What I wish I had been taught in preschool days

We all have a unique mind and a unique body. Biology teaches us that the source of our mind-body duo is the one cell with which we start the journey of our life at conception. That is how connected our body and mind are.

This one cell with which we start our life divides with an asexual biological process called mitosis; we start growing rapidly in geometrical progression as one become two, two become four, four become eight, then sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one hundred and twenty eight and so on. Soon we get a body of millions and billions of living cells. The growth may not be strictly in geometrical progression as some cells die while new ones are born. To get a sense of growth, it is of interest to note that a healthy adult human being has an average of 37.2 trillion cells, a number over five thousand times bigger than the number of people on the planet.

An amazing biological fact to note is that as cells divide, they replicate their chromosomes exactly. Chromosomes of the cells contain their genes. Our genes contain a blueprint of our body and mind. Thus, the genetic composition of each one of our 37.2 trillion body cells is exactly the same, although they differentiate between each other: some become skin cells, some heart cells and so on. Each one of our cells contains an exact copy of the blueprint of our mind body duo according to which they operate without conflict whatsoever.

As we grow, cells self-organize and specialize into different body parts so that they can all sustain themselves as they sustain the body which they comprise. Each cell is programmed by nature to survive, sustain and procreate which is possible only with an innate awareness of the self. From each of our trillions of parent cells comprising our body, we get our innate mindset: mental self-awareness and tendencies of the mind compelling us to survive, sustain and procreate.

Because the compulsion to survive is fundamental to our existence, it works unconsciously in an automated fashion. The fundamental survival processes are cantered on biological homeostasis so that not only our bodies can live in health but also that each one of our 37.2 trillion living cells gets enough sustenance to live in full health and vigour. This is the source of the unconscious faculty of our mind working in an urgent and instantaneous reflexive manner. In comparison, sustenance and procreation issues being less urgent are dealt with reactively by the subconscious faculty of mind working in a semi-automatic manner.

A look at the evolution of life suggests that the mind of little creatures is limited only to unconscious automation. Evolved animals add a subconscious semi-automatic faculty to it while further evolution of mammals adds a faculty of conscious consideration. We learn from a chronological look at evolution that the unconscious faculty of our mind has a history of some 3.4 billion years, the subconscious faculty of 2.8 billion years while the conscious faculty is a new kid on the block with a history of only around 200 million years. Human beings are a mammalian species with a history of only around 200,000 years.

The most established, compelling and busiest faculty of the human mind is the unconscious, the next comes the subconscious while the least compelling with little to do is the newest kid on the block, the conscious faculty. It is natural to live the first two with some or little help from the latter. Yet, modern psychology pays the most attention to it and the least to the most compelling. In my humble opinion, that is the main reason underlying the prevalent global mental health crisis, physical health issues, attention, learning and ingenuity deficit. Our future generations must be educated to pay more attention to the unconsciousness and the subconscious. Regulating them allows our conscious mind some freedom to steer our lives in directions other than mere survival.

This paragraph may seem like a digression, but perhaps it is in order to consider the question of what is more to life besides survival. We get convincing to this question if we consider the source of cells. Cells originate from matter. The matter has its own mind because we notice there are material interactions in the material world.  Atoms, the building blocks of matter, can feel other atoms in their immediate environment and bond with them if there is compatibility or leave the other alone. There are no divisive survival issues in their behaviour with each other. Atoms are different from cells because they are programmed to survive where atoms are not. They just exist in the present. The mind of atoms is more aware of its original field of non-differentiation while in mortal cells that awareness is overlaid by survival. Regulating the unconsciousness and the subconscious enables us to realize the original field of non-differentiation overlaid and suppressed by our existential need to survive. Then we too can survive in harmony loving the neighbours if compatible or let them be.

We are not aware of the unconscious. We consciously attend to its activities by paying attention to their effects. The instantaneity of the unconscious keeps our body in a perpetual state of activity readiness driving our vital core body parts like liver, heart, lungs, blood circulation, endocrine system etc. working 24/7 with high speed while slowing the digestive system. The conscious faculty of our mind has little control over the working of our core body parts that run our biological survival, but it can certainly attend to the working of our lungs.

Respiration is the work of our lungs. Our lungs are controlled with our autonomic nerves to automate their function. They too are connected with our somatic nerves for our conscious mind to intentionally override their ordinarily automated behaviour.  When our conscious faculty regulates our lung function, it regulates the entire operation of the core body parts ordinarily run by the unconscious. Conscious regulation of the unconscious regulates the subconscious as well.

We need to learn to consciously regulate the working of the body to steer its unconscious faculty or the latter will continue to steer us towards instability, disease, conflicts and disharmony.

