The Unconscious Mind

Q: Do you think most of the mind is conscious, or unconscious?

A: Although the conscious mind is what we notice above the surface precisely because it's conscious, the unconscious mind is the largest and most powerful part, remaining silent -but far from unheeded- below surface awareness.
 

Only a small percentage of the whole mind is conscious. The large majority of the brain's activity takes place on hidden levels; and the conscious part – the "me" that boots up when we wake up in the morning – is only a tiny bit of the brain's operations.

Think about it -at any given time, all memories, ideas, processes and thoughts that are out of current conscious awareness are by definition 'unconscious.' The conscious mind is constantly supported by vast unconscious resources.

Now think of all the things you know how to do without conscious awareness. If you drive, swim, dance or ride a bike, you use over 30 specific processes without being aware of any of them. These are processes requiring not just body maintenance but intelligent decision-making, judgment and learning.

The conscious mind is what we ordinarily think of when we say 'my mind.' It's associated with thinking consciously; communicating with words, analyzing and synthesizing and making judgments and decisions. The conscious mind actively directs its output because only so much information can reside in conscious awareness (and working memory) at once. Everything else falls back below the 'awareness' line, into unconsciousness.

So most of your intelligence is unconscious. It makes good sense, then, that most neurohacking will take place on an unconscious level. And it means that can realistically start thinking of ourselves as 'mostly unconscious intelligences', (as compared with 'totally unconscious intelligences' such as amebas or slime molds).

Far from being a largely conscious entity able to access a small supporting set of unconscious processes, we can now view our intelligence as a largely unconscious entity able to access a small enhancing set of conscious processes. Consciousness does not endow us with intelligence -it merely enhances the abilities of the intelligence we already have, giving it the opportunity to express itself rationally as well as metaphorically, abstractly as well as concretely.

The unconscious is where most of the work of the mind gets done; it's the repository of automatic skills, the source of intuition and dreams, creativity, problem-solving and information processing. Fleeting perceptions register on the unconscious mind all the time without our being consciously aware of them. Most unconscious responses are automatic, including those that we have formed from habits.

The fact that most of our intelligence is unconscious shouldn't come as any great surprise. We know that intelligent behavior can arise without conscious intelligence, and we observe that much of the automatic behavior of simple creatures (or robots) is intelligent behavior. Even the behavior of complex organisms like ants can be seen as simply 'programs' developed by evolution to ensure adaptive intelligent behavior (it's easy for such a program to 'emerge' when everything that doesn't behave in adaptive intelligent ways goes extinct).

Even so, it's easier to interpret their behavior as 'automatic programming' than it is our own complex behavior, and we also see that they do not appear to have free will.

With the emergence of emotion intelligence was able to motivate behavior consciously as well as unconsciously, and also able to reprogram automatic system with the most useful chosen behaviors. Emotion also enabled memory weighting and information categorization.

All this new processing relies on our database of associated concepts and their graphic representations in N3's inner model.

The Architecture of Memory and the Unconscious Inner Model

As we know, the unconscious processes information on an interior subjective model of reality, constructed from experience, memory, logical inference, and our brain's ability to spatially map out it's own internal representation of our surroundings. It picks out patterns from the stream of information it receives in the form of electrical signals, patterns that are image-based codes or odor-based codes or audio-based codes, that contain a compressed record of the proximal stimuli.

Our brain uses these patterns to assemble images on our internal 'screen', representations that are (if we are healthy) correctly related to our real surroundings. Data enters in 'bits', but our mind creates the appearance of smooth continuous courses of events. Our mind maintains this internal spatial map, like our own internal graphical model, so that we may consult it to form plans, take actions, move about, control and manipulate and interact with our environment and circumstances. But we don't really 'see' what is around us; we see whatever our perception enables us to know about our environment. It's a construct.

It's a modular construct, because the brain is modular and coordinates in the model match coordinates in the brain. And it's a spatial construct, because it develops from our brain's ability to spatially map out it's own internal representation of our surroundings.

As we stated above, the evolutionary shift from unconscious automatic control to autonomous self control emerges from biology's following 'least energy wasted/best results' algorithms.

"Best results" means a network is good at recognizing input patterns. In biological terms, 'least energy wasted' depends on a lot of things. It includes the energy costs not just of building new connections, but maintaining them, the energy to transmit along them, and signal delays, all of which increase as a function of connection length and number. [42]

Multiple studies of the brain overall and individual networks (modules) suggest that the summed length of the wiring diagram has been minimized.

