a universe in which all is in

flux, continuous body movement enables a person to

directly sense the Divine.

          By beating drums and dancing energetically,

Hare Krishnas follow Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu's example

and experience the Divine.  Experienced joggers also

experience an intense euphoria known as "runner's

high."  Pilots and skiers experience euphoria and

speechlessness as they see bright reflections off

clouds and snow respectively.  Many autistics gaze at

bright lights or reflections of lights.  It's

reasonable to suggest that all these Divine responses

are neurochemically induced, i.e. caused by increased

endorphins in the brain.  These endorphins cause a

person to feel euphoric and this euphoria enables a

person to work harder and longer.

          The precise and graceful movements in nature

are described by mathematical equations known to

scientists.  One example is Newton's law F=ma where F

is the force exerted on an object, m is the mass of

the object, and a is the acceleration of the object. 

A second example is wl = WL where w is the weight and

l is the length of the lever arm on one side of the

fulcrum and W is the weight and L is the length of the

lever arm on the other side of the fulcrum.  A third

example is d= Kt where d is the distance an object

moves,  K is the constant velocity of the object, and

t is the time during which the object has been moving.

          Many precise and graceful movements in

nature are defined by the above mathematical

relations.  Autistic persons are known to be unusually

graceful in their body movements even though they

don't speak and write well.  More articulate people,

in carefully thinking about what to do before doing

it, lose some of this sense of grace.  To master any

skill, one studies all the aspects of theory and

practice related to that skill.  So intellectuals can

become more aware of non-verbal attunement and body

intelligence by interacting with an autistic person as

well as by experiencing more the sense of the

ineffable sublime as described in a few words by Ilene

Serlin's student.

          To do one's best work, it helps to feel

centered, whole, soothed, gentle, and inspired. 

Confidence, competence, and experiencing what some

people have called the "Presence of God" often go

together.  But what exactly is being felt as this

ineffable "Divine Presence"?  By repeatedly sensing

the unity which reduces ones ability to speak and

write intelligently, a person uses less of his or her

brain to verbalize with and more of the brain to move

gracefully.  This produces better work.  A rational

and precise explanation of this preverbal sense makes

it possible for many more individuals to become more

conscious of what autistic persons are aware of but

have no way of understanding this or explaining it in

clear, precise language.

          Many autistic persons move their physical

bodies and bodily controlled objects with a rare

precision and grace.  This suggests that each human

being has hidden intelligence and sensory capacity not

yet consciously realized by parents, educators, and

doctors and that by clearly understanding the language

of mathematics the autistic sense, the kinesthetic

intelligence, and the full human potential will be

wholly understood and demonstrated by more and more

persons in the future.

          References

1.  Baron-Cohen, S., Bolton, P. (1993).  "Autism- The

Facts".  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2.  Kellogg, R. (1970). Analyzing Children's Art. 

Palo Alto, Calif: National Press Books.

3.  Prabhupada, R.C.B.S. (1972) "Bhagavad-Gita As It

Is" Los Angeles: International Society for Krishna

Consciousness.

4.  Serlin, I. (1996) Kinesthetic Imagining.  Journal

of Humanistic Psychology, 36(2), 25-33.

5.  Webster, W.D. Konstantareas, M.M., Oxman, J. Mack,

J.E. (1980) "Autism New Directions in Research and

Education".  New York: Pergamon Press.



John L. Waters

johnlwaters@yahoo.com





The information on this page represents that of John Waters and not 

necessarily that of Humboldt State University. John Waters takes full 

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