IN THIS Interlude, we examine the changes that occur as the mind grows more unified in the higher Stages. We also provide a simple but profound revision to the Mind-System model to help you better understand and navigate the Stages to come.
As you progress through the higher Stages, the entire mind-system continues to unify, becoming ever more cohesive and harmonious, and ever less fragmented and conflicted. This process has three profound effects: mindfulness keeps improving, as does the “magic of mindfulness”; deep unconscious material rises to the surface, allowing for further purification; and profound Insight becomes more likely.
More unification produces a larger consensus of sub-minds tuned in to the information appearing in consciousness. This has far-reaching consequences.
Why does unification of mind produce such far-reaching consequences? The basic explanation is quite straightforward: more unification produces a larger consensus of sub-minds tuned in to the information appearing in consciousness. At the end of the Mind System Interlude, we posed the question, “Who is conscious?” The answer was the collective of minds that constitute the mind-system. However, just because information projected into consciousness becomes available to every sub-mind of the mind-system, that doesn’t mean they all receive it. It’s like a radio show: the show is being broadcast, but not everyone is tuning in to listen. So, too, in the non-unified mind, any information projected into consciousness rarely registers with more than a small fraction of sub-minds. Unification changes this by increasing the size of the receptive “audience.” This larger audience is tuned in to the meditation object, and to anything else that may appear in consciousness as well—including Insight experiences.
From Stage Seven on, the quality of mindfulness improves dramatically. You’ll feel more fully present with whatever appears in consciousness, and the experience of knowing will have more power and “richness.” According to the Moments of Consciousness model, this just shouldn’t happen. Most of your mind moments became perceiving moments in Stage Five. The proportion of perceiving to non-perceiving mind moments continued to increase through Stages Six and Seven, meaning the vividness and clarity of mindfulness improved as well. But past Stage Seven, you should have very few non-perceiving mind moments left, so any further increases in mindfulness should be minimal.
Mindfulness improves dramatically. You’ll feel more fully present with whatever appears in consciousness, and the experience of knowing will have more power and “richness.”
By itself, the Moments of Consciousness model can’t explain how mindfulness improves so much beyond Stage Seven. After all, once every mind moment becomes a perceiving moment and dullness completely disappears, mindfulness shouldn’t improve any further because the “bandwidth” of consciousness is full.
However, when we combine the Moments of Consciousness model with the Mind-System model, we can easily see how mindfulness can keep increasing in power into Stage Eight and beyond: as more sub-minds unify around a particular conscious intention, the audience for the contents of consciousness grows larger. With greater unification, more sub-minds are “tuning in” to consciousness at any one time. In other words, our degree of mindfulness depends not only on the number of perceiving moments, but also on how much unification there is.1
This also helps us understand why a martial artist or an athlete in the zone can be totally alert, but still not have the mindfulness of an adept meditator: only a limited number of sub-minds are involved in fighting an opponent or running for a touchdown. Rather than being unified, the rest of the sub-minds are just offline. When the fight is over or the athlete leaves the field, the cacophony of conflicting sub-minds resumes.
Figure 47. Mindfulness can continue to improve even when there is absolutely no dullness, because mindfulness depends not only on the number of perceiving mind moments, but also on how much unification there is. The larger the audience for the contents of consciousness, the more mindfulness you have.
At the adept level of practice, you’ll also notice that mindfulness can still be quite powerful even when you’re dull and can’t think clearly because of fatigue or illness. Furthermore, you can sustain strong mindfulness even as you fall asleep at night, and lucid dreams aren’t uncommon. Even in deep, dreamless sleep, we can have the experience of “knowing” we’re asleep.2 Again, this contradicts what the Moments of Consciousness model predicts. If dullness is due to a decrease in perceiving moments, then mindfulness should erode when dullness sets in. Indeed, meditation would seem pointless when we’re sick or sleepy. But with greater unification, even if there are fewer perceiving moments of consciousness, the content of those moments is reaching more sub-minds. That is, there is less information in consciousness, but a bigger audience watching. So not only can we practice when we’re dull, but we should practice, because unification can continue even in dullness.
