Sunday
3-9-08
An interesting little computation
Posted by Frank DeMarco under Stray Thoughts | Tags: conscious subconscious meditation intuition
[4] Comments
I said a while ago that it is now realized that the subconscious mind processes about 42 million bits of information in the one second that it takes the conscious mind to process about 42 bit, for a million-to-one difference.
This means that if I glance at something for one second, the subconscious sees what the conscious mind might see if it looked at the same thing for 16,667 minutes, or nearly 28 hours, or more than 11 and a half days.It struck me this morning, perhaps this has something to do with what we often call intuition, and something to do with meditation.
Suppose we set our conscious mind to meditating on something – water, say. If the subconscious is on the same track as the conscious mind – and I take such coordination to be one function of meditation — one minute’s subconscious concentration on one subject gives it time enough to process two and a half billion bits of information. By comparison, the conscious mind in that time will be able to process about 2,500 bits.
Two and a half billion (that’s a thousand millions!), versus 2,500. Some odds, huh?
Now, for all I know this computation may be all wet. If so, please feel free to tell me how and why. In the meantime, I’m going to think of it, provisionally, as a kind of explanation as to why intuition is so lightning-fast and so far-reaching. The subconscious mind just has (in effect) that much more time to play around in a given situation.
It kind of boggles the mind really, but anyone who meditates or journeys should be saying, “yes, that is true” once they think about it.
Many of my journeys will bring me quick snapshot visions, but within those snapshots are many paragraphs of information when I sit down to write them up in my journal, and there is almost always more than I can put into words.
And as I read your comment I am reminded that time There doesn’t seem to be the same as time here. Dreams, the same way. We can have a dream that in a few seconds seems to last days. (Of course, I can remember some high school classes that had the same effect, but I think that’s probably an unrelated phenomenon.)
In fact, Rich, as I continued to ponder your comment, suddenly I thought — maybe THAT is why dreams seem to prefer pictures, images, to words. Words are by nature linear and sequential, whereas pictures are grasped at a glance. Closer examination of a picture will reveal more, sometimes far more, but still the initial glimpse will reveal its essence. That is not true for words. So if you are operating in one realm and are attempting to communicate with another realm that operates a million times slower, pictures, or a few words, might be the best you can do.
Yes, and because of the differences in how things are viewed there and here, when we are meditating or journeying, our awareness is at a level closer to where they are so that they can give us the whole thing instead of just a teaser. It’s like getting an entire book instead of just a page or two.