ITS ALL IN YOUR HEAD. by Ken Edwards

Very recently, perhaps only about a million and a half years ago, with a lot of help from good old Evolution, human beings invented a brand new kind of Mind that is unique to human beings. The Conscious Mind.

The Conscious Mind consists of billions and billions of fatty, transistors or semiconductors for amplifying, controlling, and generating electrical signals.

These transistors are called: "brain cells" and are not made of germanium or quartz. They are made of Fat and are edible.

The human brain ranks easily as the most complex structure in the known universe.

This Conscious Mind is located inside of people's heads mostly in the prefrontal lobe of the brain which is that big, ugly bulge right above the eyes. It is much smaller and much stupider than the mighty Sub-Conscious Mind which occupies the rest of the brain, but it is densely inter-connected with the Sub-Conscious mind and is actually a kind of an extension of the subconscious.

Whenever the Conscious Mind gets beyond its depth (which is most of the time) it refers stuff to the more powerful Sub-Conscious.

Examples. “I have a hunch. I'm not too sure about that. Let me sleep on it.”

SPEECH
The Conscious Mind is a relatively new thing in nature and it can communicate spoken thoughts to other Conscious Minds by using a system of very widely agreed upon signs and symbols and words and numbers called "a Language".

These symbols are almost always spoken but, very rarely, they may be written or typed.

These words and other symbols such as plus and minus signs are stored in a memory bank inside of the prefrontal lobe and are called "a vocabuary".

The Conscious Mind could not have been evolved without first creating many new, very delicate, muscle mechanisms in the mouth and throat and tongue and lips and wise old Evolution swiftly evolved scads of tongue and throat muscle movements in order to extend and modify the old time grunts and giggles of the prehuman apeman. Put your tongue in the top of your mouth and speak out and an "R" sound is made. Curl your tongue back in the mouth and an "G"sound is made. Close the lips and an "M" sound is made. Vibrate the vocal cords down in your adam's apple and a loud, singing sound is made. That is what singing is. Speak with all of the lip and tongue and mouth movements but without vibrating the vocal chords and a Whisper occurs.

The Conscious mind while working together with these little muscle twitches is called "Speech"

As far as size is concerned the Conscious Mind is the Sub-conscious Mind's idiot, little brother. But it has one huge advantage, new in nature, of allowing two widely separated minds to wiggle their tongues and turn their vocal chords on and off and communicate and speak back and forth with each other even though separated .

Would you believe that Earth guys once spoke to guys way up there on the moon? How separated can you get?

So now, for the first time in all of biological history, you and I and other like-minded folk can communicate with each other using words.

We are doing that very same thing this very minute!

Congratulations!

One very odd and very peculiar thing about the Conscious Mind is that it can not think without using words. (The mighty subconscious mind, to the contrary, cannot think by using words.)

I’m sure you know, dear reader, that you cannot Talk without Thinking but did you know that neither can you Think without Talking? Weird!

These spoken thoughts need not be spoken out loud enough to be felt and, in fact, they very rarely are.

You talk aloud with strong muscle twitches in your mouth and tongue and throat but those small twitches are always there even when you are thinking words silently.

Those teeny-weeny little muscle twitches when thinking can be measured.

Just try thinking the following words: "My big bad brother beat up the mad monkey" with your mouth wide open. It gets tricky.

I have always wondered what muscles Helen Keller twitched when she read things in Braille.

Please do keep in mind that me, the writer and you the reader and this paragraph and all of those millions of other like minded folk actually exist inside of and are a tiny part of The Big Bang Universe.

That fact is endlessly worrying and complicates things no end.

Some useful facts about the inside of your head.

Your brain is a proper human brain and you use it to create all kinds of thoughts which bounce around inside your Skull. For instance you, at times, have happy thoughts and sometimes you have sad thoughts or maybe angry thoughts and there are many other kinds of thoughts.

The important thing to keep in mind about all those thoughts is that they are all crowded together inside of your bony skull.

It is a known fact that all these different thoughts exist nowhere else in the known universe except up there between your ears.

You can communicate thoughts with shoulder movements like shrugs or with shaking your head back and forth or up and down or by moving your thumb up and down or by frowning or smiling or by wagging your tail (if you are a dog.)

To clarify this idea let me give you some examples.

Your Happy Thoughts exist inside of your head and exist in no other place.

Also, your Sad Thoughts exist inside of your brain cells and exist in no other place.

Forbidden Thoughts exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place.

Second Thoughts exist inside of your brain cells and can exist in no other place.

All of these thoughts exist physically as patterns or arrangements of greasy brain cells and can, at least theoretically, be detected and even be physically sliced out with a sharp knife called a scalpel and be removed. Witness a prefrontal lobotomy.

Your Worries exist inside of your brain and none of your Worries exist in any other place in the known Universe.

All Hatred and all Love exist inside of bloody lard and exist in no other place.

