Thinking About Thinking: How the Brain Creates Your World Automatically

Copyright © 2021 Bonnie Nack, Ed. D.

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Balboa Press rev. date: 10/13/2021

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PART ONE

THINKING ABOUT THINKING

CHAPTER ONE – THINKING ABOUT THINKING

CHAPTER TWO – THE BRAIN CREATES A SIMULATION OF THE WORLD

CHAPTER THREE – THE UNCHANGING I

CHAPTER FOUR – THE SPLIT MIND

PART TWO

THE LAWS OF BRAIN AND MIND FUNCTION

CHAPTER FIVE – THE LAWS OF MEMORY

CHAPTER SIX – THE LAW OF ASSOCIATION

CHAPTER SEVEN – THE MIRACLE OF DECISION MAKING

CHAPTER EIGHT – GENERALIZATION, REASON AND THOUGHT SYSTEMS

CHAPTER NINE – FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS

CHAPTER TEN – ANGER

CHAPTER ELEVEN – THE INCREDIBLE POWER OF BELIEF

CHAPTER TWELVE – AWAKENING FROM AN ADDICTION TO DONUTS

CHAPTER THIRTEEN – THE MYSTERY OF UNDERSTANDING

PART THREE

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

CHAPTER FOURTEEN – THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

PREFACE

Most of our lives we focus our attention out into the world. We focus on what is going on out there and on our desires and opinions in relation to it. We seldom observe what our brain and mind are doing. And therein lies the problem of being human. We have no awareness of the fact that our brain functions automatically. We are not aware that our brain may be misleading us and we are just going along for the ride.

This book is not about the content of your mind; it is about how your brain automatically manipulates its content. Sensory input goes into the brain randomly, but what is received there is transformed and automatically organized by the brain to create your experience of being a human being living in this world.

Like every other organ in the body, the brain functions dependably and lawfully. This does not seem to be the case when it is undisciplined and out of control; but even when it is out of control it is still functioning lawfully. Like a programmed computer, it can do no other; unless it is reprogrammed. It is unfortunate that human beings are not aware of how the lawful functions of the brain create their reality. If they were, they would be able to consciously choose re-program their brain to manage their lives more efficiently.

The purpose of this book is to make the reader aware of the laws of how his brain and mind function; but instead of observing them from outside the skull like a neuroscientist measuring brain waves or a psychiatrist inferring unconscious motivation, this book is about looking inward to your subjective experience of what the brain is doing automatically. When you know how something works you can exert control over it. When you have no idea of how something works, you cannot control it and things can go haywire. The end result of reading this book should be that you become consciously aware of your subjective experience of how your brain works automatically, and how you can learn to deal consciously with what it is doing automatically -- every moment of your life.

Part One

Thinking About

Thinking

Chapter One

THINKING ABOUT THINKING

In ancient Greece, Minos was a mythical king who ordered

a labyrinth to be built. A labyrinth can be seen as symbolic

of the convolutions of the human brain. It is the labyrinth

of the human brain in which a thinker can get lost.

Thinking underpins everything that that exists in our world. If you could not think your life would be meaningless; you would be no different than a plant growing in the ground. All activities in the whole world -- everything that we see around us and everything we experience -- is the expression and embodiment of thought. Personal relationships, the social order, automobiles, sciences, medicines, electronic devices, skyscrapers, cities, ships and bridges; everything is the manifestation of the thinking of human beings. Without thinking none of these things could have appeared on earth. On the other side of the coin, because of thinking people argue and wars are fought and the collective material creations made possible by thought are destroyed and demolished.

Because thinking is so fundamental to who we are, we take our ability to think for granted and seldom if ever think about thinking itself. Instead of being taken for granted the ability to think is something that needs to be examined and understood. Unless you understand what thinking is, you cannot really understand anything – you unwittingly just go along for the ride. As the venerable Einstein commented; We cannot solve the problems facing us by using the same kind of thinking that created them.

Human beings have been created with minds that far exceed the minds of animals in ability to think. But it is something of a tragedy that they do not know that their mind does many things automatically; how it works or how to make the best use of it. Instead, like animals they focus on the external world or their body sensations and desires, and like an animal mindlessly allow their brains to react and run their lives instinctively. Animals’ limited ability to think is a protection for them. Although they cannot, through cumulative cooperative and creative thought, rise above the limitations of their environment to improve their life situation; neither can they create confusion, suffering and destruction for themselves like human beings can do. It is the infinite range of the creative possibilities of human thinking that has both blessed and cursed the human race.

