What is the Human Mind?
There are many different explanations and concepts available to explain the levels of the human mind and the connection between mind, body and soul. Mind and consciousness are largely philosophical concepts, so I do not claim that the descriptions below are scientifically accurate or fundamentally true in any way. They are the ones that make the most sense to me based on the research I have done and my own awareness. What is described here as levels of mind could possibly be more accurately described as levels of consciousness, however, I have retained the word mind as it is a term that more people relate to.
I have been fascinated by how the mind works ever since I trained as a teacher in my early twenties. My understanding has grown much over the years however. At first I understood mind to be thinking based in the cranial brain. I have always had a sense of the spiritual/soul aspect of me, but I saw that as something very separate to mind as the thinking brain.
When I did my training as a Nia movement instructor I was introduced to the concept of somatic intelligence and the body mind. This stimulated me to begin to find a more comprehensive understanding of the human mind. I then trained as an NLP practitioner and coach and was introduced to yet more concepts of mind.
However, I still struggled to find a comprehensive description of mind that included all the parts I had learned about and was aware of in myself. The first description I found that really seemed to make sense for me and provide a really comprehensive understanding was the one set out by Richard Barrett in an article titled The Ego-Soul Dynamics of Enlightenment. The summary below is based on Barrett’s ideas, however, I have added and adjusted some of the concepts and descriptions he used.
Energy and Matter, Soul and Ego
Barrett’s outline incorporates understandings from quantum physics and explains existence in terms of interactions between the 4 dimensional energetic universe, the 3 dimensional material universe, soul and ego. Let’s start by defining these elements first.
In the early part of the 20th Century scientists such as Albert Einstein began to confirm what mystics and shaman had been aware of for millennia – that there was a fourth dimension energetic realm beyond the three dimensional physical one. This led to the development of the quantum field theory.
Most people believe that we live in a three dimensional world of solid matter because this is what we perceive with our senses. However, the latest quantum physics science states that energy is the basis of material reality. Every type of particle is conceived of as a quantum energy vibration in a field of space, and the fields of space themselves consist of energy. The latest discoveries in Western science point to a fundamental primal energy that works throughout the universe connecting everything to everything else. This correlates to what human beings have known intuitively for thousands of years. For example, the Chinese described this type of universal energy as ch’i, the ancient Greeks called it pneuma, the kahunas in Hawaii call it mana, and in yoga it is called prana.
Everything is energy. Your body is energy vibrating at a particular frequency. Your emotions are energy vibrating at a particular frequency. Your thoughts are waves of energy, and you are surrounded by a unified quantum field of energy, an energy of infinite creation potential.
The 4D energetic Universe/Quantum Field/Universal Energy Field/Source/Consciousness/God:
is the generating source of physical matter
is the container for the 3D material world
is the world of the soul
is influenced by our thoughts which are energetic impulses
has the properties of timelessness, omnipresence and energy
.
The 3 Dimensional Material Universe
has the properties of time, space and matter
is perceived through our five senses
is a construct through which we experience physical form and mass, separate identity, and decay and death
.
The Soul-Mind (Inner Being, Higher Self)
Your soul, and the soul of every other human being, is an individuated aspect of the universal energy field. It is who you are. You don’t have soul, you are a soul.
Your soul is a field of conscious awareness that identifies with your personal energy field, not your physical body.
Your soul:
lives in 4D reality
knows it cannot die
has no fears
has no needs
creates what it desires through its thoughts
has a sense of connectedness to every other soul
principal desires are self-expression, connection and contribution
.
The Ego-Mind
The Ego-mind is the creation of the Soul-mind. Soul created the ego mind in order to have a physical experience. It is your three dimensional physically based identity. The ego is not who you are, but it is who you think you are. It is a mask or identity you take on to function in the physical, social and cultural framework of your material existence.
The ego-mind
thinks it can die
thinks it has needs
principal needs are survival, safety and security (in our modern society these generally translate to love, acknowledgement and money)
develops fears about not being able to get its needs met
begins to form during the first 2-3 years of your life
defines who it is by criteria such as age, gender, role/occupation, race, religion and nationality
.
The diagram below shows how these 4 elements interrelate.
