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The Illusion of Mind

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Ideas & Questions

Published: 11 November 2015

Hits: 2492

• Illusion,
• Mind,
• Consciousness,
• Self,
• Ego,

Somewhat musing, and clarifying my thoughts on the Illusion of Mind.

By which I mean, of course, that necessary delusion that we all suffer that somehow we are "I" - unique, continuous, congruent people.

The Ego, constructed from birth forward, pejorative, it's social convention to disregard the ego, we use the terms "egomaniac", "egotistical", "egocentric" to describe someone who's ego is unacceptably developed - the ego, that combination of individual experience, that separation from others, we manifest it a hundred ways, through consumerism, fashion and clothing, brands, our identifying with various causes, corporations and lifestyles, religion, art, we are anchored to our experiences, opinions and beliefs, all of which serve to make us "unique". But this ego is the frail, uppermost, "conscious" realm of thought, it's the day-to-day quest for identity and belief in ourselves that defines us, and I would argue that it's largely, if not entirely, an illusion.

There are in fact a hundred, maybe even thousands of smaller mental and psychic cogs that work to create this illusion, largely hidden (but not entirely), our conscious self is perhaps a bit like an optical illusion where we see lines against dot backgrounds and our mind fills in and imagines a square , or any of a hundred other corollaries, the square does not exist, certainly, but it is suggested, and the suggestion is enough for our minds to imagine a whole...

Imagine, extend feelings of hunger, of pain, of withdrawal from your chosen addiction, there comes a point with each of them where you break, you're mind no longer able to grasp the wholeness of you, the smaller mind that preoccupies itself with food, survival, pleasure is now in control. Homunculus has taken over. But these are extreme states you argue, but then think of emotional states - be they pleasure, anger, heartbreak, loneliness, etcetera, and you'll find they as well can consume you - and everyone, at some time, has fallen prey to these. Again, extreme states. Think about your autonomic responses - breathing, heartbeat, kidneys, a thousand parts that work efficiently in the background until it's time to make their demands known - and when they do, there's an urgency that cannot be resisted. Relating, on a curious and personal note, while trekking in Nepal, above 15000 feet my breathing was no longer autonomic, it became very much a labored, conscious process - each breath required both diligent effort and concentration, curious, indeed, for this was a process that my entire life had looked after itself.

And curious, too, or not so, if you please, but consider meditation - various practitioners are able to alter any number of their autonomic responses, reducing heartrate, breathing, raising or lowering core body temperature and adjusting metabolic rates. And curious or not, meditation is generally the process of refuting ego, descending beneath the realm of self, enlightenment (a popular aim in meditation) is generally described as a liberation from ego and worldly desires, a oneness - an intellectual as well as an emotional realization - of the connectedness of all things.

In mind - or the grasping of mind - it as well helps to survey the external landscape of external stimuli - always a part of mind, the backdrop of thought, the countless super and subliminal cues and subconscious responses, the manipulation of which suggests that a great proportion of which we consider to be free will is nothing but a conditioned response to the environment around us. Consider the illusion of what we perceive to be the world about us, generally shared, but represented to each of us independently in our own heads, we agree - often - as to the size and shape of an item, but disagree as to it's meaning, it's subjective value (a piece of music might simultaneously inspire and/or revolt 2 different members of an audience), our every sensation is first filtered through our senses and a hundred hidden prejudices, opinions, interpretations, understandings, emotions, creating an internal representation that bears little objective relation to the external world.

And finally there's memory - the lingering experience as recalled through all the processes above - seldom accurate or objective to begin with, memories are overwritten every time we revisit them, destroying all continuity, we continue our lives from places we think we have been...from false memories and interpretations of events, memories of books, films, third party narratives told to us at cocktail parties and by our parents, siblings, teachers, all woven into our own, we know that it's unreliable, tested and proven, but our own recollections are somehow not to be doubted, and every memory is a false starting point from which we begin again... 

These are just a few random thoughts, poorly organized, but for more coherent and inspiring reading that might challenge or enlighten you on theories of self and mind, try some of the links below...

Link: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome

Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness?language=en

Link: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/partial-recall