If I thought the term "consciousness" would evoke one clear process in the readers mind I would not start by coining a new word, mentalogy. But consciousness brings only fuzzy images to mind. Is one referring to old Rene Descartes meanderings, "I think therefore I am." or does consciousness refer to recent writings of neuroscientists who declare the brain to be a bag of neurons firing in various patterns? While many writers have recently investigated the relationship of one part of the brain to another part in an effort to tell us how brains think, or where consciousness resides in the brain, I see these avenues as dead ends. A small library of books has been erected to the idol called consciousness. I hope this paper allows the reader to sort the wheat from the chaff.
(See web link to reviews of recent books by renowned authors: HOW BRAINS THINK, THE ASTONISHING HYPOTHESIS, A UNIVERSE OF CONSCIOUSNESS, AND THE EMPEROR'S NEW MIND: <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A1U20CUTG6I28X/002-6735597-2608234>
Mentalogy will refer to the brain's connection and communication with its external surroundings. Mentalogy, universal consciousness, is a union of human consciousness with material or external consciousness. The term material consciousness (see below, section on sewing machine metaphor) is embedded in the notion of a universal web of space connecting all matter (described in the Worldreels Cosmology 3 section). Since my picture of consciousness resides in the Planck realm, beneath present scientific magnification, I must resort to imaginative magnification. Defining the term mentalogy will be a unique explanation of how one's brain interacts with his/her external surroundings to produce consciousness.
Mentalogy won't refer to any of the EEG brain wave states which are merely symptoms showing the arousal of the living brain.
Because the pitchmen for sleep learning will claim that the Delta wave state (dreamless sleep) offers the best opportunity to learn, there is little point in arguing whether the Delta wave sleeper is conscious. The same applies to the Theta wave people (unborn babies in the womb and adults in float or sensory deprivation tanks) where what is conscious will always be a matter of disputed belief. Also in this category are anesthetized patients (who some claim can hear the operating room chatter), hypnotized subjects, dreamers, and mystics in drug induced trance states (by swallowing, injecting or internally produced).
In only a passing manner will mentalogy refer to what thought is. Thought to me is a rather solipsistic activity of the brain. One could, like Rodin, The Thinker, a famous sculpture, sit and think for years without any effect. Thought holds the same place as the sound of the tree falling in the forest that no one hears. Thought occurs when one part of the brain sends signals to another part of the brain through the millions of internal feedback loops. For example, the left hemisphere of the brain signals the right hemisphere through the corpus callosum (a half billion nerve fibers connecting the two hemispheres). This leads to a schizophrenic model -- with one brain portion talking to another portion. Although talking to oneself is considered mental aberration, thinking to oneself has escaped such a label. There appears, actually, to be no real difference in the two events. Using this analysis the right hemisphere is external to the left hemisphere and the principles of mentalogy , once they are understood, will also apply to thought. Usually, however, Mentalogy will include thought only when it is translated and projected to an external medium: writing, art, or music that others can be exposed to.
To continue our metaphorical journey it is time to take the balloon flight inside the human brain. Keeping in mind the metaphors used in the Cosmology sections will make these new metaphors of the camera, the sewing machine and the tree rings easier to follow. To briefly review, the rainbow metaphor illustrated how the intersection of rain particles and light waves can cause the projection of things and events. The pyramid metaphor was introduced to illustrate how worldreels are projected off the Planck film embedded in the Planck realm, thus enabling matter to exist. The space-net metaphor described the matrix like linkage constructed by means of a universal webbing of all matter appearing since the Big Bang. This webworks holding all matter in place allows for one's human consciousness to join with any external, material consciousness. The key is that there must be a process of uniting the consciousness of external matter with the webworks of the human brain. This process of joining the two images, tapping into the universal consciousness, is termed mentalogy. Next, three new metaphors, the camera, sewing machine and the tree rings, will be introduced in an effort to understand universal consciousness and memory. Then a survey of some other directions of thought on consciousness that have been put forward by others will conclude this page.
