Innate subconscious processing predisposes individuals to paradigmatic worldviews.
The mind is conceputally divisible into willmind, coremind, and nattermind. Willmind is what is commonly thought of as “the mind”: a cognitive device under conscious control. Instead, coremind dominates mentation with its continual processing of sensation and development of perception via adaptive filtering.
Conscious thought comprises a miniscule portion of mentation. Even with intention, information acquisition is made subconsciously and then delivered to awareness. Everything we think we know comes packaged by coremind.
Nattermind is a mentation agency independent of intent: the mind on automatic drive. Nattermind is a busybody, acting by default as the gatekeeper of what comes to mind: determining which subconscious streams should surface to conscious awareness. Nattermind may be overridden by willmind. In elevated levels of consciousness, described later, nattermind is subdued.
From infancy coremind develops perceptual impressions bottom-up from observations. Precocious mechanistic theories about how the world works are abetted by inborn knowledge, which shapes focal attention and resultant perception. The early observational gyre is naturally driven by wonder, curiosity, and in pursuit of desire fulfillment, which blossoms in diversity through social interaction.
Around age 5 nattermind emerges, employing previously accreted knowledge to create a countercurrent of construal: perception colored top-down, with established theories influencing observation. Nattermind increasingly gains dominion during adolescent development. “Human information processing is the simultaneous operation of automatic bottom-up processes, driven primarily by sensory and perceptual input, and top-down processes that are more accessible to conscious awareness,” notes American psychologist Adam Green.
In adulthood, indolence of mind results in top-down domination by nattermind, with encrusted belief systems that resist being dislodged. Under this slovenly mental regime, novel facts that would dispel a belief are discarded. Such lazy-minded belief adherence is the norm among the Collective of adults, reinforced by sociality. People proceed in a perpetual fog of self-deception that they think is a clarity of mind nourished by faith.
Consciousness provides the capability for awareness. Keenness of awareness determines scope at the front-end of sensation: the fodder which feeds coremind. Perception has richer potential with greater awareness.
Perception is a construal process, with filtering according to orientation determined by mindset. Mindset is the percolator of top-down processing from bottom-up input.
The perceptual-mindset (PM) spectrum is partly shaped by discernment of unification among the apparent diversity which defines Nature. This radial spectrum is continuous, but (for exposition purposes) there are 4 pronounced regions: skeptical, believer, open-minded, and spiritual.
Intuitive patterning (IP) is a perceptual mechanism evolved for predictive processing of environmental information. Being a generally positive adaptation, intuitive patterning is a common biological predisposition.
Individuals differ in their degree of intuitive patterning. Data dots must be connected top-down if intuitive processing is weak. Contrastingly, patterns are perceived bottom-up if IP is strong.
Because intuitive processing literally defines the way that the world is perceived, its power to convince is typically indelible. Adam Green elaborates: “intuitions (i.e., reportable experiences of knowledge that was not consciously learned) develop as products of bottom-up gathering of environmental signals/information via unconscious information processing. Because individuals are not aware of such bottom-up influences, intuitions drawn from unconscious processing may instead be consciously interpreted via explicit belief narratives that provide a rationalized context for beliefs and behaviors. Indeed, intuitions frequently bias more explicit top-down views and judgments, and certain explicit beliefs may be more compelling and difficult to override when they stem from intuitive impressions. These effects have been found to operate across diverse modalities of sensory information processing. For example, in the context of interpersonal evaluations, humans rely on rapid, nonconscious face processing to form intuitions of trustworthiness, which has substantial influence on subsequent decision-making.”
Intuitive pattern orientation without disposition to top-down analytics yields religiosity. People prone to beliefs are those who naturally perceive patterns and tend to accept what they are see and hear. Believers naturally take to religious indoctrination.
Contrastingly, perceptual atomism abets skepticism, including the reductionist approach which typifies scientific inquiry. Children who grow up to be skeptics do not readily intuit patterns, unlike those later given to religion or spiritual seeking.
In failing to autonomically perceive patterns, atomistic perceivers require more overt evidence to convince them, especially of something they are not inclined to accept. Without underlying patterning to sensation, skeptics are biased toward matterism: that what manifests is all that there is.
For skeptics, conclusions which shape mindset only comfortably come from conscious thought: top-down versus bottom-up. Convictions are an outcome of reason. By contrast, those who naturally intuit patterns from a bevy of observations need only leading information to blithely draw conclusions on a situation, character, or dynamics.
Ironically, skepticism does not preclude religiosity, albeit emanating from a distinct vector than intuitive patterning. Many skeptics are believers in denial via assumption: by unquestioningly regarding actuality as objective reality. Naïve realism is the belief that actuality as perceived is reality. Objectivity – that a “real world” exists “out there” – is the core axiomatic precept of scientific matterism.