How does a simple practice of conscious breathing do its magic? It changes us from within.

Our behaviour is determined by our personal experience. Ordinarily, we do not go against our personal experience. In matters of mere survival, we can mostly gain that experience with the physical organs of sense perception. But many subtleties of life necessary for survival in health, happiness and harmony, such as our original field of non-differentiation, are outside their reach. In those cases, our direct experience consists of deep contemplative insights or inner experience with the eyes of the mind. 

Although physically we are all created equal, our mental dispensation may not be so. We inherit our body and mind from our line of predecessors through our genes. The genetic memory which we inherit comprises our inbuilt mindset which is being continually modified by our lived experience. Part of our lived experience is stored in our easy-to-access conscious memory, some in the subconscious and some gets added to the unconscious memory of our genes. The subconscious and unconscious memory that we accumulate or inherit keeps continually distracting us by its random and uncontrollable intrusions in our conscious mind. Figure 1 shows Sigmund Freud’s iceberg metaphor of the mind. Freud visualized the human mind as a composite of three faculties: the conscious, subconscious and the unconscious listed in ascending order of size.

The conscious is the tip of the iceberg showing above the surface of the ocean. It may be 10-15 percent of the overall size of the mind. Next in size is the subconscious immediately below the surface while the bulk of the mind deep below is unconscious. The content of the conscious moves into our subconscious and that of the latter into the former. In addition, there are random fluctuations continually going on between the subconscious and the unconscious. The latter vacillations affect the former.

Figure 1 shows the mind and its two sets of vacillations using dark red circular arrows. Their random intrusions into our conscious mind is responsible for our characteristic attention deficit. As a result, our understanding and experience do not penetrate the surface of things. Thus, we are incapable of seeing life’s subtleties even when we are fully awake without paying special attention. We get continually distracted by our unconscious and subconscious memory of our lived or inherited past, much of it being related to mere survival and not with the subtleties of existence.

The instantaneity of survival unconsciously keeps our body and mind in a state of perpetual hurry. Our physiology and psychology are built in such a way that conscious deep breathing slows our body mind activity down. That reduces the random distractions of the mind by its wanton wanderings. The more we practice conscious breathing, the more the calming of our body and mind. Thus, conscious deep breathing increases our capacity to pay undistracted attention to the subtleties of life to get deep insights to run our behaviour. In other words, conscious breathing makes us calm and considerate.

The transformation that happens in us is driven by physiology and not by our intellect. It is contrary to a common belief that good thinking leads to good behaviour. In fact, modern neurological studies show that the conscious mind cannot change the mind which includes the subconscious and the unconscious in addition to the consciousness itself. With the background of Freud’s iceberg metaphor of the mind, trying to change human behaviour by putting good ideas in our head seems to be like trying to wag the dog by the tail.

The practice of conscious breathing calms our nerves, balances our hormonal chemistry, and changes our neural connectivity altering our thought patterns and gene expression. Changes in gene expression make the transformation of the practitioners of conscious breathing transmissible to their progeny. The effects can be intergenerational.

Therefore, it is important that we use our educational system to change our respiratory culture as soon as the children can learn to consciously learn to breathe deeply. We notice them breathe deep in their calm and restful periods. They are born with it. It is natural to them. They lose this calming nature soon because of the stresses and strains of growth. It is important to catch them early before stressful shallow breathing gets deep-rooted.

Figure 2 shows the entirety of who and what we are. We are a growth rooted in the infinite and infinitesimal spirit or energy appearing in the form of an infinitesimal cell formed from the fusion of an egg of our mother and sperm of our father. One cell grows successively to shape an adult body and mind consisting of 37.2 trillion cells. The gross body is on the left and its subtle source is on the right in Figure 2. The subtle is the material and efficient cause of the gross.

Our body is the sum total of the bodies of 37.2 trillion living cells and our mind is the sum total of the minds of 37.2 trillion cells. Try and imagine the 37.2 trillion number. It is more than 5,000 times the number of men, women and children living on planet earth. Who we think of as “I” is indeed a universe of cells living in harmony with each other. My universe dies when its cells turn against each other. The same happens in the bigger universe out there where we live. The sense of calm and focus of attention resulting from the simple practice of deep breathing can teach subtle things of life like no teaching or preaching can. Haven’t religions been teaching ethical values unsuccessfully for millennia?

