Br4 EXPLAINING the MIND
In UK, June 1999, many people were disillusioned, critical of the brave new government which was coming unstuck as it actually faced reality. The Labour Party should have known, just as we should, that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. You can't make this social system work for good, because it's fundamentally bad. Why is our social system fundamentally bad, and why, for heaven's sake, don't we see it as such? The answer to that question lies in our early history.
Since the beginning of life on Earth, every creature's brain-size and consequent intelligence has been directly related to the needs of its survival instinct. Until humans arrived. We humans are unique. From the beginning we had intellect as our human potential, a power of intelligence far beyond the requirement of our instincts.
The unique feature that made us human was a comprehensive brain mutation. Our original ancestor suddenly appeared with a brain extension of masses of additional neurones, arranged on six hierarchical levels, expandable in scope through countless millions of potential inter-connections.
This new reasoning-power promised to be more than capable of taking over responsibility for human survival. Our intellect might have been expected to scrap the hitherto unquestioned programme of instinct, replacing it with a broad, stable, secure, fully-reasoned and therefore morally true programme.
In the event the human species has not come up to that expectation. We have neglected our human potential, as an independent and truly critical survey of the world will show. The human stage presents a mixture of farce, love, heroism, comedy, wisdom, stupidity, melodrama, hate, villainy and tragedy.
Our thinking-faculty has become divided into two - a dominant but restricted lesser mind, the conscious, and a marginalised yet unrestricted greater mind, the postconscious. The conscious mind both contains and is utilised by the conscious self, and these two in combination represent us and our version of reality. The capacity of the conscious mind was much augmented when it took over part of that extension resulting from the brain mutation mentioned above, but the penetration of its reasoning increased relatively little because that take-over went no further than the first level of the new thinking-power.
The other division of the human mind, the marginalised postconscious, is a greater faculty of perhaps similar volume to the augmented conscious but of greatly increased multi-level complexity which gives it optimum reasoning potential. This mind is the most significant part of us, the source of our truth, and it is one such mind that is guiding the writing of this piece. As our chief faculty the postconscious should represent us but, unbelievably, we do steadfastly ignore it.
An interjection is appropriate at this point. A basic human fault is that we presently judge everything from the viewpoint of existing reality. We do this because we are in existing reality, and struggling to cope with it. From this viewpoint any protest against the world appears childish and suspect. From the opposite viewpoint, which I am taking, reality appears as it really is - misguided, disturbed and self-harming - unworthy of our advanced intelligence.
Although the conscious is the lesser human mind, it is nevertheless much more complex than, for instance, that of larger-brained whales, because the human conscious mind utilises the added first-level faculty of reasoning. This makes it capable of complicated language, and far more proficient in practical calculation and memorising, especially when stimulated by the powerful influences of inner emotion, mixed up with instinctive ego and self-will, reacting to pressure from the competitive, amoral world outside.
The postconscious mind, by contrast, is entirely free and independent of the world outside yet fully aware of it, as it must be in order to perform its function of pure reason, or truth. This, combined with the six-level orientation, can facilitate very much deeper thinking, using a code vastly more complex than the language we know. This deeper thinking, when acceded to by both conscious mind and self, is the optimum human thought-process which I call intellation.
It is vital to understand that the object of this process is truth, but truth deduced by utter reason and not necessarily indicated by fact. The postconscious is a faculty of utter reason, so whole truth is within its scope and humantruth is already available to it. The conscious mind, on the other hand, is capable of only limited reason and therefore prefers, as the basis of its relative or part-truth, fact which appears to be proven according to the precepts of the limited conscious sphere. To illustrate - that the postconscious mind exists is clearly known to that mind itself, and this true knowing is accepted and shared by the supraconscious self. But the conscious self does not accept this truth because the conscious mind alone cannot know it and the existence of the postconscious is not proven fact. Conscious minds may reach many and various conclusions which, though capable of complex accuracy as to selected fact and specific reason, lack holistic reason and so fall well short of humantruth (and of desirable, if not yet actual, fact.).
At the first level, the conscious level, thinking on particular subjects is pursued in vast blocks and endless complex circles but only as far in the vague direction of truth as the conscious level's reasoning-power can take it. This reasoning-power is enormous in quantity but limited as to quality, and draws upon all the basic knowledge accumulated by learning and experience in a false world. It may also be dictated to by prejudice and the strong influences of ego and self-will.
It is in this conscious sphere that all human knowledge, and all generally accepted thinking and activity exist. Yet at this first level the conscious mind is unable critically to correlate, in order wholly and truly to rationalise its different conclusions but keeps them in separately constructed, mostly disconnected compartments of opinion, belief, special expertise or knowledge. This is complicated by the confusing fact that, if it should choose on occasion, the conscious mind may take the opportunity momentarily to follow contrary moral conscience such as when, for example, priests bless the armies of both sides before a bloody battle.
In this way the human race betrays itself. It does so by failing to fulfil its chief faculty, the postconscious mind.
