The Biology of Belief - Bruce H. Lipton [73]
I’ve described the power of the subconscious mind, but I want to emphasize that there is no need to consider the subconscious a scary, super-powerful, Freudian font of destructive “knowledge.” In reality, the subconscious is an emotionless database of stored programs, whose function is strictly concerned with reading environmental signals and engaging in hardwired behavioral programs, no questions asked, no judgments made. The subconscious mind is a programmable “hard drive” into which our life experiences are downloaded. The programs are fundamentally hardwired stimulus-response behaviors. Behavior activating stimuli may be signals the nervous system detects from the external world and/or signals that arise from within the body such as emotions, pleasure, and pain. When a stimulus is perceived, it will automatically engage the behavioral response that was learned when the signal was first experienced. In fact, people who realize the automated nature of this playback response frequently admit to the fact that their “buttons have been pushed.”
Before the evolution of the conscious mind, the functions of animal brains consisted only of those that we link with the subconscious mind. These more primitive minds were simple stimulus-response devices that automatically responded to environmental stimuli by engaging genetically programmed (instincts) or simple learned behaviors. These animals do not “consciously” evoke such behaviors, and in fact, may even be oblivious to them. Their behaviors are programmed reflexes, like the blink of an eye in response to a puff of air or the kick of a leg after tapping the knee joint.
The Conscious Mind: The Creator Within
The evolution of higher mammals, including chimps, cetaceans, and humans, brought forth a new level of awareness called “self-consciousness,” or, simply, the conscious mind. The newer conscious mind is an important evolutionary advance. The earlier, subconscious mind is our “autopilot”; the conscious mind is our manual control. For example, if a ball comes near your eye, the slower conscious mind may not have time to be aware of the threatening projectile. Yet the subconscious mind, which processes some 20,000,000 environmental stimuli per second v. 40 environmental stimuli interpreted by the conscious mind in the same second, will cause the eye to blink. (Norretranders 1998). The subconscious mind, one of the most powerful information processors known, specifically observes both the surrounding world and the body’s internal awareness, reads the environmental cues, and immediately engages previously acquired (learned) behaviors—all without the help, supervision, or even awareness of the conscious mind.
Visualizing the information-processing powers of the conscious and subconscious minds. Consider that the image of Machu Picchu above is comprised of 20,000,000 pixel dots, each representing a BIT of information received by the nervous system in one second. How much of that information enters the conscious mind? In the lower picture, the dot represents the total amount of information that is processed by the conscious mind. (Actually the dot is 10X more than enters consciousness, I had to enlarge it because it was barely visible.) In contrast, the powerful subconscious mind processes all the remaining incoming information (the black area) in the same second.
The two minds make a dynamic duo. Operating together, the conscious mind can use its resources to focus on some specific point, such as the party you are going to on Friday night. Simultaneously, your subconscious mind can be safely pushing the lawn mower around and successfully not cutting off your foot or running over the cat—even though you are not consciously paying attention to mowing the lawn.
The two minds also cooperate in acquiring very complex behaviors that can subsequently be unconsciously managed. Remember the first day you excitedly sat in the driver’s seat of a car, preparing to learn how to drive? The number of things that had to