The nation taken for a ride by a girl, an actor and a TV channel
Mangalore Today News Network
By Prof. Narendra Nayak
Mangaluru, Dec 3, 2021: This a story of how an eleven year old made a fool of someone eight times her age and he in turn tried the same with a nation of 130 crores! This is the story of the episodeno62 of the KBC13 a very popular TV show broadcast from the Sony entertainment Television channel. In this a girl shows super powers by reading pages from a book after blind folding herself with one brought by her! Sadly neither the appendage nor its properties whether could cut off all light from falling on the retina were not checked by the presenter Amitabh Bachchan or his team. This shows both in very poor light and more so the nation whose gullible population is taken for a ride by assorted range of such tricksters starting from religious gurus to online frauds. Well, when there is a fraud there must be some ‘spiritual force’ behind it and it is true in this case too!
The girl Vanshi’s performance was allegedly due to her training by a commercial organizations called as Brighterminds and it was inspired by one Kamlesh D Patel, who promotes something called as heartfulness meditation. In fact, he on previous occasions had taken children to various places including IIM, Bengaluru where they demonstrated the act of ‘blindfolded seeing’ in August, 2019 and when the director of IIM was queried about it the reply was “There are several events, conferences and lectures that are hosted at IIM Bangalore, and many of them are also open to the public to attend. However, it may be noted that not all programs are sponsored by the Institute. Many such initiatives are individually driven by faculty and students who are keen to bring together multiple perspectives for wider discussion and debates. In this particular instance, the video is being propagated by an external entity and the Institute has nothing to do with it. We shall certainly take note of any specific concerns that may be raised pertaining to events hosted at the Institute,’ said Kavitha Kumar, Head of Communications, IIM-B. The net result was the video of the children showing the ‘super power’ of blind folded reading was pulled off the net! The link for the news report is here (https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/will-mid-brain-activation-really-produce-super-kids-or-it-scam/). However, this did not prevent the said enterprises from demonstrating this elsewhere!
While Patel called as Daaji by his followers made a number of tall claims about meditation and such, the only show piece they have is the demonstration of blindfolded seeing by children attributing that to something called as ‘neuroplasticity’ which enables only children between the ages of 5 to 15 can be subjected to that process! Well Patel and his crowd could say that. But, any sensible person would call that as lying. Because, till date no one has shown that the eyesight to the clarity of reading text can be done by any means that the light falling on the retina can be totally excluded! It also means that the children who claim that they can see by odor and touch are lying and have been brainwashed by elders to do that.
Such things are not new in this country. In fact in 2010 or so I had exposed a teenaged called Ranjana Agarwal on a panel discussion for a TV channel at Delhi. She was flaunting a certificate by Department of science and Technology govt of India commending her for ability see blindfolded signed by the secretary Science and technology Smt. Reva Nayyar on 14th, November, 2004. It was supposedly for National child award for exceptional achievement! The only exceptional achievement that one can see here is her ability to take people for a ride claiming that she can see blind folded while actually peeping through the gaps!
Later on the concept of blindfolded seeing took a different pitch and got a new name called as Midbrain activation. This was allegedly the (mid)brain child of a Japanese ‘genius’ called as Makoto Schichida who had a list of bogus degrees, claims and awards! This was started by a number of enterprises called as Midbrain activation academies. They claimed to make geniuses of children and the proof of that was they could see even when blindfolded. We had challenged them to show the abilities under controlled conditions- that the method of cutting off light from falling on the retina to be devised by us. An acceptance of this challenge and the subsequent chickening out by a man called Vinoj Surendran in Kerala resulted in our activists children performing the same acts of blindfolded seeing without the need for any ‘midbrain activation’. This resulted in some ‘midbrain activated’ children who came from the audience or rather were thrust forward by their parents coming forth to take the challenge and failing miserably when proper methods of blind folding were applied! It also resulted in a video which was uploaded on to the net and this video started popping up when midbrain activation was googled. So, the cheating in the name of blind folded seeing by children took up new names like right brain activation, brain balancing etc. One such enterprise which started a place called Puttur near Mangalore had to be closed down when the govt ordered them to stop making children by smelling and touching which cannot be acceptable! It was probably for the first time in the world that the district administration stopped such nonsense!
By this time, the so called ‘spiritual’ gurus had entered the picture. People like the rape accused Nityananda who has now absconded, the Art of living foundation had all started their own versions of blindfolded reading with different fancy names.
The latest entrant into this is the enterprise of Kamlesh D Patel and these people managed to hoodwink the team of Kaun Banega Karodpathi13 into showing this on National Television. One can only comment about the poor quality of the team which screened this girl or was it because of other factors? Following a complaint from us, the video has been pulled off. But, the fact remains that the message has gone to the gullible population that it is possible to read even when the light from the material to be perused does not fall on the retina! It also ‘proves’ that some sort of ‘neuroplasticity’ can alter the brains of the children to learn text books by touch and smell alone!
We have asked the channel as to what steps they would take to correct the wrong impression created by their broadcast of a nonsensical claim that some can see even without light from the object falling on the retina!
Prof. Narendra Nayak is a President of Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations
Mid Brain Activation Scam - Watch An Educative Video