At the adept level, mindfulness can still be quite powerful even when you’re dull due to fatigue or illness. So not only can you practice when you’re dull, you should.
Yet mindfulness can be quite powerful even in the face of dullness due to fatigue or illness. With greater unification, even though there is less information in consciousness, there is a bigger audience.
Unifying the mind3 doesn’t just enhance mindfulness. It also enhances the magic of mindfulness. In the Second Interlude, we talked about how the magic of mindfulness was its ability to reprogram old patterns of thought and behavior, transforming our personalities for the better. Such dramatic changes are possible because mindfulness provides new information to unconscious sub-minds so they can unlearn old, habitual ways of reacting. However, for this transformation to happen, the relevant sub-minds must receive the new information as it becomes available in consciousness. Unfortunately, the relevant sub-minds might not be tuned in to consciousness, resulting in missed opportunities for mindfulness to work its magic. As the mind grows unified, however, the audience for conscious experience expands, and the amount of assimilation and reprogramming increases proportionally—as do the positive results.
Unifying the mind also enhances the magic of mindfulness. As the audience for conscious experience expands, the amount of information assimilation and reprogramming increases proportionally.
Unification plays the same role in Insight as it does in personality change. For an Insight experience to actually reprogram our intuitive view of reality, the relevant information must reach a large enough audience of sub-minds. What makes a mere Insight experience into a transformative Insight is how many sub-minds of the mind-system share in the experience. We can have a profound spiritual experience, yet the effects may be short-lived. There simply weren’t enough sub-minds unified around the experience—tuned in to the information in consciousness—to produce a major transformation.
Unification also affects how deeply Insight penetrates. As the information sinks deeper and deeper into the unconscious mind, a weak Insight becomes a powerful Insight.
Unification also affects how deeply Insight penetrates. As the information provided by an Insight experience sinks deeper and deeper into the unconscious mind, the Insight matures. A weak Insight becomes a powerful Insight. The process by which Insight deepens is the same in every case: new information gets assimilated by the sub-minds that are tuned in, forcing them to revise their “reality constructs.” At some point the transformation created by Insight becomes so widely established in the mind-system that our worldview changes completely. That’s why unifying the mind is so important for achieving Insight.
As unification increased in Stage Seven, it created “pressure” on other unconscious sub-minds to join in the process. That’s why you may have experienced another round of purification of mind: for sub-minds to unify, conflicting goals and priorities must first be resolved. Since conflict resolution and integration can only occur in consciousness, the effect of this pressure from below was to force the buried content preventing unification up into consciousness to be purified. The exclusive focus and pacification of mind in Stage Seven created the perfect opportunity for both deeply buried and extremely subtle material to surface. This is the hidden story behind the subjective experience of purification.
Purification is important for minimizing the psychological trauma that can accompany Insight. With the greatly increased potential for Insight in the adept Stages, purification is more crucial than ever.
As we mentioned in the last Interlude, purification is important for minimizing the psychological trauma that can accompany the Insights leading up to Awakening. Therefore, as we enter the adept Stages, with their greatly increased potential for Insight, allowing purification to continue is more crucial than ever.
The Mind-System model and unification process help us understand one of the most profound Insight experiences, the cessation event.4 A cessation event is where unconscious sub-minds remain tuned in and receptive to the contents of consciousness, while at the same time, none of them project any content into consciousness. Then, consciousness ceases—completely. During that period, at the level of consciousness there is a complete cessation of mental fabrications of any kind—of the illusory, mind-generated world that otherwise dominates every conscious moment. This, of course, also entails a complete cessation of craving, intention, and suffering. The only information that tuned in sub-minds receive during this event is the fact of a total absence.