The visual devices of the brain that trigger consciousness operate like a time-lapse camera -- recording a picture every tenth of a second. Internal visual neurons might fire on exposure to a one millisecond (1000 per sec) visual event but the brain can process a word or picture no faster than ten images per second (one every 100 milliseconds). Snap shots shorter than a tenth of a second do not register to the observers conscious mind. To illustrate, perhaps you have heard of subliminal advertising, where the words DRINK COKE are flashed on the movie screen for a few hundredth of a second (10-50 millisecond). Such words may trigger neurons in the brain to fire but the words appear too rapidly to be consciously registered or seen. Whether these rapid fire suggestions prompt one to go get a coke is another matter. The point is the conscious mind needs 100 milliseconds (1/10th sec) to see a picture or word. Thus we can detect only 10 pictures per second like in a time lapse camera. Time-lapse photography is common in showing the opening of a flower. If a one second snapshot is taken with a real movie camera every 5 to 60 minutes, the strung together and projected pictures will show the flower opening. So in both cases, where movement is too fast or too slow for the brain to register the event, the manipulated film can be used to extend the memory of a viewer.
What does this tell the reader about human consciousness? With high speed photos taken in thousandths, even millionth of a second, with laser pulsed photos lasting only picoseconds (a second divided by 10 to the 12th power), with particle accelerators detectors showing a baryon sigma particle lasting only 58 sextillionth of a second (a second divided by 10 to to the 21st power), the mind and memory can be enhanced to record little pieces of the hidden realm which surrounds us. The point is to illustrate how much of our surroundings go missing in action every second. Sextillion of these short time events are occurring all the time but what chance does the time-lapse camera of our mind, limited to one snapshot every tenth of a second, have of detecting any of this activity? It is with these facts in mind that one should announce "I saw the bird lay its egg." And then add, "at the time lapse rate of ten snapshots per second."
Because of the projection speed of a movie (16 frames per sec) the images appear as an illusion of motion on the screen. What if the human visual cortex could be enhanced so that the brain could register a hundred or a thousand snapshots per second? Or what if a high speed movie camera (1000 shots per second) were used to record the slower, unreeling movie on the screen? Then watching the 16 frame per second movies would be like seeing a strobe light dance floor with each projected picture being followed by gaps of darkness. One would see a series of still tableaus and the illusion of motion would be gone. Stepping outside the movie theater one could then see clearly the patterns and spots on the fast flapping wings of a hummingbird. What was hidden in a blur would become visible. With these examples it becomes clear that visual consciousness is a function of the speed with which our surroundings can be visually processed. Human consciousness is not a continuous process but (similar to movie film projection) proceeds in 1/10th second increments -- like time lapse photography.
Returning to reality one must rely on magnifying devices to detect the hidden realms. Let me list a number of the hidden realms down to the Planck realm and trace the times and the distances which light travels in each unit:
(Using the velocity
of light as 3 times 10 to the 10th power centimeters [cm] per
second)
In a plancksecond(1 divided by 10 to the 33rd power) light will
travel3 divided by 10 to the 23rd power cm; In a yoctosecond (1
divided by 10 to the 24th power) light will travel 3 divided by
10 to the 14th power cm; In a zeptosecond (1 divided by 10 to
the 21st power) light will travel 3 divided by 10 to the 11th
power cm;
In an attosecond (l divided by 10 to the 18th power) light will
travel 3 divided by 10 to the 8th power cm;
In a femtosecond (1 divided by 10 to the 15th power) light will
travel3 divided by 10 to the 5th power cm.
In a picosecond (1 divided by 10 to the 12th power) light will
travel3/100th of a cm
In a nanosecond (1 divided by 10 to the 9th power) light will
travel 3 cm. (1.2 inches)
In a millisecond (1 divided by 10 to the 3rd power) light will
travel 3 times 10 to the 7th power or 30,000,000 cm.
