Optimality Of I Potentiality: Consciousness, Cognition, Causality And Criticality Of Communication by Santosh Jha - HTML preview

Globally, there seems a common trend everywhere that communication clarity and exactness has been eroded and there is growing abstractness and waywardness in communication – both internal as well as external. Much of the blame for this muddled up communication exactness goes to emotional instabilities of average person and little practice of self-introspection. Average person in contemporary cultures and milieus has lost touch with the brilliant human ability and artistry of ‘self-dialogue’. In ancient Oriental spiritual traditions, there is great stress on continuous and persevered self-investigation and self-enquiry. These are essentially aimed at honing the skills of communication with self.

To make the idea of optimality of specificity in communication clear and also to emphasize its importance in life-living wellness and success, I share a true story with you. Few months back, a dear friend of mine shared with me an idea and he insisted that I do research on this issue. The issue was that in his long list of acquaintances, friends and relatives, there were large numbers of families that had only single child, be it a girl or boy. There was a growing feeling among them that there single grown up offspring did not seem sensitive enough towards their emotional and other needs and therefore, there is a common overriding wish that these families must work together to evolve and create a support structure in coming years so that they are independent and self-sufficient in their old age. My dear friend wanted me to do a research on what’s going on around the world and how we can go about it.

Not to my amazement, I found a clear global trend and commonality of causality, when I researched over this issue. Almost in most developed country, there is around 10-15 percent families with single offspring and globally, there was a fast emerging complaint among many families, be it with single child or many children that the parents felt a growing gap between them and their offspring. There were common emotional issues and conflicts of assumptions were on both sides. I wish to share my findings that may help us understand how critical the issue of exactness of ‘communication’ is.

First, there was no clarity on both sides about the specificity (exactness) of the trouble between parents and the offspring. Rather, the entire stress factor between the two had very abstracted situation and acceptance. Is there a dignity issue at hand? Are offspring treating parents badly? Are they abusive? The research seems to suggest, there is no definitiveness to it. For example, an old lady living alone complained that she was very upset with her daughter because when she came to her house on a vacation or otherwise, the daughter would check her food packets and confront her mother as why she was eating this and why she was still stacking the spices that were well past expiry date, etc. The old mother felt this as intrusive behavior and though she may not take it as a ‘dignity’ issue, she still was ruffled up by her daughter entering her space and trying to order her. The daughter on the other side felt she was doing the right things as she was concerned about her mother’s wellbeing. Now, there is no data available as which way she was telling her mother about what she was telling. There are innumerable such examples where both parents and offspring would stand to appear as both are right and genuine in their feelings, yet, trouble pervaded their relationships.

So, broadly, what is the specificity-trouble in this issue of parent-offspring communication crisis? It is very clear, if we see the broad picture. The primary issue is that two people are having a crisis in relationship, where the root of trouble is that there is a gap of ‘perceptions’. Only in few rare cases, there is an element of dignity as abusive behavior between two are not the rule. The majority cases have communication collapse or abstraction. The parents are probably not receiving the perception and perspective of offspring and the vice-versa. Both sides have right and wrong in their perceptions and perspectives. Usually, both sides have the problem of gap between ‘Media’ and ‘Communication’, which we have discussed earlier. Like, children are not sensitive to the reality that parents may not be logical about their right and true wellness concerns towards them as they may be emotionally instable. The parents may also be insensitive to the fact that the grown up child has moved away and may have his or her own emotional crisis about how he or she can handle parents’ safety and wellness. May be, both sides have emotional ‘Media’ and they are attempting a ‘Logical’ communication through it and naturally, abstractions creep in and specificity (exactness) is missing by huge margins.

So, what is the trouble? The trouble is; the specificity or exactness of the situation demands that both sides sit together and discuss ways to improve communication and weed out elements of distrust and abstraction about it between them. However, what parents are doing is focusing on how to get rid of this crisis by devising a ‘disconnect’. They are not focusing on root of trouble but the inverse of it by planning to be ‘independent’ of offspring. The offspring are also not focusing on how to alter communication so that their concerns of safety and distant-care perspectives are understood in right spirit by parents. Rather, they are also planning to fill in more vacuum with their parents by ‘providing’ but not ‘intervening’. So, the outcome is growing gap between the two sides.

The same situation happens with internal communication within an individual too. Like in my case, as I had mentioned at the start of the book, I was in high fever and incapacitation but I was not thinking about the body situation. Rather, I was more worried about the success in my office event that was slated three days ahead. Therefore, my own media required my conscious self to focus my communication about the fever and pain but I was communicating my media signals about my worries about success in office event.

