This article is a follow-up to What is Mind, exploring the consequences.

We know from physics that the world around us does not look the way we perceive it. Our senses pick up a narrow range of certain spectrum only. We don’t see vibrating fields but solid objects. We hear movements in the air as sound. We feel surface tension as solidity.

Our senses take in narrow bands of the available spectrum of information. Yet even within those ranges, our senses take in vastly more information than we “notice.” The mind compares everything to past experiences, filtering heavily for hazard, relevance, and interest. We screen everything else out before the information reaches the conscious mind.

We’re also designed for one-at-a-time experiences, what Buckminster Fuller called special case. We can experience a very large and inclusive thing but can only notice one detail at a time. For example, we can’t have distinct conversations with multiple people simultaneously (some beings can) nor look at every star in the sky at the same time. We can look at an area of the sky or a star but not both at once.

The mind uses a model of the world and processes sensory input into that context. We have a shared reality baseline. This means we share a similar vision of the world with those around us. However we each interpret that experience distinctly and live as if in our own world. We only notice the distinctions when comparing our perceptions with others.

If we spend time in another culture, we discover ways in which their shared reality differs.

I suspect we inherit the world-model from our parents in a similar way to how we model them energetically. We evolve our model through life experiences and choices. But it’s very difficult to see outside the box we live in. How do we process an experience that changes our sense of reality?

Essentially, our perceived world is a mental appearance that allows us to function in the world and interact with others. But the assumption that this is reality is an error. An error that leads to untold suffering.

To be clear, I’m not saying the world is an illusion, although that point can be argued. Only that a mind-based perspective is very limited. We’re capable of so much more.

To understand this, let’s look at what mind is. Mind is lively consciousness that has become dense enough to create a stable field. Because consciousness is nested, mind also is. There is what I call a cosmic mind, a universal mind, then progressively more localized layers. The group consciousness of a community has what others have called group-think or group mind.

Our local mind is a field that surrounds our whole body. Yet we experience mind as being “in the head” because of the dominance of our senses there – 4 of the 5 sense organs are in the head.

More accurately, our body is an expression of more subtle layers, including the mind. We don’t experience the mind itself until we can look back on it from a higher level. What we usually experience is the content in the mind. We notice thoughts, ideas, and impressions as they move through the mind.

One of the most important impressions in the mind is the self-sense. At an early age, the intellect learns to distinguish self from mother. We develop a mental concept of self, an I-sense. Then we attach many related concepts to that like I am small, I am good at math, I like figs, and on and on.