This essay presents a model of the mind organized into four functional components. The intent of such of model is to provide a basis of understanding for how the human mind works. The scope will deal with the working of the every-day mind, and the mind in special states, such as meditation and Satori. The model is not intended to provide a basis for understanding the processes of psychotherapy, as the Freudian model does, although I make a rough correspondence between the Freudian mental constituents and those of the model presented here. Because much of my thinking about this model is influenced by my interpretation of Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , I also note the correspondences between my functional mental components and Pirsig's primary philosophical dichotomy.
How is one to evaluate a model of this kind? Is it possible to judge whether it correctly represents the TRUE nature of the mind? From what source does one acquire the knowledge of the TRUE nature of the mind so that one could use such a criterion? I suggest some simple practical criteria. Does it work for you? Does it help you think about how you might try to use your mind effectively? Do the decisions the model helps you to make about how to effectively use your mind turn out well for you?
In describing the model, I will use some metaphors about the brain. This does not mean that the functional mind components can be located in particular parts of the physical brain. However, the metaphors can be useful as a mnemonic, and there is some neurophysiological rationale for the association of each mental component with a part of the brain. The rationale is that most of the time, for most people, most of the kinds of mental activity that correspond to a functional component is associated with a measurable increase in metabolic activity in the associated part of the brain.
The four functional components of the mind are: the INTELLECT, the INTUITION, the INSTINCT, and the FOCUS OF ATTENTION.
The Intellect performs the mental thinking functions that are step-by-step sequential in nature, such as systematic problem solving, most language functions, and most intellectual game playing (like chess) below the expert level (as well as some above the expert level). These functions more-or-less correspond to what are commonly now-a-days called the "left brain" functions. They also fairly closely correspond to what Pirsig called the "classical", and they also corresponds roughly to most of the Freudian concept of the Ego, or at least that part of the Ego that one can describe and/or characterize verbally as one's sense of self. In the branch of computer science known as Artificial Intelligence, this kind of processing is generally characterized as "serial" and "rule based". These functions include the creation of conceptual systems, including structured models of reality. The Intellect gets its sensory inputs interactively via the Focus Of Attention by directing the Focus Of Attention at particular sensory sources and source areas.
The Intuition performs the mental thinking functions that are Gestalt or holistic, such as recognition of a familiar face, performing a well established habitual activity (like tying your shoe laces), and a great deal of, or perhaps most of, intellectual game playing above the expert level. These functions more-or-less correspond to what are commonly now-a-days called the "right brain" functions. They fairly closely correspond to what Pirsig called the "romantic", and they also corresponds roughly to the Freudian concept of the Subconscious, although these processes also include the Freudian Superego, and that component of the Ego that is based upon a holistic non-verbalizable sense of self. In Artificial Intelligence, this kind of processing is generally characterized as "parallel" and "pattern recognition". The Intuition functions include the innate "wired-in" mechanisms that create holistic mental habits, which include holistic models of the elements of reality and how the elements interrelate. When these elements are analyzed and combined by the Intellect, via independent thought, reading, or education, into a structural system, and the structural concepts are used over time, they are also integrated by the Intuition into mental habits that become holistic models of a structured reality. All of these holistic models, structured and unstructured, correspond to Kant's a priori concepts.
The Intuition gets its sensory input directly from sensory pre-processing outputs. The inputs are processed by many concurrent parallel mental habits, as well as the wired-in mechanisms for forming new habits, and the results may be passed onto the Focus Of Attention either because the Intuition decides that this is appropriate, or because the Intellect has directed the Focus Of Attention at a particular sensory source, and this source will have been "linked" by the Intuition with a particular mental habit or mechanism that had generated the output. In other words, the Intuition is filtering the raw sensory data into a priori concepts that the Intellect perceives as reality. These a priori concepts have been previously created by the wired-in Intuition mechanisms in interaction with past experiences.
The Instinct performs the mental non-thinking functions related to emotions and feelings. To continue the brain geometry metaphor, these would correspond to the "rear brain", or more accurately, the limbic system which is mostly in the brain stem. In Freudian terms, these functions include the Id and the Libido. In Pirsig's nomenclature, these functions would either be part of the "romantic", or not relevant to what he was discussing. In terms of the interactions with the Intellect and Intuition, the outputs of the Instinct behave very much like the outputs of pre-processed sensory inputs described above. However, it is possible for the Instinct to transmit its emotion or feeling output directly to the Focus of Attention, unfiltered by the Intuition, in some situations.
The Focus of Attention holds what you are aware of NOW! To continue the brain geometry metaphor, this processing takes place in the "front brain", or more accurately, the forebrain, or more specifically the cerebrum. In Freudian terms, this function corresponds to the Conscious. (There is a lot of other activities that goes on in the forebrain than the Focus of Attention. These activities are mostly related to the immediate neurological processing of sensory information below the level of possible mental awareness, and they are outside of the scope of what my model of the mind deals with.)