A supraconscious person is one who, dissatisfied with those conscious first level conclusions, passes them to the second postconscious level for intellation towards truth, where all are exhaustively correlated and rationalised until new conclusions are reached and passed to level three. The same process is pursued at level three, and its conclusions passed to level four and so on until, at level six, truth is discoverable.
That is the process of supraconsciousness. Of course, in practice the process goes on continually at all levels and would be completed, were that possible, when no truth was left undiscovered. However, humantruth - truth concerning the meaning and well-being of human life on Earth - can be fully understood at level six. It is important to recognise that opinions, beliefs, concepts, values and practices formulated from level two up to level five are progressively more true in direction though not yet fully true. Those at level one which, it is sobering to reflect, contain the conscious sphere in which all our worldly affairs are decided and conducted, cannot be truly reliable. As importantly, we have to recognise that all minds at level six shall be in agreement and at peace.
At the time of its original mutation by the addition of a six-level extension to a hominid brain, the subsequent human species would certainly seem to have extended its intelligence in range and power to the degree required to override powerful instinct yet still sustain optimum security. The creatures which become extinct are those those who are unable to adapt, and the best means of adaptation is a flexible mind. The first human was given such a mind, and if we had developed its potential to the full we would now be a truly morally-aware race living in a society founded on moral truth.
If we had DEVELOPED THAT POTENTIAL, we would now be responding to genuine need of every sort with utter fulfilment of that need, within the bounds of possibility of course, and would be allowing no other consideration to intervene. We would be following truth, free of false conditioning; free of the unintelligent practices of lying and deceiving and competing. We would be keeping to a simple life-style, recognising that our fulfilment is to be found in the abstract, rather than in material things. We would be applying our true morality to all things.
Why haven't we developed in this ideal way? Because we never got to the point of overriding instinct - we never achieved supraconsciousness. Having developed the enormous first-level capacity of the conscious mind, we proved ourselves all-powerful in applying it to pursuit of the instinctive drives, closing off and ignoring the other five levels (except for conscience). Humans had manual dexterity to aid mental development, but that hasn't helped in overriding instinct because it is quite sufficiently served by our first-level mental capacity. In this way we have helped instinct to construct an overwhelming human version of nature's amoral reality on Earth, the Machine, founded on our application of impure intellect to those competitive drives.
The Machine harnesses humans to its pursuit of the instinctive competitive drives, first by education, then by financial necessity which makes it difficult to find an alternative to the norm. This does not make sense to truly human reason but, the world being subject to a money economy, it does make sense to financial reason. The instinctive drives are not appropriate to us, because when humanity's formidable power of conscious calculation is applied to them they become hugely destructive. The Machine itself destroys the environment, and Machine-people, particularly those it neglects, harass and destroy each other and vandalise civilisation.
The Machine responds with the control of persons by laws and police, and of nations by armies. It seeks to promote individual good behaviour by the institution of religions, overlooking the fact that it is the Machine's version of reality that itself provokes much bad behaviour. The Machine disunites people by fostering consumer self-interest and by introducing all kinds of artificial attractions that we find irresistible and that the money-system makes profitable. The Machine is served by the concept of progress, which it has converted to autoprogression and which is also attractive to human impure intellect and provides financial justification for otherwise largely needless perpetual change.
Humanity lets itself be convinced that Machine reality is inevitable and then adjusts itself in ways which that conviction makes appear meaningful. We absorb, from newspapers, radio and television, endless dramatised news about world events which, in the sight of opened intelligent eyes, should not be happening. We convince ourselves that we are being as moral as is possible by joining one church or another. We dupe ourselves into believing that we pursue our Machine goals for the good of our family, of our company, of our community, and even for the good of humanity. We deceive ourselves in believing that our minds are well occupied in the study of history, literature, science, metaphysics etc., or in seeking personal tranquillity and self-control through the various practices of 'spirituality' and despite the pressures of reality, thus ignoring or bypassing the glaring and vitally urgent prior challenge of truth. In prosperous parts of the world we nevertheless feel the dissatisfaction that comes from deep awareness of non-fulfilment, and try to compensate with over-indulgence, particularly in sensationalism, sport, fantasy, food, alcohol and drugs.
We developed in this way by confining our thinking to the conscious mind, and our activity to the conscious sphere. Under the main influence of instinct we then founded the Machine, whose version of reality formed the civilisation which has governed us ever since. The higher part of our intellectual faculty, the postconscious, remained independently committed to its function of truth through pure reason, but its findings would ring awkwardly in the ears of humans harnessed to the false Machine. So the postconscious became closed to direct contact with consciousness, except for the former's simple maxims, the moral truths which are unconsciously conveyed to us by way of conscience.
The postconscious retained the key characteristic of the whole original human extension of mind - independence. If that original higher mind were to override instinct it had to be self-contained, independent of the influence of instinctive will and egoistic emotion. But for that independence the postconscious paid the price of division from consciousness which wilfully refused to follow its lead, and of consequential isolation from human reality. However, with whatever energy and encouragement the brain as a whole will allocate to it, the postconscious proceeds with its moral correlations, and continues to pass their conclusions to consciousness, even against our self-will, by way of conscience, or moral intuition. The hope for humanity is that consciousness shall be persuaded to open to the postconscious, so that our world opens to humantruth. It is a matter for our conscious will whether we do become supraconscious in this way.