Until very recently (2012) researchers assumed that the single criterion evolution is using to develop brain networks is the measure of whether a network is good at recognising input patterns or not. But this is not biology's only rule. There are two rules underlying the development of efficient modular networks, and the second rule reflects biology's obsession with energy-conservation. Indeed, without this rule networks do not evolve modularity. [43]

Selection for best pattern-recognition alone doesn't produce modular networks. Selection to reduce connection costs however produces modular networks (that is to say, modularity emerges when network costs are taken into account). [43]

'Evolvability' describes how well populations are capable of rapidly adapting to novel environments. [44] Experiments and simulations have shown that modular systems are more evolvable than non-modular systems when conditions change, and biological systems such as brain networks, gene regulatory networks and metabolic pathways tend to be modular. [42]

There is now clear evidence for the unconscious spatiotopic map in humans: one which can be influenced by image motion. [45]

It's also apparent that it's based on an hexagonal grid system. [46] In 2012 researchers discovered that memory itself uses a 6-bit system right down at the cellular level. [47] An essential chemical for LTP is the hexagonal enzyme CaMKII. Pre-synaptic excitation causes the snowflake-shaped CaMKII to transform, extending sets of 6 leg-like kinase domains above and below a central domain, the activated CaMKII resembling a double-sided insect.

Each kinase domain can phosphorylate a substrate, and thus encode one bit of synaptic information. Ordered arrays of bits are termed bytes, and 6 kinase domains on one side of each CaMKII can thus phosphorylate and encode calcium-mediated synaptic inputs as 6-bit bytes. This results in hexagonally-based patterns of phosphorylated tubulins in microtubules forming an inter-neuronal substrate for memory. [47]

Microtubule-associated protein logic gates have been demonstrated and show how patterns of phosphorylated tubulins in microtubules can control neuronal functions by triggering axonal firings, regulating synapses, and traversing scale.

The most detailed images of brain wiring itself, to date (2012), also reveal a pervasive 3D grid structure. The wiring of the mature brain appears to mirror three primal pathways established in embryonic development. [49]

Network connections form along perpendicular pathways, running horizontally, vertically and transversely. This grid structure appears to guide connectivity, which limits options for growing nerve fibers to change direction during development. This may enforce a more efficient, orderly way for the fibers to find their proper connections – and for the structure to adapt through evolution [49]

One of the results of all this inner geometry is that the inner model shares it. The mind associates its own design with the nature of reality as it knows it, and we have to remember that almost all input to N3 comes from within.

N3 has only one direct sensory apparatus for input and that is the olfactory system. All the rest of its input comes from other brain networks -not (and this is very important)- not from the outside world. N3 is like a dude in a windowless capsule, with cameras, tools and sensors on the outside and computers and monitors on the inside. It cannot see or feel or hear anything directly for itself from what is 'out there'. It's in a virtual reality and it has to predict what things are like from whatever data is available to model reality from.

Everything in reality has to be representable on the same model as a 'code image' with multiple associations. The model, in this respect, is a 'context' for reality-portrayal that must model the context of reality itself as well as the architectire of the brain.

Below is a diagram of how an hexagonal inner-model context with six core concepts can be applied to multiple sets of associations.

The unconscious uses the same contextual model and the same core concepts regardless of the details populating it. For example it can model 'functions of network 3'; 'types of memory'; 'basic behaviors' and 'emotions' onto the exact same background context, as seen above.

Unconscious Code

Imagine your unconscious mind (the great majority of your intelligence) as an onboard supercomputer that has been programmed with graphic images of factual information about reality learned through the experience of several billion years, it can't speak any language and can only communicate in its own codes. Every new human gets one. This, taking up most of the brain, is your 'body of knowledge' -knowledge that your system has 'embodied' literally into its genome over billions of years.

This experience-programmed computer, whose 'rules for success' were laid down by direct real-life feedback favoring pattern-recognition and energy-conservation algorithms, doesn’t classify the world in the same terms that intellect and academia do, it categorizes it in the terms of actual practical evolutionary experience of reality. Nor can it think in words; its entire memory is a massive network of associated graphic concepts placed according to an inner model that it has constructed from all previous evolutionary experience. The unconscious contains -or rather, embodies- the accumulated knowledge of life thriving and adapting in reality through time.

Despite the difference in taxonomic systems, this knowledge is far from randomly stored or categorized -the unconscious mind has evolved its own associations between branches of knowledge and they are not at all the same as those synthetic (and often changing) categories we have organized in academia.

Consequently, those of us who had a school education and were taught categorization according to society’s ‘reductionist style’ categorizations may feel that understanding N3’s map can seem like trying to understand how an alien civilisation has classified its knowledge! But it’s easier than we may initially think, because the brain’s map is our very own biological construct, based on human needs, and it makes intuitive sense as well as cognitive sense. We don’t in fact so much have to learn it as to ‘remember it is there'.

This is a treasure we are already carrying in our heads, it is our inherited "intrinsic (inner) culture". Whatever adaptations we make in our own life experience that affect our genome will be passed on in that intrinsic 'body of knowledge' to future generations, and our ability to interface it in sync with conscious processing and our extrinsic (outer) culture in real time is the measure of our congruity of association.

