Every decision of mankind, individually or collectively, is predicated upon some premise structure. That conceptual structure, when failing to reflect reality, has the unhappy effect of limiting progress, if not propelling the individual, or the group, hopelessly in the wrong direction.
In terms of human function, one foundation belief that fails to reflect reality, such as one's concept of existence, can insure a seriously misdirected life. In the area of a belief, internalized, defended and maintained, the individual will consistently press for supportive falsehoods in preference to factual knowledge that would pose a threat to the belief. It is but rarely such individuals accept the realities necessary for insight and correction.
The problem of correcting one's own conceptual structure constitutes the single most formidable problem in one's life, not only because it is not recognized as a problem, but also because internalized material is reflexively defended. There is an inborn imperative to protect and maintain one's own internalized concepts. In order to do this, the individual must reject or otherwise exclude any conceptual material that poses a perceived threat to these concepts. Thus, delusion, presents a devastating barrier to learning and intellectual growth.
A culture never provides information relevant to this problem area, first, because the institutions remain based on primitive delusions that require insulation from critical examination and the reciprocal realities. Belief is the predominant means used to control and manipulate populations. Ultimate reality and the factual nature of the human being must be maintained as unfathomable mysteries, as part of an environment of unquestioned belief and faith.
Our cultural institutions present the human being as largely a hopeless enigma, even beyond the reach of science and human comprehension. This is untrue, of course. Much, if not all of the seeming enigmatic nature of existence and the human animal can be shown to be confusion resulting from poor science, as mainstream science and our institutions attempt to accommodate cultural myths.
In the process of accommodating cultural delusion, mainstream science, especially the social sciences, have too often pulled their punches. Too often, psychologists and sociologists have blinked when confronted with cultural pressures. Too often, valid material is mixed with mysticism, the encroachment of superstition ignored, if not eagerly accepted. Conceptual pathogens are enfolded within a culture and institutionalized. Too often, the scientist becomes blind, deaf and dumb to anything that might be controversial or unpopular.
Although such infidelity goes a long way toward destroying the credibility of science, it is understandable in view of the fact that anyone working within a formalized system, within an institution, is vulnerable to reprisals. To speak out is to seriously jeopardize one's career. Here is one reason why this book could be written only by someone largely outside, independent of the cultural institutions, someone the institutions could not sense and, thus, move to suppress.
There is another reason that such a book would not come from within an institution. Those working within mainstream systems are immersed in mainstream thought and the disciplines of their academic training and profession. They will have accepted most of the flaws of their discipline as well as much of the popular cultural material within the society, in addition to the functional material of their profession. It is unlikely they would stray far enough from conventional thinking to see through the fog of our myths and routine irrationalities.
Also, many workers within the fields of psychology and sociology are drawn there because of their own problems, generated by delusions. They come to their profession, highly irrational and reactive to massive amounts of valid information. These workers impose their own distorted perceptions upon the existing body of material, often adding to the confusion. They seek niches and philosophies which provide acceptance and security, if not comfort. A large part of their energies are dissipated in the maintenance of beliefs. Any information which constitutes a threat to these areas of cognizance triggers reactance.
It should be noted, that the forces which propagate the idea that the human animal is not fathomable, are basically the same forces that have, throughout human history, worked so diligently to prevent an objective examination of existence, humankind, and our cultural myths. How eminently successful they have been!
We generate new life forms in our laboratories, build machines that increasingly exhibit the ability to think, send smart machines into space and create crystals that have never existed before on Earth, yet the overwhelming majority of our numbers still cling to the ideas of ancient cultures, desperately avoiding the bulk of real knowledge that could set them free. The great mass of humanity still practices the rituals and clings to the delusions of a savage and ignorant past. What a tragedy that the multitude, more than adequately equipped with intelligence, and with seemingly limitless potential, remains bound in a perpetual syndrome of belief-ignorance, living their lives with little more reasoned behavior than exhibited by our ancestors ten thousand years ago.
The human brain remains the most complex subsystem ever evolved in our Earth environment. Its activities are born of complex chemistry in an organic computer capable of co-processing at many different levels of function and at speeds which baffle those who labor to unravel its mysteries. The human personality is generated by, and is dependent upon, the brain, the highest level of development on Earth, while the fundamental controls of development are at the bottom extreme of the developmental scale. That essence of individuality, of personality, which lends grace, dignity and intelligence to the human animal, ceases to exist the moment the brain processes stop.
Obviously, the idea of a soul has nothing to do with the real existence we have discovered. The concept of soul or spirit, which can live on beyond the life of the brain, is but the product of wishful thinking; of cultural traditions and myths born of ignorance, superstition and the vested interests of institutions and individuals within our cultures.
Belief in a soul displays an ignorance of physiology, as well as physics. For an organized personality to exist, there must be an organized brain generating that personality. In other words, there cannot be organization without the organization of physical structure.
