The Complexity of Being

Michael Graeme

More than we seem

We are more than we seem. There are more facets to our selves than we ever present to others, but could it be there might also be more facets to our selves than we ourselves perceive - more to me than I know and have conscious control over?

At any given time we experience a multitude of sensations, from the press of our toes inside our shoes, to the weight of our spectacles upon our noses. But usually we only notice these things when we bring our consciousness to bear upon them, or when they become important for our well-being, for example when our shoes are perhaps too small and hurting our toes.

Does this mean the nerves in our toes and our noses only operate when we focus our minds upon them? Of course not, otherwise we might sit upon a drawing pin and not feel the pain merely because we did not expect to feel it. Our nervous system transmits information all the time but only some of it gets through to conscious awareness. The rest is analysed and disposed of by the unconscious.

By comparison, consciousness is capable of processing relatively little information. You can test this for yourself by focussing on some part of your body, your big toe for example, and holding in your mind the sensory information surrounding it - the feel of your sock, the pressure of your shoe against the nail. Then, while holding on to the impression of your big toe, focus on some other part of your body, your forearm perhaps and the faint pressure of your sleeve wrapped around it. Now move on somewhere else. Don't skip round sampling information from each area in turn but try to focus on them all at the same time.

How many parts of your body can you monitor in this way? Three? Four? The maximum appears to be around seven. But there are millions of nerve endings in the body and the unconscious is capable of monitoring and processing data from all of them at the same time.

This process of unconscious filtering of information is not yet understood but its existence is self evident and its effects can be measured. It takes time to process this amount of information, about half a second in fact. So what our conscious selves perceive as reality, is already half a second old. The true reality, the true "now", is a thing we are never aware of experiencing, for by the time our unconscious minds have processed and filtered the sensory information defining that reality, what we eventually become conscious of is, if you like, the summary of an instant that is already history. In other words what we perceive on the surface of our being is an illusion, an artist's impression of what is, or to be more precise what was really there.

But hold on you say. If I accidentally stick my hands in scalding hot water it doesn't take me half a second to wake up to the fact and then pull them out. That's true, and in fact the actual time it takes us to react to a stimulus, like scalding hot water or sitting on a drawing pin, is about a quarter of a second. So, it takes us a quarter of a second to react to pain and a half a second to become consciously aware of it.

The evidence would suggest then, the urgent business of reacting to danger or pain is carried out in advance by our unconscious and not our conscious selves, otherwise it might be nearly a whole second before we managed to pull our hands out of the scalding water.

Is that all there is to it then? Is the conscious self reserved for the finer points of life? For considering the high minded questons of our existance? For selecting a good wine from the supermarket shelf? For choosing a sexual partner? And is the unconsconscious merely the silent drudge, grinding away at the trivial details, sorting out the sensory detritus and saving our hides from harm? It would appear not. Indeed there is good evidence to suggest there's more going on in there than mere drudgery.

The conscious and unconscious partnership.

If we can accept the concept of the conscious and the unconscious self as a partnership, it is interesting to attempt an understanding of the balance of the relationship. Is one side more dominant than the other? Are they both the same? Perhaps surprisingly, contemporary scientific thinking is beginning to take the view that by far the more significant partner making up our whole "selves" is the one we are least aware of.

"I'll sleep on it." How many times have you said that to yourself? How many times have you wrestled with an intractible problem and come up with what you think the right answer to be, only to go the other way after sleeping on it, and not out of any logical consideration but simply because the answer felt right.

Trust your feelings, you're told. Go with your heart. These are intangible qualities and cannot be measured in terms of simple logic, yet anecdotal evidence would suggest they are not always fanciful notions.

Henri Pascal, a nineteenth century mathematician, recounts the story of how he had been wrestling with a problem, using every fibre of his conscious might to come up with a solution. Then, when he was out walking in the street thinking of something completely different, he simply felt the answer come to him. It was not like an equation appearing on a blackboard in his mind, more an abstract notion, but he knew when he next sat down he would be able to apply this mysterious insight and the problem would be solved, which subsequently it was. It seemed as if his unconscious mind had continued working on the problem while his conscious mind was engaged elsewhere.

Another clue to the role of the unconscious comes from the words of James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell gave us the mathematics definining the physics of all things electrical in a few brief equations. When asked, he said the equations had not been written by him but by something greater than himself, inside of him, a reference perhaps to the influence and the significance of his unconscious mind in guiding him through his work.

To quote a less urbane example, a friend of mine had a problem, one that faces most of us at least once in our lives. Should he marry a particular girl or not? In such a situation, there are no mathematical rules to guide us and no logic to map out the right answer. The girl in question was very presentable and physically as exquisitely endowed as was imaginable. She also possessed as many of the wifely virtues my friend could ever have hoped for, in addition to other skills he admitted had already exceeded his wildest dreams. But did he marry her? No he did not.

He confided that for all her virtues, the contemplation of matrimony had made him inexplicably nervous - even though he had reached a stage in his life when he had been looking to settle down. In the end he chose a partner in the same way as I chose my own. We did not have to ask the question, nor consciously analyse the data. We just knew. Our unconscious minds had already made the decision for us and we went with our feelings.