All Joy and all Happiness and all Glee exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place.

Sorrow and Grief exist inside of human and animal brain cells and exist in no other place.

Religious Thoughts exist inside of bloody lard and exist in no other place.

All Certainties and all Uncertainties exist inside of human and animal brains and exist in no other place.

Beauty itself exists only in the the brain cells of beauty beholders and exists in no other place.

Feelings of Insecurity and Timidity exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place.

All Trust and Distrust exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place. Just ask your banker.

Plans and Predictions exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place.

Goblins and Ghouls exist inside of bloody lard and exist in no other place.

Leprechauns and Tooth Fairies exist inside of human brains and exist in no other place.

Santa Claus, himself, exists inside of brain cells and exists in no other place.

Now here we might run into a few problems. Not my problems to be sure but possibly you might have some problems.

All Heavens and all Hells exist inside of human brains and exist in no other place.

All Gods and Goddesses exist inside of human brains and exist in no other place.

Hey! How about that?

An interesting thought here is that Heavens and Hells as they are usually postulated are themselves teeny weeny little universes but with none of the oceans and mountains and prairies and rivers or hurricanes or earthquakes or sunrises or droughts so common to our own Real Universe. Most postulated heavens are filled to the brim with people but contain almost nothing else, not even drug stores.

All Devils and Saints and Satins and Ghosts exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place.

Please don't feel afraid of Devils and Ghosts. Just keep in mind that all Devils and Ghosts live only inside of greasy brain cells and, if worse comes to worse, they can all be sliced out and french fried with onions.

But don't worry about your own thoughts getting cut out and maybe getting french fried. We have laws against things like that.

I once ate calf brains in my youth, fried with onions. I can calculate very roughly that every spoonful of Brains and Onions that I ate contained about 200 billion Gigabytes of useful data, not counting the onions.

All Regrets exist inside of brains and exist in no other place.

All Possibilities exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place.

All Impossibilities exist inside of bloody lard and exist in no other place.

Here we have an interesting contradiction. We all know as a fact that The Real Universe can contain no negatives. Now the word "Impossibilities" is certainly a negative although it does seem to maintain a weird kind of ghostly existence in the real world in the form of the thoughts inside of my own Conscious Mind.

Meaning itself exists only inside of brain cells and exists in no other place, I think. What is the meaning of the word Meaning? How the hell would I know? Look it up.

Now, this one might be a little bit tricky. All Legalities and all Illegalities exist inside of human brain cells and exist in no other place. Well, how about the Legalities and Illegalities in Law Books? Okay, just think about that for a minute. Left to themselves books are only clumsy, inert stacks of paper and ink. Laws must always be conceived and pondered and created by human brains before they can be printed in law books. And no law printed in a book can have any results whatsoever without being perused and perhaps acted upon by a human brain. So my statement holds. (I think)

All laws of Nature exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place. I may be partially wrong here. Let me sleep on that.

All History exists in bloody lard and exists in no other place. Okay, what about the history in history books? Well, we’ve already been through that with Legalities.

All Ideas exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place. By definition.

All Memories exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place.

Now this is kind of a special deal. Memories exist physically as patterns of greasy semi conductors and can be detected electrically and frequently are by scientists.

I have heard it said that a person IS his memories. Without his memories the person does not exist. Now what if I should say: "You yourself are only your Memories and don't kid yourself. That is All you are now or ever have been or ever will be!"

How do you like them apples?

I personally at 92 years of age have got lots and lots of memories. I got memories I ain't even used yet. Many of these memories are not readily available to me but with some effort and maybe with the help of a good hypnotist they can usually be recalled or evoked.

It has been said: "I think therefore I am". Well, sure, why not? Thinking is an action and we already know (because I just said so) that all actions are physical movements and therefore unequivocally exist in the Real Universe.

And the phrase "I think therefore I am" does indeed prove that you exist but not only because of the word "think". It proves conclusively that you exist because of your use of the word: "I".

We might also say: "I eat therefore I am" or "I sneeze therefore I am" or "I sleep therefore I am".

Both your subconscious mind and your conscious mind are real and exist physically in the Real Universe and can be x-rayed and (if you are not worried about murder laws) can be surgically removed and weighed and measured and can even be cooked and eaten. Yummy!

At this very minute my Semantic Mind" is indispensable to both you, the reader and I, the writer, because it is the part that is connecting Me with Thee and connecting Thee with Me. It is the part that is composing and directing my fingers to write this essay.

Now here is a real doozy. All Mathematics exist inside of human brain cells and exist in no other place. Don't be to quick to contest that statement. Better sleep on it first.

All numbers exist in brain cells and exist in no other place. What?

Morality. All morality and all Morals exist in bloody lard and exist in no other place.

What about written rules of Morality such as the writings of Confucius. . Go back and see "Legalities".