Everything that we have discovered, or found the faintest evidence of existing, is of a material nature. Even something as elusive as a thought or an emotion, such as love, has a material basis. The diverse forms of energy and the 'waves' of particles that carry communications through space, are material, packaged primary motion that can be stored, shaped or translated to other particles, but can never cease to exist. The most fundamental "essence" behaves in accordance with the exact geometric requirements of existence. There is no evidence of an existence beyond this natural one and, therefore, no defendable reason for assuming one.
Although human knowledge, and insights concerning the nature of existence, are growing exponentially, nowhere has there been found any evidence of a supernatural or of gods or spirits. In fact, our understanding of the nature of existence is now complete to the point of showing that there is no place and certainly no physical need, for the supernatural. Ascribing any aspect of existence or function to a supernatural being not only adds zero to our growing body of knowledge, but distorts the truth by mixing it with myth and fantasy.
Should there ever be found evidence of a supernatural, I will immediately write a retraction. In the meantime I will not pretend, or otherwise lend credence to delusions. To do so constitutes working against the species and Earth's ability to support life.
There is much yet to be discovered about the brain's method of storage, awareness, and other systems as a processor of received stimuli. We do know the organization of the brain in terms of where many of the functions are carried out. It is also known that the brain is capable of operating on many different levels simultaneously. Consciousness is made up of countless points of perception, merging to provide awareness, recognition, insight and understanding.
Although the exact processes by which the brain produces self awareness is still largely a mystery, its fundamental mechanism is the same as that of an electronic computer, a base-two counting system built up from on/off or signal/no signal neural activity. Our understanding of the rudimentary essentials for this process have been gleaned from sources other than the brain itself, through work with computers and the study of artificial intelligence, AI.
It is not necessary to know exactly how the brain is performing a process in order to know what that process is. Much insight can be gained through a close examination of what it does or does not do under a given set of circumstances.
In the following pages, the word brain will refer to the physical organ while the word mind will refer to programming and processing, a combination of the learned and the systemic, conscious and subconscious, volitional and automatic, the total functioning program. The cognitive programming effects the physiological and vice-versa.
Mind is analogous to the operating system and programming of a computer. The brain is the hardware. Learned material will be used as analogous to the program of a computer. The functioning of a brain or a computer will be no better than the program it is running.
In this work I will only touch on topics that are usually neglected, not only because of the limitations of space, relevance and knowledge, but because it is not necessary. There is an abundance of factual material on the subject in any freedomry. However, I would caution you to stick to material that is supported by experimental or clinical evidence. There is probably no subject area more tainted with superstition and interlaced with fantasy-generated distortions than the fields of psychology and sociology. Seek out factual material and be suspicious of interpretations, especially where explanations are tinged with emotional appeal.
There is little Freudian material that is an adequate reflection of factual reality, although it is largely the defacto standard for description and, unfortunately, still lingers as an approach to treatment.
Try to see through the distortions. Do not be impressed by experts or psychological jargon, much of which serves only to obfuscate or is devoid of objective meaning. Reserve interpretations and final determinations for yourself. You are better equipped for the job than you may suspect. You will, however, be required to reason.
As for this chapter on the mind, it has the purpose of spotlighting, expanding and integrating some areas neglected (or carefully avoided) by mainstream psychology. It does not have the purpose of replacing any work in experimental or clinical psychology which reflects factual reality. The material in this chapter can provide only an overview of mental processes and hopefully will assist the reader toward insight by touching on areas psychology has failed to properly address.
Reasoning is listed in the College Edition of the New World Dictionary as "...the drawing of inferences or conclusions from known or assumed facts...". From this one can immediately infer that, for reasoning to stay within the bounds of reality, it must be based on factual knowledge.
There are basically two forms of reasoning, inter-related and to a large degree, automatic. They are categorized here for these purposes as deductive and inductive reasoning. Although there exists a great variety of mental activity, any activity which involves reaching conceptual conclusions, falls within one or both of these categories.
Some aspects of reasoning must take place on a conscious level, but always involves the sub-conscious level. The subconscious, although incapable of inductive reasoning, is a master at deductive reasoning, as well as being the storehouse of all our knowledge and acquired skills. In terms of the two major reasoning processes, the subconscious is effective only in deductive reasoning and provides stored material for use by the conscious mind. It also provides `packaged' responses to stimuli, as well as external or internal environmental cues. These response packages may be conditioned or unconditioned, that is, learned or instinctual. The subconscious reasoning processes are ongoing, to some degree, at all times. The subconscious never sleeps.
Deductive reasoning is where, given a generalization, you deduce the particulars. For example, if you overhear someone say, "Look, there's a monkey riding a pony!.", a picture of a monkey perched on the pony's back immediately comes to mind. The process is as quick as a reflex. In fact, it is a mental reflex. You will have stored in your memory visual and learned conceptual material relating to such things as ponies, monkeys plus any other material that may fill in the picture. Given the cue of those few words, your mind provides you with a very complex picture of the monkey and the pony, more involved than was contained in the few words that served as a cue to trigger it.