Barrett’s theory is that when your Soul-mind incarnates into a human embryo, it is your dominant center of conscious awareness. However, as your physical body and nervous system develop, other types and levels of mind develop and your Soul-mind becomes more and more unconscious. Our Ego-mind begins to develop around age two, and needs to develop fully in terms of having its perceived needs met in order for us to function effectively in our 3D physical form. When the Ego perceives that its needs are met we can begin to reactivate our Soul-mind and begin identifying with our soul in order to expand fully in our physical universe experience.
“We make progress in our journey towards enlightenment in our three dimensional material world to the extent we stop identifying with our ego and start identifying with our soul. . . we can redefine enlightenment as a process of learning to live in soul consciousness (four-dimensional energetic awareness) while being in a physical body in a three-dimensional material world.” – Richard Barrett
The diagram below is based on Barrett’s description of the levels of mind.
Since coming across Barrett’s description my understanding of the levels of mind have been percolating into my own understanding of the how all the aspects and parts of the human consciousness integrate. I wanted to come up with a model that was easy for me to work from and for others to understand. I also wanted it to incorporate what I see as being the important aspects of our rational mind consciousness, our feeling mind consciousness, our body mind consciousness and our soul mind consciousness. Below is the model or description I have put together.
In terms of an NLP understanding of our conscious and unconscious mind, your conscious mind is like the captain of the ship and your unconscious mind is like the crew. Your conscious mind is the only part that can direct its focus, and imagine what isn’t being experienced as physically real by your senses i.e. visualize. It gives directions to your unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind operates from directions given to it by your conscious mind either in the past or in the present. It is the domain of your emotions, controls your body and is able to process large amounts of information very quickly. Your unconscious mind simply follows directions, it does not need to understand in the way that your conscious mind wants to. It is like the keeper of your information and memory files though, and it works best when you ask respectfully for it to do what you want, and when it feels reassured that it is safe to make the change.
NLP only uses the terms conscious and unconscious mind and I find this a bit limiting, especially when doing somatic work based in the body. To me there are three layers or aspects of mind incorporated into the NLP understanding of the unconscious mind which are the subconscious mind, the paraconscious mind and the unconscious mind. Paraconscious is not a common term. The definition I found is that it is a form of cognition dating from early intrauterine existence to sometime in the first year of life which is an intelligence or knowing that does not include voluntarily retrievable mental representations. My understanding of this is that it is a knowing without constructed thought or words. I see this aspect of mind as including instinct and intuitive knowing. It’s when we just have a sense of something, a gut feeling, or a heart leading. This fits with Barrett’s concept of the body mind and also with Suzanne Scurlock’s concept of the wisdom areas of the body.
The arrows on the diagram represent which aspects of mind can be accessed by other aspects. The conscious mind can only access the subconscious mind. It is only through the subconscious mind that the body-mind and soul-mind can be accessed and known consciously. In my awareness the body-mind is physically based and sensory, but also receives information freely from soul-mind and the quantum field. Abraham Hicks teaches that non-physical Source Energy comes to us through every cell of our body. We need to disengage from our rational (monkey) mind, and connect with what commonly feels like a quiet place within to access our deeper levels of consciousness which are our body-mind consciousness and our soul-mind conscious, and even much of our subconscious mind. I view this process as withdrawing our awareness from the physical world and connecting into the energetic aspects of our self. This is commonly achieved through meditation, visualisation, hypnosis, and forms of ecstatic dance.
Is Human Development Linear?
One of the other aspects of Barrett’s description of the development of the types and levels of mind was that it implied that you could only access your Soul-mind later in life once your Ego-mind’s needs for survival, safety and security were met. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs is based on a similar concept of linear human development – the idea that we cannot begin to step into self-actualisation until our more elemental physical needs are met. I do not think that human development is this linear. I think we can access into our Soul-mind at any age, and that the earlier we learn to do so, the more fulfilling our lives will be. Let’s not wait for a mid-life crisis to have an experience of enlightenment. I think that Anthony Fieldman discusses this concept very intelligently in his article The Problem with Maslow’s Pyramid.
“the way life really works isn’t linearly; it’s iterative. We explore; we learn; we apply; we learn from that, good and bad; we adjust; we re-apply; and we repeat these steps ad infinitum, until we die. If we’re lucky, we get somewhere close to our highly individual vision of “a life well lived”. But this, too, is a moving target; because all of that learning, discovery and stabbing in the dark leads us to understand the world differently from when we established our fantasies. And so the whole enterprise is in a constant state of iterative evolution. A knotted-up tangle of yarn comes to mind — not a pin-strait “A to B” line — to evoke the idea of what life looks like, for most (all) of us. Somewhere in that knotted mess, we can find shelter, food, jobs, mates, baubles, and self-awareness” – Anthony Fieldman, The Problem with Maslow’s Pyramid.
