Inside Story

FTLComm - Tisdale - Thursday, March 6, 2003

If a topic is wearing away on your conscious mind, it can often seem to dominate all that you think about. I was thinking about the nature of obsessions as I watch the unfolding of what has to be a remarkable period in history. The nature of this information age, the intensity produced by all news radio and news network television and the concentration of ownership in all forms of communications especially the newspapers. With large corporations owning the news systems of the world democracy, which is dependent upon a free press, falters and is now perhaps beyond recovery.

However, the concentration of the news systems is not the issue that the Inside Story is about. It was the trigger that brought this writer to the realisation of the issue once again and perhaps a couple of other and completely unrelated things. We are now into March, experiencing the first normal winter in half a decade and each daily walk I find myself squinting through the wolf fringed hood of my parka, as I make my way along frozen streets and try not to step in front of semi frozen motorists. The third factor was the exotic, almost unearthly images taken by Ken Jones early this week of sun dogs. Combine these three thoughts together and you will understand the discovery I have felt imploding upon my senses.

We have all often talked about the role the senses play in determining what we think and how often these senses are easily fooled, or how we might be easily mistaken by what we "think" we see, hear, smell or taste. What we need to realise is that the senses do contribute, provide some input into the conscious world of each of us, but there is far more to this. When we refer to the "real world" just what are we talking about? "Real world," is completely and totally personal. There is a complete and total real world for every person, or sentient being alive and there is no other real world in existence.

This is a shocking and perhaps extreme existential way of viewing things, but nothing that happens to you, nothing that involves you, nothing that you are aware of, occurs outside your head. If we were to illustrate what is happening, the diagram would involve the whole universe at the centre of your head and your awareness, the cortex of your brain, watching all that is beneath it, quantifying, filtering, taking notes and snap shots, attempting to record the highlights of your reality, then working at break neck speed to construct some meaning of what is being perceived.

The serious nature of this conclusion is that those with limited capacity, or impaired input are not substantial reduced in their ability to live life agreeably, because their world is being defined by themselves. The danger is real and present with those people, who for various reasons, fail to grasp similar, or shared realities with the population. A poor communicator could easily become a rapist, an individual without social restraint could act in an antisocial way, or even more painful, adopt criminal behaviour as their normal means of life.

Once you realise this fundamental function of each being, the possibility that the United States President is somewhat less capable of intellectual thought is not nearly as much a problem, as any person with power, especially the life and death decision making process, being out of touch with the shared perceptions of a society, or population.

This means that if your sensory input is being controlled, such as the filtering of news and information, then it is possible for a whole society to essential go mad in comparison with those who do not share the same input.

Sorry, that this seems political, but this example is just so much a part of the news this past few months it would be silly to ignore such an easy to find instance of a distorted "real world."

Now, let us consider other events in our lives and how those apparent life experience are in fact, internal operations.

Everyone has heard of hypnosis, the apparent and obvious control a person might be able to achieve through extremely focused concentration. Recall for a moment the description earlier of the whole universe being at the core of our brain and the outside of the brain peering inward attempting to make sense of what it sees. What we need to realise is that the brain is not a single entity, but instead a hugely complex chemically powered, electronic and biological system of processors and a chemical/electronic storage system that has some extremely finite limitations.

For most people, long before seventy-two hours of continuous consciousness, the immediate short term memory buffers of the brain are maxed out. Extremely tired people will experience lost moments as they struggle to do the simplest task, only because they have no memory available for the thoughts to be handle. Most people will begin to experience dreams at this point, waking dreams, as their brain attempts to dump off the short term memory to long term storage, these events are called hallucinations and are extremely dangerous. Keep a person awake longer than seventy-two hours and the risk of permanent brain damage occurs.

Now that we are aware that the brain is a complex system of a huge number of independent processors, what if the whole system were to bring its collective processing power on to a single topic or issue. This is what hypnosis is, the hyper mode of concentration. Here is what happens; to produce such an experience. The environment should be low input, low light, quiet and comfortable. The individual needs an induction, a concept or image that will focus the brain's sensory interpreters and create an abstract internal image, most such inductions involve repetitive sound, often a simple moving or still object to focus visual dynamics and sometimes other elements. like smell and past experiences are used as enforcing agents. The result is a dramatic whole brain and whole body event that both settles the person. but afterward. leaves them feeling good.

If you take the elements of a typical hypnotic induction described above and check out other human activities you will discover that many things are merely super concentration, or hypnotic events. Sweat lodge, prayer, sexual experiences, meditation, are all examples, but the list is just so extensive and can include video games, chess, whist, and these can be fragmented, once the person has achieved the high from them, so that in a fraction of a second they can resume the experience with simple cues, such as grace before a meal, a deep breath before a performer goes on stage, the ninety seconds of a hockey shift. Hypnotic experiences are an everyday thing for most people and each and every one of them is "inside."

Perhaps the most glaring awareness of this process is the normal experience associated with sexual experience. The mechanics of the event are almost irrelevant as that is merely a prop or cue for the internal intellectual brain activity that is involved. Our bodies, for all that they seem to be, are really only the extensions of the nervous system.

Each of us, in our own way, explores the universe, right inside our mind, because there is no other place.

Timothy W. Shire