Your mind deduced all the details of the picture from material stored in your memory. This was an automatic process which required no more than an external cue for activation. Conscious thought had virtually nothing to do with the process, other than the fact that you were 'conscious' of the cue and the resulting thoughts and imagery.
The mind will work the same way with logic. If you hear someone say, "A's were given for the top five scores. Billy came in fourth.", you know Billy got an A. You may also be reminded of additional information such as how the grade will effect Billy, his parents, etc. Depending on its relevance, you may be immediately reminded of other associated material, providing you with a complex range of additional ramifications. All this has been triggered by a simple cue. In fact there is a stream of cues here, one visualization or thought becoming the cue for a subsequent visualization or thought, a stream of consciousness.
Deductive reasoning is a process in which the particulars are deduced from a whole, or from foundation premises. If you begin with the concept that "God is omnipotent", you can deduce that 'God', then, is the primary mover; that 'God' is the creator; that 'God' knows everything; that 'God', then, controls everything and notes the "fall of the sparrow", etc. In deductive reasoning, if your foundation premise structure is true, and if you make no mistakes along the way, your final determination will be true. The above illustration shows the vital importance of these 'ifs'. Valid deductive reasoning depends upon valid premises.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" is credited with doing a lot of deductive reasoning, and he did, via his creator. However, he could not have solved his first crime, or any other, without the use of inductive reasoning . He gathered clues and was able to solve the crime, not only by deducing inferences from his observations, but by synthesizing a scenario wherein all the clues fitted together, making a complete and valid reconstruction of the crime. This required comparison and discrimination and the formulation of new insights from disparate clues.
Inductive reasoning is a process of comparison, discrimination and synthesis. This process of fitting together pieces of a puzzle, until there is insight into the nature of the overall picture, requires the ability to not only weigh values and to discriminate among the relative values and parts, but to freely associate, recognizing new relational connections among bits and pieces. The result is that a new, relevant, overall pattern or insight is brought into being.
Inductive reasoning also requires material from the subconscious. It requires learned skills and stored data or memory. This, then, is the complex, total involvement realm of inductive reasoning. It occurs only in the waking state, but uses subconscious material as well as conscious awareness material.
This process has one vital function that makes it unique, the capacity to discern whether or not a determination jibes with reality. Inductive reasoning is the brain's reality validation mechanism.
The mind can, and does, do most of the work at unconscious levels, even virtually all of the factors involved in the inductive reasoning process. However, discrimination and that final determination of validity is a conscious process. It is the vital step where conceptual material, stored in the subconscious, is related and compared to objective reality.
The accuracy and effectiveness of this process will depend upon the content of one's cognitive system. If the system contains large amounts of false material, the inductive reasoning system will be distorted, causing errors in perception and reasoning. Erroneous determinations and stress will be the inevitable result as the mind is confronted by conflicting material and struggles to protect the beliefs. Determinations will reflect this perceptual and cognitive distortion, their validity being diminished accordingly.
In the inductive reasoning process, incoming stimuli and information is automatically, reflexively, compared with internalized conceptual material residing in the subconscious. A resulting emotional reflex, biased either positively or negatively, is generated. This is an automatic, unconscious process, which occurs in an instant.
Unless the individual, when a point of conflict occurs, takes conscious command of his or her own reasoning processes, determinations will automatically follow the emotionality generated. This emotional response functions as a cognitive defense mechanism. There will be an automatic process of reciprocal cognitive exclusion, RCE. That is to say, the reciprocal of the internalized material will be excluded, rejected, unless conscious control is exerted, resulting in a closer examination of the material. Without this conscious self control, counter to the emotionality, the individual will reject and avoid the offending material, usually, by just walking away.
In the absence of conscious intervention, determinations will follow the generated emotionality, based solely on preexisting, internalized material. The exclusion process is usually very simple, the most common being something more interesting catching one's eye or the person simply walking away.
The accuracy and effectiveness of an individual's validation mechanism, thus, depends largely upon the content of one's cognitive system, one's programming. If this system contains large amounts of belief, material accepted on faith and unexamined, the inductive reasoning system will be operating on large amounts of false premises.
You can have the feeling that something is correct, but will never know for sure until the problem is subjected to conscious examination and analysis. Even then, your analysis will be no better than the accuracy of your premises and subsequent perceptions, the tools with which your inductive reasoning system must work.
The quality of these determinations depends, not only on the physical integrity of the brain but the quality of its programming, how closely your mind is oriented to reality. False ideas relevant to the problem at hand will result in inaccurate determinations. In addition, your inductive reasoning mechanism will undergo further distortion in the process of maintaining the falsehoods.
The thing that is at the heart of this synthesizing process is the mind's ability to compare and discriminate among pieces of information on the basis of perceived reality. Individuals from intensive religious backgrounds characteristically have a poor sense of reality. Under ordinary circumstances, these individuals will be the ones having sustained the greatest cognitive damage within a society.
Discrimination requires that the mind perceive relationships and assign values and relevance to the materials involved. The process of rejection is fully as essential as the process of acceptance. Philosophies involving a belief in magic and the accommodation of conflicting information do not provide the believer with the intellectual tools necessary for accurate discrimination and the rejection of falsehoods.