As the result of all this we have a situation where not only our practical affairs but also our supposedly most advanced thinking is confined to Machine-reality in the false conscious sphere, ignoring our genuinely advanced faculty, the postconscious, whose truth should have spearheaded, and then consolidated human development.
Our world reality is this existing conscious sphere, which, as we have seen, is false. Therefore we live in the wrong reality for an intellectual species. There is no reason for accepting it except the fact that it overwhelmingly exists. If we are to reject it we must see that it is not inevitable but unacceptable, and that there is a truly viable alternative.
The position is, however, that humanity as a whole does accept existing reality and does not see that it is false. On the contrary, realists regard dedicated reformists as naive or mad, and accumulate a catalogue of facts and arguments to support that view. But the fundamental reason why realists don't see that this is the wrong reality for us is the orientation of their minds. Using the 'here and now' as its foundation they apply first-level conscious thinking to this question, but conscious thinking, as we have seen, is incapable of truth.
So what have we got here? We have a reality in which not only the vast majority of individuals in their private capacity but all the institutions and organisations of the world believe existing reality to be inescapable. Workers have to think like the Machine to keep their jobs. Ambitious people have to subordinate themselves to the Machine in order to 'achieve'. Newspapers have to reflect reality in order to confirm their readers' acceptance. A balance is struck between emotion and reason which falsifies both. Publishers only accept writing which conforms to a sophisticated norm. The value of money is accepted because you can't do without it in the Machine.
Injustices are done but go unnoticed; people are tortured but their screams seem to go unheeded; people are unemployed and destitute but the employed don't appear to really care; children are abused and murdered but the abusers don't let our sense of outrage stop them; politicians go from one crisis to another but fail to see the horrifying absurdity of it; all because the Machine allows, or demands, that true morality shall not come first in peoples' minds and actions
As a further result of all this, humantruth (by which is meant completely reasoned, not merely factual, truth about us and our world) is lost to the human race, excepting in the minds of an unknown number of thinking individuals, individuals who face a huge obstacle in the way of putting that humantruth across. The obstacle is this - conscious thinking discipline requires that for a proposition to be accepted as true it must be proven by evidence and argument, meaning, of course, evidence and argument of the conscious mind which, because it is the lesser mind and dominated by wilful ego, is incapable of humantruth, but presents many false versions of it. The source of humantruth, the postconscious, is impenetrable to consciousness which, therefore, cannot judge it. The postconscious is already capable of knowing humantruth and of making that knowing available. To be supraconscious is to accept that knowing as true on the grounds that whole truth is the absolute function of the postconscious, and humantruth is an essential part of that whole. To be supraconscious is also to reject untrue conscious demands because they are falsely founded and therefore irrelevant.
That obstacle to whole truth is reinforced by another, subtle factor. This is that to a conscious mind which ignores its postconscious and holds to a false version of 'truth', that 'truth', in the absence of better understanding, appears to be utterly true, especially where it purports to be upheld by conscious evidence and argument. Although false because incomplete, this 'truth' may be bitterly defended against criticism which, to the conscious mind, might appear impertinent and arrogant.
Our existing reality is overwhelmingly dominated by conscious thinking within the Machine, and supraconsciousness is yet rare. As a result not only our practical affairs but also our supposedly most advanced thinking is confined to the conscious sphere and excludes, apart from the 'footnotes' of conscience, our most advanced faculty, the postconscious, which should have advised and guided human development throughout. In consequence we are in a strangely awkward position.
The conscious mind alone cannot appreciate absolute truths because it is not supraconscious - is not privy to the reasoning of the postconscious mind - and thus is incapable of reasoning which fully backs up those absolute truths. There is urgent need for humanity to break through to supraconsciousness and thus fulfil its true nature. This breakthrough cannot be imposed. It is a matter of voluntarily and persistently raising questions in the mind and not being satisfied with half-answers - of persevering with those questions until we receive answers which our postconscious intuitively assures us are utterly true beyond further question.
List of Branch articles, in no particular reading sequence:
PREVIOUS :1. The Nature and State of the Human Race: 2 : Truth - No-Go Area : 3. Facing Yourself:
CURRENT :4. Explaining the Mind :
REMAINING : 5. Moral Mind : 6. Great Men : 7. Comment Pinker : 8. The Way We Think : 9. Sanity for Humanity : 10. Evolution of Mind : 11. Free Thinker View : 12. Reality : 13. Understanding Consciousness : 14. Bottom Line : 15. Brain-Mind Relations: 16. Open Letter to Philosophers : 17. The Mind and Philosophy : 18. Self Twixt 2 Minds: 19. The Holographic Dimension:20. Transhumanism Transcended 21. Mind, Will and Self
Should you want to comment on the foregoing please email : jhnoates@yahoo.co.uk : indicating whether you would allow us to publish all or part of your comments, should we so wish, in the End-Pages.
For overview, return to Home Page INDEX htm