We can understand the biblical statement; In the beginning was the word, to refer to man’s ability to think as the foundation of creation. Words are the vehicle by which man uses his mind to create finite forms within the realm of the infinite. Words are the way that God allows man to break His grand infinity into little pieces and manipulate those pieces as he wishes. For example, different cultures have different words for different aspects of reality – and they all slice up the pie of infinity in different ways. Eskimos have seven words for snow. Most other cultures have one. Ancient Sanskrit has ninety-six different words for love; English has only one or two.

WORDS ARE THE FOUNDATION OF CONSCIOIOUS THOUGHT

"Give me a child before the age of seven and

I will show you the man." Aristotle

The creation of a human being does not end when a child is born. The human brain is designed so that its earliest experiences program it, forming the foundation of his thinking for his whole life. The brain receives various sensory inputs and automatically organizes and stores them automatically in specific areas of the brain. A child is born out of the silence and cannot think using words, but observation of his attempts to master moving his body and exploring his environment, it is obvious that an infant is thinking even without the use of words. When learning a language, first a child mimics sounds; then he learns that these sounds represent things. Only after that can he learn a language and begin to think with words. At a year and a half of age a child’s brain automatically begins to associate words with sensory input. Words are verbal symbols that your brain formulates against the data of sensory input. They impose themselves on the wordless inner silence and reduce the complex sensory experience of this world into simple sounds and symbols. Words are giant steps removed from the electro-chemical functions of the brain, sensory input, and the experiences that form our world.

We think by manipulating words in our mind, and then we forget we can think without using words. We forget words are only symbols far removed from our actual experience. Through the manipulation of words your brain automatically creates a conceptual model and understanding of you and the world; then figuratively speaking, you move into the model. You profoundly believe thoughts, emotions and words are your reality and identity – how the world is and who you really are -- when the fact is, you are merely having a relationship with your brain’s ability to learn a language and manipulate the words of that language. Mystics are those who can recapture the experience of silence from which all thinking arises. Words become their tools instead of their identity.

For a child, learning a language is not merely a matter of imitating sounds with his mouth, tongue and vocal cords; it is a holistic life-informing interaction of the brain and body with the environment. The brain of a child adapts completely and unquestioningly to the elements in its environment. Psychologists have recognized how profoundly our early experience shapes us. They have even identified personality types that are based on the child’s earliest life experiences.

For example; what is termed a schizoid’s personality is characterized by lack of interest in social or intimate relationships. He has difficulty expressing his emotions and has a preference for solitary life. This orientation to the world is believed to be due to the early trauma of separation during the birthing process or the awareness of the body alone in space, or lack of emotional bonding with the primary care givers. Memory of the trauma is not accessible to consciousness because it is the wordless foundational experience upon which the schizoid individual predicates all his thinking and feeling.

Another personality type, the psychopathic personality, is also believed to be due to the child’s response to the early parental environment. During his early childhood the psychopath was an object for the fulfillment of his parent’s needs; not recognized as a person with his own needs. Again, this wordless foundational experience is not accessible to consciousness, but in response to it the psychopath develops a personality that manipulates others in order to be recognized, supported and encouraged. He seduces, manipulates, controls and lies to get what he wants. He has no idea why he behaves as he does.

A third personality type, the masochist, as a child experienced love and acceptance only when he was good. The mother was over-controlling and dominating, even to the extent of controlling his eating and excretory functions. The child was made to feel guilty for any self-assertion or attempts to declare his freedom from her control. He adapted to this environment by becoming obedient, deferent and polite. The wordless experience of being over-controlled remains unconscious but forms the foundation of his personality and his orientation to the world – obedient, deferent and polite.

BEYOND THE LIMITS OF FOUNDATIONAL EXPERIENCE

As a child we automatically absorb ideas and beliefs from our surroundings, and these become the foundation for everything we think and do for the rest of our lives. When you awaken to this fact, it is shocking to recognize how profoundly true it is. The personality you guarded so well all your life is based upon words and founded on your automatic reaction to circumstances beyond your control! But as you awaken to who you really are, you discover there is something that exists in the human mind that can take you beyond the limitations of even your wordless foundational learning. The human being can learn to observe its own thinking and behaving, question the emotions and beliefs that underlie it, and chose to consciously re-program his brain. The human mind is, with practice, able to learn to recognize what it mis-learned during its foundational experiences and consciously choose to reprogram its thinking; to change its relationship to himself and to the world. That idea is the essence of this book. You can consciously choose to reprogram your thinking, even the programming of some of your wordless foundational learning.