The conscious mind is the site of critical reasoning, primarily because it has the constant job of choosing behavior with respect to the factual environment. It is a system that has evolved to accurately evaluate real existence, with its attendant changing problems and conditions the individual must solve or adjust to. If perception is distorted because of beliefs which do not find their counterpart in reality, the reasoned determinations cannot escape distortion.
As developed, the brain is capable of an intimate interface with existence and the universe. As such, it has evolved into a highly accurate processor, providing the individual with relevant perceptions, indices and packages of learned behavior. By nature, it functions accurately. It is only through programming, the internalization of false material, that perception and reasoning processes become distorted.
The ability to synthesize a whole from disparate parts requires discrimination and synthesis, the essence of intelligence, the ability to compare and make accurate judgments. This is an activity strongly discouraged in an environment of cultural delusion.
Only in inductive reasoning does one find this capacity for discrimination. This limitation, and the vital role of it plays, have profound implications that are carefully avoided by mainstream psychology.
The conscious and subconscious are functions which can be separated only in concept. The two work together and are largely inextricable. Inductive and deductive reasoning have many common elements. Inductive reasoning requires some deductive reasoning as well as the support of subconscious material and activity 'packages'.
Inductive reasoning is a conscious process which is routinely carried out, to some extent, by the brain during the waking state. As such, it is a more volitional process than deductive reasoning. Though relatively small in terms of the functioning of the whole mental program, inductive reasoning might be thought of as the highest type of reasoning in that it makes possible any correction and is a necessary component for every reasoned development made by the human species.
The inductive reasoning process can handle but small fragments of information at a time. An over-all determination, in the matter of a complex question, might require years. The process of forming accurate interrelationships (or recognize inaccurate relationships) continues throughout the life of the individual. On a continuing basis, the conscious calls up data from the subconscious, processing it and correcting or reaffirming it. Where the fragments of processing are accurate, reality will be reflected and functionality will be enhanced.
The inductive reasoning process is routinely suppressed and distorted in the process of maintaining falsehoods. Cultural pressures routinely work to suppress this vital function of mind, that of cognitive correction as an ongoing process.
The healthy mind uses all its faculties, each faculty performing the function it is capable of and which has evolved as an enhancement toward function and survival. Our whole organism works to such perfection because it has had to. Dysfunctional specimens did not survive to breed large numbers of more dysfunctionals, although modern medicine and culture is in the process of drastically altering this picture.
Providing one's self with an acceptable reason for doing or being is a physical imperative. It goes beyond culture or learning. It is necessary for decisive action.
For intelligent life, any act will have a rationale. The moment an act is contemplated the mind will be in the process of formulating a rationale in support of the act. In this process, because of distorted perceptions and thought, carried down from antiquity by cultural delusions, the word rationalization takes on virtually the opposite meaning of rational. It illustrates a common form of flawed reasoning, necessary to maintain conceptual consistency and permit decisive action. It prevents ambivalence.
Our present most common approach to the unknown is to theorize, based on some indication or hunch, too often, subjective, and only then look for material that will support the theory. In this process, we automatically bias ourselves toward our theory, tending to look only for a means to support it. Materials which would give indications contrary to the theory tend to get ignored or overlooked, not only because of our emotional bias, but also because they were not part of the search objective.
In good science, one first gathers physical evidence relative the question and formulates a premise to be tested, based on the evidence. Validation is an essential part of the process.
If all you need is something to support or correlate with a theory, one can always find it. There will always be something that can be found to correspond to it, sunspots, pollen count, rainy days, something.
If all you need are correlations or public opinion (usually, when seeking cause and effect, these two are of similar value), you can always find it. Where validation is not a part of the process, any theory can be supported by 'evidence'. All you need to do is stay within the tautological system of your choice.
During the course of the twentieth century, theories have become increasingly treated as facts. Apparently, all that is needed is for the theory to be maintained for awhile. Someone will consider it worthy of building further theories upon. Thus, it becomes possible for whole systems, such as quantum mechanics, to be built up, patched into workable form with fudge factors, and continue, matching the data while not reflecting reality. Relativity is fatally flawed in several areas, yet is largely assumed to be proven.
In experimental science, the theory gets tested and, as is often the case, gets proven wrong and is discarded. However, in theoretical areas, this process of validation is often ignored. The theory is allowed to stand, supported by flawed and invalid premises. In effect, the theory is held as more important than the factual reality, the conclusion predetermined, coming at the beginning of a search, not as a final determination.
In the course of our daily decision making, the most common approach is to make a decision and then rationalize it, looking around for some rationale to support it. Most people seem to understand this, and, as a result, rationalization has come to be synonymous with excuse.
Logically, one would expect rationalization to mean 'to make rational' or to support with rationality. Since there is never real evidence to support a falsehood or an irrational act, it can never be truly rationalized. One tries to rationalize an irrational act, fabricating a rationale to support it. This activity of "rationalizing" the irrational is so common that it is accepted as normal, if not acceptable.
