ch1The Book You Finished and Cannot Explain

A person reads a book carefully. Understands the argument chapter by chapter. Finds themselves nodding at the reasoning. Finishes it with the feeling of having learned something. Two weeks later, a colleague asks what the book was about. The person can give the title and the general topic. When pressed for the central argument, they cannot reconstruct it. This is not forgetting. The book was understood at the time. This is a failure of assimilation.

The distinction matters. Forgetting implies that something was stored and then lost. Assimilation failure means the material was processed consciously but never transferred to the system that would make it available automatically. Processed information requires retrieval. You have to go looking for it. Installed information is simply there. You do not retrieve how to walk or how to write your name. You just do it. The processing happened long ago, the installation completed, and now the capability runs without effort.

Reading a book produces processed understanding. The words are followed, the argument is tracked, the examples are recognised. Under calm conditions, shortly after reading, you can describe what you read. Under pressure, a week later, in a different context from the one in which you read it, the material is far less accessible. It was processed in a particular state. That state is no longer present. Access narrows.

Antano Solar John describes a girl who was brought to a music master class after failing to learn pitch from every method her teacher tried. Direct instruction failed. Visual demonstration failed. Physical cues failed. Learning from songs failed. After sitting in a room where skilled singers were working, she was able to hit the notes accurately. Neither she nor her teacher could say what happened. What happened was unconscious assimilation. She was in a state in which she could learn from the environment in a way that direct instruction could not produce. The capability arrived without being consciously taught.

ch2The State Collector Mechanism

Antano Solar John was sitting near Richard Bandler at a training event, with a mild headache, trying to concentrate. Bandler made him sit nearby and then ignored him while telling a story to someone else. As Bandler told the story, Antano found his headache fading. Then something shifted. He described seeing the entire room at once, every movement amplified, able to hear individual conversations from across the space, super alert and completely relaxed at the same time. When Bandler noticed, he said: this is how you learn everything that is going on here. You start from a high-access state of mind.

From that moment, Antano began collecting states. When he saw someone doing something exceptional, he would set an intention to become that person. Not imitate them. Become them. He would feel what they felt. This is not metaphor. It is a specific process. When you fully second-position another person who is at a high level of skill or capability, you gain access to the state from which they operate. The state itself carries information that no instruction can transfer. You cannot describe what it feels like to see a cricket ball as though it is moving slowly. You can only access that perception by entering the state in which a skilled cricketer operates.

The state collector mechanism accumulates these experiences. Each collected state becomes part of the environment from which new learning happens. A person with many collected states has access to a richer internal environment than a person with few. When new material arrives, it arrives into that environment. The assimilation runs deeper because the state is richer. A person who has only ever been in ordinary states when reading will process a book differently from a person who has spent years collecting the states of people who read and retain at a high level.

This is why the second reading of a book does not solve the retention problem. The state in which you read it the second time is the same state in which you read it the first time. The filter that prevented assimilation is still running. The second reading goes through the same filter and produces the same result. What would change the result is changing the state. Not reading it again. Reading it from a different internal environment, one in which assimilation can happen at a deeper level.

ch3What Unconscious Assimilation Actually Looks Like

Walking requires more than 10,000 micro-connections firing in coordination, continuous dynamic equilibrium, and computations that remain unsolved problems for artificial intelligence. No child learns to walk by studying the process. No one writes down the muscle names and memorises the sequence. The child watches people around them, enters a state of imitation, and the learning assembles itself below conscious awareness. At some point, the child walks. They did not know they were learning. They were simply in a state that allowed assimilation.

Antano Solar John points to this as the model for learning that actually installs. You do not know it is happening until you look back. The girl in the music master class did not feel the notes arrive. She did not notice the moment of assimilation. After the class, the capability was present. Before the class, it was not. The gap in between was the environment of the class, which she could absorb from in a way that direct instruction had never allowed.

The same pattern appears in the way voice is learned. If you grow up in one country, the cluster of muscles you use in your throat will be different from someone who grew up in another. This was not taught. It was absorbed through years of exposure in a particular state. The state was simply being present in that environment. The assimilation was entirely unconscious. The result is durable in a way that consciously learned information rarely is.

For reading and retention, the implication is direct. The question is not how to read the material more carefully. It is what state to be in when the material arrives. A state of genuine absorption, with no competing internal noise and no background anxiety about whether the material is sticking, allows assimilation to happen at a deeper level. The material that arrives in that state installs differently from the material that arrives while the conscious mind is busy managing the experience of reading.

ch4The Environment That Allows Information to Stay

Richard Bandler went to India and found a guru whose altered state he wanted to understand. The guru told him it required 20 years of practice. Bandler asked if the guru would simply enter the state again. The guru did. Bandler matched his breathing, rhythm, and pattern, and within moments was in a version of the same state himself. He did not need 20 years. He needed the right access point. The state the guru had spent 20 years building was accessible through the doorway of the body. Breathing in the same pattern, at the same rhythm, opened entry into the same internal environment.

