Br18 SELF TWIXT 2 MINDS
This article arises from the extremes of thinking of which our postconscious minds are capable. This thinking uses some sort of code, because human languages are not capable of the speed and complexity such thinking requires. But the thinking of one postconscious can be offered to another only by way of the conscious mind of each, therefore in language. If the other conscious mind is not supraconscious it shall have difficulty understanding this thinking even though it is translated into human language, both because of the unsuitability of language to express the complexity of postconscious thinking, and because a mind which is not supraconscious is accustomed to deal with all thinking in terms of its conscious self. Being closed to the postconscious, the conscious self neither asks for the guidance of the postconscious nor heeds it if given anyway. Confronted with postconscious thinking, conscious minds are likely to dismiss it. Or, if they attempt to read postconscious writing they may well find it incomprehensible. The way out of this difficulty is for the conscious to persevere with the effort to understand this thinking by opening a special kind of dialogue with its own postconscious -the process of intellaton - ie by becoming supraconscious.
The Self-Made Connection
It is surely reasonable to question why, after five thousand or more years of civilisation, we have not tumbled to the existence of the postconscious mind, and its significance. The answer to this question is obvious yet seldom seen - that human selves do not have the right relationship with their minds. And the reason why we don't usually see the obvious answer is precisely because our selves and minds are not rightly related. The nearest we come to understanding the full significance of our own brains is when we enter what we describe as a spiritual state of mind which actually is, I believe, a state of emptiness with the self twixt 2 minds, the conscious and postconscious, and remote from both.
The chief obstacle in the way of our creating an intelligent society is our fixed belief that we, the self, are some kind of character or personality whose thought and action is a matter of 'using' its mind. I know of no serious attempt to describe or locate this self which, it seems to me, only superficially represents human being. The self was once instinct's executive and is now 'chooser' between instinctive impulsions and the various different conclusions and proposals which the conscious mind is capable of but unable truly to judge and which it presents to the chooser. If the self were to be not only user or director but also itself a more competant thinker than the conscious mind, as we seem to believe, it would have to be a separate entity with a mind of its own; a mind which, if it were to dominate the conscious would have to be superior to it. This is an absurd idea which, had it been true, would have resulted in far greater chaos than actually exists. The self has no mind. The self is the conscious mind's selector, and its executive just as, ideally, both the self and the conscious would be the postconscious's executives under the guidance of truth.
To describe our present position in computing terms, the computer would be the individual human being, self would be RAM (random access memory) which can only select and carry out instructions, and the conscious would be the hard disk with software programmes that cannot act excepting through RAM. Missing from the computer is a supremely intelligent function which would subject all processes to truth. Such a function would emancipate the computer, to the benefit of humanity. It would benefit us very much more if we too possessed that function so that our own thinking processes were subject to truth. The marvel is that we do already possess such a function, the postconscious, but, almost unbelievably, excepting for conscience we commit it to obscurity.
Throughout this SupraC website a proposition has been repeated - that the self is normally confined to the conscious sphere, serving or selecting from the conscious mind. It is present practice that the self focusses on and selects those thoughts, and decides upon those actions, which are most forcibly pressed upon it by the conscious mind which is itself pressed by circumstances. Consequently the opinions and decisions we identify with self are not determined as the result of exhaustive reasoning (as would be the case with supraconscousness) but according to the limited and variable opinions and beliefs of the conscious mind, and to its whims or wilful impulsions under pressure from worldly reality.
It has also been proposed in this work, just as insistently, that the human self, in harness with its conscious, should be supraconscious, ie should submit to the postconscious mind as its mentor and guide. This means that the individual practice of 'using' the mind, or, more accurately, of the lesser conscious mind applying itself to things which fall short of truth - to play chess, think laterally, increase reading speed to 10,000 words per minute, direct military battles, do Philosophy, play the stock exchange, memorise and recall quantities of superfluous facts and figures - is wilful misuse of a priceless gift of tremendous potential and failure to acknowledge the prior concerns of intellect. The mind that is to guide us truly must be free and independent of all interference from false influences, rules and regulations, as is the postconscious. That is why supraconsciousness is our only guarantee of truth, our only path to humantrue society.
