Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg

Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg [+ favourites]

About eleven million bits of information are passed form our senses to our brain every second. Out of this eleven million we can only be consciously aware of sixteen. The rest of the information is processed by the unconscious.

Most of our daily actions are actually reactions to information that was processed below the level of conscious awareness.

Though these reactions are initiated unconsciously, we think we did them on purpose, as if we chose to. That’s because as soon as we start to do something our conscious mind immediately gives an explanation as to what we are doing and why we are doing so.

Our conscious minds trick us by creating an explanation for everything we do, as if we consciously choose to do it. We think were doing something for a certain reason, but really were doing it because of something else, something that were not aware of.

That’s the nature of our conscious mind, it lies profusely. So much so, that everywhere we turn our attention there’s a whole bunch of explanations, reasons, conceptions etc. But ultimately it’s all just an illusion.

I read most of this in book called The User Illusion. It makes a lot of other interesting points like how consciousness lags behind reality by half a second. It also backs them by showing the scientific experiments that prove these theories.

If we want to better understand ourselves/reality, we have to move away from the concepts of our conscious mind and try to see into our unconscious mind. We have to make more conscious our unconscious.

But how? Well for me: psychedelics or meditation. For you: I don’t know, find your own way, whatever works for you. But I hope you do, because the better we understand ourselves, the better our lives will be.

I completely agree that the sub-conscious is responsible for the majority of our actions, but I do not discount the conscious mind as much as your book seems to.

The reasoning for this is your sub-conscious mind is made up of reactions, and those reactions and decisions and thoughts are all originally sourced information from the conscious mind.

For example, to be able to play any sport well, you need to consciously attempt to achieve certain milestones, and as you progress more and more of your tasks are taken over by the sub-conscious, thereby freeing the conscious mind to focus on other things.

Hence the whole theory behind conditioning and practice.

The reason this is extremely relevent to me is I try to consciously fill my life with tasks and activities and thoughts that I would like programmed into my sub-conscious.

Because, the next question you have to ask yourself is, once you are good at basketball, how do you program yourself to get bad at basketball?

What I mean is, if you have permitted your sub-conscious to adopt bad habits, how do you now get rid of them?

Suffice to say I believe it is infinitely harder to target bad sub-consious habits, let alone cleanse yourself of them. That is why it is so important to make sure you control your conscious mind all the time, from the moment you are able to think about the future, so that a year from now you are a better person.

I firmly believe that "genius" is solely the result of adequate programming of the sub-conscious. This is why some people may be able to play the piano incredibly while they whistle and eat and watch tv. It is because the sub-conscious is working 90% of the activities, and only 10% is using the conscious mind.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

I totally agree about your conscious mind programming your unconscious mind. That’s an excellent point!
Not to contradict your point at all but let me add something which maybe you didn’t think of: Why did you choose to play basket ball in the first place? I’m sure you have a reason, and you are consciously aware of it. But is it the real reason? Or is it just a conscious justification for an unconscious motive? So, in that way you could be responding blindly to subconscious stimuli.

You said how it’s infinitely harder to target bad sub-conscious habits, let alone cleanse yourself of them. I totally agree! and that’s exactly what vipassana meditation is for. To purify your subconscious mind. And form my experience, it actually works. I sincerely hope you and everyone tries it. www.dhamma.org

I think that Decius has a good point. The term genius is very vague, and yet very prestigious. Let me quote him for a second, "I firmly believe that "genius" is solely the result of adequate programming of the sub-conscious. This is why some people may be able to play the piano incredibly while they whistle and eat and watch tv. It is because the sub-conscious is working 90% of the activities, and only 10% is using the conscious mind."
This makes a lot of sense. However i disagree on one point. The relationship between conciousness and sub-conciousness is not all that creates a smart human being. It is said that throughout a persons lifetime, only 15% of the brain is used. This is very true. Only through the cohesive efforts of the concious, sub-concious, and left and right brain hemispheres, can higher levels of intelligence be reached. While someone who is "left-brained" may have skills that are more developed than others, someone who is "right-brained" has different more developed skills. But someone who has an equal balance of both... that would result in someone with abilities that knew no limit.

"Life is just one damned thing after another."

"While someone who is "left-brained" may have skills that are more developed than others, someone who is "right-brained" has different more developed skills. But someone who has an equal balance of both... that would result in someone with abilities that knew no limit."
Our brains are the product of hunting gazelle on the african plains. There's no reason for there to be some strange 'potential' in our brain, that if tapped, would give us godlike intelligence.

"Durch Nacht und Blut das Licht"

The Conscious is a very mysterious thing. There may be only a handful of people ever who have answered the question 'Who am I'. It is perhaps the most difficult question, as one can't even properly comprehend what one is asking. A lot of people have experianced 'that starnge feeling'. There are many ways to experiance it. For me, it is easier to look in the mirror for some time. Ask your self what is that voice inside my head. It really scares you sometimes. I only realized a year ago what Monks mean when they ask themselves 'who am I'.

"I'll heal ur woundz I'll set u free, I m jesus christ on xtacy"

i dont know about you, but i am me.

"UNIX is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus. ~Peter H. Coffin"

but who is that me.