This is the mechanism behind unconscious assimilation. States are not abstract. They have physical signatures: breathing patterns, posture, the direction of attention, the quality of internal noise. When you enter the state in which a skilled practitioner operates, you gain access to the environment from which they learn and perform. Material that arrives in that environment installs differently from material that arrives in an ordinary reading state.

Antano Solar John describes becoming a collector of states as the most important capability he developed. Not a collector of techniques, strategies, or information. States. Each collected state expanded the internal environment from which new learning could happen. A person with a richer state collection learns faster not because they work harder but because the environment in which new information arrives is deeper and more receptive. The assimilation runs at a level the conscious mind cannot access directly.

For someone asking how to retain what they read, this reframes the problem. The answer is not to read differently. It is to collect the states from which deep reading and genuine assimilation are possible. Seek out environments where practitioners at high levels are working. Mirror them deliberately. Notice what shifts in your internal environment when you do. Read in that shifted state. The difference in what stays will not require measurement. You will simply notice, days later, that the material is available in a way it has not been before.

Key terms
Unconscious Assimilation
The process by which capability is absorbed from the environment without deliberate conscious effort. The girl in the music master class learned to hit accurate notes through unconscious assimilation. The process happened without instruction, without her awareness, and produced results that direct teaching had failed to produce.
State Collector
A practice developed by Antano Solar John in which he deliberately enters the state of a high-level practitioner by second-positioning that person, matching their physical and internal environment, and accessing the state from which they operate. Collected states expand the internal environment from which new learning can happen.
Installation
A level of learning at which a capability is available without retrieval. Walking is installed. You do not search for it. Installed information differs from processed information, which must be retrieved from memory and is subject to interference from state changes.
Second Positioning
The practice of setting an intention to become another person, to feel what they feel and access the state from which they operate. Used by Antano Solar John as a mechanism for absorbing states and capabilities from practitioners across many fields.
Dynamic Equilibrium
The continuous micro-process of losing balance and recovering it that constitutes standing. Used by Antano Solar John as an example of learning that happened entirely unconsciously: the computation is complex enough to defeat current AI, yet every person who walks learned it without a single conscious step.

Frequently asked questions

Why do I forget what I read even when I understand it at the time?

Understanding at the time is processed learning. It means your conscious mind followed the argument. It does not mean the material was assimilated into the deeper system that makes information available without retrieval. The state in which you read determines whether assimilation happens. Reading in a state of divided attention, background anxiety, or low absorption produces processed understanding that fades. Reading in a state that allows full unconscious engagement produces installation that stays.

Does reading more slowly help with retention?

Slowing down helps if the problem is that the conscious mind is rushing past material without processing it. It does not help if the problem is that the state from which you are reading does not allow assimilation. A person who reads slowly in a state of low absorption will retain less than a person who reads at normal speed in a high-absorption state. The pace is a secondary variable. The state is primary.

Does taking notes while reading improve retention?

Note-taking creates a second representation of the material and introduces retrieval at the time of encoding, both of which can help. But notes also split attention between absorbing the material and recording it. For some readers, this improves retention. For others, the divided attention reduces assimilation. The test is whether you can explain the material to someone else a week later without the notes. If you cannot, the problem is state, not notes.

What is the best state for reading and retaining?

The state in which absorption is natural and internal noise is low. This is not the same for every person or every type of material. A state of calm alertness, where attention is fully on the material and the background is quiet, allows assimilation to happen. Antano Solar John describes entering the state of people who operate at a high level in the domain you are reading about. Reading about a subject from within the state of someone who practices that subject produces deeper assimilation than reading about it from an ordinary neutral state.

Why does reading the same book a second time not fix retention?

The second reading usually happens in the same state as the first. The filter that prevented assimilation the first time is still running. The material passes through the same environment and produces the same result. What would change the result is a changed state. If the state in which you approach the second reading is genuinely different, the material can install at a depth the first reading did not reach. Without that change, re-reading produces familiarity, not retention.