Researchers began to discover some time ago (2009) how to 'read' some aspects of unconscious code; for example the timing of when and for how long olfactory neurons respond to odors is how the brain encodes smell, and this can be viewed by observation of only one or two neurons. Individual neurons preserve almost the full information about the precise temporal dynamics of the odor. Researchers can predict the firing pattern of a neuron from the sequence of odor molecules, or predict the odor's temporal sequence from the neuron's firing pattern. [50]

A month later others announced that by placing a rat in a virtual reality maze under fMRI, just by looking at the brain data of place cells one can predict exactly where it is in that virtual reality environment. In other words, researchers can 'read' its spatial perception. [51]

It was the discovery that these same patterns were repeated in sleep that led to the discovery of memory-defragging. Work with humans has now shown that researchers can tell where a person is "standing" within a virtual reality room on the basis of the pattern of activity in their brain alone. [51] Spatial representations of the type investigated in the study are thought to form the scaffold 'grid' of the inner model. The unconscious uses imagery associated with patterns to represent all concepts in this model.

In 2011 researchers had the fun idea of connecting neurons to computers to decipher the enigmatic code of neuronal circuits. A setup using electrodes and living nerves in a petri dish allowed them to create hierarchical networks. The patterns in the networks can be seen and simplified, and connectivity between cells can be controlled to see how the neuronal network responds to various chemicals and conditions. [52]

Three months later, others had shown that different individuals' brains use the same, common neural code to recognize complex visual images. Their study demonstrated that objects are similarly represented across different brains, allowing for reliable classification of one person's brain activity based on another's, and the team developed a new method called hyperalignment to classify this common code and the parameters that transform an individual's brain activity patterns into the code. [53]

The parameters are a set of numbers that act like a combination that unlocks that individual's brain's code, allowing activity patterns in that person's brain to be decoded – specifying the visual images that evoked those patterns -- by comparing them to patterns in other people's brains. [53]

Participants in this study watched the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark while their patterns of brain activity were measured using fMRI. In two separate experiments, they viewed still images of seven categories of faces and objects, or six animal species. Analysis of the brain activity patterns evoked by the movie produced the common code. Once the brain patterns were in the common code, including responses that were not evoked by the movie, distinct patterns were detected that were common across individuals and specific for fine distinctions. [54]

The unconscious isn't reading its own patterns in the same way computers enable us to consciously do; it simply associates images with patterns (concepts). Nor does it label concepts on the inner model in words as we have ours in the diagram above. It doesn't even see things like matter and energy, space and time, dog and monkey as individual items but as agents within a continuum. The continuum of energy/matter gives rise to the objects and events in the continuum of spacetime; that's its 'big picture', simply because that IS the big picture.

The major part of our intelligence's personal experience of reality from the beginning of time is in fact interaction with itself. The unconscious has a sense of direction and knows which parts of the brain receive or send information. Imagination builds a symmetrical construct with the spacetime continuum on one side, matter and energy on the other, and their interactions taking place in the middle not just because that's how the brain is built but because that's how the mind processes stuff.

To the unconscious, spacetime issues 'belong' at the right hand side of the model because that is where all memories and awareness of such issues 'come from' in its reality. [55]

Unconscious Programs

Big fleas have little fleas,
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
and so, ad infinitum.

"The Siphonaptera"

Concept-Sets

'A continuum' is one of our unconscious concept-sets. Concept-sets are not merely one concept represented by one 'bit' of code, but a set of associated concepts that the unconscious 'expects' to occur together; wherever you find a continuum, for example, the unconscious will expect to find a continuous extent, series, set, or whole. These are the details, some or all of which it predicts will occur together with the concept 'continuum'; telling the system something like, "concepts for properties x and y are usually associated with concept z".

This entire set of concepts is packed together inside N3's image for 'continuum', and that's a concept set. A concept-set is a 'byte' of information, a compressed image representing up to six 'details' concepts nested inside a 'basic' concept. This is how memory expands fractally; every concept may have nested sets of concepts compressed inside it.

This memory trick of packing details inside details reflects the pattern of infinite regress that is manifest when we zoom in on any fractal image, but here we are dealing with qualities of meaning and on each new level, meaning is added with every new layer of details. To keep space-allocation optimal, when memory is unused the 'details' sets least often accessed are the first to be deconstructed for recycling and with the removal of every 'bit' some resolution is lost. This is why, in memory loss through non-use, it is ordinarily the case that the fine details are likely to fade before the overall impressions do (in fact if both are being lost simultaneously it is a sign of certain neurodegenerative diseases rather than non-use).

Concept-sets (C sets) are 'bytes' that occur in all memory, and ordinarily they associate with one core concept. For example the concept 'red' associates with the C set 'color' which is mainly processed in N3 and associated with the core concept, 'density'.

