T.D.A. Lingo and The Dormant Brain Research and Development LaboratoryT.D. Lingo's story"My story unfolds with me as a spearhead infantry scout for General Patton's army in World War II. The war was horrible on the front lines. My group was one of the first to arrive at Hitler's death camps to liberate the remaining survivors. After I got back home to the U.S. I went to the University of Chicago, and earned my bachelor and masters degrees in behavioral science, and almost completed my Ph.D. My experiences during the war drove me to ask but one question: "Why must I kill my brother?" To this, my school and professors had no answer. But one professor's advice was "If there is an answer to this question, it's up here," pointing to his own gray head. "The answer has got to be in the human brain, but the research hasn't yet been done in academe. You're going to have to build your own research center if you are going to solve that riddle." "So, I dropped out of my Ph.D. program and started to figure out how to put my own research facility together. I didn't have any money, but I could tell a good story! So, I figured, if there was a fortune to be made in a hurry, maybe I could do it in show business...Turns out I was right...I bought this mountain and built this place with a guitar, three chords, and nine folk songs." "I started out playing the local joints around Denver, and eventually I landed a spot on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life TV show in Hollywood. I wore these old buckskins and I played the part of a backwoods mountain man to perfection. It was during that appearance that a New York producer spotted me. He must have said "I know a good phony when I see one, and that son of a bitch is a great one!" They flew me out to New York City and signed me to do a summer replacement show on NBC. My show was a weekly one where the "new" fad of folk singing (in the late 50's) was featured. People like Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie showed up as guests, and performed with me. What a time we had...and I got paid $2000 an hour to do it! On the last show, I looked straight
into the camera and asked the million viewers who were
watching, "If anybody out there has a mountain to sell,
call me." And sure enough, somebody called me up right
from Colorado. At the end of the summer, I took my
money, two grocery sacks full, and ran! I gave one to
the IRS and I bought this place, Laughing Coyote
Mountain, with the other. I started to axe timber and
build log cabin labs. That was in 1957. No sterile
formaldehyde bleak lab walls for me...give me fresh air
and the beautiful sounds of the forest to think
clearly!"
"For the next 30 years I dedicated myself totally to exploring behavior from the perspective of the human brain. My staff and I looked at every available bit of scientific research and philosophic/religious literature on the subject. We ran our own short and long term experiments with 309 test subjects. Now, up here, this environment of rugged mountain wilderness provides a total focus into the self that never can be replicated in any city, with all the noise and distractions. Up here, there's no electricity, no TV, or movies, no four lane highways to get away from it all. You ARE away from it all! Up here, you face yourself, your mind, and your brain. The brain lab still doesn't have electrical power lines, or even running water. It's just you, the hand water pump, a wood stove, and your central nervous system. Our lab's records grew voluminous. These log structures were crammed full of file cabinets. The books line the walls from the stone floors to the ceiling rafters, 18 feet up. In the end, we discovered the mechanisms to release startling new intelligence, creativity, and pleasure, inside each and every human brain. And all our findings are supported and corroborated with foundation findings by scientists elsewhere." * * * Addendum 2005 by Neil Slade Some people are curious as to my connection with Lingo, and why his biographical material and work is found almost exclusively at my site. Here's the scoop and the story: During the 1970's at the height of flower power and self-exploration, Lingo drew a large audience from seekers across the nation, drawing people who were looking beyond the mere materialism of the 1950's and 1960's. The brain lab was a busy busy place, with students and staff continually flowing through, enthusiasm blooming. Along comes the 1980's, and out went self-exploration and in came disco dancing. Alas, I was of the later generation, but not a dancer. By the time I began frequenting the lab in 1982, most of the former staff had dropped out and instead gone back to "business as usual". I saw little if any of the former brain lab participants through the 1980's, and instead worked with Lingo to get city folk involved to start their own brain communities and support groups on the flat lands, and I worked to promote the lab's work through the mass media. My work with Lingo for eleven years was to take the brain lab's findings, which had previously been mostly done on the facility, and to take it into the schools, hospitals, and set up study groups in town (Denver), as well as to refine the written materials, and make them more accessible to the mainstream. It was my goal to become an independent brain education entity using the vast experience and knowledge that Lingo imparted to me. I further understood the need to evolve and fine tune to my own experience, adding my own special abilities and knowledge in music along with my college education and post graduate experience. Throughout the 1980's I worked in the public schools and all