Reorganization - Consciousness

Method of Levels
1

Can someone give me more clarity about the concept of “consciousness”?

Timothy Carey writes “what we think of consciousness occurs in that area of the network where there is the greatest error at any point in time” (Carey, 2018). and Powers writes “awareness is necessary involved in the process of reorganization”

I’m not sure how to formulate my questions without violating maybe some PCT principles, so I will just use the language I would normally use.

question 1:
are following expressions synonyms in PCT world: being conscious of = being aware of = having your attention on = focussing on ?

question 2:
does it mean that there is no reorganization possible without being conscious of the relevant control systems that are reorganized? but then can’t you learn something (e.g. change reference levels) unconsciously, without you being aware that you are learning something, so without consciousness of the control system that is being changed ? (e.g due to a traumatic experience there could be an unconcious change in reference states from “men with a beard are safe to approach” into “I better avoid men with a beard”)

question 3:
Let’s say I decide to do a “body scan” as relaxation exercise in which I focus on every body part, one after another. So I decide to bring my awareness to (= become conscious of /perceive the sensations in that body part ?) of my right hand thumb, index finger, … wrist, forearm, … etc until I arrive at my toes and then try to bring my whole body at once into awareness/consciousness. Does PCT’s definition of consciousness mean there needs to be an error in the body parts’s control systems in order to become aware/conscious of it? if so, please explain

question 4:
could you say that conciousness can be automatically drawn to control system units (e.g when error) AND you can also decide (use willpower) to bring your consciousness to some control units?

I have so many more questions in the pipeline, but I’ll start with these.

a kind request: for people who are so kind to formulate an answer to any of these questions: please do so in as easy language as possible. I find a lot of PCT literature difficult for my simple mind :wink:

Thank you,
Maou

1 Like
2

Hi @Malou

I think they are great questions! I am also quite new to the PCT world. My answer is more likely based on my interpretation / biases but at least we can get this discussion started!

Powers writes “awareness is necessary involved in the process of reorganization”

Question 3:
Does PCT’s definition of consciousness mean there needs to be an error in the body parts’s control systems in order to become aware/conscious of it?

I think we can try using the logic equation to analyse Powers’s writing “awareness (A) is necessary involved in the process of reorganization ( R )”. This equates to “If R, then A”, because the truth of R guarantees the truth of A. Assuming Powers’s writing is true, then, it is impossible to have R without A. Using this logic, awareness can exist independent to reorganisation, but reorganisation is dependent on awareness.

Now, it comes to the difficult question which you raise in question 1: What is awareness?

In PCT, I believe, awareness is defined very loosely. From a mechanical perspective, you can say the system is aware of error as long as it has a sensor to detect it. From a psychological perspective, we usually refer to “pay attention” to or “focus on”. Personally, I think both level of awareness can happen within the same control system. For instance, you are constantly aware of the temperature on a low level of control system but you are not focus on the temperature on a high level because you are reading this paragraph. The temperature only comes to your high level awareness when it is too cold or too hot. In short, my personal take is there can be different level of awareness (I dont have any evidence to support my claim but it kind of makes sense to me).

but then can’t you learn something (e.g. change reference levels) unconsciously, without you being aware that you are learning something, so without consciousness of the control system that is being changed ? (e.g due to a traumatic experience there could be an unconcious change in reference states from “men with a beard are safe to approach” into “I better avoid men with a beard”)

So, maybe, the lower level of control system was aware of the trauma and re-organised from “men with a beard are safe to approach” into “I better avoid men with a beard” but the high level wasn’t aware?

The next difficult question is what exactly is re-organisation (in respond to your question 2)?

In a basic control unit, we know there is a input function, comparator, and an output function while perception is travelling within a control unit. Which part of a basic control unit can re-organisation change? the input function? the comparator? the output function? Or, as you suggest, the reference signal? Is learning a new skill considered as re-organisation? Since a new skill was not in the structure of the control system, could it be “organisation” rather “RE-organisation”? How do we know someone has re-organised?

Question 4:
Could you say that conciousness can be automatically drawn to control system units (e.g when error) AND you can also decide (use willpower) to bring your consciousness to some control units?

If we agree on there could be more than one level of awareness (at least a low level and a high level within a control system for now), consciousness (I assume you mean a high level awareness) may not always verbalise or pay attention to the error. I believe you can decide to bring your consciousness (I refer to a high level awareness) to some control units which the psychotherapy “Method of Level” is built on.

