The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science

by Culadasa (John Yates)

The conscious mind is not the source of its content. It’s more like a “space” into which the unconscious minds project their information and intentions.

all moments of consciousness have intentions associated

The Unconscious Minds The unconscious7 part of the mind-system is divided into two major parts: the sensory mind and the discriminating

sensory mind processes information from the five physical senses.

the discriminating mind, the greater part of which is called the thinking/emotional mind,9 produces moments of consciousness with mental objects, such as thoughts and emotions.

Figure 38. The unconscious part of the mind-system is divided into two major parts: the sensory mind and the discriminating mind. The sensory and discriminating minds are each composed of many individual sub-minds that function simultaneously and autonomously.

Each sensory sub-mind has its own sensory field and its own function. Its job is to process and interpret raw sensory data as it comes in.

First, the sub-minds create sense-percepts

the sensory sub-minds also produce a hedonic feeling13 of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

The products of information processing by the sensory minds are projected into consciousness as input for the discriminating mind.

The final “products” of this activity are sense-precepts, associated hedonic feelings, and automatic responses. When sense-percepts and hedonic feelings are projected into consciousness, this information becomes available as input for the discriminating mind.

The Discriminating Mind The sensory minds don’t project every sense-percept they generate into consciousness, but those they do become available to the discriminating mind. It assimilates that information, further processing these sense-percepts and transforming them into more complex mental representations—in other words, into perceptions.14 For example the visual mind will project a collection of sense-percepts into consciousness as, say, an image of a rapidly moving, black-and-red thing, or an even more specific image, such as a black-and-red bird flying by. The discriminating mind takes that and creates more elaborate representations of this simple concept by combining it with memories, previous sense-percepts and other stored information, and even things from our imagination. The image of a black and red bird thus becomes transformed into the specific conceptual object: “red-winged blackbird.” The original sense-percepts may have been accompanied by a hedonic feeling of pleasure at the gracefulness of the shape and the combination of black and red. The discriminating mind might then add its own emotional overtones, such as an experience of “happiness” at seeing and correctly identifying such a beautiful bird.

The discriminating mind generates perceptions based on sense-percepts, thoughts, and ideas. Because emotions come from the discriminating mind, we also call it the “thinking/emotional mind.”

The discriminating mind consists of many separate sub-minds, just like the sensory mind. Each sub-mind performs specialized activities and has its own particular function and purpose.

At the top are sub-minds in charge of things like personal values, self-image, and weighing consequences.

In the Moments of Consciousness model, we discussed how every perceiving mind moment has an element of intention associated with it. Part of the intention associated with each moment of awareness is for certain things to become objects of attention. This intention may be strong or weak, but when it’s strong enough, our attention automatically shifts to the new object.

the discriminating sub-minds remain continuously active,

the conscious mind provides an “interface” that allows these unconscious sub-minds to communicate with each other and work together cooperatively.

With all these unconscious sub-minds working independently and at the same time, the potential for conflict is enormous. The conscious mind is what allows them to work together cooperatively.

The conscious mind acts as a universal recipient of information

conscious experience is simply an ongoing stream of moments of consciousness whose content has been projected into the conscious mind by unconscious sub-minds.

Therefore, the conscious mind also serves as a universal source of information.

all the unconscious sub-minds can interact with each other through the conscious mind.

One, and only one, sub-mind can present its information at a time, and that’s what creates single moments of consciousness.

The conscious mind doesn’t actually do anything

Everything that appears in consciousness—decisions, intentions, actions, and even the sense of self—actually comes from the unconscious mind.

Higher-order cognitive tasks—things like regulating, organizing, inhibition, planning, and so forth—are referred to by psychologists as executive functions.

planning and decision-making; correcting errors and troubleshooting; situations that require novel actions or complicated sequences of action; dangerous or complex situations; and situations requiring the inhibition of our usual conditioned and habitual responses, in order to take a different course of action.

Executive functions are higher-order cognitive tasks required in situations where pre-programmed behaviors are not sufficient.

“How is all this relevant to my practice?” The answer is, you’ve been using executive functions this whole time to train the mind in meditation!

There isn’t an “executive sub-mind” in charge that performs these functions. Executive functions are the result of many sub-minds communicating through consciousness.

executive functions are the result of many sub-minds communicating through consciousness to arrive at a working consensus.

They work together to exhibit leadership, coordinate their activities, and reach a consensus. This is only possible because these many sub-minds have simultaneous access to any information present in the conscious mind.

somatosensory mind

this collective interaction of sub-minds, and its resulting outcome, is the executive function process.

Regardless of where your attention was, many other sub-minds kept working on a non-conscious level. This includes the sub-minds of the discriminating mind.

Intentions

All intentions ultimately come from unconscious sub-minds. A conscious intention is one that gets projected into consciousness so many sub-minds have a chance to support or oppose it before it produces an action.

we need to distinguish between intentions we’re conscious of and unconscious intentions. Remember, all intentions are ultimately generated by unconscious sub-minds. A conscious intention is just one that has been projected into consciousness.

This means any action arising from a conscious intention requires a consensus of sub-minds interacting in the conscious mind. This “top down” process takes place via the “boardroom” of the mind.

By contrast, actions caused by unconscious intentions happen automatically.

As long as there’s a strong enough consensus of sub-minds, you can keep attention from responding to unconscious intentions.

There’s a dynamic interplay between conscious and unconscious intentions.

In the dynamic interplay between conscious and unconscious intentions, the mind-system as a whole chooses what to block or pay attention to.

when that content is consistently dismissed or ignored by executive functions, it will eventually stop being presented to the conscious mind

paying attention to our state of mind—introspective attention—will lead to an overall increase in introspective awareness

Many different sub-minds participate in the process of deciding between conflicting intentions. The end result is a conscious decision and course of action.

Limited participation by too few sub-minds leads to poor decisions. The best decisions come from the fullest participation of every part of the mind-system, which is one reason why increased mindfulness is so valuable in daily life.

“You” either consciously decide to return to the breath or to pursue the thought. Still, this outcome is actually the result of a collective decision, made on an unconscious level, by a group of sub-minds.20 To stay focused on the breath over long periods requires an ongoing, uninterrupted consensus.

Training the Unconscious Sub-Minds