However, 'continuum' is an example of a core-concept-set (CC set). These encode properties, principles or processes of reality, and they associate with all core concepts.

For example, 'Continuum' can be related to the core concept 'matter' if one considers a continuum of agents from which to choose one, or with 'space' where some images unconsciously associated with it are temperature gauges, number lines, the electromagnetic spectrum and measuring sticks (they are associated with it because we measure events on a continuum with all these systems and we treat them as a 'background' measure against which events occur). Spacetime itself is a continuum, and so is matter/energy.

'Polarity' is another CC set we are unconsciously familiar with, for example we can see how it relates to 'matter' (thin object/wide object), 'space' (big place/ small place, north pole/ south pole) 'time' (daytime/ night time, dark season/ light season, cold time/ warm time), and so on.

Just as the appearance of an object or the frequency of a sound or smell or the development of an organism conforms to a particular concept-pattern, a series of events can conform to a single concept-pattern that now contains an inner 'nested' set of concepts that are also events.

The nested set of associations in the CC set for 'polarity' carries the implicate (unconscious) information: "where x occurs, y will probably occur, and they are reasonably likely to have two opposite, complementary or contrasting principles or tendencies".

Notice terms such as 'probably' and 'reasonably likely'. The unconscious mind is an imagination-based prediction engine and thinks in terms of probabilities rather than absolutes. 'Probably' sounds vague, but intelligence knows that reality always holds the potential to be unpredictable, as it has learned through aeons of experience, and it is not inaccurate in its vaguery; it is thinking like the scientist who admits, "We can never prove anything with 100% certainty because somewhere in the universe there may be exceptions we don't yet know about." Nor is unconscious computation mere guesswork; the prediction of probabilities relies on hard figures from both experience and input data to reliably perceive and remember, as well as forecast events reliably as 'probable'. It is simply aware of its own limitations in the real world.

Cycles and Spirals

A repeating cycle is another CC set, images associated with this include the circular arrow. A repeating cycle or spiral of events is another process that conforms to a specific concept-set of associated bits, events making up a 'bigger event'. Regardless of what words or symbols we use to represent it, we all have an inner unconscious concept of what a repetitive cycle IS. We understand the pattern of a repeating course of events, and we can also abstract that same concept to be used in any time scale, place or construct with our imagination.

For example, we can understand that day/night is a repetitive cycle, that life itself is a repetitive cycle, that learning or doing certain tasks involves a repetitive cycle of movements, and so on. We recognize the repetitive cycle concept as a basic 'course of events' behind a lot of different things, regardless of their individual details, the mind can see they have this one thing in common and has abstracted it.

Balance

'Balance' is another CC set the mind is accustomed to (as well as courses of events that enable it to be achieved), because right from day 1 of our existence the unconscious brain has been using neural feedback and hormones to learn how to affect internal homeostasis, maintaining a balanced dynamic equilibrium of temperature, respiration, digestion etc.

Later (when developing N2) the mind abstracts and applies the same concept to achieving the equilibrium of balance in behavioral terms of locomotion (ie, not falling over when we're walking). The mind can abstract the ideas of balance as a state and modulation as a process as concepts in their own right at this stage, and when developing N3 will be using them to maintain emotional balance via exactly the same means (modulation of neurotransmitters & hormones). The details (WHAT neurotransmitters/hormones) will vary depending on the application, but the basics (procedures or 'courses of events' that can lead to balance); the underlying concept we have grasped unconsciously, remains the same.

Feedback from internal chemistry is also input to N3 –we can often forget this- and it’s treated just the same as any other input. The concept of balance has been 'abstracted' but is still just as effective as it ever was.

CC sets are used in the mind's programs, abstracting a 'course of events' into a process. For example the CC set that recognizes 'repetitive cycle' can be turned around by imagination to 'command' the mind to start a repetitive cycle of processing on details x and y.

The same processes, properties and principles that apply to reality apply equally to the mind itself, and the unconscious recognizes that the same patterns we perceive out in the world apply also to ourselves; for example 'polarity' applies to our emotions (happy/sad), our behaviors (sleep/wake), our energy levels (tired/energetic), our appetites (hungry/satiated), our state of wellness (ill/healthy) and our state of being (dead/alive.)

Parts of a Whole

Once the unconscious has grasped a sufficient critical mass of CC sets and the associations within them, it is able to associate them together as parts of more complex processes. The 'parts of a whole' CC set is the idea that big things are 'probably' made up of smaller things all interacting together.

CC sets are amalgamates of bits of code, just like computer programs are amalgamates of bits of code. CC sets presented in particular orders determine most of an unconscious program's structure, and its structure determines what functions it will able to carry out.

Our entire experience of the world is made up of patterns and sequences. They are everywhere; dark time becomes light time, cold season becomes hot season, creatures migrate across vast distances in ever-different formations. Landscapes are constantly in perpetual change. Intelligence needed a way to make sense of these natural patterns.