In the ordinary every-day awake state, the Intellect and the Intuition are both busily doing their respective things at all times, but the Focus of Attention is aware only of what the Intellect is doing, and what the Intuition is doing is ignored. That is why it appears to us that only our Intellect is working, and that our Intuition is idle and underutilized. But in fact our mind makes hundreds of decisions every day, and almost all of these decisions are made by the Intuition without any awareness by the Focus of Attention that this is happening. (It is not difficult for anyone to become aware that this is happening, and I will describe later in this essay how to directly experience this as the watching state.)
Your Instinct may be idle if you are not currently stimulated to feel any emotions, but even if you are experiencing emotions or feelings, your Focus of Attention may also ignore these Instinct mental activities as well as it pays close attention only to what the Intellect is thinking about. A sudden change in emotions will generally get your Focus of Attention off of what your Intellect is doing and directly onto the experience of the emotion, and also onto what is happening around you that may have stimulated the emotion, such as a startle or sudden anger. The emotional reaction can be a direct Instinct response to unfiltered sensory stimulation, such as a sudden load noise. More commonly it is an indirect Instinct response triggered by the Intuition as a filtered response to sensory stimulation from what is happening in the world around you, such as a cry in the voice of a loved one that your Instinct interprets as a fear cry or a pain cry, rather than a gleeful cry. In either case, the Focus of Attention becomes aware of some change in your emotional state that requires attention.
Your Intuition can respond in two ways in situations with respect to emotions and feelings. Your Intuition can recognize that the situation is one in which an emotional reaction is both natural in one sense and inappropriate in another sense. Imagine a situation that your Intuition interprets as your being insulted and ridiculed, and this situation triggers a natural Instinct anger response. Imagine also that the person insulting and ridiculing you is a person with authority power over you, such as your boss. Your Intellect and your Instinct may recognize that it would be inappropriate to respond in an angry manner, so the anger is repressed. With respect to the model, this means that after the situation ends, the Intuition will re-interpret or mask the lingering anger response so that it is not noticed by the Focus Of Attention. One of the functions of psychotherapy is to help a person become aware of his/her repressed emotions and feelings, and their causes as repressed memories. In Freudian terms, these repressions live in your Subconscious; in my model the repressed emotions and feelings are in your Instinct, and your Intuition performs the repression function, hiding the information from your Focus Of Attention.
The Focus Of Attention plays a critical role with respect to memory. The nature of memory is a very complex topic, and this complexity is beyond the intended scope of this essay. For the purposes of this essay, it is sufficient to consider memory as consisting of two elements: temporary memory and permanent memory. It may be useful to consider the follow analogy. Temporary memory is like the random access memory in your computer whose content goes away when the power is turned off. Permanent memory is like your computer's hard-drive. Both the Intellect and the Intuition make use of temporary memory in performing their functions, but in order for what is in temporary memory to get into permanent memory, so that you can remember it some time later, the Focus of Attention has to notice it, which means that YOU have to be consciously aware of it, at least for some short amount of time.
Not everything that gets into permanent memory is equally accessible at a later time. Some information may be forgotten and permanently lost. Sometimes extraordinary techniques, such as hypnosis, can recover "lost" memories, but there is generally much uncertainty about the reliability of such recovered memories. They may be recovered actual memories, or they may be false memories of invented events or involve invented details of actual events.
Generally, information recovered from permanent memory into temporary memory for use by the Intellect or Intuition is refreshed in permanent memory whether or not it is noticed by the Focus Of Attention, and this refreshing tends to keep the information from being forgotten, and makes it more readily accessible in the future.
Here is an example from every day life. You intend to stop on your way home from work to do some errand, such as pick up something from the dry cleaners. While driving home, you are listening to the radio, and some interesting and important news is being described. You continue to listen to the news and drive home, and when you reach home you then realize that you have forgotten to stop for the dry cleaning. The interpretation of what has happened using the model is as follows. Your Intellect was thinking about the news, and your Focus Of Attention was on what your Intellect was thinking about, as is the usual way your mind works. Your Intuition was on "auto-pilot" driving your car home from work following your well practiced usual habit for how to do this, making all necessary decisions about when to slow down, when to accelerate, when to stop for a traffic light, when to turn right, etc. It is almost certain that you will have no detailed memory of the trip home, such as the particular intersections you actually had to stop at for a traffic light, because none of that information made it into the Focus Of Attention, and therefore it failed to make it into permanent memory. Now suppose instead that on your way home, due to some road work, you had to take a detour. At that point, your Intuition would not be able to follow the usual habit pattern, and the Focus Of Attention would be shifted to deal with the detour, which means that the Intellect would be interrupted from listening to the news and would have to think about alternate routes. This interruption would provide an opportunity for the Intellect to remember the dry cleaning, so that there would be a good chance that you would now turn off the radio and consciously drive to the dry cleaners, using your Intellect and Focus of Attention to make sure you got there. Furthermore, you would subsequently remember the detour since your Focus Of Attention had to deal with it, and this would have moved that information into your permanent memory.