While I think that there is a biological component to how our mind develops when we are young, I don’t agree that human beings have to satisfy all the needs of their Ego-mind before they can begin to re-activate Soul-mind, or in other words, that all our physical needs for survival, safety, belonging and recognition need to be met before we can begin to become self-aware and self-actualised, and access non-physical aspects of ourselves. Experiences of self-awareness can occur at any age, and at any time.
The Interaction Between Body and Soul - Who Are We Really?
Abraham Hicks teaches that each cell of our bodies connects individually and collectively to Source and has its own asking which implies that it has intelligence/consciousness. According to Abraham it is our cells that summon the life-force which gives us physical life i.e. which gives our being physical form. If the energy of our thoughts and feelings do not disrupt it, our cells naturally align with the stream of wellbeing which is the pure positive energy of Source. This could be why many people find their body heals when they meditate. In meditation the conscious and subconscious minds are quieted and thus their resistance is softened and our cells are allowed to align with the wellbeing of Source.
Cell biologist Bruce Lipton has come to a similar conclusion through his research. We think of ourselves as an individual person, but Dr Lipton’s research demonstrated that each person is actually a community of about 50 trillion living cells. Each cell is a living individual, a sentient being that has its own life and functions, but interacts with other cells in the nature of a community. Moreover, every function that is performed by the human body is present in every one of your cells. The human cell membrane is like an information-processing computer chip and the cell’s genes are the hard drive with all the potentials. That is why every cell in your body can form any kind of cell because every nucleus has all the genes that make up a human. What determines which function a cell performs is not to do with the genes it contains, but stimulated by feedback information from the environment. What Dr Lipton found is that our identity is actually an environmental signal that is playing through the keyboard on the surface of our cells and engaging our genetic programs. You are not inside your cells; you are playing through your cells using the cell membrane ‘keyboard’ as an interface. You are an identity derived from the environment.
In my younger days, I didn’t see that religion was offering me truth. I went away from spirit and ended up in science. Realizing that my identity was something from the environment playing through my cells was the greatest shock to my world because I was completely thrown from a non-spiritual reality into the requirement of a spiritual existence. My cells were like little television sets with antennas and I was the broadcast that controlled the readout of the genes. I was actually programming my cells.
I realized that if the cell died, it did not necessarily mean the loss of the broadcast – that the broadcast is out there whether the cell is here or not. All of a sudden it hit me with such profound awe. What I realized was that survival was not that important because of my eternal character was derived from some broadcast in the field. The fear of mortality disappeared. That was about twenty-five years ago and it was one of the most wonderful, liberating experiences I ever had.
Bruce Lipton – The wisdom of Your Cells
This all supports the understanding that our soul is not within our body, but that our body is within our soul.
To put these concepts in a summarized form, our Ego Mind (conscious and subconscious mind) is our physically based consciousness. This consciousness can direct the functioning of the cells of our body. Our Soul Mind is our non-physical consciousness. Our cells also connect to the transmission of our Soul Mind. The Body Mind connects the Ego Mind and the Soul Mind and receives and transmits information to and from both.
When you live from your Ego Mind you perceive largely through a lens of limitation and fear. Life appears to happen to you and be beyond your control. As you become aware of, and align with, your Soul Mind, you can begin to perceive existence through its qualities of love and abundance. As you grow in understanding that everything is energy you come to know how to influence everything on an energetic level, and your unlimited potential to create experience.
You Are Love
Love is who you are as your soul self, your true original state. You are love. Love in abundance is already yours, your only task is to receive it. Self-love and self-worth are coming to an awareness of experiencing yourself as love. It is coming to know who you truly are as Soul. You don’t actually need to learn to love yourself because you are love. Self-love is the process of remembering and surrendering to that. Abraham Hicks refers to it as letting your cork float to the surface. If we stop holding ourselves apart from who we truly are through our Ego Mind programming of separation, fear and judgement, then we naturally ‘float’ to an awareness that we are love.