Why Do You Want To Change Me? - Santosh Jha (good non fiction books to read txt) 📗

the milieus around and creates an imagery of physical model, for the body to deliberate on a decision for appropriate action. This imagery is intangible. This is first part.

Simultaneously, when these models lead to tangible actions and behaviors by body, it also stores those experiences, emerging out of these set of actions of body and converts them into processed information for future decision-making. Therefore, consciousness works not only as warehouse but also as agent of gathering multi-dimensional information. As deliberating imagery of workable models out of the previously stored information is an intangible facility, whereas storing information from actual actions taken by body is a tangible work, the consciousness as a dual mechanism is intangible, emergent and virtual processing of information.

Its dual character makes consciousness a virtual agency. It is not body, not purely brain, not entirely the full spectrum of what we know as mind, but a part of mind. That is why consciousness has an emergent and virtual skin and flesh. At best, it is a bridge between the body and brain, very much part of mind and always evolving. This mechanism makes consciousness a virtual agency and that is why there is so much of mysticism and marvel associated with the idea of consciousness. It is because of the virtual nature of consciousness – the sense of ‘I’, mysticism stands as instinctive first choice of acceptance of realism. That is why the old wisdom as well as science maintains that God, ghosts, angels, soul and after life et al are mystical realisms, which are all inside our conscious self and what we do with the above idea in physical world is a virtualism, emanating out of the very character and nature of our consciousness.

The dualism, which the idea of consciousness creates is – ‘You’ are in your perspective and your perspective is in ‘you’. This needs elaboration. Modern scientific insight into mechanism of consciousness says nothing new or against what old wisdom of ancient world had elaborated thousands of years back. Science however puts facts in objective way, elaborating the details of the mechanism, which creates the dualism of consciousness. The primary hypothesis is the fact that human evolution designed a brain, which is far more complex and multi-functional than other developed organisms. In addition, human brain is not a typical single part, like other organs, e.g. liver. It has evolved in a way, which makes it a layered organ, with every new layer evolving as a pile up on previous layer. Brain is a complex cooperative of multi-functional parts working in an auto-mode synchrony, which we are mostly unaware of.

Other organisms, especially developed animals with sensory system also have this subjective feeling of ‘self’. Science has definitive lead on the fact that all other species have consciousness, a feeling of ‘self’, but it has different shade. However, consciousness in humans is far more pronounced and permanent, as we have a brain mechanism, which makes it possible for us to store far more complex information in our brains; especially those info created out of actions of body and mind, which we call experiences. Apart from that, we have a brain mechanism, which engenders a strong and decisive feeling of ‘experiencing’ the experiences. This however, is an emergent agency and empowerment; we are not born with that faculty.

Science maintains that the conscious feeling that we all have is primarily because we have an evolved and matured process of storing experiences as memories, with a definitive sense of we as our bodies present in all such memories. These memories in which the subject is definitively our own body, creates a sense of self-awareness in our brains. This we refer to as knowledge. This needs to understand very carefully. Knowledge is not information, our sensory organs collect and pass on to our brains for processing. Knowledge is the ‘processed’ info as physical imagery in brains, which goes through the filters of mind’s memories of experiences, instinctive inclinations as well as those collective experiences, passed onto us from our ambient culture.

We have awareness that we are experiencing something. We also have memories of other experiences of our past. More importantly, we have a definitive and exclusive mental facility of collating all past imageries of experiences and imagining a novel imagery of possible model action and behavior for future. This facility of intra-polation and extra-polation of imageries in our knowledge inventory has been a decisive tool with us, helping humans produce brilliant solutions of innumerable troubles and problems. However, we need to accept the fact that this facility itself also doubles up as a major trouble for us. Imagining and extrapolating singular and objective real facts can lead to tested and replicable solutions but in situations, when the collated facts are virtual, subjective and mystical, solutions arrived at shall be subjective, untenable and non-replicable. We can design futuristic spacecrafts as we collate and juxtapose objective, tested and replicable facts of aerodynamics and navigation. However, we fail to create futuristic solutions to our emotional and psychological troubles, like those in the realm of love, faith, culture etc, as we collate only subjective, virtual and non-replicable facts. This we have to be wary of and change our attitudes and perspectives to use our consciousnesses for attaining the objectivity and singularity of decision-making matrices.

Other advanced organisms, like a dog or a lion also may have consciousness, which creates set of experiences for them. The difference seems to be the fact that they experience but do not have evolved and permanent sense or knowledge that they are experiencing. The definitive sense of their body into their experiences is either completely missing or is too feeble to admit. The same happens with a baby. It also experiences things and stores many of them as memories but as the brain has not yet developed and systematized the necessary physical pathways, the sense of they actually experiencing them is too feeble to recollect later. Their sense of a definitive body in their experiences is somehow missing in their experiencing. It is similar in higher animals with sensory system.