I must share with you a classical example of this conscious-subconscious gap and conflict, which is global in nature and intent. This shall help understand why specificity or exactness is so critical in media and communication optimality. It is widely accepted by most scientific thinking that working actionable structure of brain states is subconscious layer. The conscious states may opt for a decision but it is only intangible. The decision in mind always has to be converted into definitive action and for that only the subconscious has tangible structures. Therefore, there must be very specific linearity between conscious and subconscious about a situation. If not, abstractions shall creep in and hypocrisies shall usurp domain.

This is primary reason that globally, average person shall almost always mouth good and lofty ideals and words. This happens because in almost all cultures, goodness and righteousness is common. Therefore, it is always easy and prompt for anyone to think right and mouth most appropriate words. However, most people shall seldom do the same good and right thing. That is why ‘hypocrisy’ is the greatest malaise of human world. Our conscious self shall usually think great things but as it seldom is made to stand in sync and symmetry with subconscious, which carries the commensurate ‘action’, most of us seldom carry out the same and exact righteousness that we think. Hypocrisy is entropic situation of conscious-subconscious gap.

Globally, we have witnessed that in most nations, there is a gap between what the political leadership ‘thinks’ and what bureaucracy ‘carries’. The visions or righteous ‘intent’ of ‘decision-makers’ or law-makers are usually good and right. The policy-frameworks probably cannot be wrong and bad as they are guided by constitutions of nations. However, only the bureaucracy can carry this intent into actionable work. There is clear divide between two pillars of governance. It is very rare that decision-makers take into full confidence the bureaucracy and it is equally rare that bureaucracy stand in full cooperation with law-makers. This is akin to gap between conscious and subconscious – the ‘thinking’ and ‘acting’ layers seldom being on one page. Naturally, most nations, especially developing nations have low optimality of their governance systems. In contemporary times, it is rather tragic that politicians and bureaucracy has even come to open fights and abuses. The level of distrust and anger against each other is calamitously high. This crisis of governance has been widely documented by intellectuals of society time and again but still, no concrete measures are taken by governments to work on improved symmetry and synergy between two key layers of governance.

Therefore, the primary specificity (exactness) is to have both our subconscious and conscious in singular and present linearity. This ensures that entire consciousness system is in singular media to receive and execute appropriate communication. This requires practice. In contemporary world of fast paced life and multi-tasking demands, often, two domains of consciousness are usually in competing and conflicting platforms. Secondly, be very aware of the character of communication so that an appropriate media is consciously chosen for it. Third, the communication itself has to be very specific, sans emotional abstractions. Lastly, the communication has to be sustained and repeated so that conscious communication is etched deeply and decisively on the subconscious structures. As we have discussed above, even as a decision for action is taken on conscious levels, it shall have to be translated to existing subconscious plexus and pathways for finality of action. That is why we earlier insisted on good practice of language, emotions and thoughts as communication tools. This ensures that subconscious already has deep pathways for exactness of our communication signals for effective recall and replication.

3. Mortality Of ‘I’ – This aspect is related with higher consciousness, which dates back to almost 3000 years back and has been well documented in texts of ancient Oriental spiritual traditions. We however shall talk about it in scientific terms, elaborating its importance in ‘Conscious-Enterprise’ of ‘Media-Management’ for Wellness-Communication. This realism of higher consciousness has been the cardinal matter of most spiritual traditions and now it has caught scientific imagination. Why? Because, this realism is a tough attainment for a person on one hand but singular platform for idealism of management of body-mind media and specificity of communication to attain highest goals of wellness and success of excellence.

I am attempting to present a short explanation of this element of –I-Mortality’ of higher consciousness here and shall elaborate it in details in later chapters for deeper understanding. Here I confine the explanation of this element in relation to media and communication aspect only. Though, the issue has deeper significance, which we shall discuss later.

In our discussion over the realism of consciousness, we have talked about how it has different layers of unconscious, subconscious, conscious and higher consciousness. We have also accepted that all layers are part expressions of the singular holism of consciousness and they exist in cooperative entanglement bound by causalities. Therefore, it is very tough to have a defined clear cut divide between our conscious and subconscious. However, when we say that our conscious self must be aware enough to have an audience with subconscious and then communicate with it, we presuppose that the two layers can stand segregated. But this is never possible.

