A General Theory of How We Think and Act

"Watch your thoughts. They become words. Watch your words. They become deeds. Watch your deeds. They become habits. Watch your habits. They become character. Character is everything."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

In one of my latest posts, I talked about how a change in thinking does not directly change concrete situations. Today, I want to draw my readers' attention towards a larger picture, a picture which explains the relation between action, thinking, perception and consciousness. It seems to me that these four things are connected with each other in a feedback loop.

I am leaving "habits" and "character" out of the discussion, because they are mere niceties which can be explained on the basis of what I'm about to say.*

Some preliminary explanations:

By actions, I mean physical processes which we execute, voluntarily or involuntarily and consciously or subconsciously.

By thinking, I mean the mental processes by which we analyse what we perceive, form opinions, make decisions, etc. These too can be voluntary or involuntary and conscious or subconscious.

By perception, I mean the mental process by which our minds receive information from the various senses. This information is often filtered. Further, information from the various senses is integrated to form one percept. To put it very simply, perception means how we see things.

By consciousness, I mean the way in which our mind is "plugged in" or the state of our mind. The might mind be "plugged in" in any way, but if it is not plugged in, nothing whatsoever would work. (I am not using this the word "consciousness" in the sense of "conscious and unconscious". To me, as long as a person is alive, he has a consciousness, because his mind is "plugged in" in some way or another.)

When I say "subconscious process", I mean a process that we are not consciously aware of. Even a "subconscious process" can only occur if there is consciousness, i.e, the mind is "plugged in".

Now, Emerson begins by telling us to watch our thoughts. However, our thoughts don't come from nowhere. The data which they analyse in order to form opinions (becoming words, in Emerson's terms) and make decisions (becoming deeds, if carried forward to the action stage) comes from perception. If we perceived differently, we would think differently.

This is where a problem arises: how can one change his own process of perception ? If one cannot see something, or one can see it only in a particular way, how can one change that ? Learning to see things can only help in specific cases. For example, if I can't see a tiger hidden behind a bush, I might see it when someone points it out to me. But that might not allow me to see another tiger hidden behind another bush ! Perhaps, after being shown several tigers behind several bushes, I might even learn how to spot tigers behind bushes. But that would not affect my inability to spot, say, a particular rythme in a Wallace Stevens poem. So basically, perception cannot be taught.

Further, the process of perception is value neutral because it is completely or atleast substantially subconscious. Thus, there is no "correct" way to perceive. Yet, perception leads to thought which leads to action. And there is definitely a "correct" way to act, atleast for the sake of achieving a particular object.

Then I realised that there is a way to change how we perceive. There is one and only one way: a change in consciousness. If the way in which one's mind is "plugged in" is changed, he would perceive very differently. For example, think about how any drug, be it coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol, or LSD (and God knows what else) changes the state of our mind. Alcohol typically puts us in a state of mind in which we underestimate risks. Coffee and tea, it seems to me, make us more attentive and thereby, we perceive several finer points which otherwise evade us. Though I can't speak for LSD, Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception, has superbly demonstrated how everything seems so different on mescaline.

So, how does one effect a change in consciousness ? Obviously, taking drugs is one way. Meditation, I am told, does the same thing in a healthier way. Perhaps exposing oneself to some strong sensation might do the same thing. (Exposure to bright light, excrutiating pain, etc.) What is common to all these things is that they are actions which change our environment, internal or external. I strongly believe, therefore, that actions which change our environment, internal or external, can bring about a change in our consciousness.

Actually, even a change in our environment which is independent of our actions, can change our consciousness. But I am more concerned with voluntary changes.

So we have the following loop:

The loop moves only in one direction. This is model is slightly incomplete, because I've not properly dealt with how thought and actions can be laterally affected by other thoughts and actions. The same applies to consciousness and perception, though I have briefly talked about how perception can be modified laterally.

The moral of this story, like the moral of that earlier post, is this: The easiest way to change yourself is by doing something, not "thinking differently."

I personally believe that certain types of consciousness are preferable. In other words, one can compare and objectively evaluate states of mind. For example, a state of mind which is energetic would obviously be preferable to a mind which is always exhausted. And there are specific things that one can do to have a desirable type of consciousness which is sustainable. Tobacco might make somebody feel like working, but it has its flipside. That is hardly the case with Yoga.

Sometime later, I'll add a list of such actions to this post. Phew !

*I think that "character" is akin to what I call "consciousness" in this post. Habit, however, is a more complicated thing.