Category Archives: Classic Bill

The Originality Moment

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Welcome to this week’s Pebbles in the Pond Blog, written by Bill Harvey
October 30, 2026

MIND MAGIC / MIND EXPERIMENTS: The 50th Anniversary Edition Excerpt Series: Part 13

Start life anew with a clear slate each moment.

De-mechanizing oneself by broadening the range of creative possibilities

The consistency program in our heads is concerned with maintaining the apparent internal consistency of all our thoughts and actions. In this endeavor, it will naturally come into conflict with our changing behavior patterns, i.e., with learning. It will seek to keep us making the same mistakes in the same ways so as not to reveal past mistakes for what they now seem to be. However, our past actions were justified by what we believed then; no one ever takes a wrong action on purpose.

Our inconsistency over time in no way reduces the net value of the universe; our consistency programs need to be reminded of this fact.

If we find ourselves “out on a limb” doing something we are no longer entirely comfortable with, it may be the result of our consistency program. This is the time to stop what we’re doing and reconsider all alternatives, not doing anything merely for the sake of consistency.

The tendency to be consistent stems from the implicit assumption that if we have no preference about how to act in a given circumstance, the most logical course is to act as we have before. While this assumption may appear logical, its effect is to give power to precedent.

This is undesirable because it limits experimentation and exploration. Much precedent has been established casually.

As we proceed largely by trial and error, much precedent represents error and, as such, should certainly not be institutionalized.

Action to be consistent with precedent reinforces the precedent, developing it into a habit or programmatic addiction.

Programmatic addiction “freezes” us into stasis, halting the evolutionary march of becoming. We should ideally retain all power over our current behavior, yielding none to the past or others.

Acting consistently with precedent is another form of hasty closure and, as such, minimizes fresh thought, reducing the potential for understanding. Learning to identify which of our thoughts and actions are inspired by our consistency programs, we subject them to objective critical review as if the past did not exist, and therefore as if no precedent existed.

Start life anew with a clear slate each moment.

We can do this by spontaneously thinking and acting to break established patterns of thought and behavior unless, in a given instance, there are valid reasons not to do so.

Awareness of our power to change ourselves.

It’s common to focus on our past performance as a predictor of how we will act in the future, despite our contrary resolutions. This is because there is no feeling of change inside when we make a resolution; thus, we feel instinctively that the resolution has not changed anything nor will it.

Since we have no confidence in our resolutions, they have no effect. Then we say to ourselves, “I told you so!” and continue to behave as before with less hope than ever of willing and effecting change.

Resolutions, therefore, must not be made lightly, for their non-effect will weaken the effectiveness of future resolutions.

After considering all aspects of an issue, we resolve to do only what we are determined to do, and then let nothing stop us unless and until our mind is changed by new inputs and resolutions.

Aware that we will not feel anything inside when we make a resolution to change, we therefore do not expect to feel anything inside, and we do not take the absence of such a feeling as evidence that we are no different.

We are different: we have the invisible determination to act differently and the total invisible power to carry out this determination, aware that both the determination and power may be invisible yet real.

We can help prove this to ourselves by acting immediately on our resolutions, even if the situation only allows us to do so in small ways. This will prove that we are now different and will make our invisible will visible.

Mind Experiments

1. Springboarding from mistakes rather than patching them over

Real learning cannot occur while the ego is in command because the ego is attached to seeing itself as “right already” and thus cannot admit mistakes (and therefore cannot learn from them). The ego eschews the humiliation-evolution opportunity to preserve its illusions.

Pick a day and, for that day, focus on being honest and creative (not “consistent” and “resistant to change”). The more of your own mistakes you find that day and the more creatively you respond to them, the better.

2. Creative new approaches

One day, read this blog post upon waking and apply it to everything that happens that day. Try some creative new approaches in every area of your life that day. Enjoy.

When you are re-experiencing, check how you were feeling and what you did about it—then contemplate how this has affected the rest of your life by lulling you into fixed coping styles.