The subjective consciousness in us that ‘we are’, seems a function of the knowledge the consciousness builds up by storing different body experiences as memories, which the actionable body creates. The dualism of consciousness is created because of the cyclicality of experiences and knowledge. The body’s sensory organs provide information from the milieus to the brain. The brain is physical part of information processing. It is like the hardware part of computation. The mind however is the functional part, the software part. This functional part, the mind controls the brain, the physical part. Mind is the knowledge, which is memories of experiences of body’s actions, stored in consciousness. The feeling of ‘self’, the sense of ‘me’ is a virtual realism as this ‘self’, the subjective consciousness is an intangible connect, a bridge between the physical and functional – the brain, and mind.

The brain is the physical pathway that makes the body act in a particular way. However, the physical pathway, the brain does not itself decide all actions. This is crucial distinction and needs to be understood. There is a key difference in deliberating and deciding an action and actually executing the action. The brain makes physical action possible by physically moving concerned parts of the body. However, whether the action should be taken or not or if taken then in what measure and intent, is what the mind works at. This is functional part of information processing.

We all have empirical experience of this typical dualism of hardware-software cyclicality. In a computer, a software deliberates a particular function but the software is not designed to execute the function as it is the role of the hardware. The software shows the priorities and choices and the hard disk actually engenders the physical pathway to get the function done. Similar is the situation with our consciousness. The intangible domain of knowledge (the software part) deliberates an action and behavior priority and choice. The knowledge is a functional facility, a software faculty and therefore, it cannot itself execute the physical action and behavior. The brain shall execute the action and it shall be done because of the physical pathways, the brain has created for it. If the brains have not created the necessary and synchronous pathways (the hardware facility), there shall not be an action or the action shall be different than what the knowledge (software) had prioritized or chosen. Often, we see that our computer does some task on its own will or different from the command we selected. This is typical software-hardware dualism. Consciousness also sometimes does the same as it also has the same built-in dualism, like a computer. Therefore, we need to change the way we look at and accept ourselves as. Our consciousness must be accepted in its entire mechanism and its mechanism entails that software choices must have commensurate and synchronous hardware pathways. Otherwise, the dualism of consciousness shall create its own scary choices, often constricting our wellness and excellence. We have to be in perpetuity of our higher consciousness, which ensures the symmetry and harmony of software-hardware (body-mind) dualism. We are humans, having a definitive edge and therefore, we cannot act and behave the way other organisms do.

The consciousness of other organisms, like dog or lion primarily has physical part of information processing – the hardware. The brain does take most decisions based on instincts, which are codes already written in the genetic navigation system. They too have minds, which takes into account some of the past experiences (software) but as they do not have evolved and complex memory mechanism, they have very fleeting sense of self-awareness. Even the memories become part of rote function, very much part of instinctive decision-making. The same happens in small kids. However, even in grownups, this instinctive action-reaction dominates decision-making. This leads to larger troubles and needs to be changed.

Usually, in humans the mind, the functional part of consciousness dominates the decision-making. That is why; the consciousness in us has dualism far more accentuated than other organisms. This dualism also splits the subject, the subjective feeling of we as the action doer. There is a physical processing of information and brain handles them, we being little aware of them. This part is instinctive response to stimulus provided by sensory organs and such actions are generic actions. This subject, which does these actions, is referred as ‘generic subject’. Science says, 90 percent of brain’s structures are dedicated to handling those action-reaction functions, which we are not aware of. They happen in unconscious or subconscious minds, where our body is the action-doer but the definitive sense of we doing them, as our bodies, is missing. Only 2 percent part is conscious action of brain, where decisions of action are taken in total consciousness, with perfect sense of we as our bodies involved in them. This itself presents a huge causality for dualism about our consciousness. In babies and higher animals, this conscious action is very negligible, not even this 2 percent.

We have evolved and complex mind mechanism, the functional part of consciousness. It dominates the processing of information, filtering it through personalized and subjective memories of experiences of past actions and those experiences gathered from popular experiences of the milieus, called contemporary culture. The actions, deliberated after such filtering are ‘specific’ and creates a ‘specific subject’.

The dualism of consciousness creates loads of troubles for average people. It is because of the mechanism we have and the way our brain and mind consciousness has evolved. However, knowing and understanding this dualism in detail makes us clearly understand that what we predominantly are; is a function of our perspectives and attitudes and in turn, our attitudes and perspectives are what we are.

Here is the idea of change in all of us. We are humans and we live in complex societies, which are so laterally and vertically interlinked that every individual’s action-behavior has catalytic impact on the wellness and excellence of millions of us. That is why