Humans are extraordinarily good pattern-detectors; so much so that we happily see them even when they are not really there (the reason a lot of coincidences can cause a lot of superstitions). When they really are there, we are fast to detect them.

Here's a simple pattern of events, seen in cave-dweller terms:

One warm time, few green caterpillars, lots of birds. No food for birds, many birds starve.

Next warm time, few birds, lots of green caterpillars. Birds eat many caterpillars.

Next warm time, few green caterpillars, lots of birds. No food for birds, many birds starve.

After a critical mass of these associations, after sleeping on it N3 can grasp the 'deja vu' and rewrite this as:

Warm time A = bird time / Warm time B = caterpillar time / ... Repeats!

N3 has no words, so it thinks out all this in image concepts. It has no idea that this is referred to by science as two populations in an ecological dynamic equilibrium. But it does recognize the pattern of events "A...B...A...etc." as one that occurs in many other circumstances; as a little 'program' of repeating concepts that has multiple applications.

Knowing this pattern enables prediction of so much more than what food will be available when, and the 'bird/caterpillar program' becomes a concept associated with forward planning, assessment of new territories, the weather, harvests, animal habits, conception, migration, the life cycle, calendars, and so on.

Research has demonstrated that individuals register information about the frequency of events automatically (i.e., outside of conscious awareness and without engaging conscious information processing resources). Moreover, perceivers do this unintentionally, truly "automatically," regardless of the instructions they receive, and regardless of the information processing goals they have. [56]

The ability to unconsciously and relatively accurately tally the frequency of events appears to have little or no relation to the individual's age, education, intelligence, or personality, because it represents one of the fundamental building blocks of human orientation in the environment and possibly the acquisition of procedural knowledge and experience in general. [57]

The most basic concepts of mathematics; space and quantity, are hardwired into our brains as part of that 'body of knowledge' programmed by evolutionary experience. Even simple animals have a sense of distance and number, assessing when their group is outnumbered or overcrowded, deciding when to fight or run, calculating when prey is within striking distance.

Having a grasp of these basic concepts was the difference between survival and extinction, life and death, and all animals have them. But in humans intelligence takes these basics and is able to start to fill in the details. We have evolved to spot patterns, to make connections, to count, to record the seasons as relevant to our lives, and to order by categorization the world around us. This is how not just science and mathematics have emerged; it is how intelligence in our species has emerged. [61]

Agents, Contexts, Interactions

This is a default program that applies to the processing of all events; they are seen in terms of association of agents (individual items; N1), with contexts (background and circumstances, N2), and interactions (the behavior of agents within the context, N3).

All agents and contexts are classified as such according to their past associations, predicted likely associations, and current associations in the given instant. Contexts can be nested and something that is an agent in one set of associations can be a context in others, for example in a concrete material context, a book is an agent and a library is a context in relation to that agent, and an interaction is someone moving the book. Yet words in the book are agents in the context of the book, a reader is an agent in the same context, and an interaction is a reader scanning the words. The unconscious mind sees no problem with a context beng an agent in another context either. It knows about relativity, and that all things both perceive and are directed via their current form, context and interactions.

In exactly the same way in the abstract context of symbols, our understanding of language is contextual. The same word can have a completely different meaning in a different context, and swapping the context by implication makes for much comedic innuendo and many boobs.

This program itself ('agents-contexts-interactions') forms a context for ALL processing. Different networks are primed to process different types of agents, contexts and interactions, allocated by their associations with core concepts, both on concrete and abstract levels.

COMP VC

This is an unconscious program you should already recognize; the one we use for all successful learning and memory. In fact it's the program for successful emergence of intelligence overall, abstracted into our personal developmental context.

If we run this program, intelligence emergence MUST take place. If we run it on a platform that can accommodate a developing intelligence, biological or otherwise, and nothing gets in its way, then intelligence has no choice but to emerge, just as surely as if you mix sodium and chlorine in the same context you'll get table salt emerging every single time.

Here is the 'pattern of events' that make up COMP VC, broken down into simple processes:

1. "Many into one, part 1" (Gather together many similar agents associated by similar type.)
2. "One into many, part 1" (Spread similar agents out into different contexts.)
3. "Adaptation, part 1" (Allow agents to interact with and adapt themselves to their context's needs.)
4. "Many into one, part 2" (Gather together many different agents associated by similar type, synchronize and synthesize them into one construct.)
5. "One into many, part 2" (Spread similar agents out into different contexts, analyze them and individualize them for many contexts.)
6. "Adaptation, part 2" (Allow agents to interact with and adapt their contexts to their own needs.)