of Denver's major psychiatric facilities teaching basic brain self-control methods defined at the lab but taught in my own customized way. I regularly ran therapeutic workshops at West Pines Psychiatric Hospital, Ft. Logan Mental Health Center, Denver General Psychiatric Ward, Mt. Airy Psychiatric Hospital, Children's Hospital of Denver, Denver Head Injury Clinic, and other public and private facilities. In an unprecedented original "Mind Music" program, I was employed by the principal of a Denver Public Elementary School to teach all 600 students and their teachers how to self-activate advanced levels of creativity, intelligence, and cooperative trust behavior by learning "brain basics". We had the kids learn, illustrate, and teach each other brain anatomy and function. The program eventually led to teachers singing to their students and students dancing in the classroom. In 1989 I published my Frontal Lobes Handbook (later revised into the Frontal Lobes Supercharge), which has found its way into public libraries and university and hospital libraries. Lingo took an active part in helping edit portions of this book, and I give him full credit for helping me to learn an effective writing style. In 1992 Lingo was at hand when Sarah Rubow and I discussed the future of our brain rock band, "The Brain Revolutionaries", and we spoke and planned the possibilities of a traveling brain "medicine show". All the while, Lingo and I planned and presented radio and television appearances, wrote scripts, as well as continued to court the media. Although Lingo had corresponded with thousands of individuals across the globe, as well as had vast numbers of students and subjects come through his brain and behavior facility, his concepts and discoveries had as yet escaped widespread acceptance. Suddenly, in 1993, Lingo died of a heart defect, a surprise since he had shown no illness or premonition of coming health problems. When the Rocky Mountain News ran the multiple page story about Lingo and his work, they asked me to take the reporter and photographer and give them the guided tour of the brain lab. (My picture can be seen sitting on Lingo's bunk bed in the spread). Although in the presence of two witnesses (Sarah and Nathan Rubow) Lingo had as late as in October of 1992 expressed his intention that I carry on his work in addition to inheriting the physical property of the lab upon his retirement or death, his demise was so sudden, he had never filled out the proper paper work nor a proper will. The funny thing was, one of my best friends Rachel Mor, had a VERY strange premonition about this, and repeatedly told me in November, "Get it in writing, now." Named in the only surviving legal and relevant legal document was Harmony Asnin, a former staff member from the 1970's, who was officially the brain lab's corporate vice president. In the years that followed, she and other newly appointed corporate officers (post Lingo's death) who had been for the most part absent from the scene for over a decade, finally came to an arrangement with Lingo's estate to gain official and legal custody of all of his intellectual property, i.e. his writings. It should be noted that I had already had a great percentage of these in my possession from ten years of work with Lingo. It was Harmony and I who removed the papers from the lab, and she insured that I retain originals of everything for my own continuing work, besides her own copies. Although invited, I declined to become a corporate board member, and preferred to continue working independently without ties or constraints to any other participants (truly as Lingo himself had done). The new corporate board members hadn't been on the scene during all of the years I had been working with Lingo at least since 1982, with the sole exception of Ron McComb (whom I had run into once or twice at the lab) and I didn't see any point in creating an artificial partnership in Lingo's absence. Nonetheless, for the most part, the corporation and I had a friendly and cooperative relationship. None the less, and really no great surprise to me, in the years that followed the newly formed corporate board disintegrated and lost its legal status. In contrast, my own work accelerated and built onward and upward. In 1995 I created a web site dedicated to my brain and music work, "The Amazing Brain Adventure", and it has now reached millions across the globe with an average of well over 2200 visitors a day (April 2005). I've written and published an additional 4 books (and one book of poetry), along with 20 audio and music CDs, and a DVD. I've been a guest on multiple radio talk shows, including noted PBS host Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove's program, as well as Art Bell's Coast To Coast program many times discussing brain self-control and new ideas and methods which I developed in my own work since 1993. Although one case is known of one former student (L.G.) trying to improperly claim copyright to one of Lingo's later manuscripts (ironically, not acknowledging that it was in fact myself who supplied him with missing chapters to the manuscript! and that Lingo himself had refused a partnership with this individual) this posthumous publishing attempt was halted by the Lingo estate as being undesirable. In contrast, I continue to distribute selected
manuscripts as well as continue the educational aspect
of Lingo's work which I did in partnership with him
from 1982-1993 with the full knowledge and with
permission of the Lingo estate, who left in my
possession both T.D. Lingo's guitar, and other personal
artifacts. THINK
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