This is not so startling a thought as it may first seem. The brain is an organ that is designed to relate to the environment. As our conceptual model of ourselves in the world changes, the brain changes along with it. New thoughts, words, emotions and behaviors are added and old ones fall into disuse. For example, in our present electronic age, we have a new model of the world that could barely have been dreamed of fifty years ago; communication with hundreds of people located all over the earth that you may never meet in person. That new model is reflected in many new words and thoughts which affect how we understand ourselves and relate to others. We now have whole new behaviors and vocabulary related to electronic devices and computers while the words typewriter and carbon paper and telephone booth that were so much a part of our world and language fifty years ago are obsolete, and have almost disappeared from our world, our minds and our vocabulary; replaced by words such as IPod, texting and scrolling." The idea of being available twenty-four/seven to answer the telephone, to walk around a store or on the street while talking and texting was undreamed of even twenty years ago. Telephones with long cords connected to a box on the wall have disappeared from our minds, vocabulary and environment.

Physicists have also introduced a new reality and language into our minds. Their concepts of indeterminacy and non-locality will gradually force us to drastically reformulate our understanding of material reality and ourselves in it. In response to these changes, our thinking, self-image, social interaction and understanding of who and what we are will continue to change. Along with these changes, the brain’s structures and functions will also change, automatically. As the environment and your behavior in relationship to it change, the brain automatically re-programs itself; it changes its internal structures and functions as you change your experience, thinking and behaving. We are not aware of it, but the brain is constantly rewiring itself to accommodate change.

THE BRAIN IS A RELATIONAL ORGAN

Edwin Boring, an early Psychologist taught that even though the brain resides in a bony black box that never sees the light of day; the brain is a relational organ designed to function in relation to the environment. Neuroscientists have elaborated Boring’s theory through the discovery of what they term Neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity was first applied to the observation that the functions of parts of the brain that were injured could be taken over by other uninjured parts. Now the term is applied more generally, to how thinking, learning, memory and experience reorganize neural pathways in the brain. The brain relates itself to the world by automatically changing its structures and functions! It does this by making sense out of sensory input and then creating facsimiles of what’s out there. Then it associates words with the facsimiles. Psychological research has shown that the human brain can remember, manipulate and meaningfully link together more than forty-two thousand words and their related facsimiles!

THE LAW OF GENERALIZATION

The brain automatically goes beyond organizing sensory input, making facsimiles and attaching them to words; it generalizes. For example; presented with an object we call envelope, the brain automatically applies that one word to a wide variety of envelopes. There are many different forms of envelopes; large, small, fat, thin, colored, printed, etc. Although they all have different characteristics, the brain automatically recognizes their similarity and associates one particular concept to a wide variety of instances of that concept. In this book we will call this brain activity generalization. The brain can also perform this function in reverse; for example, it can extract the color red from a variety of different red objects. Generalization is a very important concept in understanding how the brain and mind function and how you think. The brain’s automatic function of generalization is involved in emotion, judgment and logical thinking. We will look at this automatic brain function in detail later on in this book.

THE LAW OF MEANING

The mind automatically does something else remarkable; it adds meaning to words! Meaning is something that is not expressed directly. Words do not only symbolize things, they also symbolize meaning. The meaning of words is based upon experience and social agreement. Without a common experience and social agreement all words would be meaningless, just as if we were babbling babies. We have dictionaries that define what words mean, but words and their associated sounds are cues for meaning; meaning is invisible and resides in the mind separate from the words used to express it. Proof that meaning is separate from words is demonstrated by speaker who cannot find the right words to express himself. He knows what he wants to say but his mind cannot find the right words to do it.

The definitions of words in the dictionary are stable, creating the illusion that meaning is stable. The meanings of words are not stable. They change over time and the same words can have different meanings for different people at different times under different circumstances. For example, the author’s doctoral research showed that common words had different shades of meaning for groups of black and white children. It is well known that the words of scripture have different meaning to different people, and over time its meaning to the same people, may change as their understanding deepens. The most obvious example of differences of meaning of the same words occurs in politics; the same words can have diametrically opposite meanings to people of different political persuasions. The same phenomenon occurs less dramatically in social interaction. We say to the other person, What you heard is not what I meant.