This is not a repeating cycle, but a spiral of events. We can recognize this same pattern of events in many varied contexts; for examples the memory cycle, the learning cycle, and (below) the evolution of life:

1. Biogenesis (Gather together many similar agents organized by type.) (single cells)
2. Differentiation/morphogenesis (Spread apart similar agents into different contexts.)
3. Adaptation (Allow agents to interact with and adapt to their context's needs, including each other.) (Once upon a time, an ameba ate a bacterium and multicellular life was born).
4. Co-evolution/cooperation (Gather together many different agents organized by type, synchronize and synthesize them into one construct.) (symbiosis).
5. Speciation/variation (Spread agents out into different contexts, analyze them and individualize them for many contexts.)
6. Interactive Ecology (Allow agents to interact with and adapt their contexts to their own needs, including each other.)

This program is a process that applies to all things that develop and grow, not just biological things. Each stage describes a concept that can be abstracted into multiple contexts; for example stage 4 could describe building a house or getting an orchestra together. Stage 5 could describe adding individual rooms to the house or booking the orchestra to play in different contexts such as movie music, recordings and live concerts.

In stage six you'd let the occupants decorate their own rooms and the orchestra would have grown good enough to start deciding where it wanted to play next instead of relying on offers.

Goldilocks

Sensory input is embodied in a spectrum (a continuum) that exhibits both polarity and balance, in that we know what it's like to experience 'too much' (sensory overload) versus 'not enough' (sensory deprivation) and also 'just right'. Assessing and maintaining equilibrium is the underlying concept, fairly simple as there are only these three possibilities to choose from.

Our physical, intimate and immediate knowledge of the real world (experience) is not just what enables us to walk and learn to balance, it is what enables us to understand the pattern of changes in ourselves that enables 'balance' to be achieved.

By viewing the concepts of 'too much' or 'too little', 'too close' or 'too far', as having existence as 'things' in their own right, and then applying those concepts abstractly to other circumstances, the unconscious has learned how the same pattern; Too Much/Just Right/Not Enough; is interwoven throughout all sensory and behavioral life experience. Materials are too heavy to lift or too light for protection, food is either too fast to catch or to slow to waste time waiting for, stuff is either too big to fit in your bag or not big enough to feed seven. The weather can be either too cold or too hot to be out comfortably in.

Releasing certain molecules at a certain time requires the same pattern of behavior (the same 'program' for digesting food in the stomach, setting up a specific brain chemistry, or setting up a specific body chemistry such as priming an organism's muscles to run or preparing it for sex.) If a chemical soup (which neurotransmission essentially establishes) does not receive or respond to a certain amount of added input chemical, nothing changes. Cells will not fire, and on the behavioral level this is 'not enough' to alter the mood or affect motivation.

If a chemical soup responds to an added chemical with a strong reaction that throws the system out of balance, this is 'too much'. Emotional balance means getting it 'just right'.

The "Goldilocks" program applies to us personally in all sorts of walks of life, such as not eating too much or too little, not moving too fast or too slow, not getting too tired or too energetic, not pulling/pushing too hard or inadequately, not getting too stressed out or too bored, not having your bed too big or too small, your porridge too hot or too cold. The way to thrive is to get it all 'just right'; then we 'all live happily ever after'.

To the body and senses, the goldilocks pattern applies to optimal sensory load. In terms of physical body sensation, optimal sensory load gives rise to sensual (NOT sexual) pleasure, and the body feels comfortable. With either too much (sensory overload) or not enough (sensory deprivation), it feels pain.

Comfortable operating conditions and systems damage-detection (pain) are not emotions; they are physical experiences; feedback for us to tell if all is in balance. Why are these physical experiences synchronized with mental experiences such as Pleasure and distress? Simple single-celled animals automatically move into the green zone by simple reflex behavior, no thought or emotion required, but that limits them when an unpleasant stimulus cannot be avoided; they're unable to adapt and must just keep running on automatic, futilely trying to get away or to attack the intruder, or starving to death failing to recognise food that doesn't move.

All creatures KNOW the program for finding balance unconsciously, as the saying goes, 'balls to bones'. We embody it, and we also 'know' that our green zone boundaries expand with experience and growth (a baby creature cannot lift as much as a large one) and that they vary between individuals (some smaller creatures can lift more than some larger creatures).

Long before we're old enough to have heard the story of Goldilocks, we have unconsciously mastered the method of decision-making metaphorized in it. Infants ignore information that is too simple or too complex, focusing instead on situations that are "just right".

This has even been named 'the goldilocks effect' by the research team that discovered it. [62] Instead of novelty or familiarity per se, the research shows that even tiny babies seek out situations with just the right amount of surprise or complexity. We are programmed to look for the optimal input, to lose interest when input becomes too predictable , or when the pattern seems too random and unpredictable to make sense yet. The unconscious 'knows' exactly what sort of input currently suits us best, in real time.