There seems to be an unhealthy tendency for some people to believe and sometimes even to claim publicly that there is some weird kind of Universal Morality or a Free-Floating Morality that hovers like swarms of gnats somewhere around about our human heads.

Bosh! Piffle!

Okay, so what about Facts? It is a fact that All Facts exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place. I admit I am a bit puzzled here and I bet you are too. In fact I’m not exactly sure what I am talking about when I talk about "Facts."

All Truths exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place. Truths usually come in flavors and there are lots of different flavors of Truths.

Examples: "A bitter truth". "A sad truth". "An unwelcome truth". A true truth." "A really true truth." "A really, really true truth." A relative truth" "An absolute truth," "An absoluter truth," "Its true, I swear on the head of my Mother" or "It's true - word of an Englishman" or "It's true. Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye."

All Untruths exist inside of brain cells and exist in no other place. An untruth is a negative and no negatives can exist or ever could exist or even might exist in the real universe. But negatives are a dime a dozen inside people's bloody lard. Let me give you some examples of negatives .

Untrue, Unwise, Untidy, Unforeseen, Unskilled, Unaware, Unkind, Incapable.

Or does this make any sense?: "An untruth is a negative truth". No.

All Axioms exist inside of human brain cells and exist in no other place.

I will now proclaim a new axiom. Axiom Number 36: "An Axiom, which can exist only in human brain cells, is the closest thing to an Absolute Truth that exists anywhere in the known universe."

Well, so what is an Axiom? "An axiom is a self evident truth". What does that mean? What does it say? Absolutely nothing. A rose is a rose is a rose. Gibberish. Just try to parse that statement.

But that statement, parsed or unparsed, is the basic foundation that underlies all of mathematics and all of engineering and all of science and is accepted uncritically by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

I am a potter not a mathematician but I am intrepid and I will venture here to tell you exactly what an axiom really is.

An axiom is a mathematical expression or perhaps a statement in words that has been whittled down and reduced to such extreme simplicity that the vast inner mathematics of the mind of almost any thinking person anywhere in the world is able to grasp it quickly and to accept it as a truth.

The key phrase here is: "whittled down.".

An example- “Equals when subtracted from equals are themselves equal.

It is that simplicity and the mind’s quick, easy recognition and acceptance of it that establishes and certifies that the statement is obviously a Simple, Basic Truth, i.e. an Axiom.

"It just makes sense."


Another key working factor here is the word: "Obviously”. The word "Obvious" here is almost a synonym for "AbsolutelyTrue".

Mathematicians worldwide frequently and constantly appeal directly to the vast intuitive minds of their students by using these words: "IT IS OBVIOUS THAT......"

But the adverb "Obvious" is meaningless without a complement, stated or implied. It is obvious to ME, it should be obvious to YOU, It is obvious to THE STUDENT.

My late brother-in-law, Hank Hunter, was an Abstract Mathematician who had studied under Eric Von Neumann. He once told me a story about Von Neumann, possibly apochryful.

It seems that Von Neumann was in a classroom lecturing to some very advanced students and he had written on the blackboard a succession of complex mathematical equations. As is usual in such lectures he would slowly advance from one complex equation to the next using the magic words: “And it is obvious that….”. And he would write on the blackboard and read off the resultant equation.

At one point a student raised his hand and said. "Exuse me, sir but I can't quite see that. It is not Obvious to me." The prof looked startled for a moment and then moved to an empty front seat and sat down and stared fixedly at the equations on the blackboard for a long time. The longer the time the better the joke. Finally he turned his head and announced: "Yes, it's obvious." And everyone laughed.

What was going on there is obvious. The final equation was far too complex to grasp in its entirety and had been broken up into small bits and pieces. The vast, subconscious mind of each student, working in tandem with his dumber verbal mind, was slowly, one small, simplified piece at a time, analyzing and accepting or rejecting the validity or the "truth" of each new equation.

There exists, indeed, a higher level of truth. It is called "Poetry". Poetic expressions can sometimes express profound Truths very dramatically.

An example: "The moving finger writes and having writ moves on nor all thy piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line. Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it."

Meaning as logic? Gibberish. As poetry - An easily grasped, fundamental truth.

Thus the ostensibly meaningless phrase - "An axiom is a self evident truth" is in reality a deeply profound and meaningful line of poetry.

And, finally, it is a fact or even a true fact or even a truly true fact that you, the real you, the you you, the thinking you that exists between your ears and exists in no other plac, is ephemeral.

Sadly, we are the only animal in the world that can be aware of the fact that someday we will die..

"The bird of life has but a little ways to flutter and Lo, the bird is on the wing."

But don't worry too much about that either. Life is too short.

Kenneth Edwards
Calle del Lago
San Antonio Palopo
Solola, Guatemala
kennethdotedwardsatmailfencedotcom . kennethedwards678atgmaildotcom