It is only in the 100 millisecond range that the unenhanced human brain can register conscious events. With stop-action photography events in the picosecond range can be visualized. In the ranges of the planck second to the attosecond no detection has been experimentally possible to date.
The above chart illustrates
the range of events which, without devices to enhance and extend
memory, are totally hidden from the conscious mind. To consider
a hypothetical, if the universe flashed on for one attosecond
then the universe would not register to a human mind. In another
instance, since it takes eight minutes (480 seconds) for light
to travel from the sun to earth, if the sun flashed on for 470
seconds it would be gone before the light appeared for its 470
second lifespan here on earth. The sun would be gone before its
first appearance was registered. The conscious mind could, however,
take 4700 snapshots (10 per second) of the sun to store in its
memory. Without a photo showing this fleeting sun, a person who
wasn't watching, would never believe the viewers tale of seeing
the sun.A photographic film can register the amount of detail
which the size and density of its light sensitive molecules allows.
A camcorder tape can record that amount of detail that the size
and density of its magnetic or ferrous molecules allow. One can't
assume that when the sensitivity of the measuring device ends,
there ends the detail in the external picture? The human eye can
detect some detail, but a microscope can tell the eye how much
more detail was missed by the naked eye. The human eye has no
cells to detect infrared, ultraviolet nor microwaves but they
are still an important bandwidth of reality. Ask your microwave
oven. Because a photon is such and such a size does not dictate
that other particles must be no smaller. It isn't consistent or
logical to assume that at whatever point man gives up on magnification
of an object all further detail ends. That is merely where man's
consciousness ends. This obviously applies equally to sub-microscopic
particles found only in the huge particle accelerators. Man's
limits are in no way the limits in the real world. If a laser
pulse can detect a picosecond event and put it on tape then it
can become a part of man's consciousness. Thus, where the limits
of man's magnification ends one must resort to imaginative magnification.
If the shapes presented in the imagination are wrong it of no
consequence for the verification is beyond man's abilities to
measure the sub-microscopic world. What you will read here is
a fictive account of man's imaginative magnification. This imaginative
magnification is part of what I term mentalogy.
First let me sketch the need for a new metaphor; not to use a metaphor simply for the sake of using a metaphor. I look for a way to illustrate the joint nature of the external event and the triggering of neurons called consciousness. Refer to the brain's perception of colored light. Photons or packets of red light (vibrating at 10 to the 14th power cycles per second and with a wave length of 760 millimicrons or 760 billionths of a meter) enter the eye at the flick of a switch. The red light photons strike a cone cell and trigger the firing of attached neurons. The point is that packets of external, existing consciousnesss producing light are required to create a packet of consciousness known as the qualia of redness in the brain. For blue light (vibrating at 10 to the 16th cps and with a wave length of 450 millimicrons) the qualia will be blueness. Switch off the light and you terminate the qualia of color. A device is required to connect or stitch together the red or blue wavelength with the image created by the firing neurons. This would be a light switch-light photon- cone cell-neuron cell device which few readers have ever heard of. It is easier to describe the operation of a device the reader is familiar with -- a sewing machine.
One big source of distortion in writing about consciousness is to focus on the firing of neurons in the brainworks to the exclusion of that external event which actually triggers the firing. A sewing machine has a task to do, stitching together two pieces of fabric, just as the brain's devices must join the external and internal images that account for what is termed consciousness. To focus on the firing neuron pretends one can isolate or disconnect the picture in the brain's visual center from the picture projected on the wall. Consciousness is seen as residing exclusively within the brain. What is actually happening is that the detection, projection and storage device called the brain, using the sewing machine metaphor, is sewing together the picture on the wall with a picture in the brain -- when this union occurs consciousness of the picture results. But the picture on the wall also brings to the table its material consciousness. What is material consciousness? To describe consciousness as the peception of red light and at the same time to deny consciousness to the frequency and wavelength contained in red light strikes me as a contradiction in logic. Since it is the very red light that triggers the neurons to fire which results only in consciousness of that red light, it would appear to follow that the light is an integral part of consciousness. This is what I term material or external consciousness.