The "Goldilocks" attention pattern supports other theories of adult learning. At every age natural learners direct their attention to material that contains just the right amount of challenge for their current learning state, because this optimal complexity triggers the right amount of memory weighting for the fastest learning as well as stimulation and the motivation to continue. [62]

Understanding the unconscious mind and doing any serious work with it requires understanding of these basic programs and their vital importance to it, because (a) they are the playbook of 'game rules' it lives by and (b) they are very powerful NH tools. We'll be exploring them further in the next tutorial.

Translating the Code

Imagination uses N3's graphic format as a two-way communication medium between the unconscious model and the conscious mind. It functions like a universal translator through which material and processes in the unconscious mind can be understood by the whole brain and come into conscious awareness.

And vice versa -the conscious mind can also use the graphic medium of patterns to communicate with the unconscious mind. This is how cognitive behavioral therapy and co-counseling work -the conscious mind sends information about whatever issue it wants to address, through N3 to the unconscious. When it hears things in words, the unconscious finds the patterns that sensibly associate with them. (Remember, 'sensibly' means 'according to the senses'). When we habitually follow good patterns of thought, the network-wiring must follow. Surround a system with congruity, and it will become more like whatever it is surrounded by.

And everything makes sense.

All N3 produces is its concept-related graphics, but for each network there is automatically a different 'key' for translating the code, because each network holds its own particular associations with a given image in its own format.

Every network provides a different 'context' for data (agents) to be assessed against and processed in. For examples, in N5 a given concept image will be associated with particular formal words, in N4 the same image will be associated with metaphor and procedures, in N3 it will be associated with pictures or 'movie clips' that prompt the release of transmitters associated with particular emotions, and in N2 and N1 the same concept image will be associated with muscular changes that trigger certain movements, behaviors and facial expressions, via the sensory/motor cortices.

It becomes more obvious how all this can happen at once when we know that N3 monitors and coordinates all these processes into one smooth real time input (perception), and N6 monitors and coordinates all these processes into one smooth real time output (interaction). We see how the whole brain can be thus involved on every level of every response and every interaction through modular processes running in parallel.

The concept of having a multiplicity of things all associated via the same code is not strange to us -in our high-tech lives we associate patterns with meaning like this all the time. We use bar codes and other patterns to represent all sorts of varied information including the triggering of automatic processes, and we are long-used to categorizing things using numeric or alphabetic representations (not to mention words). All of these systems use 'agents' (individual items with points of similarity) and 'a context' (the database), where 'interactions' are operations such as additions, removals, replications, new categories and so on.

A series of 'chinese rooms' can demonstrate the process: Every room gets the same picture, and each room has the same instructions: "IF this pattern arrives as input, THEN do x". But in every room the instruction for 'x' is different. In N3 x might mean, 'make these proteins' -let's say they turn out to be dopamine, noradrenaline and oxytocin. In N1 x means 'increase heart rate and respiration', in N2 x means 'kiss this person'. In N4 x means 'send procedural memories of sexual procedure experience to N3 cache,' in N5 x means thinking, 'Wow you're sexy!' and possibly 'have I got any condoms?' already; and N6 coordinates all this internal and external thought and behavior and feeling into one smooth well-timed flow of congruous interaction. And everything makes sense.

Basics are More Important than Details

The unconscious knows that programs (the underlying operations) of what is going on are much more important than details (the particular data being processed); and their relationships are always more important to our wellbeing than the details they apply to, because they apply to the whole of life.

Some programs are repetitions, some are polar shifts, some run in cycles dictated by time or circumstances, some lead specifically in one direction, others cause multiple changes. Some courses of events are action-reactions, some are interactions in dynamic equilibrium. We make congruous associations: pendulums swing, water going down holes moves in spirals, most things that are not birds fall downwards when you drop them and most things that are birds fly south in the cold time, just after the buffalo go.

These patterns are the programs of reality; the procedures that take place in all human lives and in everything around us that have been experienced by humanity since humanity began. They are viewed by N4 as the 'plots' of life just like the plots of stories.

If we know the programs of reality, know how they unfold, and can match our current circumstances up with them, we can predict a good course and navigate through changes regardless of any cultural or environmental or circumstantial details, we can predict sensible interactions (what programs we should run next) because we 'know how the pattern goes'.

It's like being an actor watching a movie with a view to joining in as a character with scripts we already know the gist of. With practice and experience, the unconscious quickly finds which of our own interaction programs (scripts) for the best predicted outcome matches up best with the movie it perceives is currently running in reality, and runs it, knowing that it's highly likely to succeed because all programs have to respond to interactive programs; it's literally their nature.

A lot of unconscious processing strategy concerns energy-conservation. Conscious thought is way more power-hungry than unconscious thought. So one of the first moves of the unconscious for associating information is to know what programs (plots) are already running and identify incoming percepts in the context of their associated programs.

Looking at the 'big picture' (the context, in our analogy the plot of the movie) before looking at all the individual agents and items of the code (actors and props) involved makes good sense and prevents wasting energy. Details can be held in RAM for as long as is necessary so we can always go back and look at more details, or leave them for the conscious mind to catch up with.

