The Hero's Adventure -

Strats wrote: Perhaps I am being a bit dramatic

Yea, please don't be so 'dramatic'. This is a place of learning and 'spirit' remember

Anway... I actually prefer the term subconscious over unconscious, to reflect that relationship between the two. It's not a neuroscience perspective but rather a human experience perspective. They inform each other, its just one is the science of it and the other the living of it. In terms of processing I agree we can have different levels of awareness of the stuff the subconscious operates so the relationship can be viewed in this way. I think it's laid down during early youth and then carried along as a default worldview, but it can be modified. The brain prunes itself a heap during the first 20-25 years, reducing its number of neurons by a huge amount and to me that probably represents the entrenchment of that perspective which serves to delineate the relationship between the conscious and subconscious - and its that boundary layer which we most commonly understand as feelings, intuition etc. IMO
:blink:

Strats wrote: Math and science do indeed make everything work.

I'm no physicist, but I was under the impression that math and science is the physical and theoretical study and measurement of what makes everything work?

In any case, I thought this thread was about the hero's adventure?

What happens when we pick apart details and hang weight on a lack of understanding of how they work together?

Is there no way you can think to make those details come together to form a larger point, Strats?

Strats wrote: Unconsciousness-> (Jonah and the Whale example) has to be controlled by consciousness.

Consciousness-> (Vader Example) Should remain a secondary organ; must not put it self in control.

My sense was not that the unconscious mind should be controlled, but that we should be aware of its working, that we should bring the unconscious into consciousness. This is less an act of control than of awareness. The conscious mind subordinates itself to the larger thing in the story (God, the Tao, the Force, etc.). The hero is not meant to exert his will over the universe, but to answer the call of the universe in a heroic fashion. But he is not meant to wander around at the behest of motivations he does not understand.

This larger thing, the whale belly, and such are metaphors. They are not meant to be parced out as literal forces. THat said, the individual bringing his or her true motivations into clear view is necessary. But, again, the unconscious is not meant to be controlled. Only peered into and understood. From there, the conscious mind can make an actual choice.

It isn't an all or nothing scenario. Nor is it a literal roadmap. I think of it as one seeing the landscape (internal or external) to negotiate it most skillfully.

Hi Strats - its an integral element of the Hero's Journey to initially reject the call, so don't fight that response if that's what you feel. It is key to your unfolding Hero's Adventure.

Strats wrote: Logic and reason should be the foundation of all great thought. Stop this madness.

As you know - often the best way to understand something is to try and definitively prove it to be true (or even better, false). Take it to its logical extreme and see where you end up with it. Play with it - just for fun.

That's exactly what Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead inadvertently did when they wrote Principia Mathematica! Then Kurt Godel came along and showed that pure logic and reason lead to inconsistency. As far as I'm aware this is yet to be successfully refuted:
PM, as it is often abbreviated, was an attempt to describe a set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic from which all mathematical truths could in principle be proven. As such, this ambitious project is of great importance in the history of mathematics and philosophy, being one of the foremost products of the belief that such an undertaking may be achievable. However, in 1931, Gödel's incompleteness theorem proved definitively that PM, and in fact any other attempt, could never achieve this lofty goal; that is, for any set of axioms and inference rules proposed to encapsulate mathematics, either the system must be inconsistent, or there must in fact be some truths of mathematics which could not be deduced from them.

Apologies if you're already intimately familiar with these ideas but if you are I would encourage you to think about the implications of them beyond mathematics.

Given your studies I would recommend trying to approach your journey from the standpoint of other Mathematicians and Physicists. Some reading ideas that might appeal to your sensibilities, and build a bridge to what others have discussed in this thread:
Bertrand Russell's essay "Mysticism and Logic": http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25447/25447-h/25447-h.htm
Then try Ken Wilbur's "Quantum Questions: Mystical writings of the World's great physicists".
For the last part of the 'bridge' try Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter - that ties it together, and may give you some further insights into why poetry, music, art, inconsistency and paradox have as much to say on these matters as science does (albeit in completely different language)

If you do decide to read these don't automatically conflate that with accepting the call to Adventure. Just read them because they're interesting!

Lastly I wouldn't get too concerned about conscious vs unconscious. Nobody seems to understand these in a way that is not paradoxical. As you will know, this is the core of the 'hard problem' and I would argue its an illogical place to look for solutions if you approach your journey with a 'pure science' hat on.