Working against this proposal is the counter-claim, on the part of some people, to an alternative, SPIRITUAL REALITY, outside the conscious sphere and beyond Earth. This is sometimes called COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS, a higher state of being shorn of worldly material concerns. It is also thought of as a perfect emptiness which may be entered through meditation; a sort of spirit world from which we came at birth and to which, in one way or another, we return at death.
Spiritual belief, like all religion, is a substitute which we find attractive because it appeals to our emotions and deep-rooted superstitions. We do not immediately find human truth as attractive because that is a much harder matter of reasoning deeply and, consequently, of turning against overwhelmingly established reality.
Most of us well know that existing reality, the Machine, is amoral and can be inhuman. But we are in it up to the neck. Many of us just make the best of it, adopting the policy - 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'. Many others, troubled by sensitivity to consciencious reason but convinced that the Machine cannot be defeated, seek salvation by seemingly rising above this world and entering what they describe as a spiritual state of remote cosmic consciousness. They go so far as to suggest that this Earth-world is a testing-ground of fitness for the spiritual world.
However attached to them you might be, I ask you to put aside all spiritual and religious explanations for the moment and, discounting them, consider another. This is asking a lot, because there are so many phenomena which seem on the surface to have none but spiritual explanations, such as 'out of the body' experiences, but please open your mind to the possibility of prosaic explanations for such experiences.
You may be familiar with most of the following Diagram 1A. The original version was used in earlier pages to describe the present position of the self in relation to its two minds and to the existing state of our reality. But the diagram has been altered to explain the sense of being abstracted from ordinary reality and placed in a tranquil emptiness in which we continue to be aware of life going on - of events passing through consciousness - but from the standpoint of a remote self, which explains those 'out of the body' experiences. The human individual self, being simply the focul-point of consciousness, cannot exist anywhere but within the conscious sphere.
DIAG 1B illustrating the
'spiritual' state of mind , the in-between state
which is not a matter of tapping into universal awareness but of the
self
entering the 'emptiness' between two minds while remaining
within the sphere of each individual's being.
The individual self's experiences can only be those which are projected, observed, or physically enacted and faithfully but not always accurately reflected and recorded, or imaginitively concocted, (as in dreams) by the conscious mind. Remembering the colossal quantity and detailed variety of information entering each mind every hour of every day, and the stupendous number of neurons and interconnections handling it, clearly we should refer to this rich source for explanations of all puzzles of perception, rather than to imagined mysteries.
After prolonged intellation I am brought to the conclusion that surrounding the barriers between the conscious sphere and the postconscious there is a sort of no-man's-land, and that this is what the self is tapping into when we meditate or claim to enter 'cosmic consciousness.' The self's occupation of this no-man's-land appeals to humans who are seeking retreat from Machine-reality and looking for peace and space in which to find some outside meaning to life. The peace and space is to be found but not true meaning, for that which is actually but unknowingly sought, but not to be found by way of such retreat, is the postconscious mind, whose meaningful existence, presently hidden, is only to be found by urgent conscious effort.
My long process of intellation at no time suggested the existence of any external faculty of intelligence greater than our own. The reason for widespread belief in some kind of 'spirituality' may well be that when the self retreats to this 'no-man's -land' or limbo it does escape the direct influences of world reality but, consequently, is reawakened to ancient forces and practices whose influences long ago outlived their usefulness but can often manifest themselves in dreams. Telepathy is an example of a faculty which has been almost totally superceded in humans, by the practice of language. We tend to ascribe significant meaning to these old faculties, forces and influences which they don't warrant.
There is no doubt that 'spiritual' people such as Buddhists are good, personally and in groups. But Buddhism is not for all people. Religions are not whole social patterns but means of moral practice despite the Machine. They leave us rooted in the amoral and inhuman Machine-reality that already exists and still largely cut off from the advanced faculty which is our true human potential, the postconscious.
There is no true virtue in the individual or group contriving to attain personal goodness in a false world. It is the responsibility of every one of us to make way for general goodness by making our world humantrue.
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: 4. Explaining the Mind : 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 :
CURRENT :18. Self Twixt 2 Minds
REMAINING : 19. The Holographic Dimension: giving a new explanation of our concept of spirituality and 'cosmic consciousness' : 20.Transhumanism Transcended 21.Mind, Will and Self
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