It is as if the the wall picture also contained reversed visual circuits that allow the picture to be seen by the human viewer. The picture on the wall is one piece of fabric and the visual image in the brain is the other piece of fabric. Each image, external and internal, provides a layer of consciousness to be stitched together. This stitching together actually takes place in the Planck realm, forever out of view. Both the Planck blueprint (size of 1 centimeter divided by 10 to the power of 33) beneath the genes lying in the nucleus of the firing neurons and the Planck blueprint lying beneath the atoms of the projected picture are webbed together -- two blueprints coalesce to form a conscious picture. But like the speed of a sewing machine, so many stitches per second, there is this limit in the conscious brain of ten images per second. We can deduce this since if the picture were flashed on the wall for only one fiftieth of a second, no conscious picture would be reported by the brain's owner. To review, consciousness is a function of the time the picture or event is projected and the brain can not process pictures with lifespans less than 1/10th sec.
Another illustration that both the external image and the image in the visual cortex are essential for consciousness is to consider a person floating in a dark tank filled with salty water. These sensory deprivation tanks (now modified with a screen to project external video images and sold as float tanks) are advertised to produce a state of mind showing EEG readings in the theta wave range of 5 to 8 cycles per second. But if the external feed is turned off most all external stimuli (including gravity pull) is removed from the mind. After hours, without any external images to process, the brain experiences acute difficulty remaining conscious. That is, the only fabric to be stitched must emanate from within different parts of the brain. Using the sewing machine metaphor, perhaps the brain can make thread patterns or reinforce button holes. After a period of time the neurons of the floater may begin their hallucinatory firings or slow to sleep. Just as the sewing machine needs two separate layers of cloth to bind together, so consciousness works best when there is an external image to bind with an internal image. Neither image holds any predominate role in this process.
Perhaps the most vivid examples to illustrate this process occur when the external image is another living creature. People, whose faces continuously become the external image for another brain, become significant others. Whether this union of the external and internal image occurs on the dance floor, across the dinner table, or in bed results can become spectacular. People can become more closely attached to a pet dog than to any person they are acquainted with. Since the two images are stitched together in the two brains, the results can easily be viewed by impartial observers. People jump up and away from another bus rider they don't like to find another seat. Two people fall in love or lust when faced with long periods of close proximity to each other's consciousness. Feelings of both love and hate envelop people who are unwillingly over exposed to others. Age differences, legal age limits, monogamy and marriage vows fall by the wayside. Unwanted desires and rapes occur -- even murder. Stalkers go to great lengths to locate a movie star whose picture they have stared at too long. Judges, intuitively understanding the joint image phenomena, issue orders that one person will not come within 500 feet of another. Divorced people cannot make themselves abide by restraining orders meant to terminate image exchange. Classmates and foxhole companions become buddies for life. People move out of their houses to avoid this continued two way conscious contact with another who they can't incorporate with their lifestyle. Staring contests have become a humorous, competitive sport to prove who can handle this knitting together of two visual consciousnesses without blinking or turning away. New age religions, well aware of the nature of joint consciousness, use close eye contact to bind cult members together. The power of the hypnotist's eye to cast a spell over the subject is common myth. The reader can go on and on listing examples of what happens when two consciousness are knit together by merely exchanging mutual images in the visual cortex. There is an oversimplifying aspect to the sewing machine metaphor. Perhaps the reader can imagine a more complex metaphor.