Full transcript
Yeah, KS has also told me, he's a very interesting person. He once told me the story about this girl who came to learn to sing from him. And this girl, they tried everything to teach her to sing and she couldn't sing. You know, like some of you might know some people like that. But you know, he would go, you know, he would say the sa pa sa, you know, the three notes. And then she would say it in the same note all the time. And generally some teachers, music teachers, what they do is they just say it louder. They say, you know, sa pa, and hoping that the louder they are, the child would be able to hear. And then the child just repeats it louder. So smart teachers, they do some NLP technique very naturally. They do it unconsciously. What they do is they start teaching the child in another representation system instead of the sound. They start teaching the child with what they see and what they feel. So they would show, you know, sa pa sa pa. And then the child went sa pa sa. Then he tried the other way, you know, he make her feel it over here, feel it here, feel it here. Didn't work. Then the final result that most music teachers have is they would teach you a tune because even if the child can't get the sa pa sa right, if she gets the tune right of some song, over a period of time she might get the sa pa sa right. So they tried that too. And we're not talking about someone who's an average teacher, right? We're talking about a prodigy, a genius who's actually used music to help people overcome asthma and change lives of thousands of people in villages. And this girl just doesn't get it. So finally one day he invites her to a master class. A master class, like me, I think a master class is where, you know, people from all levels come together. You know, traditionally, like, you know, for hundreds of years a master class, I mean, not the master class you get online now. But, you know, traditionally a master class is where there is not a fixed subject, but everybody from all levels are coming to the class and the master is explaining an insight that they have developed in that field or giving some exercises to do. And each person based on their skill level picks up different things from a master class. So that's what traditionally a master class is, where people who are like 10 years experience and just new to singing, they all come. And in the music industry it's very common that, you know, someone holds a master class and people from every skill level come and then they learn, at least in the West. And so he or his friend, I'm not sure, holds a master class and, you know, there are lots of singers who are like very well trained and then people who are just learning and people who are one step above her level and then her. The interesting thing he brings to my attention is that he doesn't know yet what happened. But in that master class, after that master class, she was able to hit those notes accurately. And his conclusion was she was somehow able to learn how to learn from him and how to learn to be on notes from the other students learning from him that she couldn't learn from him directly. And if you go and ask her or ask him exactly what happened, I don't think they would be able to pinpoint to it because it happened without their knowledge. It happened without their expectation. It happened unnoticed. And when things happen like that, we call it an unconscious process. Learning is an unconscious process. When you learn something well, you don't necessarily know that you have learned it until you look back and you're like, hey, I can do that now. The best example I have for from from your childhood is the ability to walk. Now, given that after Fani Kumar's incident, we worked with a lot of people who struggled to walk but have a perfect physiology, perfect neurology. And also given that I did some work in artificial intelligence before, I can tell you that walking is such a complex process. I don't know if you know, but even when you stand the way you are standing, if you're standing, you're not exactly standing. What you're doing is a process called dynamic equilibrium, which is you're actually almost losing balance and then your body finds balance and then you go other side and you lose balance. So imagine if you're doing this. It's exactly what you're doing when you're standing, but you're doing it at a very, very micro scale. Even when your eyes are straight fixed on someone, it's not fixed. The only way you are able to see depth, you know, earlier they thought you have depth because you have two eyes. Then what about the people who could close one eye and still see that? Now they have realized you have depth because your eyes are actually per second, they move about 30 to 60 times like this, very minor movement. So it's computing difference. It's bringing in in the same environment is bringing in 60 different representation, which are different, but they're representing the same thing. And that allows you to create create depth. So imagine when you're standing, you're actually not standing, you're actually falling down and getting balance, falling, losing balance, getting balance. It's a dynamic equilibrium. And in order for you to maintain the dynamic equilibrium, there are more than 10,000 minor connections that all have to act together at the same that have to act together at the same time. And you're making these computations moment by moment. And it gets even more complex when you have to lift a feet and move a hand. And if you have to get a computer to if you have to get a computer program to get to walk on any terrain with just two legs like we have, then until now, it's an unsolved challenge for artificial intelligence is we are the most versatile. You can't get a robot that can go in any terrain like we can because the computations necessary for that is that complex. Thankfully, you didn't write down all the 10,000 muscles and their names. I want to master the art of walking. But what you engaged in is an unconscious process. What you did is you didn't know that you're learning and you started imitating your parents, the people who are around you. You know, there are sometimes people who are carried away by wolves or left abandoned in the forest. They walk like wolves. If they're grown up by monkeys, they they they eat like monkeys and they move like monkeys. It's interesting that even the digestive tract adapts to eat what monkeys eat. That's the level of sophistication our neurology has to learn to interact with the environment based on who's already been here before us. So as a child, you saw people walk and you learn to walk. It's an unconscious process. It just happened. You have also learned other things that way, you know, the way you sound, the way you interact, because the voice culture is different if you are living in this country than if you're learning living in another country, which also means that the cluster of muscles that you're using in your throat is different. So all of these things that you have not yet learned, recognized as a learned activity is an example of unconscious learning. Now in these six days, my proposal to you is that in addition to fixing those things on