Here is another example. You are in your office building walking to your office one morning. Your Intellect is thinking about some presentation you are going to make to your management later in the morning, and those thoughts are occupying your Focus Of Attention. You walk past Joe's office as your usually do, but since there is nothing unusual going on in Joe's office, your Intuition doesn't bother to cause your Focus Of Attention to notice anything about Joe's office. So, as you approach your office, and Mary asks you if Joe was in his office, you have no memory about that. Now suppose that as you passed Joe's office, Joe said "Good morning," and you answered "Good morning." There are two possibilities. If this would be a somewhat unusual event, then it is likely that your Intuition would cause your Focus Of Attention to notice it, and when Mary asked you about Joe, you would remember that Joe was in his office. On the other hand, if this were a common event, then your Intuition may have responded "Good morning," by habit without your Focus Of Attention noticing it, so and when Mary asked you about Joe, you would not remember it. The key to whether you remember or not is something unusual being detected by your Intuition so that it gets your Focus Of Attention to notice it. If Joe asked you a question about your presentation, or was standing on his head practicing yoga, you would remember that Joe was in his office. If a full screen warning message was flashing on Joe's monitor, you would remember that Joe was not in his office.
I will now describe some mental states other than the awake state in terms of the model. I identify these states as grooving, expert, aesthetic, meditating , watching, and Satori.
The grooving state is typically one experienced by musicians, artists, and artisans, and others who get deeply into what they are working on with out needing to do much, if any, intellectual thinking about it, at least for some significant part of the time while they are engaged in the work. During the grooving time when there is no intellectual thinking, the Intellect is idle, and the Focus Of Attention is on what the Intuition is doing as it skillfully performs previously well practiced mental habits controlling some coordinated motor activity.
The expert state is typically experienced by intellectual professionals such as doctors, scientists, and engineers, and others who also get deeply involved in what they are working on, but have frequent need from time to time while they are engaged in the work to intellectually think about what they are doing in order to make choices about what to do next. This state is similar to grooving , but different than grooving in several ways. There is generally less motor activity involved, the lengths of time without intellectual thought are shorter, and the occasional decision making by the Intellect is seemlessly coordinated with the skillful performance of well practiced mental habits by the Intuition.
The aesthetic state is common to everyone while they are simply enjoying the experience of something beautiful, such as a painting, a sculpture, a symphony, a mountain vista, or a sunset. Generally, the body is physically inactive, and the Intellect is idle. The Intuition is processing the sensory input, and its filtered output is passed to the Focus Of Attention and to the Instinct as stimulation of emotions and feelings which are also passed to the Focus Of Attention. Thus the Focus Of Attention is aware of the a priori concepts associated by mental habits with the particular the experience of beauty together with the emotions and feelings that they invoke.
The meditating state is an unusual state of mind that takes practice to experience, and for many people a great deal of practice. The body is physically inactive, or may be performing a simple repetitive task. The surroundings are generally quite and dimly lighted with little if any visual stimulation. In the practices with which I have had experiences, the eyes are open but they look at a blank wall. The idea is for the Intuition to have no sensory stimulation to work on, so it becomes idle, and for the Intellect to maintain the Focus Of Attention on nothing, or on as nearly nothing as possible, such as on a regular breathing pattern or on repeating a mantra. This is a very boring state, and practice is needed to develop acceptance of this boredom, because the Intellect is very prone to invent something to think about in order to escape from the boredom. Practitioners are typically advised to quickly acknowledge an unwanted thought without reacting any further to it, and simply resume the boring repetitive whatever.
It may be that the strong drive of the Intellect to escape from boredom is a culturally acquired mental habit rather than an innate tendency. I would guess that the habit of the Intellect preferring to be active rather than idle depends of the relative amount of time an individual spends with the Intellect active or idle. That is, if a person normally spends more time in the grooving state or aesthetic state rather than in the waking state, it may be easier for that person to experience the meditating state. The validity of this conjecture might be determinable experimentally, but as far I as know, no such experiment has been performed.
For those readers who are inclined to try meditation with the intent of experiencing the meditating state, I strongly urge you do so only with the supervision of an expert. Although mild meditation practices, such as some yoga meditation, are not particularly dangerous, approaching the meditating state without supervision can be stressful, even if exhilarating, and very dangerous to your mental health.