Rational is usually thought of as being logical and reasonable, a fair description. In the strict sense in which I use it here, it means this plus the adherence to the dictates of objective evidence and validation.
True rationality, then, is the condition of being objectively rational, exhibiting behavior based on factual indices. One can be rational within a tautology, a circularly reasoned system, whether or not it is objectively valid. But, to be truly rational, one needs to validate, to confirm against factual reality.
Where the very foundation concepts of a culture fail to reflect reality, the need to fabricate supporting material is literally endless. The activity of fabricating support for fallacious assumptions is so all-pervasive that it not seen as abnormal or as lying. The distortions, obfuscation and irrationalities become invisible.
The practice of theorizing, in the absence of a validation process, is the heart of one of Homo Sapiens' most defective reasoning processes and is involved in the majority of errors in human thought. If the initial premise is false, there will be no factual material to support it and there will be a strong tendency to support the premise with fabricated or misinterpreted material, material having been made up of perceptual and conceptual distortions and from found material not relevant to the data.
The moment an act or a position is contemplated, a subconscious cuing pattern is triggered. The subconscious is scanned automatically to furnish, not only internalized patterns of behavior necessary for the act, but for material which will justify the act. Even before the act is carried out, the subconscious is committed to providing justification. Information helpful in justification is triggered, being kicked into the conscious levels of awareness, as needed. Information to the contrary is usually ignored or is repressed. This is a completely biased process, and it is automatic.
Anyone holding preconceived concepts, (concepts arrived at by other than reality-based evidence and reasoning) such as unquestioned religious beliefs, is left with this non-rational process of justification. The process, almost invariably, leads to the use and acceptance of additional false premises, as well as the distortion of perception and the reasoning process.
There is never, ever, any real evidence to support an untruth. The process of rationalizing will further reinforce reason distortion. This type of reasoning nearly always leads to false determinations, and it is the reason that rationalization is anything but rational.
Fortunately, deep down, most of us have a natural warning device which lets us know when we are kidding ourselves. Practically all of us have enough inner integrity to know the areas in which we maintain questionable concepts. We carefully avoid looking too closely at these areas. It's uncomfortable.
If you have a false belief, you will want to flee from the feeling that you experience when exposed to information that conflicts with it. However, your response does not have to be automatic. You can choose. If you want to grow, if you want to correct your beliefs, allow yourself to be sensitive to this feeling, and don't be afraid to check a premise. Don't be afraid to investigate.
The inductive reasoning process, keyed to factual evidence, is the only tool you have that will allow you to correct cognitive discrepancies. This process is essential to one's rationality, to one's mental health.
There is a principle involved with inductive reasoning, the functioning of a mechanism, that is essential to understand if one is to understand how the human being is able to maintain delusions, the cultural fantasies and all-pervasive conceptual distortions, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This mechanism is usually referred to as cognitive dissonance, a term neither conceptually nor definitively focused enough to reflect the vital role this mechanism plays in human thought, behavior and learning.
I call this mechanism Reciprocal Cognitive Exclusion (RCE). It is very simple, yet it may be thought of as the master defense mechanism, in that all psychological defense mechanisms constitute some manifestation of RCE.
Simply stated, RCE means your mind will reject the reciprocal, the opposite view, of the one you accept as true. For this reason, you should be very careful of what you accept as being true. If you believe something that is in fact false, your mind will reject the reciprocal truth.
Conversely, however, if the thing you have internalized is in fact true, your mind will automatically reject any reciprocal untruth, a very valuable mechanism which biases the individual toward additional valid material relevant to the internalized truth.
This is why you need to be very careful to avoid belief, the acceptance of concepts in the absence of objective indices. As you can see, if you have a propensity to accept things on faith, without evidence of factual reality, the RCE mechanism will block your acceptance of wide areas of reality. It is the greatest barrier to learning and the reason for the abysmal levels of ignorance and superstition within populations.
You will have heard that we use only about ten percent of our mentality. Since we have no definitive means of testing how much of our mentality is being used, ten percent becomes a meaningless number. We probably use all of our mentality, to some degree. There is no doubt that we use much of our mentality ineffectively. Huge amounts of mental energy is expended just to maintain our cherished delusions.
Also, the brain is like any other part of the body in that one must use it or loose it. Like a muscle, if the brain is not exercised, it will gain little capacity to function.
Few of us exercise volitional control over our mental processes more than is needed to allow minimal function within our environments. Conscious control is often suspended, left to the subconscious processes, by default, or is little more than following the pressures of external authority. The subconscious is allowed to grow like an untended garden, its greater content consisting of weeds.
Not only are many of our mind's capabilities ignored but our minds are programmed with such flawed material that we spend much of our lives energetically working against ourselves. The expression, 'We are our own worst enemy.' is usually true.
