Belief: The Programs of Consciousness

Living in the 19th and early 20th centuries, William James was one of the most influential people of his time. A Renaissance man in the modern era, he was very clear regarding his view of the role that consciousness and belief play in our lives, even before he became a psychologist. In his 1904 paper "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?" he states that sometimes what we experience in consciousness is intangible and "figures as a thought."¹ At other time, however, he says that it figures as a "thing," becoming real in our lives. When the latter happens, he suggests that it's our power of belief that creates the actual fact.

While I've defined belief and given examples of how it works, it remains one of the most elusive of our experiences. And for that reason, it may also be one of the most difficult places to make a change. When we really believe something, we have a feeling about it. While we may call this an instinct or gut reaction, the key to change is that our belief registers with us on a deep, perhaps even primal, level. While we don't have to understand belief to experience it, we do have to know how it works if we're to harness its power in our lives.

If we think of belief as the code that programs the universe, and if the little programs in our lives are really miniature examples (fractals) of the bigger ones of the universe, then understanding how a computer program is made should also explain how beliefs are formed. So let's begin by exploring our own as if they were simple programs. When we do, the nebulous idea of belief takes on a shape and form we can work with! We can see precisely how our inner experiences affect the outer world. Perhaps more important, we can also discover what to do more or less of to translate our hearts' desires into the reality of our lives.

While it may sound redundant to say that the purpose of a computer program is to get things done, it's important to state this clearly as we begin to think of belief as a program. If we're going to create a brand-new belief or change an existing one, we must be absolutely certain about what it is that we hope to accomplish. A fuzzy belief will undoubtedly give us a fuzzy result.

Programs can be complex or simple. Some literally contain millions of lines of computer code, and others can be as short as three simple statements. Regardless of their size, however, all programs have the same basic parts, which can be thought of as commands that launch the program (begin), instruct it what to do (work), and tell it that the work is finished (completion).

Before an actual program is written, computer programmers often outline what they hope to accomplish in broad terms. Because it's not the true program itself, this is often called a pseudo program. Just as an outline for a school paper describes the highlights of the content and provides a map for the ideas that will be explored, the pseudo program identifies the key elements that the program will accomplish.

Because our goal is to use what we already know about electronic programs to understand those of consciousness, let's look at thought, feeling, and emotion as equivalent parts of that software.

The Work Command

The work commands tell the program what to do. They give meaning to the information that the begin command had identified, bringing it together in a useful, and meaningful, way. Emotion is the equivalent of the work commands.

From Brain To Mind:
Who's Runnigs Our Belief Factory?

In his groundbreaking book Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett, co director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, says that we can actually think of the brain "as a computer of sorts," and that doing so gives us a powerful metaphor to understand how we use information.¹ Dennett's comparisons give us just what we need to navigate what he calls the "terra incognita," or the unknown land, between what science tells us about our brains and what we experience through them.

The man commonly referred to as the 'father' of the modern computer, mathematician John von Neumann, once calculated that the human brain could store as much as 280 quintillion bits of memory (that's 280 with 18 zeros following it.) Not only can the brain store such an amazing amount of data, it can process it more quickly than an of today's fastest computers.² This is important because it's the way we gather, process, and store the information of life that determines our beliefs and where they come from.

Studies during the 1970's revealed that the memories of our experiences aren't limited to a specific place within the brain. The revolutionary work of neuroscientist Karl Pribram, for example, has shown that brain functions are more global than were once thought. Before Pribram's research, it was believed that there was a one-to-one correspondence between certain kinds of memory, conscious and subconscious, and the places where those memories are stored.

The problem was that the theory didn't pan out in laboratory tests. The experiments showed that animals kept their memories and continued their lives even though the parts of their brains that were believed to be responsible for such functions were removed. In other words, there wasn't a direct link between the memories and a physical place in the brain. It was obvious that the mechanical view of brain and memory wasn't the answer. Something else was happening--something that turned put to be both mysterious and wonderful.

During his research, Pribram noticed a similarity between the way in which the brain stores memories and another kind of information storage developed in the mid-20th century through patterns called holograms. If you were to ask someone to explain a hologram, he or she would probably begin by describing it as a special kind of photograph where the image on a surface suddenly appears three-dimensional when exposed to direct light. The process that creates those images involves a way of using laser light so that the picture becomes distributed over the entire surface of the film. It's this property of "distributedness" that makes the holographic film different from that of a typical camera.

In this way, every part of the surface contains the entire image just as it was originally seen, only on a smaller scale. And this is the definition of a hologram. It's a process that allows every part of "something" to contain the entire something. Nature is holographic and uses this principle to share information and make significant changes--such as healing mutations in DNA--quickly.

So whether we divide the universe into galaxies, humans into atoms, or memories into fragments, the principle is the same: Each piece mirrors the whole, only on a smaller scale. This is both the beauty and the power of the hologram--its information is everywhere and can be measured anywhere.

In the 1940's, scientist Dennis Gabor used complicated equations known as Fourier transforms to create the first holograms--work for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1971. Pribram guessed that if the brain really works like a hologram and distributes information throughout its soft circuits, then it should process information in the same way Fourier's equations do. Knowing that the brain's cells create electrical waves, Pribram was able to test the patterns from brain circuits using the Fourier equations. Sure enough, his theory was correct. The experiments proved that the brain processes information in a way that's equivalent to a hologram.

Pribram clarified his model of the brain through the simple metaphor of holograms working within other holograms. In an interview, he explained, "The holograms within the visual system are . . . patch holograms."³ These are smaller portions of a larger image. "The total image is composed much as it is in an insect eye that has hundreds of little lenses instead of one single big lens . . . You get the total pattern all woven together as a unified piece by the time you experience it."⁴ This radically new way of thinking of ourselves, and the universe, gives nothing less than direct access to every possibility that we could ever wish or pray for, dream of, or imagine.

It all begins with our beliefs and the thoughts that contribute to them. While the beliefs themselves are formed in our hearts . . . the thoughts that they come from originate in one of the two mysterious realms of our brain: the conscious or subconscious mind.