Rupert Spira: Why Are Parts of the Mind Unconscious?

The mind, you can say, is a localization of infinite consciousness and arises in and you use the terms consciousness and awareness and being as synonyms. >> Yes. But within the mind, what's interesting is only about 5% of the mind's activity is what we call conscious awareness. And I know the terms are being used differently. But they aren't totally unrelated, either. So, my perception sometimes it's like there's this light and I know that I'm infinite light, but there's actually just a window of light with which I can experience. Even though the mind, of course, 95% you know, it's regulating my breathing and my body temperature and all that is happening outside of conscious awareness. And it feels to me sometimes that the reason why it's hard for me to kind of remember my true nature is, you know, according cognitive science, we have like seven units of processing space plus or minus two, right? There's like a limited window of conscious experience. Again, I think the terms are being used slightly differently. >> how you're using the terms. Yeah, and so I'm just How does that all like fit together? It's like It's like if infinite consciousness localized itself into a mind, it's almost like it localized itself once again within the mind through this small window of conscious experience. Do you know what I'm saying? And Yes. Yes. Consciousness localizes itself in in the mind and by doing so restricts what it is conscious of. So, it localizes itself in the form of thinking and perceiving. And thereafter, everything it knows through the faculty of thinking and perceiving shares their limitations. So, what it what consciousness can experience what it's it's conscious awareness in your language. What what it can experience through the faculties of thinking and perceiving is very limited. But that doesn't limit the consciousness that knows through those faculties. And so, for instance, let's just take breathing as a concrete example, all right? So, most of the time breathing is occurring outside of conscious awareness. Again, I'm not sure that's the right term to use, but you know what I mean? That that that little window of You're you're you're you're not >> Right. >> You're not not aware of it. Yeah, so we aren't aware most of the time except when this except when we pay attention. I don't want to get into the whole attention thing cuz that's a slightly different conversation, but like there's like it feels like there's this window place below the threshold of your conscious awareness in in your language. And so, there's some sort of awareness, you might call it unconscious awareness or block the better term, but there's still perception going on, clearly. Um bodily perception that's regulating the breathing. And I'm just I don't know even my question. I'm just What is it that What is it What's that window and why is it a window within a window? [laughter] If I was to ask you now, Christian, are you aware of your breathing? What would you say? I can become a Yeah, I am right now. >> of it now? Yes. >> Yeah. Now, did you suddenly start being aware of your breathing when when I asked you the question or were you were aware of it before but because you were focusing your attention on other things, your awareness of your breath receded so far into the background that you seemed not to be aware of it. And only when I asked you the question, did you suddenly become aware of it? Okay, we can Okay, let's talk about regulating my body temperature, something that's a little less You know [laughter] what I mean? Because it's So, some things breathing is one of those things that can be conscious or unconscious, but other things I would say they're part of the mind. The mind's doing it. The The mind is regulating my body temperature, you might say. Unless I'm a yogi, it's very hard for me Your faculties of thinking and sorry to interrupt, Christian, but I I can see where you're going now. Your faculty I would suggest your faculty faculties of of thought and perception in this case your faculties [clears throat] of perception are not sufficiently refined to enable you to be aware of that part of your mind's activity that regulates your the circulation of your blood, for instance. Because your your your our minds our our perceiving faculties, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling are relatively crude instruments. They're not just they're just not sufficiently refined to register those elements. The vast majority of what is taking place in reality lies outside the capacity of our perceiving faculties to to capture it. Our our perceiving faculties reduce what is really out there and present it to us in as sight, sounds, tastes, textures, and smells. So, that's a simplified, dumbed-down version of what is really there. The vast majority of what is taking place in reality escapes captivity by our minds. Right. And but not just even the reality out there, even the inner reality within the sphere of the mind. I I I I out there, I mean I mean in the body in the world. Yes. Yes. Yes. But this idea of this window, does that make sense to you? Like that we only have so much like the window's Maybe the window can get bigger, but it feels like there's only so much in my conscious awareness, which is why when I when I'm thinking, there's no space left over to abide in being, it feels like, even though I'm already already am, I know that, but I'll come back to that in a minute. Let me just say something else that Blake said, which is very William Blake said, which is very interesting. He said the body is that portion of the soul. The soul was just his word for the mind. The body is that portion of the soul that is discernable to the five senses. In other words, just as I was saying before that the world that the reality what what the world really is in itself appears to us as a physical world only because we see it through the orange-tinted glasses of perception. But that includes [clears throat] our body. What our body really is is not just this limited thing made out of It just appears to us that way because we perceive it through our perceiving faculties. So, the the the body is just that portion of them what we experience and perceive as a body is just that portion of the mind which our perceiving faculties are capable of capturing. And does that make sense? And are we saying that there's part of the mind that's not captured by the perceiving faculties? >> Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. Our perceiving faculties >> about that? Well, I would suggest that the whole universe was was really mind, not matter. Mind What I mean by mind in this case is the activity of consciousness. That it's really all mind. Just as William Blake said, the body is that portion of the mind is that portion of the finite mind, that portion of our own individual minds that that is able to be captured by our senses. I would say that the I'm just extending Blake's quote. The world is that portion of infinite mind is that portion of infinite consciousness' activity that is capable of being captured by our perceiving faculties. So, our perceiving faculties look at the activity of consciousness, mind, not matter. Look look at mind. And it it Our minds present the activity of infinite consciousness to us as a world made out of