Every individual has pondered the question of "Why are we here?" at one stage of his or her life. For the last couple of millennia philosophers, academics, professionals, intellectuals, psychiatrist and psychologists have been trying to discover the purpose of existence with no solid answer. An outcome of their research has resulted in the categorization of human behaviour into a series of compartments.

These limited discoveries have given bankers, politicians and industrialists a tool with which to control, manipulate, and direct a mass population based on their common behaviour toward a thing, person or ideology. A large number of populations are aware of these methods of exploitation by a small number of people; however, no one seems to alter their trend, path or behaviour when it comes to slightly different campaigns by public relations masters who constantly utilize newly discovered weaknesses in a mass society.

A society consists of a number of people who have different experiences and upbringings that makes each person unique. Therefore, before trying to find out the purpose of our existence, we probably should find an answer to the more basic question, "Why do we do what we do?" individually, and as a group.

Each one of us is the product of our past; the challenge is what parts of the past make us who we are at the present, and how will our present thoughts and experiences shape our future. To further explore this, we ought to know the very basics of human mental functionalities, namely the conscious and sub-conscious mind.

From the moment our umbilical cord is cut off to the last breath of life, we store every single experience of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, internally. However we only remember a very small portion of this vast pool of information at any given moment, and in many cases, we are selective about which ones we remember.

As we grow we develop a habit of choosing, picking, and storing certain memories and experiences, based on our ideology and belief, in our conscience mind. As a result, these become our personality. For the most part, they consist of our personal view of specific events, and may or may not match the facts and the reality; hence, our formed opinions, as well as the supporting information that we gather, are merely the reflections or a personal point of view.

All of us at one time or another act based on our assumptions without obtaining supportive facts and figures. Therefore, on many occasions we might have suffered negative consequences of these actions, based on poorly understood assumptions. The premise of MEDCENTRATION is that it would be better to learn to access the stored memories more accurately, when they can be used to aid us, that is, when we need them most.

There are many reasons that prevent us from having accurate and immediate access to all or a major part of the information stored in our sub-conscious compartment. However, the main blockage is the one that has been created by ourselves, since we do not want to lose the control of what we stored in our conscious, namely, what constitutes the self for us: some call it "ego", but this is not the true self due to the fact that we are constantly exposed to mixed messages from outside ourselves.

In modern societies and urban living we are being bombarded daily by an overflow of information, advertisement, personal interests, cultural customs, family traditions, etc. Some are accurate and helpful, and many are harmful because of the ulterior motive of the publisher. A preoccupied and cluttered conscious mind acts as a dam to keep the valuable contents of the sub-conscious behind a solid barrier.

There are two ways to gain access to these valuable resources: voluntary processes and non-voluntary process. The voluntary process is when we attempt to seek answers through spirituality; by choosing external elements, selecting different paths such as faith, religion, meditation, concentration, relaxation, hypnotic state, science, research, and so on to gain necessary knowledge of ourselves to guide us toward better living! Utilizing an external path for the purpose of enlightenment is only effective for those of us who have a clear question and are committed fully to devoting themselves to the chosen philosophy.

The non-voluntary process is when thoughts, emotions, memories and feelings try to ooze out of the sub-conscious and appear in the conscious mind, which we usually discard after a few moment of nostalgia. When these past experiences surface, they are a valuable clue to our unedited real memories. To avoid polluting this precious resource, it is vital that we handle these chance recollections very carefully, since they can help us to discover valuable truths about ourselves, like a switch that can open the gate to the fountain of personal knowledge, stored in our sub-conscious. The challenge is, how can we manage these spontaneous pop-ups of past episodes?

Every single sub-conscious memory that finds its way to the conscious chamber has to be scrutinized and studied carefully, one at a time. Rather than trying to justify its nature, we ought to find the circumstances and reasons leading to the event, by focusing on facts and figures only. This process of discovery and identification opens up a dialogue with the inner self to investigate an event in our past, whether near or distant, using a series of questions we can ask ourselves to aid in this journey. It is a step in the MEDCENTRATION process that is well worth the time and effort required to carry it out. We are our own primary responsibility, so after all, who is more worthy of getting to know than ourselves?

Medcentration is an intellectual discipline technique that has been formulated by Bahman Yazdanfar and has been in the process of being developed since 1995. In this method one attempts to get into a state of awareness by concentrating on the mind’s thinking process.

Medcentration involves focusing attention on a single experience in one’s life, tracing its characteristics, attributes, and repetitions, and examining its emotional attribute changes in order to understand oneself.

Medcentration is practised outside religious traditions and encompasses a wide range of experimental, spiritual and psychophysical issues, unique to the individual who practises it; this type of intellectual exercise focuses on overviewing the mind state, in order to understand changes in one’s life and to obtain the sort of inner confidence which results in a peaceful state of mind.

The term Medcentration means "to measure one issue at a time". It has been invented by Bahman Yazdanfar, who believes that the process of life, from inception to death, has a vertical spiral funnel pattern and mind imprint, similar to the shape of a tornado, and one can always remember past experience in broken synapses.

Yazdanfar says that if impressions of one’s past were a "time line" as is commonly believed, one could have a vivid view of one’s life from the beginning to the present, which is not the case. As we grow physically, mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, the diameter widens and distance increases. Hence, our mental view of past experiences fades over time and becomes fragmented as we age.

Medcentration is a technique to capture these fragmentations and to analyze experiences and issues, for a period of a time from different angles, one at a time. The major difference between Medcentration and other forms of the meditation is the brain activity and length of the process.

Although stress reduction, a peaceful mind and tranquility are the major parts of the desired result, it is not done passively and needs full mental engagement at the beginning, until it becomes a habit.

The aim of Medcentration is to resolve inner barriers which stop one from achieving inner peace. Everyone has specific characteristics or traits, unique personal experiences, and different life expectations. Therefore, by applying this technique, one could customize and adapt the process at one’s own pace, time, and location, to explore the natural qualities and its manifestations within.

Medcentration is not about changing our thoughts, feelings, or emotional attachment, it is a method with which to discover them. Yazdanfar believes that understanding of one’s self will transform thoughts automatically, and one can evolve only by examining the evidence of the past methodically, carefully, and logically.

Medcentration has many potential applications. It can be used as a self healing process, mentally and physically, over a period of time. Through its methodology, one can gain new control of a wide range of behavioural-pattern and self-esteem issues.