So this is already an accumulating rigid pattern. Notice that you do not have to change the position of the letter A to add the letter T. Now imagine that the letter T is being added to the letter A to form the word AT. Get clear about this before taking the next step. Are you, for instance, an organic body with no existence after death? Or are you a subtle mind, a ghost-in-the-machine, who will go somewhere into heaven or hell after death? Or are you a reincarnating causal ego beyond both body and mind? Or are you sheer Spirit beyond all three vehicles of consciousness? Or are you even something indescribable beyond any possible cosmogonical diagram or system. To help the reader understand how this works, we are going to perform a thought experiment in building up a cognitive pattern sequentially in the brain.įirst imagine that the letter A is stored somewhere in your brain and that it represents “number One”, your own idea of yourself as to what kind of being you actually are. So the cognitive pattern of sequentially ordered information and experience operates as a cognitive filter, which functions as a cognitive dissonance against unwanted facts or truth, such as when decision-makers will not face the collective danger of global warming. But there is a big problem here that any information or possible experiences that do not fit the constructed pattern, worldview, paradigm, belief-system or anti-belief system, will be automatically rejected as too disturbing or unsettling to the cognitive system. So, information and experience are accumulated over time and fit into an increasingly rigid and inflexible pattern of “understanding” that is the system’s way of “making sense” of (A) everything that has happened or been learned, (B) everything that is happening or apparently being learned, and (C) everything that can happen or might be investigated. This is true not only for a single human individual, but for human cognitive collectives as well, such as business corporations, government institutions, cultures, religions, and so on. At every moment and stage of life, the human cognitive system tries to make the best sense and use it can of the information that has been available so far in combination with the personal history of experiences. The information and experiencing do not arrive all at once, but incrementally, piece by piece and wave by wave. The human cognitive system, especially the material brain, accumulates information and personal experiences over time. I will sum it up here in a slightly new way to give a more intense personal access to the issue. It was Edward de Bono who first pointed out this important cognitive discovery. I have often been asked, “What is the secret of Notes? How do they have their mysterious, exhilarating and sometimes upsetting effect on human consciousness? Is there any scientific basis in cognitive neuroscience for what happens in the interaction between the Notes and the reader?” There are some answers to these questions for any intelligent and studious individual who is serious-minded enough to want to do some real thinking about all this, so I am going to lay out a few lines of research in this brief article, which may prove more rewarding than one might at first understand.
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