Think of a situation where you are relaxed in your living room on a comfortable sofa. You open a book to read. After reading few sentences, your mind starts wandering about something you just read and keeps on moving towards some events in the past or some task to be performed in future. In few minutes, you will be completely out of the context of the subject you are reading and lose your focus. Did this happen to you?
Let’s say you met your old friend after many years. At first, you would be stuck and find it difficult to recognize his name. But you would start talking to him without telling his name in the conversation. After some time, suddenly while you are conversing, you suddenly remember his name. You start using his name in your conversation with him to establish that you very well remember him. Have you done this before?
Let’s see what happens and how you can recollect the name of the person when your brain is busy talking to the person and understanding it. This is possible because your brain has three compartments in it. The first compartment is called consciousness, which is responsible for your thinking and processing the information you receive. The second compartment is unconscious, which is responsible for your body activities such as streamlining your heartbeat, maintaining your body temperature, etc. The third compartment which lies between your consciousness and unconsciousness is called subconscious mind, which is responsible for storing and collecting information. When you try to recollect the name of the person, the conscious commands the subconscious to retrieve the name and get backs to understanding the conversation. The subconscious mind goes and scans the memory and tries to find the name during your conversation. From this, you could observe that our subconscious can operate independently and parallel with our conscious mind. Once, the subconscious mind completes it tasks it signals the conscious with the answer it found.
The working mechanism of conscious and subconscious can be best understood if you compare it to the way computers work. Consciousness is similar to the processor of the computer, and subconscious mind is similar to the hard disk controller. When the processor does computation, if it wants to read some data from the hard disk, it sends a fetch command to the hard disk controller. Once it requests the information, it need not wait and proceed with other operations which are not dependent on this information. The hard disk controller independently searches for the information in the hard disk and, When the hard disk controller completes the read, it interrupts the processor sending the information read from the disk. The processor then resumes its operation which it kept on hold and proceeds with the operations.
Consciousness is an awareness of external events and internal sensations including the awareness of self. William James described the mind as a stream of consciousness, a continuous flow of changing sensations, images, thoughts, and feelings. There are many levels of consciousness.
- High Level of Consciousness: THOUGHTS. Complete awareness of what happens inside you and what happens outside yourself. Individuals actively focus their efforts towards a goal. In this state, selective attention is used to focus on a specific aspect of experience while ignoring all others. The concentration is high when one is in this state.
- Subconscious Level: EMOTIONS. This level can take place while we are awake or asleep. It is located in between the conscious and unconscious level. Lighter emotional experiences may be in the subconscious mind, but traumatic negative emotions are stored at an unconscious level. Information which can be easily accessed is available at this level. Creative ideas often incubate at this level before they emerge to conscious awareness. When an idea is incubating, our mind may be processing information even though we are not aware of it. Subconscious processing can occur simultaneously whereas conscious processing is serial. For example, when we are running down the street, we are consciously aware of the walking, but not of subconscious processing of height, color, weight, etc.
- Unconscious Level: BELIEFS. Unconscious thought is a reservoir of unacceptable wishes, feeling and thoughts that are beyond conscious awareness. Behavior, Attitude, Beliefs and Values of person are formed at this level.
- Low Level of Consciousness: SLEEPING. Automatic processing which requires little attention. Daydreaming happens at this level of consciousness. Sleep and Dream occur at this level of consciousness.
- Altered state of consciousness: These are mental states which can be produced by drugs, fatigue, meditation, hypnosis and deprivation of sensory organs.