What makes this cessation experience the most powerful of all Insight experiences is what happens in the last few moments of consciousness leading up to the cessation.
What makes this the most powerful of all Insight experiences is what happens in the last few moments of consciousness leading up to the cessation. First, an object arises in consciousness that would normally produce craving. It can be almost anything. However, what happens next is quite unusual: the mind doesn’t respond with the habitual craving and clinging. Rather, it fully understands the object from the perspective of Insight: as a mental construct, completely “empty” of any real substance, impermanent, and a cause of suffering. This profound realization leads to the next and final moment of complete equanimity, in which the shared intention of all the unified sub-minds is to not respond.5 Because nothing is projected into consciousness, the cessation event arises.6 With cessation, the tuned-in sub-minds simultaneously realize that everything appearing in consciousness is simply the product of their own activity. In other words, they realize that the input they’re accustomed to receiving is simply a result of their own fabricating activities. This has a dramatic effect. The sub-minds of the discriminating mind have the Insight that everything ever known, including the Self, was nothing but a fabrication of the mind itself. The sub-minds of the sensory mind have a slightly different Insight: the only kind of information that ever appears in the mind that isn’t purely mind-generated is the input coming to them directly from the sense organs.
The discriminating sub-minds have the Insight that everything ever known, including the Self, was nothing but a fabrication of the mind. The sensory sub-minds have the Insight that the only information that isn’t purely mind-generated is the input from the sense organs.
If the sub-minds are receptive but there’s nothing to receive, can a cessation event be consciously recalled afterward? It all depends on the nature of the shared intention before the cessation occurred. If the intention of all the tuned-in sub-minds was to observe objects of consciousness, as with popular “noting” practices, all that’s subsequently recalled is an absence, a gap. After all, if every object of consciousness ceases, and there’s no intention for the sub-minds to observe anything else, then nothing gets imprinted in memory. However, if the intention was to be metacognitively aware of the state and activities of the mind, we would remember having been fully conscious, but not conscious of anything. We would recall having a pure consciousness experience (PCE), or an experience of consciousness without an object (CWO).7
Figure 49. Consider a situation where unconscious sub-minds remain tuned in and receptive to the contents of consciousness, while at the same time, none of them project any content into consciousness. Consciousness would cease—completely. There would be a complete cessation of mental fabrications of any kind, including cravings, intentions, and suffering.
To be clear, there is no actual “experience” of “consciousness without an object” during the cessation event, nor could there possibly be. That experience, like any other, is a construct of the mind, and in this case is generated after the cessation event has already ended.8 How the memory of a cessation event is interpreted retrospectively takes many forms, depending on the views and beliefs held by the person whose mind is doing the interpreting. Thus, the cessation event itself is not a mental construct, but the subsequent interpretations are entirely constructed.
The cessation event itself is not a mental construct, but subsequent interpretations are entirely constructed, based on the views and beliefs held by the person doing the interpreting.
Regardless of what does or doesn’t imprint in memory, every sub-mind tuned in to consciousness during cessation must assimilate the event into its own representation of reality. As with any Insight experience, the new information forces a reprogramming of how all future experiences are interpreted and responded to. Realizing that all phenomenal experience, including the Self, are mere mental constructs, and therefore “empty” of any real substance, radically transforms how the mind functions. We understand, more clearly than ever before, craving and suffering as the grasping after mere mental constructs—and the more sub-minds are tuned in during the event, the stronger that understanding will be. Of course, it’s not that hard to acquire a conceptual grasp of these truths. Many have done so. But only Insight can establish this understanding at a deep, intuitive level.
The transformative power of a cessation event depends on how unified the mind was. Only the parts of the mind-system that were tuned in during the cessation are affected.