In continuing to refine the term mentalogy, I use a tree rings metaphor to suggest where human memory might reside and to clearly separate memory from consciousness. A growing tree deposits new cells to grow thicker and taller, to sink roots and to reproduce. Directed by the blueprint of its DNA and powered by the sun, the tree can be said to have a conscious existence. A living tree one thousand years old has deposited each year a ring of memory cells beneath the bark of the trunk. I term them memory cells because they certainly store a record of the past which can be retrieved and studied by man. These tree rings present a memory of the tree's growth. The annual ring, thin or fat, was deposited instant by instant and reveals the trees interaction with its surroundings. Indicators of the past is stored in that layer of molecules -- the wind, weather, temperature, and perhaps the ax marks where someone started to chop the tree down and changed their mind. The tree ring is a composite of the entire tree's interaction with its surroundings-- the leaves that breath carbon dioxide and might have been eaten by insect, fungus or animal, the roots that suck up water and minerals and the total health of the tree. The reader may have run across a sawed off slice of such a tree mounted outside a lumber store with arrows pointing to the year ring Columbus sailed the ocean blue or the Declaration of Independence was signed. But now an NMR image of these rings could be taken of a living tree.
If one should return to one's childhood home, old images are brought to mind. Old images are retrieved when one actually sees again in the external world images similar to those stored. The current conscious image is compared with the distant stored image, perhaps with changes noted. If I were looking to locate where human memory is deposited, I would look for something analogous to the tree rings. What I see inside the living human skull, using imaginative magnification, is a layer of molecules deposited like tree rings on the inside of this spherical bone. Beneath the layer of molecules, in the Planck realm, I image a spool of Planck film containing a person's lifelong memories. Just as the waves of an NMR imaging machine can retrieve images of the living tree rings, so wireless brain waves can retrieve images called memories. Once the memory is deposited on the skull, the image retrieval process is similar to a thought process. The stored images on the skull are external to the brain's neural retrieval devices.
The fictive human memory system described here has both storage and recall capability. Storage and recall are two separate activities involving separate neuron firings. Memory is the union of the external image with the internal image stored on the inside of the human skull in the multi-dimensional Planck blueprint, located in the submicroscopic Planck realm. Access or recall to these stored images depends upon the proper functioning of brain neurons and the transmission of neurotransmitters across synaptic gaps. This diffusion of neurotransmitters can include proteins or nitrous oxide gas molecules. Memory problems, signaled by amnesia, alzheimers and damaged neurons occur due to the neurons inability to retrieve images, not that images are not stored.
It is obvious that as with the term "consciousness" the use of the word "memory" has wandered hither and yon. Memory is used either as a mental remembrance (a person, thing, event recalled) or a system of storage and recall. Neuroscientists present confusion by trying to organically link consciousness with short term memory. This illusory link is not organic but only shows proximity in time. As brain damaged, amnesia or alzheimer patients can readily demonstrate, one can be totally conscious but lack recall of stored images. Because such people may live in the NOW doesn't indicate that they lack consciousness. Listed below are other examples that lead to confusion in the use of the term memory:
a) The use the memory metaphor for a computer. The computer system fits the definition of memory as having both storage and recall. In fact, since there is no consensus about the mechanisms for storage and recall in the human brain, using the term computer memory may be a clearer metaphor than is the term human memory.
b) If storing a book on your computer disk fits the term memory, what is the difference between the magnetic coded book and the same book printed on paper and ink? In both cases the stored information can be retrieved, and since computers can now read aloud, is there here a distinction without a difference?
c) Can a photograph be considered a memory of the past? The past image is stored by exposing it to the silver molecules on the film; the recall occurs when the film is developed. The lapse in time between storage and recall could be seconds, as with Polaroid film, or years. The same is true if the digital camera deposits the scene on a computer CD.
d) If a photo could be considered a memory then might one ask, is a sculpture of George Washington also a memory? It is now the vogue for anthropologists and evolutionary geologists to core drill on mountain tops for samples of ancient sea shells. From these discoveries they piece together the puzzle of when continents broke away from one huge land mass, millions of years in the past. The buried sea shells are a record of the past that is only now being retrieved. Is the process of digging up long stored sea shells from mountain tops a memory system?
e) Perhaps all uses of the word memory are metaphorical? If in fact, a book is a form of memory then why not genes in chromosomes, the DNA book of life, that records a person's chemical blueprint, ala Crick and Watson? Some say that in a few years a person will carry their DNA coded on a credit card size chip to be read and interpreted. Is a person, then, a walking memory of the evolution of life on earth; having been used to store the past does man now await for the process of recall?
