Thank You, Lord, For Giving Us RAS!

In the late-sixties, I bought my first second-hand Volkswagen Bug. I’d noticed them on the roads before my purchase, but never gave the funny little colored Beetles much thought—until I had my own. Then, I saw them everywhere, and I could look at the rear window and tell you what year that car had been made.

Why? My reticular activating system (RAS) had switched into gear—focused on Volkswagen bugs.

As a blind person shopping on Black Friday, I found my RAS very helpful. While my determined shopping companion squeezed us into the pressing line of sale-happy folks wanting to get their purchase in before the extra-special price time elapsed, my RAS antennae soared through the noisy crowd.

“The pillows are over there,” I shouted to my friend. “Right over there to the left. Can you see a couple of ladies arguing over something in that direction?”

“Are you kidding me? There are dozens, if not hundreds, of women in this small section of this store!”

“I know, but right over there,” I urged, pointing to the specific conversation my RAS had sifted through the clambering throng. “To the left.”

“Oh, yeah, I see them. They kind of stand out, because no one else is fighting over stuff this early in the morning.”

“Well, that’s where the pillows are.”

“And you heard them talk about pillows in all this noise? It’s like a stadium in here!”

However, after paying for our own 75%-off purchases, we walked over to the exact spot and found the pillows we’d been looking to buy—on sale, of course. Thank you, Lord, for giving us RAS!

You can find a wide-range of information on just how much our brains take in at any one moment. I found as little as two million bits of information per second in one article—all the way up to 400 Billion per second. That’s Billion with a B. The lower number claimed that we sift out all but seven or so bits, while the larger claimed we sift out 98% of the information.

There’s no accounting for the huge discrepancy, but the conclusion is the same in all reports. We take in a lot more in our subconscious than is brought into our conscious awareness.

In both experiences above, I had a reason to have the subject in the forefront of my mind. In the first example, it hadn’t been intentional; it just happened because of my vehicle purchase. I loved my Bug.

In the crowded shop, I forced myself to remember my shopping list… to keep an eye out for something on the list. Since I’m totally blind, this is just an expression; but as it turned out, my ears played a bigger role than my colleague’s eyes would have. The pillows were behind the spot where the ladies had been arguing; her eyes couldn’t have seen them, had she been near that aisle. In the incredibly loud cacophony of the dozens of different shouted conversations all around us, my RAS had keyed my ears to listen for only the items on the list.

The take-away message here is that a tremendous lot of information is registered in our brain every second. If we can learn how to stimulate our God-given RAS to help us bring/keep the essential things before our conscious mind, we can achieve our goals. Equally important, we can help those we love achieve theirs.

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me{Paul}—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.”

Phil. 4:8-9 (New Living Translation)