The transformative power of a cessation event depends on how unified the mind was. Unification determines the overall size of the “audience” of sub-minds receptive to events in consciousness. Only the parts of the mind-system that were tuned in during the cessation are affected. If the mind were completely unified, then every sub-mind within the mind system would be affected simultaneously, and there would be a complete Awakening of the entire mind-system.9
However, if the mind was only partially unified, there are two possibilities: no transformation, or incomplete transformation. This is because a certain degree of unification is needed during the event to reach enough sub-minds to make any tangible, lasting difference to the whole mind-system. With too little unification, a person may have a very memorable peak experience, but with little or no lasting effect. However, if the critical threshold is reached, the second possibility is an incomplete transformation of the mind-system, limited to those sub-minds that happened to be tuned in at the time. Complete transformation must await subsequent cessations or other Insight experiences that have a similar impact on the remaining parts of the mind-system. This incremental process of transformation explains why Awakening is traditionally described as occurring in a series of stages.10
The Mind-System model has great explanatory power. Yes, it’s a simplification of a complex reality, but that’s why it’s so useful. We have pictured the mind-system as consisting of the conscious mind surrounded by and connected to the unconscious sensory, discriminating, and narrating minds. The conscious mind is a locus where information exchange takes place, and consciousness refers specifically to the actual process of information exchange. “Who” is conscious is the collective of unconscious minds that exchange information in this way.
But by revising the model just a little, we’ll have an even better one that answers a number of questions the basic model can’t easily explain. It will also help explain the subtleties of mind revealed in meditation, and provide a useful framework for interpreting the practice instructions in the next Stages.
The revision is simple, but the implications are profound: the same basic structure of the mind-system is repeated at many different levels. This means that each unconscious mind, communicating via the conscious mind, also consists of a collection of its own sub-minds. For instance, the auditory mind that sends information into consciousness also has a collection of connected sub-minds. These are responsible for a variety of processes such as pitch, intensity, duration, and so forth. Each of these sub-minds is in turn a collection of sub-sub-minds, and this structure keeps repeating itself down to the very simplest of mental processes.
Figure 50. The mind-system consists of the conscious mind, which is a locus where information is exchanged between unconscious sensory and discriminating minds. This same basic structure is repeated within each of the unconscious minds. The auditory mind has a collection of sub-minds responsible for a variety of processes, such as pitch, intensity, and so forth, all connected by an information exchange locus.
This same basic structure is repeated at many different levels, down to the very simplest of mental processes. Each sub-mind is a collection of sub-sub-minds that exchange information with each other via a central “conscious mind–like” locus at every level.
This also means there are multiple “conscious mind–like” loci where “consciousness-like” processes of information exchange occur at every level in the hierarchy. This repeated organizational structure, in which the exact same processes that produce consciousness happen at deeper and deeper levels, shows the fractal nature of the mind-system. The only reason the particular information exchange process we call consciousness is “special” is because we experience it subjectively. And that subjective experience seems to be limited just to information exchange occurring at the highest level in the mind-system.11
The information exchange process we call consciousness is “special” only because we experience it subjectively. Subjective experience seems to be limited to information exchange at the highest level in the mind-system.
Likewise, there are “narrating mind–like” processes responsible for combining, organizing, and summarizing the information that appears. Some part of the information in each exchange locus gets projected to the next, higher exchange locus—just as some of the contents of consciousness get projected into the world as speech or action. Sometimes the information is in its original form when it moves up to the next level. Often, though, it has been modified by condensing and combining it with other information. Therefore, what appears in consciousness as the content of a discrete moment of consciousness is really the output from many different unconscious sub-minds (and sub-sub-minds), meaning it has already been extensively compiled and sorted.
This revised model also gives us a better picture of how intention works. According to the Mind-System model, all intentions are generated in the unconscious mind. The role of consciousness is to allow, suppress, or modify these intentions before they produce an action.12 However, if the unconscious intentions rising into consciousness were always simple, conditioned reactions, similar situations would always generate the same intentions. But this isn’t what happens. Also, new intentions arising into consciousness are often already quite complex. That’s because much of the evaluation, modification, and vetting of competing intentions has already occurred at an unconscious level.