that list, I want you to go through a process of unconscious learning of the things that I'm doing and the things that Harmony is doing. OK, so you do these procedures with each other to fix the stuff that is on your list. But more importantly, I think it would be great if you could invest yourself into an unconscious assimilation process. You know, the state of mind in which you do anything actually makes a big difference, right? I mean, you all know that. So imagine there are some people when they want to go and they have a meeting to attend, they're like, I have that meeting to go to. I don't know if it will turn out well or not. And these are not the voices on the outside, but these are the voices on the inside. And there are some people who are like, when they have a meeting to go to, they behave like it's their first date. You know, they're like so excited. They have an opera singing in the head. Let's go! They have the vibration in their body and both of them are not going to have the same results, right? Even if the other person is interested, the person who is going with a better state has a better response. In the same way, a person who has a better state for learning learns faster. A person who has a better state for playing a sport plays it better. But what is better? Is it one state that goes across all these places? Is it that high energy, excited? Or are there different states of mind? My proposal to you is that there are hundreds of amazing states of mind. And each activity and each context requires a different state. Like, you know, if somebody is playing cricket, they get into, if they're a legend, if they're an expert, they get into a state of mind where the ball appears to come slower than it actually is approaching them. And martial art expert, after years of practice, their perception develops in a way that the hands and the other person's movements are exaggerated. If someone is into boxing, then they're in a state of mind where they're doing excessive pain control. Like what a doctor would use to do open heart surgery without anesthesia is the same process that they go through when they're on a boxing ring. Or someone who's doing a sniper, they get into an altered state where the target appears much closer than. See, because holding a sniper is not about just having the aim right, because it doesn't work that way. You know, when people use a sniper, they're looking at long distance, sometimes kilometers. And the wind of the humidity in the air, the wind at that time, they all can change the trajectory of the bullet. And so it's a very complex calculation. So most snipers go through a half an hour of meditation, even for Olympics, they go a half an hour of meditation so that when they're sniping, they get into an altered state where the target appears closer. So literally they're hallucinating that state. Target is not here, target is there, but it appears over here. And if they can adjust it to hit this target, their mind automatically computes and hits it in the other distance. Musicians, when they get up on stage, they are in a different altered state. The sounds are exaggerated to them than it is for you and you and me. So each activity in each field, you know, when someone is working on business and numbers and creating, it's a different mind state, altered state than when they're coming up with a creative idea to solve a problem. So each profession, each context, in order for you to become excellent requires a special altered state that gives you an unparalleled advantage in that particular art form. And one of the things that I want you to gain from these six days is I want you to open up and assimilate as many states of mind as you can from Harini, me and everybody and anything that is good going around in this room. Because see, I remember once when I went, the first time when I went to learn from Bandler, I think it was the fourth day or something, and I had this, I'd come an hour early to sit in the front and I had this mild headache. And I went and told Bandler, Bandler, you know, I have been trying to pay attention to what you're saying, but I have this mild headache because I was literally like, you know, oh, two days, I have to go back to India. Let me get the maximum. But then Bandler made me sit next to him and for a moment ignored that I was there and started talking to somebody else. And there was a line and he was talking to that people. And to one of the person, he started narrating a story about how he came to India. And he met this guru who had, you know, he could, that guru would go into this altered state of mind. And Richard said, can you teach me how to get into that state of mind? And the guru said, no, no, you need 20 years of meditation and practice before I can teach you these things. So the guru said, the Bandler said that he told the guru, could you just go into that altered state one more time? And when the guru closed his eyes and went into that altered state, Bandler said that he started to breathe in the same way the guru was breathing in the same rhythm, in the same pattern. And Bandler said, as he did that, he went into a powerful altered state himself. Now, the interesting thing is when Bandler was telling the story, I found myself relaxing. The pain in my head was coming down. And in a moment, something happened where I suddenly felt as if I could see the entire room altogether at once. Every minor movement was amplified. I could hear distinctively each people talking from far. It was a state where I was super alert and at the same time, totally relaxed. As I was enjoying that trance, Richard Turned looked at me and he said, son, this is how you learn everything that is going on here. You start from a very powerful state of mind. And since that day, I have been a collector of states. What I would do is anytime I see something exquisite, like someone passionately reciting something or someone artfully creating that pain thing, I would just take a moment to become that person. And when I do, I feel what they feel. And there is no way I would have even known that you could feel that way unless I felt that way. The metaphor I have for you is like if someone is colorblind, how would that person know that they are colorblind until they could actually see colors? There is so many exquisite states around in the world. Some of them are accessible from your near loved ones. Some of them are accessible when you travel, when you have new experiences, when you meet people. If you have this ability that you have born with to learn and assimilate from people around you, then you would start tapping into these unconscious states. If there is nothing else you take from this program, I want you to take this one thing, which is your ability to become another person. Because then you would start becoming a collector of exquisite states. Not only will you feel wonderful, but you will be able to learn new things faster and quicker. So imagine if a martial artist takes 10 years to develop time distortion. And you mirror this person and you get time distortion in like minutes. You won't become an expert like him or her immediately, but you will require much lesser time to get there.