The mind is a complex set of cerebral activities that form the psychological structure in a developed brain, which is studied by psychology and treated pharmacologically by psychiatry.
Although philosophers, scientists, medics, and paramedics have been studying the mind for millennia, it remains a mystery to modern science: how and where the mind is located within the brain remains completely obscure.
A classical, though limited, definition of the mind could be the sum of all functions of the conscious (sensation, rational thinking, intuition, reason, will, and memory), unconscious (spontaneous thoughts, emotions, instincts), and subconscious (less cognitive mental activities).
The definition of the spiritual entity Mens (from the Latin word for "mind") is even more complex than one could believe and must be introduced step-by-step.
Firstly, considering the analysis of the brain structure which should, academically speaking, give rise to the mind, the concept of the local storage model of the brain is erroneous, as we have seen in the chapter on The Brain ⇒ .
In order to define and explain any physical phenomenon, it is necessary to correctly model the phenomenon; with an incorrect model, the physical phenomenon will never be completely defined and, at best, inconsistencies, paradoxes, and inexplicable phenomena will emerge.
Science, with its erroneous model of brain functioning, is obviously incapable of studying and explaining how and where the mind is located within the brain.
In fact, the "cerebral activities" of the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious do not occur in the brain, but in dimensions of which we are unaware, which we have called Extramental Dimensions (see chapter on Virtual Reality from Our Point of View ⇒).
Knowledge, understood as a set of learned, elaborated-upon, and memorised thoughts, is also allocated in the Extramental Dimensions.
In addition to performing activities related to the body's functioning, activities governed by the subconscious, the brain "processes" those memories known as "short-term" (which are accessible quickly) and manages the systems for accessing long-term memories.
Mens' own consciousness, which roughly corresponds to the individual's conscious, is bound as a form to Our Virtual Reality by the constructs of the individual's ordinary state of consciousness. That is, Mens is aware of Our Virtual Reality, but has a spiritual structure constituted in other dimensions: this is the uniqueness of Mens as a spiritual entity.
As an example, think of a little boy playing a simulation video game: when the little boy assumes familiarity with the video game, a part of the boy's mind believes that it is in the virtual reality created by the game and coordinates the movements of the young boy to accomplish actions inside the video games, but that part of the boy's mind is not physically inside the video game.
Therefore, although Mens has the potential to develop and experience other dimensions, it does not do it, because it is bound to Our Virtual Reality.
Mens develops its own existence through experiences evoked by the life of the individual in Our Virtual Reality, thereby acquiring its own consciousness through life and the knowledge of the world in an ordinary state of consciousness; any altered state of consciousness causes Mens to be disorientated and uncertain.
The ordinary state of consciousness is the ideal state in which to best live life's experiences in Our Virtual Reality.
As mentioned, Mens as an entity develops in dimensions different from those in Our Virtual Reality, which are to us imperceptible and incomprehensible.
The manifestation of Mens gives rise to most of Conscious' mental activities (sensation, rational thinking, intuition, reason, will and memory).
The Unconscious' mental activities (spontaneous thoughts, emotions, instincts) are largely due to the presence of manifestations of Spirit, although Spirit develops in dimensions imperceptible and incomprehensible to us.
The Subconscious' mental activities are the result of a union of manifestations of Spirit and Mens.
Mens and Spirit share some of these imperceptible and incomprehensible dimensions in common, meaning Spirit and Mens can somehow communicate with one other through archetypes, both consciously and subconsciously. Exchanges of information between Spirit and Mens in an altered state of consciousness can be extremely interesting from a spiritual research and experimental point of view.
New knowledge gained by the individual is stored by Mens in a part of Universal Knowledge.
Unlike Spirit, which theoretically can draw upon all of the Universal Knowledge, Mens can only access a very limited area of Universal Knowledge corresponding to the knowledge previously gained by it.
Mens easily accesses its knowledge, which is localised within Universal Knowledge, when the individual is in an ordinary state of consciousness, while it struggles to recover its knowledge in any altered state of consciousness.
Il. 9: mind, Spirit, Mens, and Universal Knowledge
While knowledge recovered by Mens does not pass through any filtering, the information recovered by Spirit in an altered state of consciousness is passed to Mens in the form of archetypes, meaning it is up to Mens to rework the information to make it comprehensible to the individual through its manifestation... subsequently, when the individual returns to an ordinary state of consciousness, comprehension of such a message depends entirely on the individual's mental development (see paragraph Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness ⇒)[26].
The dimensions of Universal Knowledge are not dimensions where Mens and Spirit develop, meaning access to it requires a small amount of energetic effort. Successful access to Universal Knowledge, and by extension the recovery of any information, is never certain.
With regard to Mens, the easiest knowledge to recover from Universal Knowledge is the knowledge that is most frequently accessed (always in an ordinary state of consciousness).
With regard to Spirit, drawing upon Universal Knowledge is not an easy task. First, the individual must be familiar with deep states of altered consciousness and a number of set conditions must be fulfilled, which we will see later (see paragraph on Thought, States of Consciousness, and Archetypes ⇒ and later).