Our conscious experience of ourselves and the people, things, and events we know as “reality” consists entirely of highly processed mental constructs that have already been extensively combined, analyzed, and interpreted before they become conscious.
Finally, extending the Mind-System model gives us new perspective into the nature of all conscious experience. The content of consciousness is actually the output from many different sub-minds and sub-sub-minds. It consists largely of binding moments; all the individual bits of sensory information have already been extensively combined, analyzed, and interpreted before we ever become conscious of them. This means that our conscious experience of ourselves and the people, things, and events we know as “reality” is made up entirely of highly processed mental constructs.13
To gain a more complete picture of this upgraded Mind-System model, let’s look at the kind of information exchange that happens within the sensory mind as a whole. Information from all the different senses gets exchanged via a “conscious mind–like”—but still unconscious—information exchange locus. For example, auditory information can contribute to the processing of visual information, and vice versa, such as when the auditory mind can’t recognize a sound, and the eyes search for its source. This also allows information from different senses to be bound together. Knowing which person is saying the words you hear is an example of this type of pre-conscious binding.
Looking closer at individual sensory minds, each one is actually made up of a number of sub-minds. The visual mind, for example, is comprised of many different visual sub-minds, each processing different kinds of information coming from the eyes—color, brightness, contrast, lines, shape, motion, etc. These visual sub-minds communicate with each other by projecting information into a “conscious mind–like” location. Then, all the other visual sub-minds have access to the information and can incorporate it into their own processing activities. This process of information exchange within sub-minds is exactly like what we call consciousness at the highest level of the mind-system. But because it happens at a deeper level, it can never be part of our conscious experience.
Sensory information is communicated between sensory minds in the form of sense-percepts that are meaningful to the entire mind-system. Sense-percepts are the lingua franca of the mind-system.
If we could somehow look inside the sub-minds of one of these sensory minds—say, the visual mind—we would find it doesn’t process visual information as images, or even as sense-percepts like contrast, color, and shape. It only converts that information into sense-percepts or images at the highest level, before exchanging it with other parts of the mind-system. As an analogy, consider computers. Images serve no purpose within computers. Rather, all input must first be converted into 1’s and 0’s before the computer can use it. Then, your computer converts the results of its processing activities from 1’s and 0’s into an image on your monitor so it’s meaningful to you. Likewise, the information within a particular sensory mind appears as something just as unintelligible as 1’s and 0’s. But between sensory minds, information is communicated in the form of sense-percepts like color, warmth, and sounds that are meaningful to the entire mind-system. Sense-percepts are the lingua franca of the mind-system.
Figure 51. Information from all the different senses gets projected into a “consciousness-like,” (but unconscious) information exchange locus. This allows the different sensory minds to exchange information with each other, and for the binding together of information from different sensory modalities. Knowing which person is saying the words you hear is an example of this type of pre-conscious binding.
Figure 52. The visual mind is made up of many different visual sub-minds, each of which processes different kinds of information coming from the eyes—color, brightness, contrast, lines, shape, motion, etc. They communicate with each other by projecting information into a “consciousness-like” location that all the other visual sub-minds have access to so they can incorporate it into their own processing activities. This is precisely analogous to what we call consciousness when speaking of the mind-system as a whole, but it happens at a deeper level, and isn’t part of our conscious experience.
Inside every sensory mind there is also a sub-mind that binds sense-percepts together. In the visual mind, information from many different visual sub-minds is integrated into a recognizable image. These highly composite images are what ordinarily get projected into consciousness (see Figure 52). In other words, what we become conscious of are mostly binding moments of consciousness, each containing a filtered, pre-sorted, and pre-assembled synopsis of the vast amount of information continuously flowing into the brain from the eyes.
The cost associated with all this integration is a huge loss of information at every level of binding, which reaches colossal proportions by the time it reaches consciousness.14 However, a certain amount of detail is restored to perceptual experience because some simple, unbound sense-percepts, like color and contrast, get projected directly into consciousness interspersed among the binding moments. This is precisely what gives normal visual experience its richness and texture.