Beyond the means of conscious consideration

There are, it seems, certain problems in life so complex they are beyond the means of conscious consideration, problems that cannot be solved by merely thinking them through logically - even though when presented with the answer, as in Pascal's and Maxwell's case, the solution, once known, can be consciously followed through and shown to stand up to the rigours of mathematical proof.

This is an intriguing notion for it suggests there is a limit to how much we can learn from what we already know. As a Mechanical Engineer, my early studies involved the assimilation of a couple of thousand years worth of key equations, from Pythagoras to Newton, from Gallileo to Euler. A number of my fellow students were always able to excel in their examinations by using their impressive memories to simply store these equations so they might bring them forth when asked the requisite questions. What appeared less obvious to them however, was that many of these equations could be dispensed with because they could be readily constructed by combining a smaller number of simpler equations.

The knowledgeable students lacked the wisdom to assemble their knowledge to create new knowledge from simpler building blocks. But how far can this go? Is it possible, knowing all the equations we now know that underpin our world to sift through them logically and piece them together to produce everything we could possibly ever want to know? Is it possible to work systematically towards a profound understanding of the meaning of life, for example, starting out with only the theorems of Pythagoras and a handful of Newtons equatons of motion? The answer unfortunately is no and the reason, as mathematicians have discovered, is a strange incompleteness about certain problems which renders them impregnable to systematic assault by logical reasoning, or the brute force of electronic computation.

Alan Turing was a mathematician, perhaps remembered most of all for his work in breaking ciphers during the second world war. His astonishing success in this field was partly due to his pioneering work in the study of computability and computational machinery.

A cipher is a fairly obvious example of a problem - a page of apparently random letters or numbers or symbols. There are two simple questions that must immediately spring to mind when presented with such a puzzle. First of all, is it possible to unravel this cipher and secondly, perhaps just as important under the extraordinarily urgent pressures of wartime: how long will it take?

Turing's work on the theory of computation showed that on both counts, there is never enough information in the question for us to know the answer, at least not until we have arrived at a solution. Nor is it possible to know if a problem is solveable or not.

If a computer were set to work on an unsolvable problem, it would merely continue computing for an infinite length of time. It would never reach the conclusion that there is no solution and therfore stop.

The value of Pi is 3, followed by a long decimal, how long we don't yet know. Computers have been working it out for as long as there have been computers and that's several decades. It may be that there is an infinitely long decimal. If there is, we'll never know because the machines will never stop to tell us.

But there is another possibility: Someone might gain a crucial insight into the problem. Such an insight will revolutionise the way mathematicians think of the world. It will add significantly to our understanding of things but it will be an understanding that requires a leap beyond what is computable and constructable from existing knowledge. It will require unconscious insight.

Plato's Realm

unconscious insight has been described as a peep behind the curtains dividing the rational from the divine. On a simpler level it is like my son learning his spellings and sneaking a look at the answers in his book. We are granted a glimpse of something beyond what we know, of something greater than ourselves, yet incredibly it is a thing inside our selves, a fundamental part of our being.

The philospher Plato believed in the existance of two realms, the physical one where we live, which can be an untidy and confusing place, and a pure realm of mathematical truths. He believed our knowledge of the physical world arose through communion with this purer realm and by, on occasion, our being granted divine access to its secrets.

It was a religious thing. The Platonic realm was a place of Gods, the mathematicians akin to priests in recieving the communion of our early number theory and elementary geometry.

Of course there is no evidence for or against the existance of such a realm as a physical place, just as there's no evidence for or against the existance of heaven but, in a more abstract sense the Platonic realm does exist. It can be explored and from time to time new discoveries are made which broaden our understanding. Unlike a physical realm though, Plato's realm can only be explored in our minds.

Take for example the Mandelbrot set. This is a geometrical figure of astonishing beauty and infinite complexity. It can be studied by a painstaking mathematical calculation, a study only made practical in recent years by the use of computers.

We do not see Mandelbrot sets growing from trees. Its form exists in the purely mathematical realm, but we can see it if we know how to look and one can thus argue its discovery and exploration is no less important or real than our exploraion of the universe using a telescope.

The Unravelling of the Universe and the Portal to Plato's Realm.

Like the stars, the Platonic realm came into being as a result of the way our universe unravelled. The Mandelbrot set looks the way it does because the mathematics dictate that it be so. The square on the hypoteneuse of a right angled triangle will always equal the sum of the squares on the other two sides, because again the mathematics make it so.

The Platonic realm is mathematics. It's all around us and inside of us, like the air we breathe. It's not a place we can travel to except in our minds - and there's the key. The portal to the realm of Plato is hidden in our heads,... in the unconscious mind.

In order to understand the significance of the unconscious and it's relationship with the physical universe, we must first disengage ourselves from our familiar role as impartial observers. The universe that unravelled to create the abstract realm of Plato also created us. We are inextricably linked with the world we are exploring. We are not merely jugglers of equations, we are part of those equations and on a certain level, even asking the question can influence the answer.