Obviously the most important programs to begin with are those dedicated to identifying dangers or benefits, and those that achieve balance and keep us in the green zone (ensuring we are following up the opportunity for every available benefit). Danger and benefit identification are about plain survival, but knowing how to maintain healthy balance is the key to thriving, so 'goldilocks' is a major player, as is knowing 'where you are' in COMP VC.

The mind doesn't usually get hit by something totally new all the time, so most of the time it is already aware of 'what program is running' because of where we are now and what it is currently doing. If the unconscious fails to recognize how an item fits in to a program, it can request more details on the fly and orient the external sensors and attention to get them (we call this 'paying attention') very fast. So most input occurs during 'known' circumstances and falls within a range of probability that the unconscious more or less 'expects'.

To encourage congruity, all we have to do is look at these basics; the program patterns in our lives. The details do not matter; if the basics are congruous then the rest must of necessity follow. We'll be focusing specifically on this in the next tutorial.

DO IT NOW

Rules into Commands

Which of these 'golden rules' do you suppose could be used as unconscious program commands? What might the commands be?

Answers at end of tutorial

 Emotional Stability

Remember to avoid this common misunderstanding: Emotional stability is NOT about suppressing emotion. It is about enabling emotion to function healthily in a healthy mind. There is nothing wrong with intelligent healthy uncertainty –that’s how we avoid being conned into giving our bank details to foreign princesses.

There is nothing wrong with being alarmed in alarming circumstances, or concerned over a loved one’s wellbeing. There is nothing wrong with grief or sadness in times of loss, or defending yourself powerfully when offended or attacked.

There is nothing wrong with lust between sexually attracted persons, or deep love and joy between those who bond. These are natural healthy emotions working for our benefit in natural events of human life, important for humankind’s wellbeing throughout our evolution.

But anxiety and sentiment are not. All they can do is damage your brain, and if you really want to have free will and a good quality (and length) of life experience, they must go.

Neither is emotional balance about suppressing sentiment. First and foremost it is about regularly practising healthy emotion and getting our brains used to those habits. Once we've got a good example to compare against, we will become more adept at spotting sentiment, knowing which healthy emotion it is hijacking, and invoking that healthy emotion to take over the usurped network/s.

Never focus on the problem in NH; always focus on the solution. The solution here lies in more and more healthy emotional behavior, and often, the only other thing people have to do to switch from sentiment to emotion is reduce anxiety. Biology, given the chance to function as it should, usually takes the opportunity.

Both the healthy emotions and the unhealthy sentiments use gene transcription to control brain and body chemistry. This is one way NH can adjust emotional health –by using epigenetics to control expression of the genome. This is not necessarily a high-tech process. The simplest method is via Input Control.

Input control & the relaxation response remove anxiety triggers for a while until we get our chemistry in balance. This is NOT avoiding problems; it is solving them. If we are too drunk to think properly, we must avoid alcohol for a while, and if we are too anxious to think properly, we must avoid anxiety for a while.

Once we have made the switch, we can face higher stressors without them affecting us; we are able to adapt to deal with circumstances without getting anxious. This is a permanent change if we do it right, because it’s how biology designed us to be. We will literally never have to feel anxious again, and we will discover a world of wonderful emotion that greatly enhances our life experience. When we’ve experienced that heady freedom, we'll wonder why we were ever stuck in anxiety, and realize how much we were missing out.

Input control is not “avoiding reality”. In fact, we are avoiding artifice and stepping INTO reality. Reality is not society. Reality is how biology works, how your brain works and how the REAL world works (not society’s ‘ideal world’).

Not knowing what reality IS can really hold us back, and if we’re very indoctrinated when we first start, it can take a long time for us to understand that society is not the real world. Societies come and go; reality will be around for as long as the universe exists. And our mind is designed to work with reality, because intelligence can only associate with what is real. We can only experience the real world when we are anxiety-free, because we can’t perceive anything properly when we are not.

After around 4 billion years of working out the best moves for adaptation and development, we believe biology probably knows what it’s doing, and that sentiment has arisen in our species only where biology has been thwarted rather than heeded in the development of intelligence.

If we try to do things in the wrong order (ie, face the stressors before we have developed the tools to deal with them) we will only end up with a dysfunctional system stuck in a mess it doesn't have the ability to solve, and nowhere to go to develop those tools. In JCP's terms, keeping a developing mind free from anxiety is not an issue of sweet sentiment, it is the issue of the development of intelligence itself; in fact it's only because we got hassle back in the past that we failed to develop those tools first time round! [80]

Researchers have seen exactly the same intrusion of sentiment-based behavior and mental disturbance in ‘domesticated’ animals whose biology has been similarly interfered with -and incidentally the same propensity to become addicted to drugs and the same related physical & mental illnesses.