Summing up, consciousness is the word we use to cover the mental activities one experiences during the waking state. It is not limited to one part of the brain nor can it be clearly defined apart from the subconscious. The conscious systems of the mind are those with which we do our planing, studying, calculating, sorting, judging, yet its premise structure and direction depends overwhelmingly upon subconscious materials and processes. It is capable of both inductive and deductive reasoning. The subconscious is capable, virtually without exception, only of deductive reasoning (together with other processes which, in themselves, do not include all the necessary characteristics of reasoning).
The conscious facilities of the brain sort the information which is being received continuously through the senses. The conscious faculties make determinations and, in effect, 'label' incoming information as true, false, relevant, not relevant, etc. The information is addressed in terms of associations attached to it, from the moment it is received until the moment of death. It is repressed or brought into consciousness, not only in terms of these associations, but in terms of RCE, whether it is supplemental to, or in conflict with, internalized material.
Most incoming stimuli is dealt with on a default basis, that is, there is little, if any, volitional, conscious determination as to the validity of the incoming material. A determination will be made, however, but it is usually a reflex action based upon internalized concepts. The process is fast and, unless the conscious mind kicks in, to examine the material more closely, it will be processed automatically, based only upon existing internalized concepts.
Often times information will be stored for a time before the internalization process is completed, much like information is stored in a buffer or RAM disc in a computer. This information may be recalled many times and processed in different ways before it is internalized completely and becomes a significant determining part of the personality.
Even after the internalization takes place, the material continues to be modified somewhat, in content, categorization or associations, every time it is recalled. The delayed internalization process is frequently observed where large amounts of information is being memorized in a short period of time. A college student who is receiving information faster than he or she can assimilate it may have a lot of this activity going on at any given time. This, too, is both automatic and volitional. Final judgment is suspended for a time during which the information is recalled, time and again, its relevance being gradually modified and new associations made, related information brought to bear on the new material. The conscious mind, using subconscious material, provides the rationale for much of the integration.
The greater the mind's false belief content, the more the individual is preoccupied with this activity. For the individual heavily loaded with belief material, it becomes a continuous juggling act, trying to make conflicting pieces fit as that person struggles to maintain belief.
Note that a substantial part of this discussion of the conscious mind dealt with its relationship to the subconscious mind. The two are interdependent and inextricable. Note, also, that a discussion of the conscious mind is nearly the same as a discussion about inductive reasoning, the most prominent aspect of consciousness.
Most of the work done by our minds is done without our conscious control or volition. This includes all of the control functions of the autonomic nervous system such as control of heart beat, the smooth muscles of the intestines, temperature regulation, blood pressure and other bodily maintenance and housekeeping chores. It should be noted that, although these functions are largely unconscious, most of these areas can also be addressed indirectly through conscious manipulations.
A large part of the brain's symbolic information processing is also carried out at subconscious levels. These include unconscious learned responses to the environment as well as other levels of the sorting and processing of learned information, juggling complex conceptual symbols, etc.
There appears to be a large amount of perception and sorting done at pre-symbolization levels. Indeed, the symbolization process itself, where direct perception of the environment is organized and interpreted, is largely done at the subconscious level, dependent upon existing perception.
Just specifically what types of processes are carried out at this level is still somewhat of a mystery. Part of it functions to work out an acceptable degree of homeostasis on an emotional level, although internal conflicts will remain, being resolved only to the degree that reality-reflecting material replaces false material.
One vital function is the automatic monitoring of environmental stimuli. The individual is initially aware of a significant change in the environment on subconscious levels. Consciousness of the change will not occur until cognitive symbolization has taken place. The initial physical response will have already begun or may have taken place. e.g., Should you accidentally touch a hot stove with your hand, the reflex away from the heat will already have been triggered before the signal is received by the brain. There is neural shortcut circuitry in the spinal cord that can activate muscles. Also, new perceptions, where there is an absence of existing symbolization, are largely worked out subconsciously before being given verbal identifiers. The verbalization will have a strong correlation with existing concepts.
As varied as the subconscious functions appear to be, the subconscious faculties of the mind are not capable of more than a severely rudimentary level of inductive reasoning, if any. Even the amount exhibited may be only at levels approaching consciousness and reflect the beginnings of conscious processes. The ability to compare and discriminate appears to be completely absent in the subconscious.
All the seeming inductive reasoning it does, even in the process of dreaming, appears to be only patterns of eclectic selection of mind content, determined emotionally and by associated material, rather than inductively. If you go to sleep thinking of something in particular, it will probably appear in your dreams. If you are troubled (emotionally involved) about something, it most certainly will be represented in your dreams.
The subconscious, because of its lack of inductive reasoning, is unable to make judgments as to whether or not a piece of information is true or false. This function requires conscious discrimination, the weighing of evidence, calculations, etc. The subconscious accepts information as ruled upon by the conscious faculties, storing and using it as directed and processing it in a dream world of which our knowledge is little. The whole mental process tends to be circular, and self-perpetuating, as the conscious makes its determinations largely based on internalized premises.