matter. It's not really Just as our body is what the the soul looks like from the point of view of the five senses, that the the world is what the activity of infinite consciousness looks like from our localized perceiving point of view. Right. And let me explain >> way, you could say that the the world is God's ideas. But when God's ideas were In other words, mind, infinite mind. But when looked at from the point of view of a localized mind, it appears as matter. And and we have a a um We have a reason for for for um believing that that this this is true. After all, when you have a dream at night, the entire dream you you dream it within your own mind. It's all mind stuff. All there is to your dream is mind stuff. But you can't perceive the dreamed world directly from your from the dreamer's mind. You have to localize yourself in your own dream. You have to seem to become a separate subject of experience within your own dream. Your own mind localizes itself or seems to localize itself within its own imagination. And then when you, the localized mind in your dream, the person you seem to become in your dream, then looks out, what does it see? It sees a physical world. The world you dream of at night seems to be a physical world. It's not a physical world. It's the activity of the dreamer's mind, but it looks like a physical world from the localized perspective of the dreamed character. Well, what about infinite con Just just just take that mechanism and just put it up one level. The infinite The infinite mind, infinite consciousness is dreaming or imagining the universe within itself. The universe is the activity of infinite consciousness. It only looks like a physical universe when perceived from the localized perspective of a finite mind within that consciousness. I guess my That makes sense to me. I guess my question is still slightly different, which is within the mind in terms of perception. For instance, creating space and time. We don't do That's not within conscious awareness. I agree that it's a perception, but that's an unconscious activity of the mind. So, some of the mind's activity is conscious and some of it's unconscious, but it's Yes. You mean it's conscious you >> about creating space and time, but within the mind itself only a small portion of the mind's activity is conscious. Well, only a small portion of the mind's activity appears in your waking state consciousness. So, only the the top part of your mind. There's much more to your mind than than what we're aware of in the waking state. Is Is that what you're Yes. Yes. >> completely. And not even just waking versus sleeping. >> Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I agree. We we just aware of the tip of the iceberg. There's much more to to to to mind below the surface. But But But what you would call below your conscious awareness. Right. In your language. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the the the um the personal unconscious. Yes. >> And below that, the collective unconscious. Yes, absolutely I would agree with that. Keep going. Well, I so Why is this important to me? Just because in from my felt sense of the my experience, it feels like there's this there's a window of light. Even though I know I'm all the light, I just feel like there's a window, which is my working memory space or my conscious awareness. Even though I know the sun is a lot more is going on. Why is it that only part of the mind is conscious? Well, why is it that that much of the mind's activity lies below the the the surface, so to speak, and that we're not Yes. >> consciously Yeah. I suppose. And I know I'm not going to go to the brain cuz I know that won't make you happy, so leaving the brain out of it if we could. I think it's to do with the fact that Gosh, how do I explain this? [snorts] Take Take them the mind as an It's an iceberg. And what what you're saying, and I agree with you that the part of the mind that we're aware of is just the Is it 5%? The 5% of the 5% Yeah, less than 5%. >> Less than 5% Just the tip of the iceberg. That's the That's the bit that appears in our In your language, in our conscious awareness that we're aware of. Everything else the first layer of the the iceberg below the surface is the personal unconscious. It's It's that area of our individual mind that is not accessible to us. It's that part of each of our minds that's that we're not conscious of, but it still belongs to our individual mind. It's the personal unconscious. Yeah. Most of it conditioned by That That may be so, but that that So, the the the first part of the iceberg below the surface of the water is what we call the personal unconscious. We don't have access to it except in dreams and but it's still within our private mind. That below that is the collective unconscious. In other words, below that surface all the icebergs join up. So, the tips of the iceberg are all separate. The bit of the iceberg that's immediately below the surface of the water is also separate, but you go down further, it it's all joined. That's the collective unconsciousness. It's that strata of the mind that that connects all of us. It's not It's not It >> [clears throat] >> It We We We don't have access to it except for in dreams and but it's our minds share this whatever we going to call it, this information. Um Now, it >> [clears throat and snorts] >> Imagine that our minds had access to the totality of the subconscious all the time. It It's It's I mean, imagine if your mind it your your conscious awareness that the 5% above the water. Let's just talk about the personal unconscious that Can we say the 45%? The 5% above the water, the personal unconscious 45%. Let's Let's imagine that each of us were aware just of the our own personal unconscious all the time. Not just the 5% we're aware of, but the full 50%. Imagine what experience would be like. But then imagine that we also had permanent access to the 50% Let's call it 50% of the collective unconscious. Imagine if that was accessible above the surface of the water. That was our waking state experience. The world would barely get a look in. We We would barely register the world. It would be completely overpowered. The 5% Remember the fact The world is only 5%. The world in our body is just 5%, but imagine if we were also experiencing the other 95%. The The world would be banished to the periphery of our experience. So, in order to experience what what we know of the world, the rest has to be excluded in order to make this experience possible. So, it it's a Our minds have to nar- In order to make this experience possible, our minds have to narrow the window of possibility. We cannot possibly be experiencing the the full collective unconscious all the time. We wouldn't even be aware of the world. In order to experience the world, the mind has to narrow and narrow and narrow and narrow till we just experience this 5%. And it has to exclude all the rest. It's like the same process in a way. So, infinite consciousness localizes, you might say, in a personal mind. And then that localizes again so that that personal mind can understand It's It feels like it's almost repeating itself. Do you know what I mean? >> Yeah, I I see what you're you're getting at. Yes. Yes. It's a compassionate infinite consciousness doesn't want to blow our minds. >> Yes. >> [laughter] >> Okay. Thank you.