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 2007 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". Clear evidence of this is the complete lack of color photographs published by anyone, save myself and the photos Lingo took of me helping him collect firewood around 1987 See Brain Lab Photo Tour. The few other black and white photos of Lingo that exist were taken from the mid 1970's and earlier, showing Lingo as a much younger fellow. Surprisingly, when we did the photo shoot above, Lingo refused to have his picture taken, and instead insisted on documenting my own work and taking the photos himself using my camera. I attribute this to his generosity in passing on the "baton of brain fame" to me, rather than stepping into the spotlight again himself. 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 news spread, and to no surprise, there is no mention nor proof of any former staff or students- because they had all left Lingo on his own for the most part, years before.
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. Unfortunately, his demise was so sudden, he had never filled out the proper paper work nor a proper will, despite erroneous claims of "a living will" by former students. 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 appointed additional corporate officers (post Lingo's death) who had been for the most part absent from the scene for over a decade. Together, this spanking new self-formed legal establishment finally came to an arrangement with Lingo's estate in their attempt to gain 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 really been on the scene during all of the years I had been working with Lingo at least since 1982, and I didn't see any point in creating an artificial partnership in Lingo's absence. It should be noted that one former student, presently makes absurd claims of a "living will" and legal guardianship of a selected manuscript and other papers that he has come into possession of, that he has been expressly forbidden to publish by the Lingo's legal heirs and estate. Any legal entitlement to any of Lingo's works ended abruptly when the corporation failed to fulfill the legal requirements of their corporate status. Turns out, key missing parts of this manuscript came directly from me... keep reading. Within only a couple of short years, the newly formed corporate board disintegrated due to apathy and disorganization, and lost all of its legal status. In contrast, my own work grew in momentum, as it had been while Lingo was alive and while we worked together over the previous 11 years. 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 two films. I've been a guest on internationally broadcast radio and TV news and talk shows, including CBS news (Canadian), noted PBS host Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove's program, as well as Art Bell's Coast To Coast program discussing brain self-control and new ideas and methods which I developed in my own work since 1993. Another former student now in the self-help business (L.Goodman) at one point notoriously claimed copyright to one of Lingo's later manuscripts while nobody was looking, but was eventually discovered. Ironically, not acknowledging that it was in fact myself who supplied him with missing chapters to the manuscript for which he claims "The only known copy of this workbook" (!!) and that Lingo himself had refused a partnership with this individual in a previous attempt to gain control of the manuscript, this posthumous publishing attempt was halted by the Lingo estate as being undesirable and was refused. In my archives I have some amusing and enlightening personal letters from Lingo expressing his opinion of such former students, but alas, we see enough dirt in pop culture these days and I see no point in dipping into the mud of others. Alas-- these are not very good examples of brain self control by these two former students. It would have been very easy to tell the truth surrounding any of Lingo's materials, and I am always happy to see stuff about Lingo, but in the case of these former students, full disclosure and complete honesty is beyond their ability. It should, most importantly be noted, that Lingo ABANDONED the publication of both earlier works as being obsolete (pre- Self Transcendence Workbook I), as well as the later STW II. For the last decade of his life, Lingo made only one book available, and that was the 42 lesson STW Version I, that I continue to release with permission of his estate, and with previous knowledge of the single person to which Lingo granted legal custody of his work, Harmony Asnin. I consider this to be his absolute best written work, concise, to the point, and relatively simple to grasp. Although of historical interest, I always found that Lingo's other writings were hard to interpret and confusing, and were not as effective in conveying his personal core teachings, methods and direct one-on-one vibe, as it were. This was exactly the reason I wrote, with his blessing and help, The Frontal Lobes Handbook (expanded with additional original material in 1997 into the Frontal Lobes Supercharge), which has been wildly successful in contrast to Lingo's own books, which have seen little acceptance for one reason or another. Never the less, although personally and historically I owe a debt of gratitude to Lingo for a decade of friendship and work together, the bulk of my work is original, and I make no attempt to solely capitalize (financially or otherwise) on the work of others. I continue the educational aspect of Lingo's work which I did in partnership with him from 1982-1993, continued distribution of the original Self-Transcendence Workbook with the full knowledge and with permission of the Lingo estate, who further left in my possession both T.D. Lingo's guitar and extensive personal artifacts. In time if others lay claim to their own self-importance in the story of Lingo and the Brain Lab, regardless of the inaccuracy of their reporting and their convenient amnesia, well, success is always Xeroxed and siphoned, and to see my lone efforts of promoting Lingo's work alongside my own copycatted after so long a time, riding upon some convenient fibs and twisting of history, comes as absolutely no surprise to me at all. However, accept no substitutes, eh? Better yet, as Lingo himself put it many times... "Your way is not my way, and my way is certainly not your way..." That's why this stuff is called Brain SELF-Control. :-)
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