‘Porthole Effect’ – Mind over Matter

This is something which many of us do not experience… for only those who form the distinguished groups of the Special Forces have experienced this for themselves. Yet it is not because we as so-called ‘more normal’ human beings are not able to experience this, but it’s because we do not know what it feels like to be pushed to our utmost limits & still carry on.

I learnt from reading many military books that soldiers are not enlisted into the Special Forces, rather… this is something that soldiers volunteer for. At first, it struck my mind… volunteer? Yeah, coz this is such a distinguished group of the elite that you yourself must want it bad enough to be a part of it & have what it takes to become one.

There’s no need to force people to join, coz they wouldn’t make it if they didn’t want it badly enough from the beginning & keep reinforcing this in their brain till the end of their long months of grueling training.

One of the best examples is the famous ‘Hell Week’ (which all Navy SEAL candidates go through) puts you literally through an absolute hell of a week, lasting 5 days with only 4 hours of sleep in total. That’s approximately 48 minutes of sleep each day & the rest of the hours of agonizing physical drills, with no let-up in pace. I have a calculator with me, but I seriously don’t wish to count the number of hours of continuous grueling. If you do count, please let me know. I can’t bear to count. And that’s just the first week… which many journalists, congressional investigators & Navy bureaucrats have been accusing as mindlessly brutal, for over all these years.

You see, to become one of the elite, it takes more than physical fitness. A typical minimum fitness score to qualify for a Green Beret commando training, could be as simple & direct as being able to run 2 miles (3.2 km) in below 12 – 14 minutes, more than 100 push-ups in 2 minutes & more than 100 sit-ups in 2 minutes.

I haven’t tried the push-up & sit-up part (though I’m quite keen on trying it out just to test myself), but as a competitive runner in my early school days, this timing wasn’t a problem to me at all. I used to run 3.2 km at the stadium, 6 days a week, with an average timing of 13 minutes. But does that qualify me to sign for commando training? Far from it… coz qualifying for the course doesn’t stand on reaching the minimum standard of a typical fitness test. To be accepted into Special Forces training, you must aim for the top score for everything…

Most importantly, the strength of the mind is very important. This is what is referred to as the ‘Porthole Effect’, where in the midst of grueling training, the Navy SEAL trainees reach this state where they begin looking out through their eyes at the hostile world around them, despite the pain & discomfort outside this ‘porthole’ in which they are looking out from.

Trainees who don’t learn to retreat within the ‘porthole’ end up quitting Hell Week & even later parts of SEAL training because they have allowed their physical discomfort to take over their minds. If you want to know what kind of training they are put through, feel free to read about it.

This point made a strong impression on me, coz I find that many of us are ‘soft’ in the body & weak in the mind. If we speak to those who have gone through & some even escaped from prison camps or torture camps during wars such as the Vietnam War & others, their mindset is just different from the rest of us. When we push our minds to make ourselves do the impossible, that’s where something changes within us & we find strength for the task. It’s difficult to explain unless one goes through it for himself or herself, but if we ever undergo that & hopefully survive that, we will know what it means.

Does the ‘Porthole Effect’ really work? Can the mind really be over matter? We will never find out unless we ourselves are subjected to the test…