This is what presents as big challenge for us. Both spiritualism and science accept that ‘Objectivity’ is an impossibility for we humans as even when we stand in utmost higher consciousness, there shall always be grains of subconscious and unconscious entrenched in it. The causalities between these layers shall remain ingrained. It is like; the ‘objectivity’ itself can be seen, realized and deciphered by none other but our own ‘subjective’ self. Naturally, subjective sense cannot fully be detached and segregated from any objectivity enterprise. It is here this ‘I-Mortality’ element of higher consciousness helps attain optimality.

The basic premise is that usually, a person is a subjective expression of his or her own body-mind milieus and the media of his or her memories of experiences. It is because of the very nature of evolution of consciousness, which we have already discussed. This subjective expression, this sense of me or ‘I’, as unique and differentiated to all others is a property of ‘Entropy-Expansion’ that essentially is the way we have been designed. However, for logical, objective and reasoned out thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behavior, we all have to undergo a process of ‘Entropy-Suppression’, as we grow, mature and as our media and communication pathways have enough critical mass of experiences.

However, this entropy-suppression is no segregated function. The higher consciousness or what we understand as higher awareness; has to do it but it is very much an inseparable ‘part’ of the ‘holism’ of consciousness. In other words, it is the ‘I’ that checks and controls the stupidities and conflict-confusion of ‘I’. This is the dualism that is defining property of our consciousness and it is not easy to get over it. But the fact remains that empowerment is not possible if we do not rise above the dualism and master the artistry of our higher consciousness, which itself is only ‘part’ of our singular consciousness, managing and optimizing other parts.

We shall elaborate this dualism in later chapters but here our task at hand is to explain as how ‘I-Mortality’ element can help us rise above this dualism. There is a simple explanation that classical spiritualism provided, which shall help us understand the core process, even while we have all the reasons to believe that it stands on some hypothesis, which may not be tenable today. The classical spiritualism accepted that body is mortal and consciousness is immortal. The body, which is just the media of all ‘Karma’ has a ‘Lord’ and this is our consciousness, which is transcendental and immortal. This is classical body-soul segregation.

What we take from it is that it is this primary reality of mortality that is biggest subconscious tool for rising above the dualism. We do not have to accept this classical hypothesis of consciousness (soul) being immortal and re-installable in another birth. We are not concerned about it here. What we take out of this is that mortality is a subconscious wiring, which is an entrenched facility for consciousness to build a successful enterprise on. Our body is discontinuous and mortal is always in subconscious awareness, whatever we do. It is a reality that cannot be wished away. However, what soul-hypothesis facilitates for us is segregation of two parts and making them distinct. This helps us rise above dualism.

We all need to consciously take out his mortality element from subconscious and install it in our conscious mind states. As we practice enough and successfully pervade our higher consciousness with this central and cardinal realism that our body, the so-called protagonist is only a temporary media, we facilitate greater objectivity. The very pervaded consciousness that our body-mind is mortal, segregates ‘us’ from it. As we practice it, we shall feel that there is a growing ‘detachment’ of conscious self from our body-mind media. This happens because we cannot happily accept that ‘I’ can wither away. Gradually, there is a higher consciousness cover that makes us feel that the Real ‘I’ is not our body-mind and this media is only temporary and therefore inferior. Our subconscious is designed to never accept discontinuity of self or ‘I’. Therefore, conscious acceptance of mortality shall gradually make us detach from our body-mind media. This is what facilitates a consciousness position, which classical spiritualism called ‘Witness-I’ and science refers to as ‘Non-Local Consciousness’.

What we are trying to hypothesize that this element of conscious mortality facilitates a consciousness, which stands as continuous ‘Witness’ to whatever our mortal and wavering body-mind media is doing. His happens because our higher consciousness is able to ‘detach’ itself in a long way with body-mind subconscious media and communication as it cannot accept something that is mortal and discontinuous as part of self or ‘I’. So, what the higher consciousness is able to do by pervading the ‘I-mortality’ realism throughout its awareness plexus is attain this segregated ‘Witness-I’ consciousness. This in turn facilitates a better objectivity and logicality. When a ‘Detached-I’ is standing above as witness to everything the subconscious and mortal body-mind media is doing, this protagonist is better placed to have higher objectivity, logicality and reasoned assessments. This is the idealism we all must have because then only we can launch a ‘Conscious-Enterprise’ Of ‘I-Media Management’ For Life-Living Wellness and Excellence.