You may recall having a dream where someone is talking, explaining something very important. You see the person and hear the voice. All the proper realism it there, including even the inflections in the voice, the facial expressions, the subtle modulations. However, regardless of how hard you try, you cannot follow the words. You cannot understand what this dream person is saying. The reason you cannot is easy to understand. Since the subconscious is incapable of inductive reasoning, necessary in order to formulate a reasoned pattern of thought and speech, the person in the dream cannot be provided with such speech beyond, perhaps, a few simple cliche's. You may dream of someone saying a word or a short phrase, but not following a pattern of reasoned thought. If a person in a dream is following a coherent train of thought, you are well on your way to being awake.
The subconscious is usually thought of in terms of some relation to memory. Everything you have experienced in your lifetime would seem to be stored in your memory. Any of it may be recalled, provided you have some means of cuing it, stimulating the system relevant to that particular material.
This stimulation is usually achieved by thinking associated thoughts or by visualization. A cue could be stimuli from any one of the senses. Odors are particularly effective in triggering memories. Imaging is also a powerful tool for stimulating recall. The better you are at visualization, the more your memory tends to be photographic. Individuals with a good photographic memory can visualize pages from a book they have read and read it back to you verbatim, often years after they have seen the book.
Human drives arise because of physiological as well as psychological or intellectual needs. These drives usually get reduced as they arise. When one is thirsty there is usually immediate movement toward drinking something, etc. When a drive is thwarted, it usually builds, becoming more insistent until it is dealt with in some manner.
Human drives are an extension of natural systems of activities and organisms at lower systems or levels of development. At any level of development, activities translate from the internal activities of primary particles. All energies and activities of the individual issue from within, although may have been triggered from without.
Human drives result from both physiological needs and from what we have learned. The human animal conceptualizes by the translation of symbols, providing the possibility of gross conceptual distortions of reality. Much of extant human conceptualization is not a functional portrayal of factual reality. This results in inefficient approaches to problems and, often, frustrated drives.
Frustrated drives tend to build, be they physiological or psychological or, which is usually the case, a combination of the two. This phenomenon is readily demonstrated when governments prohibit commodities.
Prohibition of liquor during the early years of this century led to increases in price, black markets, public disobedience and the rise of organized crime. The prohibition of drugs has led to increases in price, more addictive drugs, black markets, international crime, public disobedience, increased addiction and the rise of police power and governmental involvement to the point of being a serious threat to the structure of "modern" societies. Note the inability of authoritarian systems to learn from their mistakes and an absence of any tendency to make corrections.
The institutions of the society are unable to learn from the earlier experience because, to do so, would be counter to the maintenance of its belief and premise structures. Further, generated problems function as a means to growth, increased jurisdiction and power.
When a significant number of the people want a commodity, a law prohibiting the commodity will not curtail its use. Such laws only insure a host of secondary problems, including a stimulation of the criminalized activity.
Drives are hierarchal in nature, in that some drives must be reduced before others can be exhibited. e.g:, drives concerned with the physical well being of the individual, such as for food, shelter and physical security must be reasonably met before intellectual or aesthetic drives will exhibit themselves to any marked degree.
The arts, literature, high technology, etc., require environments relatively free of physical privation and danger, with quiet time to accommodate intellectual pursuits.
There is probably no act you can perform which is purely conscious in nature. All conscious movements or thoughts will be shared by the subconscious. For example, the movements of my hands as I write these words require very little conscious thought. The control has long since been turned over to the subconscious faculties which require only a triggering, as I think of the letters and words to use.
Only a momentary awareness of a word will produce the correct sequence of letters, the word automatically appearing on the screen of my computer. The tiniest body movement, such as closing an eye, requires a patterning of muscle control which, in its individual parts, is completely unconscious. The only conscious involvement is a momentary conscious initiation of the act. Complex behaviors such as riding a bicycle, flying an airplane or playing a violin, become largely unconscious after the skill has been acquired, even though the process took great conscious attention and control in the learning.
We say the skill has been learned. In other words, the brain has integrated all the movements and relationships and has consigned this information, not only to conceptual subconscious storage, but to the storage of material relevant to patterns of reflexive behavior.
This information is retrieved by a cuing or triggering process. When it is triggered, the information springs into function, activating muscles, providing the conscious mind with conceptual material and generating appropriate emotionality, automatically producing the behavior. The consciousness is left with little more to do than observe and steer the process, where needed. Even this steering is largely unconscious as the subconscious is triggered by environmental and internal feedback, which it receives, usually before the conscious becomes fully cognizant of the stimuli. Active conscious control is truly a fleeting thing.
There is a close connection between the subconscious conceptual processes and the autonomic nervous system. The manipulation of this conceptual material can modify physiological processes which are directly controlled by the autonomic nervous system. This includes heart, blood pressure, temperature, etc. By manipulating the subconscious you can gain substantial indirect control over this system.
The mind is an organic computer. Unlike a solid-state computer, the brain is in a continuous process of program running, information processing and program modification. This computer begins its first rudimentary functioning shortly after conception and will shut down only with death.