Figure 2 shows my “I” extends from the body on the left to sensory faculty, ego, rational intellect, wisdom and the spiritual mystery beyond to include the infinitesimal on the very right. Are we aware of our extent? Even a child is aware of the body with a notion of mind within. How many of us are aware of our ego identity and the extent of our intellect? Are we aware that the rational part of our intellect being definitive divides but when pushed to its limit becomes a unifying field of various possibilities called wisdom? Only a few are aware of the blissful field of non-differentiated mystery beyond wisdom with the capability of producing 37.2 trillion diverse living cells from one all living in harmony in one human being. With 37.2 trillion individual cells comprising us, we are an expression of unity in diversity.

All life taking birth is programmed to die but with self-awareness of the extent of who and what we are, we die happy, healthy and without suffering a disease.

Contemplatively exploring the “self” while conscious deep diaphragmatic breathing leads to self-awareness to the fullest extent. Conscious awareness of the “self” leads to the transcendence of our unconscious survival orientation leading to live in harmony with the other. Lack of harmony results in fear, conflict, mistrust and disease. Volumes have been written on it from the Vedic period in India but the human condition is such that we lose it only to rediscover it over and over.

Mind is said to be subtler than the body. Figure 2 shows the body on the left and the mind with its successively subtle faculties, sensory faculty, ego and intellect on its right. Part of me to the right of intellect labelled spiritual mystery is subtler than the intellect. Although different parts of the structure of being human in Figure 2 are given discrete names, names are merely figures of speech because a human being is one continuity from the infinitely subtle on the right to the apparently gross on the left. Each one of our “discrete” faculties, indeed, is a non-homogenous continuity seamlessly merging with the other.  Thus, mind, body and spirit are indeed one. We can view this continuity as a sphere with body on the surface, mind in the interior and spirit at the core. Once again, we are an expression of unity in diversity of body, mind and spirit. It is only because of our modern sensory faculty-based scientific rational intellectuality; we have been accepting the Cartesian split between the body and the mind.

Referring to the discretization in Figure 2 again, we have a gross material body and a subtle mind. The subtle is the material and the efficient cause of the gross. It controls how the gross behaves. We also have a sense of being more than the body and the mind but we do not know what that is. We call it a mystery shown on the right side of the mind in Figure 2.

According to mid-eastern traditions, the mind is divided into two parts: a sense perception based on rational, analytical, scientific and definitive nafs rejecting all paradoxes, and wisdom, a field of multiple possibilities accommodating paradoxes when warranted. The only road to wisdom is through pushing human intellect to its limit with the use of critical reason. The modern science of quantum physics, general theory of relativity, energy-mass equivalence is full of paradoxes as is ancient spirituality.

Survival is the paramount concern to the rational nafs. Survival tendencies of the mind being the source of our random wanderings of the mind, consciousness located at the level of the body and nafs, is incapable of achieving undistracted focus.  A totally undistracted focus of attention is possible only when our consciousness or mindset gets beyond survival concerns. With reference to Figure 2, consciousness has to locate in wisdom and mystery beyond to be fully focused without any distraction whatsoever. As long as we are conscious of the body, senses, ego identity or rational intellect, survival issues are going to keep distracting our focus of attention.

The practice of conscious deep breathing can regulate the focus of attention successively eliminating distractions more and more as our consciousness moves from body to wisdom and beyond. Our goal then is to get to a point of no distractions whatsoever by deepening our consciousness from physical body to wisdom beyond the deepest layers of rational intellect. The following is a brief look at the stations along the journey on which we must take our consciousness as it goes from our physical body to wisdom. But let us first note two important points: (1) The journey of our consciousness must be repeated many times over because of the need to survive which keeps pulling it back to the body, and (2) Our conscious mind has to make an effort to deepen our breath; it does not happen by itself. This is the only thing it has to do to exercise its dominion over the unconscious and the subconscious minds.

Each one of the figures below shows two diagrams. The eye in the diagram on the right represents the location of consciousness. The diagram on the left shows the human mind with a text header in a deep red box and two sets of arrows in the same color. This intensity of this colour lightens as the eye moves right to indicate deepening of the consciousness reduces both mental distractions and the effort to breathe deep.

Body Consciousness: Figure 3 shows our physical mindset. With body consciousness, all we can think of is our individual body and its survival. In the waking state of existence, we generally are in body consciousness. In the beginning, we have little desire to make the effort to breathe deep, calming our mind, reflecting or contemplating on subtleties of life.

