The Unconscious
Section Two: The Unconscious
We spend time talking about consciousness and its effects on the brain, and yet there is a giant lurking elephant in the room with us. Most of our actions, perceptions, and even thought processes are happening within a space we conveniently refer to as the ‘unconscious’ mind. We rely upon these processes to react to stimuli, learn and develop skills, and even generate creative thoughts.
Imagine someone throws you a ball unexpectedly and you catch it. How much did you consciously need to think about to complete this action? We think we are conscious of the ball before we react to it…but science would suggest otherwise. Marc Jeannerod is a neuroscientist studying the decoupling of motor reactions and conscious awareness of them. Not only have his experiments shown evidence that we react to stimuli before we are conscious of it, but they also suggest that thinking of motor function exercises the same neural networks that doing the action does.
This means that there may be some kind of feedback loop between objective and subjective experience. But, how does subjective thought physically stimulate the brain? We don’t know. It does suggest, along with much of human history, that (however real or unreal you believe them to be) our nonphysical subjective experiences have causal impacts on our physical lives. How much of the nonphysical activity happening in our mind is conscious?
It is an ancient concept that the mind is divided into the conscious state and the unconscious state. You’ve heard phrases like “the power of the unconscious.” All of the brain processing that’s happening in the background creates no qualia, at least that we are ‘aware’ of. How much of what you do depends on your consciousness of it?
Challenge yourself to some change blindness or inattentional blindness tests on the internet.
These are designed to simulate how an observer may completely be unconscious of large changes within their visual field. What they suggest is that your field of consciousness is actually very focused and narrow. The rest of the world outside of that focus is being filled in by your…educated imagination. However, the ‘filling in’ is severely shaped by the belief structures that we’ve built throughout our lives. This section will explore how much our beliefs shape our perception of the world around us.
Have you ever seen something ‘out of the corner of your eye’ and swore you knew what it was but when you looked, it was something else entirely? This is your trans-saccadic memory at work. This function of the brain helps us to perceive the world as one fluid seamless input of information as opposed to thousands of small data inputs from our senses. The issue is that this memory functions poorly if we consider the objective world as the truth.
Developing unconscious reactionary traits is an excellent and necessary skill in some scenarios. Athletes and first responders depend on these traits for quick movements and sharp aim. There’s certainly no question that our ancestors needed to be able to react quicker than thought in the face of a sabertooth tiger or pack of wolves.
I once attended a college lecture about stress. Our limbic systems are wired to deliver quick and powerful bursts of energy and hormones when we get stressed. It’s what we call the ‘fight or flight’ response. Ancient humans needed to fight or flee the majority of dangers they faced. If the mountain over the village is spewing rocks and ash, it’s time to flee. If a neighboring settlement begins to violently conquer your town, it’s time to fight. As we evolved, our societies became more stable we lost many of those immediate stress triggers and replaced them with long-term stressors. Things like climate change, financial stability, and long-term health are stresses that live in us rather than pass through. Or, maybe we’re just stuck in traffic and our limbic systems are going crazy but neither fight nor flight will help us right now.
Interestingly, our limbic systems are triggered by emotion. This implies a few things worth spending some thought on. Our limbic systems have not caught up to our environmental changes. They aren’t equipped to deal with consistent triggers of long-term or modern stressors.
“Chronic low-level stress keeps the HPA axis activated, much like a motor that is idling too high for too long. After a while, this affects the body which contributes to the health problems associated with chronic stress.
Persistent epinephrine surges can damage blood vessels and arteries, increasing blood pressure and raising the risk of heart attacks or strokes. Elevated cortisol levels create physiological changes that help to replenish the body's energy stores that are depleted during the stress response. But they inadvertently contribute to the buildup of fat tissue and to weight gain. For example, cortisol increases appetite, so that people will want to eat more to obtain extra energy. It also increases storage of unused nutrients as fat.” Harvard Health Publishing Understanding the Stress Response
Isn't this indicative of the health issues afflicting most Western population centers today? New prescription drugs to treat stress, high blood pressure, and anxiety seem to creep up every few weeks. Perhaps there are better ways of dealing with this evolutionary deficiency.
The second interesting observation is; if the limbic system is triggered by emotions, this suggests they occur before conscious awareness. We can have reactionary emotions based upon unconscious perception, or what we ‘perceive’ to be true. This plays a huge role in modern psychology. As we learned earlier, just thinking about stress, worry, etc. will trigger the brain and limbic system response.
One of the best mantras that I learned during Consciousness studies in college is, “I am not my thoughts or emotions, I am the Self that experiences them.” It’s a profound realization when you become truly mindful of it. Just as you live in two worlds, the physical and non-physical. You have multiple selves that experience and take action within these different realms. There is the self that acts in the world, touches things, smells things, says things, experiences pain, etc. Then there is another self which most people agree sits just behind the first self. It’s as if there is someone right behind you watching everything you do (not trying to be creepy).
This other self is sometimes called the Witness. That self doesn’t have to get their hands dirty. They are somehow shielded from the experiences of the world. They can mentally interact, their thoughts are your thoughts. But, ask yourself, has your witness self ever really driven a car? Had lunch? Taken a shower? When do you access this witness? What do they do? Do they provide comfort? A safe haven to retreat into?
Swami Sarvaprinyananda is a teacher of Vedanta, an orthodox school of Hindu tradition. This video is a fascinating glimpse into a culture that has spent thousands of years developing a philosophy of the mind. You can understand without knowing the Sanskrit words because of what we’ve discussed in this course, though it may be difficult.
Who Am I if Not The Knower? Swami Sarvapriyananda
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