A solid state computer, if left alone, will hold a program unchanged so long as there is power to the circuits. The brain's program is the same but automatically modified with the continuing process of living.
In the inductive mode, the accuracy of evaluation may differ widely between individuals, but determinations will be made on all incoming information. Information received by the subconscious will not be questioned for validity, but will be taken at face value, processed and responded to according to relevant internalized information.
By using techniques which allow you to bypass your conscious reasoning facility, the sorting, labeling mechanism of inductive reasoning, you can take advantage of the limitations of the subconscious and more effectively program yourself, inserting information and instructions toward your own particular goals. These techniques are some of the most powerful tools any individual can possess.
You can program your subconscious to perform a wide variety of tasks, including that of changing behavior patterns. In fact your subconscious mind can perform practically any task which does not require checking material against objective reality.
Even here, your subconscious can be made to tickle your inductive reasoning as it is needed or as you are waking up, if you are using it during periods of sleep, allowing the conscious mind to finish the job. Deliberate subconscious programming can be very effective.
To program your subconscious to more effectively use your hours of sleep, all you need to do is to assign yourself the task to be done while you sleep, such as in setting your mental alarm clock so that you wake up at a particular time or working on a particular problem. You can assign your mind the task of solving problems and it will do so, based upon the relevant information you have stored in your memory (internalized). If that information is predominately reality-based, the solution has a good chance of being viable in the real world. In any case, such a solution will need to be verified and validated by conscious analysis, after you wake up.
Some, if not all, of the highly creative people work this way, using their minds while they sleep as well as while they are awake. Many people habitually use their subconscious minds productively, without being consciously aware they are doing so.
From time to time I use subliminal tapes to program myself. I make them, myself, finding these to be far more effective than the commercial ones. One of the differences in these tapes is that I make the volume loud enough to be certain that I hear it. I have experimented, making tapes with and without music to mask the words, both with good results. On the tapes using music, the verbiage is loud enough to be heard as a murmur in the background, with my being able to understand a word here and there. The unmasked tapes are used when I am on the road. I roll the window down part way and use the sounds of the wind and tires on the highway to mask the words on the tape. Even here, the words are loud enough to catch one now and then. When attuned, the subconscious appears able to follow the words at volumes too low for conscious perception.
The purpose of subliminal insertion is to outflank the inductive reasoning mechanism. If the material can be heard and understood consciously, the inductive mechanism will encode the incoming material with determinations reflecting existing cognitive structure.
I have noticed that a tape consciously audible, when its suggestions are in contrast to my usual mode of operation, or when it is saying things that I really don't accept as true, will generate tension and restlessness.
There has been spectacular progress in the drug industry over the past ten years. A substantial part of this progress has been in the field of mind control chemistry.
There has been an acceleration in the development of diverse chemicals for the control of specific mental states and activity as well as in the duplication of some of the same chemicals generated within the brain.
Medicine is capable of targeting an increasingly wide range of mental activity, being able to stimulate or suppress it. The effectiveness of this new chemistry is particularly important in the control of the symptoms of mental illness, but cannot touch a problem of flawed conceptual material.
Chemistry can never take the place of programming. It can never take the place of cognitive content or be able to selectively erase belief. The individual will always have responsibility for belief pathology.
These are important functions of the human mind, the implications of which are often avoided by main-stream psychology. These are the mechanisms and principles through which we are controlled and manipulated by our cultural institutions, little aware of the processes at work.
This manipulation is achieved, primarily, through instilled beliefs and the triggering of emotional responses, to a lesser degree by learned or reinforced cues and suggestions. The end result is that you are largely induced to control yourself, in support of the agendas of your institutions.
Belief has ever been the primary means of controlling populations. Unfortunately, our controlling institutions, themselves based on fundamental delusions, have instilled these pathologies in populations throughout our history, severely blunting human effectiveness and preventing societies from making fundamental corrections.
However, due to the diminishing effectiveness of indoctrinated belief as a means of social control, and the current proliferation of real knowledge within populations, such controls are breaking down. This process is further fueled by the increasingly obvious irrationality and absence of integrity of our flawed controlling systems.
Individuals are increasingly rejecting cultural propaganda. Too often, however, they have little understanding of what constitutes reality, the result of having been discouraged from critical reasoning.
Although one's mind is initially programmed by the culture, ultimately, the individual must take responsibility, because only the individual can consciously accept or reject the ideas proffered by the culture. In virtually all cases, one's programming will have been largely the result of accepting the pronouncements and agendas of others, the foundation concepts having been instilled during childhood.
The child can do little else than accept. It is the adult who has the ability to correct his or her own cognizance, and to stop instilling untruth in others. It is the adult who is the only one who will make such corrections, if this vital job is to be done.
Much of one's programming, regardless of the intentions of the programmers, is destructive to the individual, the culture and the species. In the next chapter, we will take a closer look at this programming as we examine the Belief System.
This will be a look at the human mind in terms of delusion and RCE, a perspective which mainstream psychology avoids. This view of the mind must be evaded, if society's fantasies and delusions are to be accommodated and maintained.
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