In order to sense resonance clearly, it is my belief that a mind should be able to achieve a state called Unconditioned Consciousness, if only for a moment (which at times is all that is possible). The conditioning of consciousness is necessary (that is a question) to manage the complexity of the physical and mental domains — the usefulness and utility of conditioning can be observed by how well we can achieve such a wide array of useful and varied functions in our daily personal and professional lives (sometimes simultaneously) while still having a large reserve of attention available for achieving so much more.  I like Mihaly Csikzenthalyi’s classification of attention as psychic energy – and the organization of attention down coherent paths of consciousness as psychic order [whilst the opposite is considered psychic entropy].  As for ordering consciousness, a good percentage of learned behaviors (including reflexive reactions) order the flow of consciousness for a period of time and interestingly enough, reflexive reactions can likewise organize consciousness automatically to achieve goals (an often referred to example is that of driving a car between destinations without any awareness at all of the task at hand, while thinking about or attending to other things).

In order to describe how to achieve Unconditioned Consciousness, it is necessary to talk about the relationship between awareness, perception, and attention more deeply.  For a first slice at a model and analogy, let us picture that attention is the currency of consciousness[1] (which gives new meaning to the phrase ‘pay attention’).  Regardless of whether we are aware of the these transactions of consciousness, they are still occurring moment by moment.  Awareness applied reflectively to the contents of consciousness can be thought of a sort of meta-attention, that is attention about the target of attention, or where attention is being absorbed.  In order to suspend (and later rework) the automatic triggering of reflexive reactions, it is necessary to reach awareness of all reflexive reactions.

Early work on static pattern engineering examined two boundary conditions of interest:  Unconditioned Consciousness and Complete Absorption of Attention Without Awareness.  In the latter case, which takes many forms, I was most interested in cases of extreme depression and catatonia:  In catatonia, attention is completely absorbed – none is available – and when questioned later, those that went through this state have no recollection (awareness) of what the contents of consciousness were nor what was external to them (thus attention wasn’t attached to perception).  Nearly everyone would agree that this state is one of complete degeneration.  Short of medication that alleviates or changes the state of consciousness, how do people in this state move out of it?  The solution is a bit counter-intuitive: Awareness (which is completely or nearly nonexistent) is activated and then gradually expanded to encompass the content of consciousness[2].  Of course, the state of the content of consciousness is that nothing is moving – the economy of consciousness is completely frozen, attention is absorbed in apparently nothing, and not even perception is properly processed by attention[3].  Nonetheless, the gradual widening of awareness restores the flow of attention toward perception and gradually awareness detects the slow, painful flow of thoughts (which nearly always have a negative slant). Through this gradual expansion of awareness, the mind seems to reorder itself, allowing attention to work once again as the currency of consciousness.

I wanted to illustrate the extreme boundary case of Complete Absorption of Attention Without Awareness and the mechanisms that lead away from it to state quite simply what Unconditioned Consciousness is:  Complete Absorption of Attention With Complete Awareness.  Consciousness often operates with a mixture of reflexive reactions operating at a threshold below awareness (or at least only partially illuminated by awareness): to move toward unconditioned consciousness, it is necessary to follow the same mechanism of applying awareness as described above to expand awareness to the contents of consciousness.  It is easiest to apply awareness to perception and then to expand it across the entire content of consciousness.   Just as described in the previous post in this series, proprioception of thought (the sixth sense) is possible via invoking awareness.

In the next post in this series, I will continue the journey toward unconditioned consciousness (or complete absorption of attention with complete awareness) and talk further about reflexive reactions and dissolving, activation energy, sensing resonance, and finally resonant reactions.

[1] I know the skeptical mind will immediately transfer to this footnote: To answer any questions and to point out the immediately obvious flaws in this analogy, I will give the more expanded model for completeness sake: static patterns and reflexes are the currency of consciousness while attention is the current of consciousness (when it is causing an ordered flow of consciousness rather than just being absorbed).  Nonetheless, the model used above effectively illustrates the intended point.