3. How do you see yourself now?

Fill out the questionnaire below. If you like, Click here to download and print.  Feel free to add your own adjectives and check them as appropriate.

To be continued next week.

Our best wishes to all,
THEI Team

Guiltless Housecleaning

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Welcome to this week’s Pebbles in the Pond Blog, written by Bill Harvey
October 23, 2026

MIND MAGIC / MIND EXPERIMENTS: The 50th Anniversary Edition Excerpt Series: Part 12

It's time for a guiltless housecleaning

In last week’s post, we explored how to dismantle counterproductive tendencies by tracing their origins, setting realistic, gradual goals for self-control, and shrinking the gap between action and self-awareness until we can catch ourselves before we act. We also examined how our old coping mechanisms—”senators” or past influences—fight to survive long after they have outlived their usefulness.

This week, it’s time for a “guiltless housecleaning” of our internal system.

To compensate for these tendencies, it’s wise to regularly review our favorite programs for signs of vestigiality. But in light of their past service, we do not blame any program for being counterproductive as we remove it. Housecleaning should be guiltless.

We will remove a program when it no longer fits our developing gestalt; until that point, the program fit, and neither we nor the program were to blame for our union.

Avoiding the temptation to be harsh with the programs we remove, we look upon them not as enemies but as “mischief programs”. They were necessary stepping stones to where we are now; we can love them for this while defusing their power over us for the upcoming phases.

As we remove our extraneous programming, we will be simplifying the number of variables impinging upon any set of circumstances. Thus, we will solve the circumstances for best action more quickly and accurately.

In attempting to identify our unconscious programming, we need to be prepared for the pervasive to be invisible: the things we do most continuously will be hardest for us to detect and analyze.

Mind Experiments

1. De-energizing parental-dynamic-compensating parasite circuits

You may not yet know this, but you can “return in time” and re-experience any memory quite vividly just by putting the time and energy into it.

2. Do this—return to the first time you saw your parents perform the first act on your list, from Mind Experiment 2 from last week: De-energizing parental-dynamic parasite circuits.

Then do it for each other act on the list—go back to the first time they played that one in front of you.

To the extent that your rational mind believes that this built-in memory ability is impossible for you, the process will be delayed, but the subconscious processes will still work on it, will flash you hints from time to time, and eventually, you’ll suddenly re-experience a key moment: from then on, it will be easy—you will systematically re-experience each unassimilated moment in your memory and clear it.

When you are re-experiencing, check how you were feeling and what you did about it—then contemplate how this has affected the rest of your life by lulling you into fixed coping styles.

Our best wishes to all,
THEI Team

Edit Your Head Files

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Welcome to this week’s Pebbles Blog written by Bill Harvey
October 9, 2026

MIND MAGIC / MIND EXPERIMENTS the 50th Anniversary Edition Excerpt Series: Part 10

The first step is to become aware of our programming...

We have all been programmed. Every experience we have ever had and every communication we have ever received has implanted in us a predisposition to act and think in certain ways.

There are currently a large number of programs operating in our heads, most of which we are no longer aware of or were never aware of.

These programs interact to determine precisely how we will behave in a specific set of circumstances. To the extent that we allow this to continue, our behavior will be predictable based on knowledge of our programming. Thus, we will be mechanical slaves, our lives the mathematical result of all our programming inputs.

It is possible, however, to gradually become aware of all our programming; to select which programming to keep, which to modify, and which to remove; and to act with conscious awareness of our relevant programming so that we can either ratify or override it in any given set of circumstances. When these things are done, we are no longer mechanical slaves to our programming and can choose when to use each of our specific programs.

The first step is to become aware of our programming:
this requires close observation.

We must observe ourselves as if we are observing another person we have never known before. Every word, every tone of voice, every minute gesture, every action, and every thought must be scrutinized from the standpoint of:

  • Why was that done?
  • What are the roots of such behavior?
  • What is the motivation?
  • When might it have been implanted and by whom or what?