In summary, trying to include memory in the analysis of consciousness appears to open a linguistic Pandora's Box. Human consciousness is not dependent upon memory nor does it demand a high IQ. Consciousness need not demonstrate an awareness of past events. Whether the human memory is composed of a layer of calcium molecules deposited inside the skull or deposited on the undetectable Planck film beneath the visible neurons of the brain is of little consequence. Mentalogy implies that the ten per second increments of conscious images occur regardless of the brain's capacity to retrieve stored images from wherever they are hiding.
The camera metaphor
suggested that like time-lapse photography the human brain is
limited to processing ten external events per second. The speed
of processing incoming neuron firings determine what a person
becomes conscious of. Compared with high speed cameras this makes
human consciousness a very slow process in recording external
events.
The sewing machine metaphor suggested that consciousness is composed
of both the external image and the duration of internal neuron
firing in order to construct a conscious image. The two images,
external and internal, must be stitched together to produce the
conscious image. As with the speed of the sewing machine, the
speed of mental processing determines the final image. The tree
rings metaphor suggested that human memory can be considered to
lie outside the retrieval processes of the brain. Events are stored
on a layer of molecules inside the skull much as tree rings store
a history of the past weather, temperature and droughts that the
tree endured. But although conscious images may trigger the retrieval
of memory, memory is not essential to consciousness.
It may be useful to contrast some of the recent academic attempts to define consciousness with the mentalogy ideas you have read here:
a) One analogy considers biochips, the coating of silicone circuitry with live animal cells, silicone chips painted with peptides to grow nerve cells that can be be fired with external electricity. Although the implantation of biochips in humans may end blindness and greatly increase the power of memory, hearing, and smell, this direction of research fails to add any understanding of whether consciousness is more than a bag of neurons firing in the brain. One may construct a device with decision making abilities, an artificial intelligence, and still make no progress in understanding what consciousness consists of. It may become possible to enhance the recording device, the brain, but unless consciousness is merely a playback of that recording (at ten snapshots per second), no new insights are forthcoming.
b) Another direction of understanding the mind has been to surgically remove parts of the living animal brain to see how some aspect of consciousness such as memory is affected. If, by removing a portion of the brain of a living animal or by testing humans with accidental brain damage, one could discover a total loss of memory, then it was hoped the seat of memory or consciousness could be located. With rats this approach hit a dead end. No such removal of any part of the rat cortex inhibited the trained rats from running their maze. With brain damaged human cases it was found, as with alzheimers patients, that a part of the "self" disappeared -- that part dependent upon short term memory. But attempts to identify a portion of the brain, such as the cortex, cerebellum, hypothalamus or reticular formation as the seat of memory or consciousness have hit dead ends. This has prompted some writers to hypothesize the existence of dynamic cores or functional clusters of neurons. If consciousness doesn't lie in one part of the brain, since all parts are interconnected, consciousness must lie in the interactions of the totality of the pieces. Such ramblings add very little to our understanding. Since the seat of consciousness remains hidden they resort to fiction. Few of them will admit to any fiction as I prefer to admit to. It appears, in the search for consciousness, that one neuron is like any other. Neurons, of course, are essential to both consciousness and the retrieval of stored images, but this says next to nothing.
c) Another shortcoming of writings describing consciousness is their inability to discuss the probable role of the gene cells and their offspring, protein cells, in the process. This is all the more remarkable since most neuroscientists accept Darwin's evolutionary route as the birthpath of consciousness. If mankind evolved cell by cell to his/her current conscious state then the arrival of consciousness also must have occurred bit by bit. That the presence or absence of genes, which direct cell making, can modify or result in different states of consciousness is apparent from the case of colorblindness in men. If the cones, photoreceptor cells, sensitive to the red lightwave are missing in the eye, the neurons that give us the quale of redness will not fire in the brain. Thus the conscious image is absent the subjective experience of seeing redness.