Adam Green notes that “top-down processes are more accessible to conscious awareness.” Religiosity among skeptics is in fact driven by the cherished scientific method. Skeptics value analysis: conscious conceptualization. With their readily accessible archetypes, religious texts are esepcially targeted toward skeptics.
Inference is the means for theorization, which is the inductive weaving of “laws” by which Nature supposedly proceeds. In excluding anomalies and going with the fattest slab of the observational bell curve, theorization is a statistical philosophical exercise which creates the illusion of comprehension.
Theories are always approximations in which exceptional outliers are excused – at least until the oddities are swept up by a theory with greater scope, or the oddities become so odious as to overthrow a conventional theory for an alternate, typically more complex, conceptual schema. This more sweeping or complicated theory becomes the new approximation.
The constraint of conscious thought is obvious in it being bandwidth limited. One can only think one thought at a time. By contrast, the coremind subconscious rapidly surveys a wider range of information and conceptualizes seemingly effortlessly compared to the necessity of tidy categorization demanded by logic.
Willmind anyway is rarely the decider; rather, the confirmer. What is brought to conscious awareness is either a provocation against a bias or a dissonance between biases. Logic is the stringing concepts together – from one or more premises to a conclusion – in a way that the linkages are agreeable. Biases guide that process. We don’t go against our desires unless the evidence is overwhelming.
Religious gullibility is a distinctive form of naïvete from that of skeptics. Whereas “scientific” skeptics embrace monistic matterism and eschew any behind-the-scenes forces (beyond the abstraction of energy taking coherent forms), religious folk have the traditional view of dualism which affords supernatural influences, most notably deities.
Religion is a culturally evolved belief system originally stemming from awe. To readily amplify the intended instruction through simplification, monotheism predominates moralist religions. The construct of a single omniscient, omnipotent God – coupled with the idea of potential ascent to an eternal heaven or damnation to hell – provides doctrinal leverage for faith-based imposition by priests of moral codes. Monotheism is logically ridiculous, but faith itself is an admission that logic – top-down mentation – holds limited esteem.
Intuitive patterning (IP) is 1 of 2 major facets in perceptual mindset (PM). Certitude (CR) is the other.
Certitude refers to the tendency toward perceptual resolution. Impelled by fear, the felt need for certitude can be compelling. Discomfort with novelty – as contrasted with curiosity – is a mild expression of certitude (CR). Incertitude (IC) is absence of need for resolution or sense of certainty. Certitude is a major psychological life-history variable.
Partly inborn, certitude can be heightened by upbringing. For healthy psychological development, children need emotional security. Those who do not feel secure in early childhood crave certainty throughout their lives.
The method of resolution is significant: whether via (top-down) cognitive analysis or (bottom-up) intuitively. Believers are those with intuitive patterning (IP) coupled with a need for inner security (CR). Those lacking innate patterning (NP) but with a yearn for certainty (CR) assumptively top-down think their way to a tidy worldview. This too is a form of religiosity, though it may not involve religions. Whether theological or atheistic, religiosity smacks of desire for certainty, not the presence or absence of intuitive patterning.
One only desires what is imagined as satisfying. CR people are satisfied by results; IC people by the process itself.
While intuitive patterning and certitude are innate dispositions, either may be attuned by willful shaping of mindset – a rare skill.
Will is innate facet of personality. Willfulness seldom internally modulates, but its impulse is tempered in a disciplined mind attune to social graces.
The term “spiritual” has been so disparately used as to be vague. To be clear: spirituality involves perceptions that engender elevation in consciousness. In other words, spirituality is an abiding impetus toward higher levels of consciousness.
As an admitted simplification, there are 5 levels of consciousness: degraded, normal, enlightenment, coherence, and unity. Normal consciousness characterizes the Collective, which comprises the great mass of humanity.
A thinner segment of the Collective has debilitated awareness: people that are considered dim even by Collective standards. Notably limited awareness and negativity are the norm among those with degraded consciousness. Beliefs come easy and become entrenched.
There are 3 elevated levels of consciousness: enlightenment (quiet consciousness, quietude), coherence consciousness, and realization (unity consciousness). These higher levels correspond with tightness of coupling to Ĉonsciousness, the unified field by which individual consciousnesses populate souls. (An introduction to the wherefores of existence can be found in Clarity: The Path Inside. The essay “The Mechanics of Existence“ provides more detail on that subject.)
Enlightenment is most simply typified by the contentment that comes from an untroubled mind. Nattermind is subdued in enlightenment and higher levels of consciousness.
