I studied it with Oleg Bakhtiyarov over a decade ago, AMA. In short, it’s a corpus of techniques that use attention control beyond mere focus as the main tool. Some borrowed, some novel, but all neatly organised into a framework that allows you to do mind state “algebra” first and then try to reach these new states you derived. Techniques are working, helped me both in maintaining cognitive flexibility and creativity over time and to handle a few extreme situations in my life. There is lot of mythology around outstanding results achieved using these techniques but neither Oleg nor other experienced psychonetics practitioners never demonstrated them to us, only relayed anecdotes.
Special forces squad constructing and learning eidetic visual language tailored to muscular control. One guy “translates” his high knife-throwing skills into it, another one “reads” the description, goes through a short “comprehension” stage with flu-like symptoms, starts throwing knives almost as masterfully as the first guy.
People breezing through Schulte Tables (e.g. https://drafterleo.github.io/schulte/) and similar exercises on hard mode (10x10, 4 colours, counting in different directions for each etc.)
Almost perfectly transferring handwriting skills from a primary hand to a secondary hand in the scope of a single sub-hour meditation. Quick skill acquisition in general. Anecdotally, my psychonetics practice does help me to acquire skills faster but not a magnitude faster in the most cases (hard to measure baseline tho).
Doing a range of normal (including mental) activities under a debilitating dose of ketamine. Anecdotally, my practice improved the navigation of altered states dramatically but I’d not say I’m capable of overcoming physiology much.
Definitely sus that the psychonetics superpowers weren’t demonstrated but still seems worth it to try (modulo all the other stuff on my bucket list pushing it back :P).
Is there any good Anglophone resource on this or do I have to learn Russian?
The book you linked in the question (http://deconcentration-of-attention.com/psychonetics.html) is the most comprehensive resource in English I’ve seen. It also covers basic exercises really well, I can help you with translating more advanced ones once you hit the ceiling.
I studied it with Oleg Bakhtiyarov over a decade ago, AMA. In short, it’s a corpus of techniques that use attention control beyond mere focus as the main tool. Some borrowed, some novel, but all neatly organised into a framework that allows you to do mind state “algebra” first and then try to reach these new states you derived. Techniques are working, helped me both in maintaining cognitive flexibility and creativity over time and to handle a few extreme situations in my life. There is lot of mythology around outstanding results achieved using these techniques but neither Oleg nor other experienced psychonetics practitioners never demonstrated them to us, only relayed anecdotes.
What were the most impressive results that were supposedly accomplished? Maybe we should run some experiments to see if they can be reproduced?
To name a few:
Special forces squad constructing and learning eidetic visual language tailored to muscular control. One guy “translates” his high knife-throwing skills into it, another one “reads” the description, goes through a short “comprehension” stage with flu-like symptoms, starts throwing knives almost as masterfully as the first guy.
People breezing through Schulte Tables (e.g. https://drafterleo.github.io/schulte/) and similar exercises on hard mode (10x10, 4 colours, counting in different directions for each etc.)
Almost perfectly transferring handwriting skills from a primary hand to a secondary hand in the scope of a single sub-hour meditation. Quick skill acquisition in general. Anecdotally, my psychonetics practice does help me to acquire skills faster but not a magnitude faster in the most cases (hard to measure baseline tho).
Doing a range of normal (including mental) activities under a debilitating dose of ketamine. Anecdotally, my practice improved the navigation of altered states dramatically but I’d not say I’m capable of overcoming physiology much.
Definitely sus that the psychonetics superpowers weren’t demonstrated but still seems worth it to try (modulo all the other stuff on my bucket list pushing it back :P).
Is there any good Anglophone resource on this or do I have to learn Russian?
The book you linked in the question (http://deconcentration-of-attention.com/psychonetics.html) is the most comprehensive resource in English I’ve seen. It also covers basic exercises really well, I can help you with translating more advanced ones once you hit the ceiling.