Normal sensory perception consists of a mix of discrete moments of consciousness reflecting many different levels of information processing in the sensory mind. There are the simple, unbound sense-percepts, like color, temperature, pressure, and pitch. Then, there are the binding moments that combine sensory percepts. Contrast, brightness, color, and shape are combined to create an image. Pitch, loudness, timber, and sustain are united to make a musical phrase. The normal tactile experience of the breath is another example, consisting of a multilevel integration of touch, pressure, movement, temperature, and so on. Finally, there is the higher-level unconscious binding activity that combines information from the different senses.
Drugs and certain kinds of brain injuries produce bizarre sensory effects by altering the mix of bound and unbound sensory information reaching consciousness. Something similar also happens when we see or hear something we can’t recognize because the sensory mind can’t make sense of the information it receives. We can feel our whole mind struggling to make something meaningful from them as different components of sensation appear in consciousness.
The conscious mind is where the sensory, thinking/emotional, and narrating minds exchange information. When projected into consciousness, the content of all the various sensory mind moments becomes available to the discriminating mind. The thinking/emotional mind then conceptually identifies and evaluates that information before adding it back into the stream of conscious moments. The conceptual and emotional output of the thinking/emotional mind then becomes available to the sensory and narrating minds. The narrating mind performs the highest level of information binding within the mind-system as a whole.
Attention and awareness each have their role in this information processing. Attention extracts specific parts from the vast amount of information contained in these moments of consciousness for more processing. Most of the time, attention selects, processes, and re-projects complex, high-level binding moments. These are the high-level moments that get bound together by the narrating mind. The function of awareness, on the other hand, is to selectively deliver to consciousness whatever attention requests for analysis.
Although dominated by high-level binding and narrative moments of consciousness, the richness of conscious experience comes from sense-percepts and lower-level binding moments.
Although conscious experience is dominated by perceptions derived from high-level binding moments and narrative moments of consciousness, its richness comes from individual sense-percepts and lower-level binding moments. This richness increases proportionally when the content of consciousness shifts toward more low-level information processing, and away from complex binding, abstract thinking, and story-telling. The increased richness and detail that comes with being more “fully present” is an example of such a shift.
With stable attention and powerful mindfulness, we can witness events in the mind-system that simply aren’t accessible to the untrained mind. This is because intentionally directed and effortlessly sustained attention has a powerful effect on what appears in peripheral awareness. When we choose to attend to certain kinds of mind moments and ignore others, those moments become much more apparent because they increase in frequency, while the others decrease. In particular, when we preferentially attend to lower-level binding moments and basic sense-percepts, it narrows the overall range of mind moments, making these stand out much more prominently. Thus, sustained, selective attention can give us access to the many different levels at which raw sensory data gets converted into our familiar conscious experience. The exceptional power of awareness and attention then allows us to observe these different levels of information processing with great clarity.
Sustained, selective attention allows us to observe the many different levels of information processing that convert raw sensory data into familiar conscious experience.
Take the example of the acquired appearance15 of the meditation object at Stage Six, when conceptual interpretations of the breath fell away. This was the first time you became so fully and continuously conscious of individual sense precepts. Prior to this Stage, they were fewer and scattered among a large number of more complex binding moments, such as those producing recognizable experiences such as “in-breath.” But as attention focused more on the sensations of the breath, the mind-system responded by providing more mind moments involving simple sense-percepts. At the same time, conceptual and other more complex binding moments arising in awareness were consistently ignored, so higher-level binding moments decreased. As the proportion of simple sense-percepts increased in both attention and peripheral awareness, perception shifted to become more direct and less conceptual, and you experienced individual sense-percepts directly.