As we come to conclude the talk about consciousness, its media and communication, we can sum up this long discussion into a small wisdom. This wisdom has three simple points that we need to remember –

1. Our body-mind has a mechanism and process. Science has unraveled good bit of it and evolving the knowledge every day. We all must be fully aware about them and keep updated so that we have a consciousness, which is more objective, logical and singularly in sync with all others. Consciousness is at the core of all cognitions and therefore, we must have deep knowledge of the holism of the idea of consciousness.
2. There are unseen and embedded rules of causalities that are infinite. Every realism is a function of some causality and therefore, to have a better understanding of reality, we need to understand as much causalities as possible. On this depends our wellness and excellence.
3. All causalities that create a realism are function of some form of communication. Every particle of the cosmos is in communication with other and this plexus of communication shapes up reality. It is only natural that a communication must have media. Every empowered person therefore should ideally be consciously aware of media and communication within self and outside.

We have discussed consciousness and causality in this book to understand the idea of media and communication. In the next part of the book, there are chapters about those issues, which we encountered in course of earlier chapters, about which I had said we shall discuss later. These chapters are optional but recommended so that you could have more detailed understanding of what we have discussed so far. As we were focused on the core element of media and communication, I had consciously chosen not to divert our attention away from it by going into these topics. As you shall read them, you can relate them to the media and communication aspect of our discussion.

Thanks for patiently being with me this far. Wish you all best in live and living. May you all have more empowered consciousness and great success in handling your media well with excellent and specific communication to attain whatever life-living wellness and success goals you have consciously chosen for you. Thanks!

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PART TWO

CHAPTER 1

Understanding Consciousness In Detail

Science maintains that the conscious feeling that we all have is primarily because we have an evolved and matured process of storing experiences as memories, with a definitive sense of we as our bodies present in all such memories. These memories in which the subject is definitively our own body, creates a sense of self-awareness in our brains. This we refer to as knowledge. This needs to be understood very carefully. Knowledge is not information, our sensory organs collect and pass on to our brains for processing. Knowledge is the ‘processed’ info as physical imagery in brains, which goes through the filters of mind’s memories of experiences, instinctive inclinations as well as those collective experiences, passed onto us from our ambient culture.

We have awareness that ‘we’ are experiencing something. We also have memories of other experiences of our past. More importantly, we have a definitive and exclusive mental facility of recalling, relating and collating all past imageries of experiences and imagining a novel imagery of possible model action and behavior for future. This facility of intra-polation and extra-polation of imageries in our knowledge inventory has been a decisive tool with us, helping humans produce brilliant solutions of innumerable troubles and problems. However, we need to accept the fact that this facility itself also doubles up as a major trouble for us. Imagining and extrapolating singular and objective real facts can lead to tested and replicable solutions but in situations, when the collated facts are virtual, subjective and mystical, solutions arrived at shall be subjective, untenable and non-replicable. We can design futuristic spacecrafts as we collate and juxtapose objective, tested and replicable facts of aerodynamics and navigation. However, we fail to create futuristic solutions to our emotional and psychological troubles, like those in the realm of love, faith, culture etc, as we collate only subjective, virtual and non-replicable facts. This we have to be wary of and change our attitudes and perspectives to use our consciousnesses for attaining the objectivity and singularity of decision-making matrices.

Also, the ‘knowledge’ ascribed to and installed in subconscious for all future references of experiences are in a way cause of trouble too. This makes the case that our higher consciousness must be equipped with aware requirement of ‘Unlearning’ for continuous updating. Why?

Suppose I have an injured finger. There is inflammation and if I press or even touch it, pain surges up and I feel troubled. Why? Simply because my subconscious mind state, which handles my auto-mode action-reaction based on reward-punishment assessment, has entrenched ‘Knowledge’ of pain and my natural reactions to it. If I say, ‘pain is not what it actually is but because of the ‘Knowledge’ of pain that I have’, an average person shall feel confused and never believe it. But, it is a reality. This is what cognitive science tells us. To prove it, what I have to do is be in calm and relaxed state of mind. Change my brain waves to meditative state and consciously repeat to myself that the pain I am feeling is not actual but just a ‘memory’ of the ‘Knowledge’ of pain that I have subconsciously assigned to my being. This I am going to change and ‘unlearn’. Therefore, I am going to meet the ‘pain’ in new light and have an audience with it from a new and fresh perspective. I shall focus it right there to ‘unlearn’ my past knowledge and face it anew.