[2] Please note that I am not simply stating that the complex treatment of degenerative mental states can be abolished and replaced with ‘awareness therapy’ nor that this works in all cases; however, this is based on studies and cases where a reversal of catatonic states and extreme depression have been reversed by the application of awareness by the volition of the person suffering this state.

[3] This state is intensely interesting in the sense that is attention is completely bound. All of this is more completely described and diagrammed in the upcoming book (sorry title of the book is still pending).

I’m going to redefine two terms from psychology for the means of making a simpler paradigm for discussion — these terms are ‘Reflex‘ and ‘Unconditioned‘. In classical behavioral psychology, we have conditioned responses and unconditioned responses. The unconditioned responses are innate to a species (e.g., human beings, geese, african or european swallows) [1a]. Conditioned responses are learned by ‘hooking attention’ (this is one of those ‘iceberg phrases’ I will use to signify that a massive structure of useful theory lies below the surface and will be a ‘complex to crack open’ (using one of my best friend’s favorite phrases) later) [1b].

So we have learned behavior and inherent behavior. Not only for linguistic purposes, but for a deep level of integration with core SPE theory, I like to call these behaviors and responses reactions (for now, just assume I’m using a linguistic sleight of hand). I am going to use the term reflexive reaction to define any reaction or behavior that has assumed some degree of automaticity — where the degrees of freedom have been yielded either by choice, by genetics, or subconsciously. Like most terms in SPE, I want to use the notion of ‘degree of’ to qualify and quantify how much this definition is true for a particular instance or event. Thus, for an innate reflex (e.g., if I tap your knee with a rubber hammer) there is an extremely high degree of reflexivity (with little choice) but for a learned behavior it can be considerably lower because a mental choice (a degree of freedom) still exists. Note that at the point of learning a new reflex (those awkward moments of knowledge acquisition), the degree of reflexivity could possibly be nearly zero (unless the new behavior is a combination of previously reflexive behaviors, but even then it is much lower than the sum of the parts).

Now – the problem with observing behavior externally is the same as was addressed in previous posts: we are looking at the individual once action has taken place (a knee jerk, a survival reflex, job interview responses to practiced questions, a complex defense against a political coup). Just as I expanded the criteria for knowledge from ‘information with potential for action’ to ‘information with potential to produce effects’ (see the Towers of Knowledge, Part One post), I would also like to, as a first slice, define a reaction as a ‘response capable of producing effects’ (which may produce variable actions). To use a mundane and easily graspable example, I’ve learned that if I grow extremely tired, I can respond with a cup of coffee. This usually involves a quite careful choice (is it 11pm at night? how much coffee have I had today?) — if it doesn’t, and there is a high degree of automatization (a high degree of reflexivity), you could say there is an addiction at play. This example has both an observable action from a person (getting the coffee) and a learned effect from the response (increased alertness unless the coffee is decaf). What I want to stress is that the effect is of primary importance and it is only because the action is tied to the intended effect by some mechanism (in this case, the tie is pharmacological) that the action has any importance at all. If I were aware of about a dozen equally effective actions that spanned approximately the same amount of time, then really my action would only be a matter of choice.

Even though I have requalified with an emphasis toward effect, my example of learned behavior does however manifest in an action that interacts with the ‘outside’ world [2] (drinking the coffee), but I used this to make it more tangible. To truly extend the notion of what a reaction is to the bounds required for SPE analysis later, I want to show that a learned reaction need not result in any external action whatsoever [3]. If instead the scope of the system that is affected by the reaction is only the mind of the learner, then we have a reflex that has little or no outside manifestation/action whatsoever.  A good example of this is the ‘self-calming’ behavior we often learn on our own in childhood (which may have language structure or not, may have overt action if it calls attention or not).