The well-trained mind of an adept can witness processes and events at an even more subtle level. If you did the practice of Close Following described in Stage Seven, you may have experienced sensory information before it was converted into a sense-percept. This type of close, fine-grained observation is not available to ordinary consciousness. That kind of raw, unprocessed sensory data appeared as a vibratory flux, empty of meaning. Not only is information in that form unrecognizable, but the mind-system as a whole tends to recoil from the experience in great discomfort. This practice pushes the tactile sensory mind to project information into consciousness in a form usually exchanged only between tactile sub-minds; like the 1’s and 0’s of a computer, this information is meaningless outside of that particular sensory mind. This type of information never becomes conscious except as part of rare drug experiences or brain injury—or in meditation.
As you move into Stage Eight and beyond, you will engage in practices that allow you to further examine other subtle mental processes. For instance, in the Meditation on Dependent Arising in Stage Eight, you will investigate fleeting thoughts and sensations. You will realize these are binding moments of consciousness, and the aim of the practice is to unbind them, so to speak. You will deconstruct these sensations and thoughts to become aware of the feelings, cravings, and intentions that were bound together with the thought or sensation in the unconscious.
In later Stages, you will also start to realize how our sense of time and space are the result of unconscious binding activities.
In later Stages, you will also start to realize how our sense of time and space are the result of unconscious binding activities. Consider time. Our ordinary sense of events happening in time appears immediate—we watch as events unfold. But think about all the different sensory sub-minds at work that have to organize, store, and integrate this information before it becomes conscious. Each sense-percept that appears in an unconscious information exchange locus quickly passes away to be replaced by another. To become meaningful, a series of individual sense-percepts must be stored, and when enough have accumulated for a pattern to emerge, they are bound together in a way that reflects their relationship over time. This temporal binding is a fundamental kind of binding that necessarily precedes most other kinds. What we actually experience in consciousness, therefore, are binding moments, with the sense of time already embedded in each moment. In more everyday terms, what we experience as “real time” is actually after the fact. Time is, in a sense, packaged into mind moments by the unconscious sub-minds, to be unpacked later in consciousness.
Temporal binding moments are always being projected into consciousness, but can only be clearly discerned once most other binding moments have been excluded. For example, during the early part of Close Following meditation in Stage Seven you experienced the breath as jerky “pulses” of sensations. Those pulses are instances of what temporal binding moments look like in relative isolation.16 The idea of your experience of time as a mental construct may initially seem foreign, but you will gain firsthand experience as you progress further. By the time you reach Stage Ten, you may be able to experience temporally extended events as a whole, without the time element being fully unpacked. This pre-conceptual, temporally bound sensory information can also be used as a meditation object to enter very deep jhānas.17
Spatial binding is another fundamental form of information binding. Visual percepts and sounds, for example, are located on an internal mental map of surrounding space, with our body in the center. In the same way, tactile percepts are associated with specific locations on an internal map of the body. Spatial binding is so ubiquitous that we usually become aware of it only by its absence. You may have already experienced one example18 of this in Stage Six, when the breath seemed to appear disconnected from the nose. This dislocation happens when breath sense-percepts become divorced from our internal map of the body. All such meditation experiences clearly demonstrate that our sense of space results from unconscious sub-minds organizing, integrating, and projecting binding moments into consciousness.
These are just a few examples of the different unconscious processes contributing to conscious experience that can be revealed through meditation. As you proceed, you may also experience how temporally and spatially bound sense-percepts from different senses get combined together in the unconscious. Another possibility is seeing how bound collections of sense-percepts arrive in consciousness already recognized and labeled. These are further integrated with other stored concepts, allowing their potential significance to be evaluated. Then, still more conceptual binding gives rise to desire, aversion, loving-kindness, compassion, and other forms of intention. From these, in turn, flow the even more complex conceptual formations that produce actions and reactions. Any or all of these phenomena, and a variety of others not mentioned here, may be revealed in meditation.