After practicing this conscious resolve for a good one hour, I again touch or press the wounded finger with the same intensity as I did previously. It is for sure I shall feel less pain and even while pain may at times try to fall back to my previous ‘feel’, it shall be a different feel. This is some practice that Monks do and successfully unlearn their subconscious ‘knowledge’ of pain by persevered practice. A well practiced Monk shall feel the pain in completely different light and therefore, his or her level of tolerance of pain shall be much higher than an average person. This is what the Dalai Lama said, ‘Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional’. This is cognitive change that higher consciousness can bring about in subconscious ‘knowledge’.

The simple idea, which we have to consciously accept and practice, is to have clear distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge’ of expression of the reality. Pain is one thing but suffering from the same pain is altogether different aspect of the reality. Consciousness has this artistry of cognition to live up and sustain this distinction for wellness and success.

This knowledge aspect of consciousness needs to be understood well. Other advanced organisms, like a dog or a lion also may have consciousness, which creates set of experiences for them. The difference seems to be the fact that they experience but do not have evolved and permanent sense or knowledge that they are experiencing. The definitive sense of their body into their experiences is either completely missing or is too feeble to admit. The same happens with a baby. It also experiences things and stores many of them as memories but as the brain has not yet developed and systematized the necessary physical pathways, the sense of they actually experiencing them is too feeble to recollect later. That is probably why a baby’s threshold of pain is higher than grownups. Their sense of a definitive body in their experiences is somehow missing in their experiencing. It is similar in higher animals with sensory system. As we consciously segregate ‘Me’ from experiences and make clear distinction between experience and ‘knowledge’ of the same experiences, we can have better management of pains and other troubles.

The subjective consciousness in us that ‘we are’, seems a function of the knowledge the consciousness builds up by storing different body experiences as memories, which the actionable body creates. The dualism of consciousness is created because of the cyclicality of experiences and knowledge. The body’s sensory organs provide information from the milieus to the brain. The brain is physical part of information processing. It is like the hardware part of computation. The mind however is the functional part, the software part. This functional part, the mind controls the brain, the physical part. Mind is the knowledge, which is memories of experiences of body’s actions, stored in consciousness. The feeling of ‘self’, the sense of ‘me’ is a virtual realism as this ‘self’, the subjective consciousness is an intangible connect, a bridge between the physical and functional – the brain, and mind.

The brain is the physical pathway that makes the body act in a particular way. However, the physical pathway, the brain does not itself decide all actions. This is crucial distinction and needs to be understood. There is a key difference in deliberating and deciding an action and actually executing the action. The brain makes physical action possible by physically moving concerned parts of the body. However, whether the action should be taken or not or if taken then in what measure and intent, is what the mind works at, with its ‘knowledge’ of antecedents of ‘experiences’. This is functional part of information processing.

We all have empirical experience of this typical dualism of hardware-software cyclicality. In a computer, software deliberates a particular function but the software is not designed to execute the function as it is the role of the hardware. Software must have a pathway connecting hardware. The software shows the priorities and choices and the hard disk actually engenders the physical pathway to get the function done. Similar is the situation with our consciousness. The intangible domain of knowledge (the software part) deliberates an action and behavior priority and choice. The knowledge is a functional facility, a software faculty and therefore, it cannot itself execute the physical action and behavior. The brain shall execute the action and it shall be done because of the physical pathways, the brain has created for it. If the brains have not created the necessary and synchronous pathways (the hardware facility), there shall not be an action or the action shall be different than what the knowledge (software) had prioritized or chosen.

Often, we see that our computer does some task on its own will or different from the command we selected. This is typical software-hardware dualism. Consciousness also sometimes does the same as it also has the same built-in dualism, like a computer. Therefore, we need to change the way we look at and accept ourselves as. Our consciousness must be accepted in its entire mechanism and its mechanism entails that software choices must have commensurate and synchronous hardware pathways. Otherwise, the dualism of consciousness shall create its own scary choices, often constricting our wellness and excellence. We have to be in perpetuity of our higher consciousness, which ensures the symmetry and harmony of software-hardware (body-mind) dualism. We are humans, having a definitive edge and therefore, we cannot act and behave the way other organisms do.

The consciousness of other organisms, like dog or lion primarily has physical part of information processing – the hardware. The brain does take most decisions based on instincts, which are codes already written in the genetic navigation system. They too have minds, which takes into account some of the past experiences (software) but as they do not have evolved and complex memory mechanism, they have very fleeting sense of self-awareness. Even the memories become part of rote function, very much part of instinctive decision-making. The same happens in small kids. However, even in grownups, this instinctive action-reaction dominates decision-making. This leads to larger troubles and needs to be changed.

Usually, in humans the mind, the fun