Words are the way in which we attempt to share meaning -- our private inner worlds with other people. There develops a bond of understanding among people when they successfully share the meaning of their inner world with each other. When people believe the meaning of their words is not understood, they may feel frustrated, angry, invalidated, alone, disconnected and even unloved. In order to be understood words must evoke a similar meaning in both the mind of the speaker and the mind of the listener. When the same concepts are learned in different contexts, heard by people of different experience and levels of understanding, or spoken with different nuances of sound or emotion, their meaning changes.

In addition, the meanings of words are often symbolic or metaphoric; they mean something that has no literal connection with the word itself. For example; the sentence, Do you expect me to swallow that whole? has nothing to do with eating; we understand it means we doubt the truth of what we are being told. Moreover, translations from one language to another cannot be done word for word. If two different English speaking people translate into English the same text written in a foreign language, the English words each uses will not be exactly the same; the translator strives to convey meaning rather than make a literal translation word for word. In addition to all this, the mind presents words to your awareness according to rules of grammar of the language you are speaking. And even the rules of grammar influence how we think. Past and present tenses of words reflect the fact that we live in time. Nouns create the illusion that reality is stable and unchanging when in fact all material reality changes and is composed of active molecules and energy fields. Deepak Chopra suggests that all words should be verbs.

Speaking of meaning; before we proceed with our discussion, we need to clarify the meaning of the words mind and brain as they are used in this book. The concept brain refers to a physical electro-neurological organ floating in a viscous fluid inside the pitch black darkness of a bony skull. It is the organ that modern neuro-scientists are focused upon -- but the concept mind does not refer to something physical. Its functions are invisible to the human eye. Mind is the place where thought, perception, will, creativity, imagination, intention, knowing, and meaning occur. Scientists know there is a profound relationship between the neuro-chemical functions of the brain and these invisible functions of the mind but scientific understanding of that relationship has barely begun.

THINKING AS AN ACT OF CREATING

"Things but represent the thoughts that

made them. (ACIM L187 2:3)

Conscious thinking is based upon the mind’s ability to manipulate words. We forget that words reduce our multidimensional sensory experience into simple verbal symbols. Because these verbal symbols are backed by experience and memory images, powered by meaning and emotion, we believe them -- even though they are far removed from the reality from which they were derived. Consequently we humans live, not in the world as it is, but in a self-created imaginary inner world which we absolutely believe is real; However if we remove the projected verbal symbols from the outer world, the inner and the outer worlds can become one again. then we project our inner world out onto the real world. When the inner worlds of many people concur, social order and relationships are fostered; but when idiosyncratic inner worlds are projected outward into the world, confusion, strife and suffering is created. The ultimate spiritual goal of this world-creating is to get the inner and outer worlds to function in harmony with each other, but because of projection most people are not aware they are unable to see external reality objectively. They believe their way is the right and only way to see things.

Consequently, almost everyone wants to tell you what to think, but no one can tell you what thinking is or how it operates in the mind and brain. Yet, unless we know what thinking is and how the mind and brain work together, we cannot reliably know anything at all. It is remarkable that because we take thinking so much for granted, even science has not acknowledged how intrinsically bound to how they think, is every theory they have ever developed; nor have they questioned how thinking can create something new that until the moment of discovery was unknown in this world. Almost everyone just believes what their mind thinks and takes for granted their ability to think.

ETYMOLOGY

Lack of knowledge about thinking is reflected in the definition of that word in a modern dictionary. There it is defined in terms of what it does, not in terms of what it is. It is defined as; make opinions, judgments, resolve problems, conclude, decide, propose, intend, determine, recall, consider, etc. This definition is an impressive list of different abilities of the mind but it does not give us any insight into what thinking is.

Etymology is the study of the origin of words and how their meaning changes over the course of history. Judging from entries in an etymology dictionary, the meaning of many English words originally had spiritual meanings. According to the Etymological Dictionary the word think is derived from the old English verb "thenken or thenchen. Thenken means to conceive in the mind." The Etymological Dictionary states probably the original meaning of these old English words was "cause to appear to one’s self." The meaning of the Old