To make the Mind-System model even more accurate, we need to make one last change. The particular information exchange locus we have been calling the conscious mind is not a place or locus after all. The information exchange process we call consciousness doesn’t actually happen in a particular part of the brain. Nor is it even a specific function of the brain. That was just a convenient way for us to talk about it. Consciousness is simply the fact of information exchange, and refers specifically to information exchange occurring at the highest level in the mind-system. But information exchange happens at every other level in the mind-system, too. Information exchange anywhere, in any form, is the result of shared receptivity, and shared receptivity is an expression of interconnectedness. Put another way, consciousness is simply the inevitable result of the interconnectedness of different parts of the brain, and of the shared receptivity that results in information exchange between them.
What we have called the conscious mind is not a place after all. It is simply the fact of information exchange at the highest level in the mind-system. Information exchange is the result of shared receptivity, and an expression of interconnectedness.
The radical interconnectedness of the brain is what makes it so unique and powerful. It has been estimated that there are more possible connections in a single human brain than there are particles of matter in the entire universe. This means that vast amounts of information exchange are occurring at absolutely every level within the brain and nervous system, in every moment. Each and every neural circuit in the brain, even if it is the simplest of reflexes consisting of only two linked neurons, has the property of shared receptivity; the output of one neuron becomes input for all of the other neurons in the circuit. Individual neural circuits are linked together in the brain to produce more complex circuits. More complex circuits are linked together to form functional systems within the brain, and these systems are likewise linked into larger systems. The highest-level information exchange process—the one that we experience subjectively and call consciousness—is no different from what is happening at every other level in the brain/mind-system.
A natural individual is defined by the shared receptivity and consequent exchange of information between its component parts. It’s our inner interconnectedness, rather than an external boundary, that gives us our individuality.
But we are not simply reducing the mind to the brain, nor consciousness to something the brain does. If we think about the implications of consciousness being the result of shared receptivity and information exchange, it takes us in a completely different direction than reductionism. Consider the fact that shared receptivity and information exchange doesn’t stop at the level of neurons in the brain. A single neuron is a system of interacting organelles, the specialized structures that make up a cell. Organelles are systems formed by interacting molecules, which are themselves composed of interacting atoms. Atoms are systems formed by the interactions of even subtler forms of matter and energy. Each of these structures—person, brain systems and circuits, cells, molecules, atoms, and so forth—is a natural individual. A natural individual is an entity defined by the shared receptivity and consequent exchange of information between its component parts.19 This means that every molecule and every person is a kind of unique individual, but it’s our interconnectedness, rather than an external boundary, that gives us our individuality. This also implies that the process of information exchange called “consciousness” at the level of a person is no different from what is happening at all these other levels as well.20
Shared receptivity and information exchange doesn’t stop at the level of individual human consciousness either. People are interconnected in the form of many different kinds of social units, from couples and families to nations and humankind as a whole. We view these organizations of people as distinct entities and often speak of them as having a kind of “group consciousness.” Even the United States Supreme Court has intuited a sort of “personhood” in corporations. It is, of course, a politically and legally problematic comparison, simply because corporations have so much more power than an individual person. Nevertheless, corporations, churches, and political parties all take part in information exchange, and thus have a type of consciousness one step above that of individual persons.
Indeed, every structure—from atoms to persons to the universe as a whole—constitutes a natural individual by virtue of shared receptivity and information exchange.
Pursuing this idea even further, multiple species are interconnected to form ecosystems. Ecosystems are interconnected to form biomes, and the biosphere is formed of interconnected biomes. Both the living and non-living parts of planet earth interact, changing each other to form a single, complex, interdependent system. Planets and stars form galactic and supragalactic systems. It’s not unreasonable to view the entire universe as one single, massively interconnected and interdependent system. Indeed, every structure we have identified—from atoms to persons to the universe as a whole—constitutes a natural individual by virtue of shared receptivity and information exchange. From this perspective, what we call consciousness is just a single, limited example of something that pervades the entire universe at every level.