The breakthrough in locating one abnormal gene in a dog which causes narcolepsy gives an example. If one defective narcolepsy gene, failing to direct the production of a neurotransmitter, can cause an animal to fall asleep, thus losing consciousness, what may lie ahead in the unraveling of the genome? But like all quantum processes occurring in the brain, most writers decline to discuss what they cannot see. The next frontier in the understanding of consciousness is proteome research, the study of the proteins, enzymes and hormones which are manufactured at the direction of gene cells in the nucleus of the neuron.
d) Arguments about artificial intelligence (AI) have been helpful in focusing on the likelihood of whether computers will ever achieve consciousness. But there are major problems limiting the usefulness of these AI arguments. The more that knowledge in physics and chemistry is attained the closer nature appears to replicate computers and vice versa. For example, the hydrogen atom must quantum compute the angle of its bond to the oxygen molecule in order to form water. Every cell in one's body must operate as a mini-computer in order to carry out its symbiotic mission with every other cell. Genes in the chromosome must operate as tiny computers in sending out replication messages on how to construct proteins, enzymes and nitrous oxide neurotransmitters. Some have suggested the entirety of man's body is constructed from nanobot cells with the chromosome as central processor of a biomolecular computer? Futuristic writers are chanting about DNA computers with their ability to simultaneously calculate with an astronomical number of molecules. Another problem with the AI metaphor for consciousness is that if one asserts that the silicone computer and man's mind are similar then free will fades into oblivion. One idea is that consciousness must be an active process in order to make decisions in interaction with the external environment. Yet physical activity, like moving a finger, controlled by conscious thought is slow ( takes as much as a second) and rather passive, as though some hidden force were pulling at invisible puppet strings.
None of the above approaches explains how brilliant new ideas and fantastic artwork could emerge from the biocircuits of the brain. It becomes apparent that the brain consists of more than hardware able to process sense data and trigger responses to that data. Something far more than computation or parallel processing is required to explain consciousness. It is for this reason that I felt a new approach which I termed mentalogy would be useful.
Mentalogy points to human consciousness as residing in the quantum or Planck realm. There a mixture of not only one person's thoughts but a combination of all human thought, a universal, collective consciousness is possible. This assertion could be called a cop-out since that realm is hidden forever from man's view and from experimental verification. But cop outs don't detract from a fictive philosophy. There is no interest in proof of this point of view. On this submicroscopic interface, a Planck lens lying between the visible and hidden realms, a picture of consciousness emerges. It is a collective consciousness that encompasses all matter -- since all matter is linked or webbed together with the fictive space net. Consciousness is not a unique and individual process although every person has their own limited capacity to tune into the collective total consciousness. Without magnification (at a rate of ten snapshots per second) increments of the universal consciousness are projected into the human brain. But with fictive magnification one could see that the space net in the Planck realm webs together every cell and molecule of the human body and brain with every external event witnessed. The Planck blueprints scrolled up in the Planck realm beneath the brain cells appear to be tiny rows of beads, stored data that can be read like moving tape or film to exhibit the memory pictures, sights, sounds, smells, tastes and sensory touches required to bring consciousness out of a automatic, machine like state.
The Planck blueprint, like a sub genetic code, records every image detected by the ever streaming neutrinos. This blueprint is nonlinear, complex and fractal in nature. As on a hologram everything is recorded in multiple dimensions, (for example, the eleven dimensions hypothesized for the theoretical strings in physics), regardless of the brains limited capacity to process more than four of these many dimensions. The human conscious mind appears incapable of fathoming images projected with multiple dimensions. This limitations along with the ten images per second limit will forever exclude conscious pictures of total reality. Enough to say that the fractal nature of the human brain has many counterparts in nature, from the fractal edges of tectonic plates, lava flow, leaves, tree bark, coastlines and clouds-- much of what surrounds man on earth. It should be little surprise to hear that the processes of consciousness reflect similarities to the many elements out of which it has evolved.
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