Insight is a fleeting union of the unconscious mind with the universe that made it. It is peering through Plato's curtain to gain a momentary glimpse at God's book of geometry, where all the profound truths are written and Pi is defined as an equation as concise as e=mc^2.

If we wish to move forward, to deepen our understanding of the universe and our place within it, we must, as the philosphers and the mystics say, seek to know ourselves, and in particular our unconscious selves better than we do at present.

Encouraging the unconscious

This all sounds very grand - getting to know our unconscious. But do we really want to encourage that sort of thing? After all, is the unconscious not a dangerous place, a place where our personal demons lurk? Where psychiatrists probe our neuroses like someone sifting through garbage? Indeed the world would be a poorer place if we all we went around listening to voices from our unconscious, for there are times when unconscious voices are not to be trusted, like when we covet our neighbour's wife or we want to throttle the parking attendant for giving us a fine.

But our unconscious minds only present us with the possibilities upon which we might act. It is up to our conscious mind to make the choice of whether to act or not. Only when our unconscious minds fall sick does it effect our judgement. So in general, the better we know ourselves the better we might trust ourselves and act accordingly, with wisdom and insight.

But how do we befriend the side of us we never see, when so far its secrets have only been glimpsed through devious experiments designed to trick it out into the open? How do we communicate directly? How do we help it to help us?

The British mathematician Andrew Wiles, feted for his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, one of the most infamous puzzles in the history of mathematics, explained how the unconscious can be brought into play in a real and practical way.

The trick seems to be one of immersing our conscious minds in the problem, then walking away, forgetting about it, having a break, making a cup of tea, anything but thinking of the problem. Then, somehow, in a way we do not understand, the unconscious takes over and makes the connections with Plato's realm our conscious selves cannot.

Remember, what the conscious eye sees the unconscious sees also, only in far greater detail. If we're fortunate, we might occasionally be granted a peek behind Plato's curtain, perhaps glimpsing a unique piece of the grand jigsaw making up the puzzle of our world.

Joining up the pieces

Unless we can grasp the whole of the universe in one blinding flash, individual insights are worthless in defining the overall picture, unless they can be shared and linked together with other insights, gleaned by other people.

There are those who would argue that the sharing and weaving together of insights is what we are destined to do. In a remarkable series of books, the author and visionary, James Redfield proposes a list of crucial insights in support of a positive and uplifting world view he calls the Celestine Vision. In one of these insights, he explores the notion of syncronicity and meaningful coincidences, particularly with respect to our relationships with other people, people we know and people we chance to meet.

He argues that if for example we encounter a stranger and we are attracted to them in some way, then there is a high probability that person will possess a piece of information we are unconsciously seeking, or vice versa.

While on the surface of things this may sound somewhat fanciful, a closer look at the way we communicate reveals some intriguing possibilities. When people come together and talk, far more is communicated than what is merely stated. A person's posture gives us clues as to how that person is feeling. Facial expressions give us a measure of how sincere a person is being. Hand movements give emphasis to words.

These are simple things, things we can be consciously aware of. But the unconscious is capable of studying an astonishing amount of sensory information that our conscious minds remain unaware of. If a person is telling us something, how much more of their expression is absorbed and decoded by our unconscious than we know? And since our expressions are unconsciously generated anyway, is it not possible there might be such a thing as non-verbal unconscious communication?

For example if I meet a woman, say at work in order to discuss business, and at the same time find myself thinking how astonishingly attractive she is, are my thoughts being transmitted into her unconscious by my own unconscious expressions? As we discuss our business, does she begin to feel inexplicably uneasy in my presence? Dare I hope she might feel inexplicably uplifted? Are my own thoughts being triggered by something she in turn is thinking about me and unconsciously transmitting?

Studies suggest human beings do indeed communicate at a subliminal level. For example sexual attraction or arousal can be indicated by a sudden and involuntary dilation of our pupils. But transmitting sexual attraction is one thing, transmitting the extent of our personal insight into the nature of the universe or lack thereof is quite another and so far as I'm aware such sophistocated subliminal communication has yet to be proved.

Of course, as with all such speculation there is a danger of attributing too much to the unconscious, simply because of its mystery, like pinning an unsolved crime on a passing stranger instead of concentrating upon what can be established by proof and reason.

We are all striving for something, for evidence of meaning in our lives, for reassurance our existance is not in vain, for the knowledge that we are intimately and eternally connected with something greater than ourselves.

Perhaps in seeking that evidence we have overlooked the possibility that the key to what is greater than ourselves may be found in each and every one of us, that in seeking answers to everything we could possibly want to know, we can do no worse than begin by seeking to know our selves, both of them - and especially the one we are least aware of, for it seems in each of us there lies as much mystery as in all the heavens.

Bibliography

1) The Emperor's New Mind - Roger Penrose.

2) The User Illusion - Tor Norretranders

3) Fermat's last Theorem - Simon Singh.

4) Cosmos - Carl Sagan.

5) Does God Play Dice?- Ian Stewart.

6) The Celestine Vision - James Redfield

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