"I'll heal ur woundz I'll set u free, I m jesus christ on xtacy"

Yes. The “I” (The ego) is just an illusionary image we create. Seems like a necessary tool we’ve evolved. Some say the image of self is created by a process of identifying yourself with things.
Buddhist teachings point out how the “I” is responsible for our suffering. “I” am suffering! Poor me. When you get rid of the “I” suffering is no longer suffering, just a sensation of….? I experienced that in the meditation course. When after meditation for so long, “my” legs really hurt. But somehow I learned to detach myself from my “I” and “my” legs didn’t hurt anymore, there was just a sensation of pain (just a sensation no more).
I always try to see through the image of “I” but it’s really hard. As soon as I do what happens: “I’m such an egoless person”. So I just meditate and before that: psychedelics helped a lot.

The 'I' is not your body, your mind or anything else physical. Descartes defined it as the thing which is thinking. However, I don't think we can even say that. the 'I' is the thing which is feeling. The thing which believes, sees and is basically receiving all this data and sensations. That's what is closest to the individual, the 'I'. Whatever it is, the 'I' is what makes each electric signal going to our brains more then just a signal. It makes it a sensation. That thing, whatever it is (and whatever you want to call it) is the I.

"Durch Nacht und Blut das Licht"

egoname, how do you meditate?
An interesting experiment is to not look at yourself in the mirror for a couple of days, and then afterwards, look deeply at yourself, for as long as possible, asking who is that person in front of me. It happens seldom, but whe it does, the feeling is incredible.

The 'I' is basically the consiousness. That is the 'soul'. Animals don't have that sense of 'I', becasue they dont have a consiousness.

"I'll heal ur woundz I'll set u free, I m jesus christ on xtacy"

Has anyone read the book Ender's Shadow? Its in the Ender series. Well the book about the extremely intelligent boy who was genetically altered to keep his brain growing. The book was based around the theory that the brain stops making brain cells at a certain age (around when puberty stops). This is actually true. When the body stops growing, the brain stops expanding and it is impossible to learn as fast as you did as a child.
What if there was a "key" that you could turn that would keep your body and brain growing, at the expense of dying young because of the body being to big to support itself? Couldn't this be achieved? Its just a theory but doesn't it kind of make sense?

"Life is just one damned thing after another."

Sounds simple enough.
Things like these may be possible, depending on how far we can go in genetics. But this is off the subject.

"I'll heal ur woundz I'll set u free, I m jesus christ on xtacy"

What we need to find out is what is the difference between the concious and the subconcious. Why is the sense of 'I' in the conciousness and not in both. How is the composition of the sub concious different from the conciousness.
It is also important that we know what happens in the brain when various particles interact differently with each other, as according to the results we can then know if life is predetermined or not.

"I'll heal ur woundz I'll set u free, I m jesus christ on xtacy"

To stop bad habits you have to consciously make an effort to stop the bad habit becoming further entrenched in the unconscious, a good way to start is to understand that the unconscious itself is just another illusion firmly entrenched in your beliefs like some unmovable hidden power, I is just a name for your entirety not some logical impossible to pinpoint zone of your mind, and how can anyone say that animals have no form of consciousness just because they dont call themselves "I", consciousness is your entire mind and senses as processed through your brain, not a realm ruled by the precarious logical part of the brain. How can we define or claim to know what so called reality is if we are always half a second behind it? Are you trying to say that the future is reality? The so called conscious mind draws from experience to explain phenomena or experience of itself, i would say that our daily actions are carried out intentionally and specifically, if I scratch my nose its a reaction to an itch, is it somatic? of the body? If I make a drink it is down to thirst, information that was processed below the level of consciousness to me would be a new idea or realization that burst forth out of no where, after long deliberation over a subject or conundrum, so was initiated by concentration. Below the level of the immediate consciousness are memories and dreams, but you are still conscious of dreams or you wouldnt remember them, some things we just do because our bodys are linked to our instincts more closely than our than our calculating ego consciousness is. We want explanations for everything though thats why we reflect, find an answer, and then realize later when we understand some more that we were deluded to ever think we had an ultimate answer, if your thoughts are unconscious until your made aware of them, then consciousness is as close to the future youll get, but if i want to do a math calculation then im conscious of it first then have to process the correct answer so I have to ask myself what the answer is, thats not the same as a thought that came from the unconscious to the forefront of consciousness, its the other way round. Its easy to program yourself to play bad at basketball just consciously miss and purposefully bounce the ball out of reach you would have to do it for as long as you had trained to be good or longer, but your not going to because its illogical and irrational and a waste of time, but maybe fun. A natural genius wouldnt need a whole load of programming or conditioning, they would be shown the basics like anyone else but be twice as advanced as an everyday person, due to natural ability, but what about people that have an impediment physically but are brilliant mathematicians, or have to try 5 times as hard to do everyday tasks and living, maybe they are more the genius, I dont think there is a supra normal reason as to why someone chooses to play basketball, they probably thought it was good on tv or were inspired by a great player, you dont need a motive to want to play sport, try detaching yourself from your legs and after the initial horror of having no legs and the pain after, your "I" wont react to the lotus pain as nothing will be there, i.e no nerve endings. If there is some untapped holy grail of the brain it certainly isnt meant to be conscious
maybe were all just p-braned.