Sense Consciousness: Practice of deep breathing in body consciousness takes our consciousness to the level of the sensory faculty, see Figure 4. In this state mental distractions are reduced and so is the effort required to breathe deep, compare the left diagrams in Figure 4 and Figure 3. With a calmer mind, we go to the next level of understanding subtle truths of life. Our calmer mind itself raises relevant questions and explores satisfactory answers from within. These answers are liveable by the seeker until the unveiling of more satisfactory answers to run our behaviour. The understanding resulting from our body consciousness is shallow, selfish and coloured with our unconscious physical agendas. We are so survival-fixated that long-term health and happiness are of little concern to us. In body consciousness, it seems hard to make the effort to breathe deep. But we must try and persist until we overcome this inertia; soon it becomes easier to breathe deep. Then, the practice begins to calm our mental fluctuations, balance our hormones and regulate our thought patterns and take us to the door of contemplative exploration of answers to questions that are foremost in our mind.

Contemplation in sense consciousness gives us a sense of family responsibility beyond our own sense gratification. It is the beginning of our connection with others. We feel connected to them because they are our means or results of sense gratification. Such a state of consciousness is shown in Figure 4. Learning resulting from this state of contemplation is coloured with the subjectivity of sense gratification and familial concerns. This state of consciousness is less oriented to the narrow self than that of sense gratification in body consciousness.

Ego Consciousness: The next station, in the journey of our consciousness from highly distracted body consciousness to completely undistracted wisdom or spirit consciousness, is ego consciousness, see Figure 5. Ego identity in humans is an evolved form of herd identity in animals. It is based on the logic of safety of survival in numbers. It connects us with others with our identity. Simultaneously, it divides humanity into groups on the basis of their identities. Identity in humans is a complex concept based upon race, religion, denomination, culture, language, nationality, community, gender, gender orientation, trade etc.

As it brings the members of different groups together in safety and kinship, it builds tight boundaries around them pitting them against each other. Its unification, connection and security at the individual level come at the cost of a division of humanity into groups pitted against each other with tight boundaries around them. Subtleties of life then are understood in terms of ego identity. A religion which is meant to unite humanity in love and compassion instead ends up being a basis of interfaith bigotry.

Today, religion is a major determinant of ego identity. Religion is defined by its humanlike concept of personal Gods. Although religion proclaims that God is One, there are many conflicting concepts of God. Deep insight on the nature of God then is priceless in putting us together as one humanity living in harmony with our larger planetary family. Contemplation in ego consciousness on the concept of ego may help but it cannot get us there because our contemplative mind is still distracted although to a lesser extent than in sense consciousness. A profound concept such as God cannot be untangled completely with a distracted mind.

Intellect Consciousness: Next our consciousness on its journey arrives at the station called intellect consciousness. Figure 6 shows us a view of this station where our mindset is limited to the rational part of our intellect.

You can see that the effort to breathe deep is further reduced here and so are the distractions to the conscious mind. At this station, our conscious mind is fairly free from its usual distractions caused by the unconscious tendencies in our genetic memory. This station is very conducive to effective contemplation of certainties and definiteness of science and technology.  It can also think, strategize and decide on critical issues of survival including ego consciousness.

Wisdom Consciousness: This is the destination of our consciousness on its journey to an effortless and completely undistracted focus of attention.  Pictorially it is shown in Figure 7. You can see from the left diagram in this figure, that the undistracted focus of attention is also effortless. In this transcendent state of multiple possibilities, mind inwardly experiences hidden secrets of existence accommodating paradoxes when due and heart expands to be holistic, all-inclusive and all-loving.

Consciousness in this state is superconscious. That is when we go beyond the divisive specificity of sense perception into the lap of multiple possibilities. Wisdom accommodates paradoxes when rational intellect does not. In this superconscious state, we can unlock hidden secrets of subtle connections between infinitely diverse existents. Then, we begin celebrating diversity in the light of our underlying oneness. This is the ultimate human achievement.

Wisdom is characterized by a total lack of survival fixation. As such, it looks at survival with no short-term immediacy but with a long-term view. Each individual and humanity as a whole is much happier and healthier with a long-term view than with a short-term survival fixation which is fraught with usual unhappiness, disease and suffering. Contemplation of any subtle matter of existence with undistracted focus of attention of our consciousness located in this survival transcendent state leads to a deeply inner experience of the matter as it really is replacing prior understandings and beliefs.

Consciousness located elsewhere in the zones of rational intellect, ego identity, sensory faculty and physical body is characterized by survival related distractions which can only lead to subjective understanding coloured by our survival oriented hidden agendas set by the unconscious. Our ordinary waking consciousness falls in this category. Contemplation of subtleties of life in a superconscious state of undistracted attention leads to deep insights that can transform life.  Our calm and deliberate journey of “self” exploration while breathing deep attenuates the strength of the natural unconscious mindset that continues to plague humanity. History has shown that without a lasting proactive approach, it does not let up.