We will find that the bulk of our actions serve petty ends of which we cannot consciously approve. For example, we will find that most of our words, gestures, and postures can only be explained as role-playing mimicry designed to make us feel approved of. We will find that even when we can do without outside approval, we still seek inside approval from other people whose viewpoints we have stored inside our heads.

When we have stripped away all such programming, we will no longer be addicted to the support of others: we will take what we consider the best action we know how to take at any given moment, assess the results of that action, and revise plans accordingly. We will see status in society as a form of scrip slaves/workers are permitted to give themselves in return for obedience. (Scrip = ersatz money as given by the “company” for use in the “company store”.)

Mind Experiments

Let’s revisit the Mind Experiments from Part 9

1. Watch action patterns.

  • Pick a day. On that day, from the moment you awaken, stay alert all day and watch your actions down to the smallest gesture.
  • When you seem to be observing an action pattern that appears significant to some part of your mind, ask yourself: “Why did I do that?” (Or, “Why am I doing this?”)

2. “Autopilot addictions” meditation

  • What were your mother and father “addicted” to (attached to getting or avoiding)?
  • How about your peers at school and others known to have influenced you: to what were they “addicted”?
  • To what extent do you now automatically mirror any of these addictions?

3. Meditate on the extent to which you “need” approval.

  • Whom do you “need” approval from? Why?
  • Clue: What do you work hardest at? Who would approve of you the most for working so hard at it?

Let’s add one more:

4. Develop absolute willpower.

Absolute willpower means that when you make a vow, you know you will keep it.

What stands between most of us and absolute willpower is the knowledge that we have habitually broken our vows and don’t know how to break that habit. In other words, we don’t believe ourselves when we make vows, so we don’t feel truly bound to keep them.

The way to break the habit is to start making vows to ourselves that we know we will keep, and then allow time to pass during which we always keep these vows.

Example:
The next time you catch yourself in an “unwanted manifestation” you know you can give up, vow (decide) to give it up. Make as many of these as you like, but don’t try to give up something you’re not sure you can give up until your body has observed you keeping the “easy” vows in three-dimensional reality.

Once your “lower” (cybernetically less sophisticated) parts have observed you keeping your “easy” vows, it will become much easier for you to make and keep “not-so-easy” vows, and eventually “hard” ones as well.

Love to all,
THEI Team

Celebrating Bill Harvey,
a man whose life’s work touched so many

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Bill Harvey
March 1942—September 2026

Today, we, the THEI team, are writing to let you know that Bill Harvey, gifted writer and speaker, innovative researcher, creative inventor, and our beloved friend, has passed.

We will miss his physical presence immensely, and yet he will live on through his work. Bill’s wish was for us to carry on the mission of The Human Effectiveness Institute by making his writings available to all. Bill created a large body of work—some not yet published—which he intended to share with you.  We look forward to making that happen by posting some of Bill’s “new” writings here on Pebbles and, when possible, making them available as printed and/or eBooks.

Bill Harvey loved life. He loved everything he did and always looked for ways to serve and uplift humanity. He radiated joy and enthusiasm for all aspects of life, and he wanted everyone to experience that same joie de vivre.  This led him to establish The Human Effectiveness Institute in 1976. And even at the very end of his life, 50 years later, he remained enthusiastic about discovering what would come next.

Also in 1976, he wrote his first book, Mind Magic, which reflected his desire to help people experience life from a higher viewpoint. Universities, colleges, and even the US military have used Mind Magic as a course text to train people to use their minds more effectively.

Bill was a writer at heart. He loved to write and made time to do so daily.  He wrote more than 10 books, some of which have received awards. He wrote nonfiction, science fiction, and children’s books, as well as numerous published media research papers and articles.