I think the watching state is also an unusual state of mind, although it is much easier to experience than the meditating state. I think it is unusual only because people don't think of trying to experience it. The watching state is similar to the waking state except that the Intellect is idle, or as nearly idle as possible, and the Focus Of Attention is on what the body is doing, including its interactions with the world. The reason the watching state is easier to experience than the meditating state is that the state is not nearly as boring, since the Focus of Attention is on the body and the world rather than on nothing. Since the state is not too boring, the Intellect is not as prone to invent something unwanted to think about.
If you were trying to abandon the intellect and WATCH the intuition, rather than FOLLOW the intuition, the watching state would be the proper state of mind for doing this. Although you would not be seeing the direct working of the Intuition, you would notice and remember for later study the results of your Intuition's mental habits as they control how your body interacts with the world. Then at a later time you can use your Intellect to analyze these remembered behaviors to discover how the mental habits you want to escape are continuing to influence what you do, and to plan on how to work towards replacing these habits with more desirable habits.
I am going to describe how to experience the watching state in terms of imagining that you are watching a certain kind of movie. Think of a movie in which the camera is positioned as the eyes of the protagonist, and the camera moves in the same way the protagonist's head would move as s/he interacts with her/his surroundings. There have been occasional movies made using this technique to tell the story, just as there have been occasional novels written in the first person. To experience the watching state, just imagine that you are watching such a movie with you as the protagonist. For your first try, I suggest doing this when you are doing something simple that you do habitually every day, such as, brushing your teeth or getting dressed. After a little practice, you can try more complicated habits like eating meals and driving commonly repeated routes. If you catch your Intellect thinking about something other than the movie, simply say a single word to yourself to refocus, like "brushing", dressing", "eating", or "driving". Alternatively, you might try the word "movie" or "watching". See what works best for you to help you gradually increase the average time between unwanted thoughts.
The main point of experiencing watching is not to perfect the state by eliminating all unwanted thoughts, but simply to be able to experience how much of your life is actually controlled by the mental habits exercised by your Intuition. If you do a meditating practice, then experiencing watching from time to time might be a helpful adjunct.
The state of Satori is a very unusual state of mind, and I am certain that the explanation of it that I give here will be flawed, since I have never experienced this state, nor am I ever likely to do so. However, I think my explanation does more-or-less capture some of the important aspects of this state, and this may be of some interest and use to the readers. I find it useful to think of Satori as an integrated combination of all of the previously described states, and likely other states as well. One's first experience of Satori does not involve the combination of all of the above states, but at a minimum I think that the waking state and the meditating state must be integrated. As one continues to experience Satori , then other states will naturally become integrated.
My interpretation of the Zen experience is as follows. Zen teaches that meditation is a way of preparing the mind so that it can experience Satori . However, Satori is not experienced while one is in the meditating state. It is experienced later when one is in the awake state. The story of the first experience of Satori by the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, is that he experienced Satori immediately upon ending a long period of meditation. Most Zen stories about people first experiencing Satori describe them having the experience while in the waking state, but after much previous meditation, when they are triggered to experience Satori by a well chosen comment or action by their teacher.
Some lineages of Zen, such as the Rinzai, use koans as part of their practice. In Unlocking The Zen Koan , translated by Thomas Cleary, two kinds of koans are described. One kind, the No koans, are intended to improve the meditating state in which the mind experiences the oneness of reality as not divided by any mental habits or a priori concepts. The other kind, the Causality koans, specifically prepare for the meditating state of mind to be integrated with the waking state.
In the integrated Satori state, useful mental habits and a priori concepts, including the useful generalizations about how the world works such as the principal of causality, are experienced CONCURRENTLY with the experience of the undivided oneness. That is, in this state, the person simultaneously experiences two mutually contradictory views of reality. In one view the oneness of reality is directly experienced together with the direct grasp that all of the divisions of reality into good and evil, self and other, mind and body, object and subject, free will and determinism, Taker and Leaver, and all of the various objects of the world and the laws of nature are arbitrary illusions of our mental habits. The person is able to perceive the information from her/his senses directly and unfiltered by mental habits and a priori concepts. In the second view of reality the person perceives and interprets the every day world as s/he normally sees and understands it. The a priori concepts formed by mental habits are what is perceived as and understood to be real in the every day world.
The integrated Satori state allows the person to use the a priori concepts without being bound to them as one is in the normal waking state. Mental habits and a priori concepts can be readily abandoned when they are seen to be not useful, and they can be readily replaced by new mental habits and a priori concepts that are more useful. Moreover, the true utility of these a priori concepts can be discerned with much clarity gained from the concurrent oneness perspective.
It may seem illogical and insane to hold in your mind at the same time with absolute certainty of their truth two mutually contradictory views of reality. In this regard I find it useful to remember the following bit of wisdom as a sort of a personal koan: The nature of reality is fundamentally paradoxical.