As an aside, this is a good opportunity to talk about human minds as ‘idiosynchrasies’ or private mixtures of thought, knowledge, and reflexes. From the pragmatic side of human affairs, we often talk about thought, knowledge, or behaviors that serve a common useful function — a sort of ‘agreed to’ matrix of thoughts + actions that forms a common system of thought [4] which you will continue to internalize throughout your life (and which goes through its own evolution as all systems do). What I want to talk about now are the unique ‘survival’ behaviors we invent, concoct, or learn on our own from the moment we begin to interact with the environment. Please note that in doing so, I am flying squarely in the face of the reason why behavioral psychology (or behaviorism) sought to exclude the subjective abstractions of personal mood, emotions, and reflexes — what really mattered was observable behaviors (which I am calling ‘actions’). Let me start by saying that this abstraction started by Watson over a century ago was extremely useful at the time — an idealization that allowed for a tremendous amount of early results. The field has since moved toward a belief that internal and external stimuli influence behavior (reactions) — but the line I am delineating is one in which internal effects (which may lead to present or future observable behavior) change the internal state of consciousness.

So, why am I taking you through this tortuous and careful journey from focusing not on just observable behavior (and therefore action) toward a paradigm of focusing on the reflexive reactions that produce internal or external effects as well as internal or external actions (behaviors) [5]? Quite simply, it is easy to have awareness of one’s observable behavior but to become aware of internal reflexive behavior opens up another realm of possibilities, which I am going to address in the second part of this set of posts: Unconditioned consciousness. This is actually a recent, complete reworking of the theory of resonance that is core to SPE theory. To be honest, I want to postpone discussing it until I’m completely refreshed and ready to write about it… but basically, let me talk narratively and freely about it. I love when this happens in life: Unconditioned consciousness was my ‘first’ slice at resonance a few years back — I considered it too unrefined and coarse at the time (not enough to define it) and thus took a different approach. It was an intuitive flash, however, and my early notes on it describe perfect what I have come to realize after a long and careful approach toward this realization. As happens often in insights, the first glimpse was full and correct, but it would take years to properly qualify it. That side of creativity, to me, is refreshing and fulfilling. The glimpse gives a large blast of energy that can sustain one on an endeavor for months or years of intense concentration — if this didn’t occur throughout my life in different contexts, I doubt I would have taken up half of the projects I have.

FOOTNOTES

[1a] These ‘unconditioned responses’ are often called reflexes (a single operation or response) or fixed action patterns (this is a series of behaviors in a sequence that goes to completion). An example of a reflex which is common to both animals and humans is the natural withdrawal in the opposing direction from a source of pain (i.e., fire, a stab wound, etc). An excellent example of fixed action patterns in female geese: If the female goose sees an egg outside the nest (key stimulus), it will repeatedly drag the egg toward the nest with its beak and neck — this movement will continue until the goose is back in the nest whether a researcher removes the egg or not.

[1b] I do not want to open a can of worms on this one yet, but if interested in further research, google for ‘classical conditioning’ and then ‘operant conditioning’ as a starting point. This thread of discussion will be essential to return to later.

[2] Part of the requalification of SPE will be to do away with the ‘subject-object’ boundary except where absolutely necessary, thus terms like ‘outside world’ will vanish.
[3] The interest in behaviors resulting from external action are simply legacy from our initial and crucial experiments while psychology was emerging as a field, examining both animals and humans.  In other words, it was an experimental approach that developed into a theoretical framework.
[4] Here I am using David Bohm’s expanded redefinition of the thought system as explained by Lee Nichol: “The essential relevance of Bohm’s redefinition of thought is the proposal that body, emotion, intellect, reflex, and artifact are now understood as one unbroken field of mutually informing thought.” – this redefinition of the Thought System will be part of a large future discussion.

[5] The notion of internal action has not been described as of yet — let me just qualify it by calling it ‘virtual action’ for now. If you need examples, they are abundant: Visualizing or practicing an event long before it happens, observing behaviors in the outside world as an infant (thus internalizing them) before even attempting to produce or mimic them (this includes spoken language — which is an action in itself), planning/declaring/plotting an action, etc.. I am relegating this notion to a footnote even though it has intense interest for me and will for you later — it simply clouds an already complicated topic. But this will lead to the ‘in order to’ Operator and its associated Transforms later in discussions.