An acclaimed leader in media and advertising research, Bill was also a futurist and an inventor with four issued US patents. He consulted for hundreds of companies, including many in the Fortune 500.

In addition to awards for his books, Bill received awards for his contributions to media research and advertising, including an Emmy in 2022 for his pioneering work in technology. In practical terms, his invention helps diverse audiences with a wide range of interests to get all the types of programs they enjoy the most.

His most recent start-up company, RMT Labs, merges neuroscience, marketing, and media. He brought together a stellar team of professionals who are well-positioned to continue RMT Labs’ early successes.

Bill deeply loved his country and wanted to see everyone get along. He often wrote about how we could and should do that and posted these ideas in his blog, Pebbles in the Pond. He also wrote to presidents and congressional representatives to share his ideas.

A natural public speaker, Bill was invited on many radio talk shows, podcasts, and live engagements. You can view some of those speaking engagements on his YouTube channel, Bill & the Universe, The Bill Harvey Media Channel.

We have been deeply moved by the beautiful tributes from around the world for Bill and would like to share two of these with you.

We are especially grateful to Bill’s industry colleague and friend, Jack Myers, for the eloquent and heartfelt tribute he posted on his Myers Report. Here are some excerpts:

I cannot think of Bill as simply gone. He believed that consciousness extends beyond the boundaries we ordinarily place around it, and that every human life is part of a larger spiritual universe. I believe Bill would want us to understand his passage in that light…

To the media and advertising community, Bill was one of our most original and respected thinkers … continually challenging accepted assumptions. He asked the industry to … recognize that what is easiest to count is not always what counts most. … He understood that … communication carries a responsibility to elevate…

It’s his larger body of work for which I believe he most deserves to be remembered. His work in media was one expression of a much larger inquiry: How do our minds work, what prevents us from seeing clearly, and how can we become more conscious, creative, compassionate, and effective human beings?

Bill did not offer spirituality as an escape from reality. He presented it as a way of entering reality more fully. He believed we could learn to observe our own thinking, quiet the forces that distort it, reach the flow state, and use our minds rather than allowing our minds to use us.

He wrote about the discipline required to imagine ourselves inside another person’s experience. Empathy, for Bill, was not a slogan. It was a demanding exercise of consciousness and one of our responsibilities as human beings. His invitation was simple and profound: “Share warmth. Love to all.”

Bill spent his life exploring doorways into higher consciousness. Now he has passed through a doorway none of us can fully comprehend. … I will remain grateful for the intelligence, generosity, and spiritual light he shared with us. The best testimonial we can offer Bill is to keep his work alive. Read his books. Revisit his columns … Question your assumptions. Observe your own mind. Bring more imagination, warmth, and consciousness into every decision. (Read the full tribute here.)

∞

The following is excerpted from a tribute to Bill by Josh Chasin, posted on LinkedIn, which he delivered at an industry summit this week:

How do you describe the measure of a man who loved measurement, but who was himself immeasurable?

I cannot conjure a mental picture of Bill where he isn’t positively beaming, the light of life and love and wonder emanating from him like a beacon. He didn’t just make us better or smarter … He made us happier.

Perhaps the greatest legacy Bill could ask for would be that that smile, and that light, lives on in all of us. (Read the full tribute here.)

As mentioned earlier, we will be posting more of Bill’s writings here, in his continuing blog, Pebbles in the Pond.

Next week, we will continue serializing the revised 50th anniversary edition of Bill’s 1976 book, Mind Magic: The Science of Microcosmology.

To learn more about Bill, please read his books and the reader testimonials, available on the THEI website.

We also invite you to share your experience of Bill and his books, videos, and podcasts below in the comments. We would love to hear from you.

We hope you’ll revisit Pebbles in the Pond often to read new content from Bill.

We wish you all the best.

As Bill often signed off –
Love to all,

The THEI Team
Karen L. Harvey, Advisor
George Niver, CEO
Christine Niver, Art Director
Yana Lambert, Publishing Director