The
Mind Conspiracy
The Thread of Awareness in Chaos is a metaphor
describing something real, but invisible. We can only be aware of it by observing its
behavior.
We recognize and use the word "life" and
know what a living being is. But when scientists are asked to define life, to separate it
from the world of the non-living, they have a serious problem. We can all agree that a
particular tree or a fish is alive, or that it is dead. We readily identify a fossil as
something that was once alive even though it is made of rock. We can describe what life
looks like, what it does, but not what it is.
Why should we have this problem? Life can hardly be
something very complicated since even a bacterium can do it. Many scientists, who have
worked on this issue, and the related issue of cognition, concluded that we are somehow
programmed to avoid these kinds of thoughts. Sort of the reverse of our biological
programming to think about food or sex. Humans are clearly programmed to think and
talk about sex. Every cell of our body experiences hunger and we can focus on food with no
problem at all.
As soon as
we start thinking about the issue of mind,
however, we get diverted - our conscious minds
lock up or slip aside (wouldn't you rather
think about food or sex?). Control words like
spirit, God, metaphysics, religion flare up,
blinding objective thought on the issue. Our
subconscious or whatever it is that controls
these inner plots, will do anything to change
the subject or confuse the issue. Look how
long it took for anyone to figure out the
perfectly obvious fact that the two hemispheres
of the brain were different
beings (still a confusing topic).
 I
have a theory about this difficulty. Everyone loves a good conspiracy
theory. Mine is this. We turn away from thoughts about life and mind
for the same reason we cringe, turn away, and sometimes faint when offered
a glimpse of human intestines or other interior parts of human bodies.
We love to stare endlessly at skin and eyes, preferably of the opposite
sex, but make horror movies by simply removing the outer layer of cells
to show the interior systems of our bodies. Even a little blood makes
some people shift consciousness into oblivion.
We are slightly more comfortable when the interior
of a human is displayed by other humans in costume, performing as medical doctors, using
arcane language known to just a select few. In the same way, we can allow professional
psychiatrists to open up our minds - to a point, and as long as the findings are totally
confidential. We even allow some thought about life and the deeper issues of spirit so
long as these issues are dealt with by professionals - priests of various sorts - and the
more costuming and confusing words the better we like the performance.
It is not difficult to imagine why we have evolved a
horror of viewing the interior domains of human bodies. When it happens, there is almost
always something seriously wrong. Perhaps the same applies to observing the even deeper
and more critical control systems describing life and awareness.
So my conspiracy theory does not require secret
multidimensional beings, extraterrestrials, gods or goddesses (sorry). Just our own
biology, our evolved control systems. We avoid the issue of life because - like our blood
and guts - the fabric of the thread of awareness is off limits to our conscious minds.
The question of how limited our conscious mind is,
and how aware our larger awareness might be, is something we need to know. Part of our
mental system managed to construct us from a single fertilized egg and controls the way
our 100 trillion celled bodies clump around and interact with the outside world. How
extensive is this mind system? What's in our great unconsciousness that we are not
supposed to know about? Or is our unconscious (sub-conscious) mind just a rubbish bin of
old operating systems?
There is only one way to find out. Ask it.
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