Someone with coherence consciousness senses the entanglement inherent in Nature. Coherence consciousness is sometimes called a “peak experience” by someone of normal consciousness with intuitive patterning who momentarily experiences that consciousness level. Coherence consciousness is intuitive patterning which is readily accessible consciously.
Consciousness elevation makes one more aware. Internally, mentation that is subconscious at lower levels of consciousness becomes more accessible at higher levels. Conscious awareness of intuitive patterning in coherence consciousness is an instance of this.
A realized person directly experiences unity. Unity consciousness is so distinctive from normal consciousness as to be commonly considered quasi-religious, when instead someone spiritually realized is simply at the epitome of mental health, entirely divorced from religiosity. The abundance of fakirs who claim realization – especially in the West, which has scant spiritual tradition – has tarnished terribly spirituality as a mental health regimen.
Theological doctrines derive from gurus: the teachings of spiritual insights by those in unity consciousness. Those realized have no need of religion, as they directly experience what believers in the Collective can only imagine as divine.
Religion is a codification of core sagacity which believers do not directly experience, and so can only have faith in. Skeptical schemers encrust onto religions parables, moral admonishments, and rituals – using religion as a social tool rather than an instructive guide toward enlightenment.
Intuitive patterning (IP) coupled with incertitude (IC) facilitates enlightenment. Such people are naturally spiritual. Their distinction from believers is incertitude. Spiritual people (IP/IC) are naturally comfortable not resolving a worldview. Skeptics are at the opposite end of the perceptual-mindset spectrum.
Those with incertitude (IC) but lacking pronounced intuitive patterning (NP) are open-minded. Their defining characteristic is mental flexibility and not being doctrinaire. Religion, regardless of form – whether matterist or dualist – is anathema. If not themselves philosophers – by dint of their free-thinking, top-down perceptual mindset – IC/NP people are philosophical fence-sitters.
As intuitive patterning (IP) is prevalent, as is certitude (CR), most people are believers. Certitude is a strong force, so skeptics are the norm among the NP.
Roughly 75% of the world’s population are believers, 15% skeptical, 10% spiritual, and 5% open-minded. Perhaps 1% have the potential to reach enlightenment without the guidance of a guru – though few do. Fewer than 1 in 100 million of the people on Earth are in unity consciousness.
The sociological implications of spectrum distribution in perceptual-mindset are significant. Believers are the sheep of humanity.
Natural leaders are those who are analytic, have good communication skills, and possess a certain subset of the engineering mindset: specifically, the ability to envision workable functional arrangements or equilibria. This systematic analytic skill may be contrasted to the micro engineering talent of mechanical or logistical problem-solving.
Leadership is a social-assertion inclination related to certitude (CR). Motivations behind leadership are the approval of others, producing results as a group endeavor, and organizational management itself (like the solving of a puzzle).
Some believers are natural leaders. But because top-down analytics is practically a prerequisite for leadership talent, skeptics have an edge.
Skeptics also have an advantage in more easily being able to look outside a belief system rather than just buying into it. This externality view yields a skill in being able to imagine how outsiders may view a belief, and thereby facilitates promoting the cause to outsiders or adroitly addressing objections. Credibly dismissing nonbelievers wins the admiration of believers in the group.
Leadership is manipulation: constructively, aligning others’ motivations with group goals. Skeptics may be more inclined to enjoy manipulation than are believers; another reason for their leadership skill, as we tend to do well that which we enjoy.
The commonality of unscrupulousness in leaders owes to their skepticism: cynical of the institutions they administer, as well perhaps a feeling of contemptuous superiority over true believers for their gullible simple-mindedness. Skeptics are the corrupting class of humanity.
Innate faculty for intuitive patterning (IP) and absence of a need for certitude (IC) are instrumental in engendering the raising of consciousness which delivers a most rewarding life experience. The opportunity for enlightenment among the Collective is diminished by the institutionalization of religions and lack of tradition esteeming true spirituality. Given this strong cultural current of spiritual ignorance, the teachings of a guru are especially conductive in fostering enlightenment, as innate talent and inclination alone rarely suffices, for the mind itself labors against the insights which propel consciousness elevation.
Societies are culturally malleable because the Collective are largely believers. The fates of societies often rest on the morality of their leaders. Alas, socially astute, manipulative skeptics are the psychological pool from which many leaders emerge; many of whom disregard, or even undermine, the moral foundations upon which abidingly successful societies rely.
References:
Ishi Nobu, The Echoes of the Mind (2019).
Ishi Nobu, “God,” (3 February 2020).
Adam B. Weinberger et al, “Implicit pattern learning predicts individual differences in belief in God in the United States and Afghanistan,” Nature Communications (9 September 2020).
“Unconscious learning underlies belief in God, study suggests,” ScienceDaily (9 September 2020).