Since I am studying anxiety, biology and PCT, I always think that a lot of abstract words (e.g. anxiety) is a construct of many perceptions. When a person says they are anxious, it can have a cognitive component (e.g. spiders are some hairy and scary) and a biological component (e.g. feeling a high heart rate and hyperventilating). Therefore, I probably have raised more questions than I have answered them. Sorry that if I may have made it more complicated.

I hope someone can provide a more concrete answer than I can give here.

1 Like
3

Mak suggests that someone may be able to provide a more concrete answer than his. I suggest that if someone does, that answer will be drawn more from the responder’s imagination than from anything that follows directly from the principles or experimental data of PCT.

With that caveat, here are my “more concrete answers.”

  1. These expressions are not in the PCT world at all, but you can answer them from your personal experience. Are they identical in your experience? They are not, in mine. I am conscious of a wide field of experience, the computer I am working at, the bookshelves and carpet in my room, the ambiance generally. Having said that, I am more conscious of some aspects of my local environment than of others, much as in my (and I presume your) visual field you have best precision in central vision, with the precision smoothly graded out to your visual periphery.

I feel that I am more aware of things related to what I am at the moment controlling but about which I have potential choices or am uncertain than of things which go on in the reorganized control hierarchy, which are normally non-conscious control. I may or may not attend to these, but “attending to” is for me quite close to “being aware of”. However, when I focus on something, I am not aware of a lot that I ordinarily would notice (another word you could have included). I may be trying mentally to solve a problem, and then I might be aware of nothing in my normal environment except “alarms” such as bright flashes or loud bangs.

  1. The mechanism of reorganization is not understood, at least not in any secure manner. For instance, if perceptual control is done neurally (as not all of it is, since it can be done in silicon, or biochemically) then the modification of synapses and of the local ionic and biochemical environments of nerves must be important to reorganization. These clearly are not aspects of consciousness. So your question is not whether there is or is not reorganization without consciousness, but about how consciousness is involved with reorganization when it is involved. That’s not how your question is posed, and to answer it would require an answer even more speculative and out of my imagination than I think this thread warrants.

  2. Quick answer. Since there is no “PCT definition of consciousness” the answer is “No”. But there is a further answer. Since according to PCT “All intentional behaviour is the control of perception” you might ask what perception(s) you might be controlling to what reference values when you “want to” perceive the sensations in your left big toe. The answer to that is probably not something of which you are conscious, but the question is in the same ballpark as a question “what is over there” that would lead you to aim a telescope, a searchlight, or the focus of your consciousness. I can’t answer your question in connection with myself, let alone for you.

  3. My quick answer “Yes”. But that has nothing to do with any principles of PCT. It has more to do with the idea that if you are aware of problems and dangers that might be fixable or avoidable, you are more likely to survive to produce descendants than it you are not. “Aware” here does not need to mean “be conscious of”, since the same applies to any sufficiently complex life form, whether it be a plant that has the means to defend against some insect attacks, a fish that might sense varying pressure and electric fields that might signal a nearby predator, or whatever. It has to be built deep into our systems, and I believe that we often do the defensive actions and only a few milliseconds later do we become conscious of having acted, then of the reason why we acted. But that’s my imagination speaking again. PCT doesn’t say much about it that I find coherent.

1 Like
4

Hi Malou, and thanks for important questions. I have thought those issues a lot but can now reply only shortly.

  1. There seems to be no coherent definitions for those concepts in PCT so it is impossible to answer. For me they are not synonyms.

  2. No, but rather that consciousness promotes and directs reorganization. This is quite common and practical idea also outside PCT for example in teaching. Reorganization or learning can take place without it but with it it can be more efficient
    and beneficial. That may be part of evolutionary explanation of the phenomenon of consciousness.

  3. I think about this similarly as 2.: An error can direct and intensify consciousness but is not a necessary condition.

  4. Shortly: yes.

I will try to write more about this during the autumn (or perhaps) winter…

Eetu

Lähetetty Samsungin tablet-laitteesta.

-------- Alkuperäinen viesti --------

Lähettäjä: Malou Laureys via IAPCT noreply@discourse.iapct.org

Päivämäärä: 6.8.2020 15.08 (GMT+02:00)

Saaja: Eetu Pikkarainen eetu.pikkarainen@oulu.fi

Aihe: [IAPCT] [Clinical] Reorganization - Consciousness


Malou

August 6
Can someone give me more clarity about the concept of “consciousness”?

Timothy Carey writes “what we think of consciousness occurs in that area of the network where there is the greatest error at any point in time” (Carey, 2018). and Powers writes “awareness is necessary involved in the process
of reorganization”

I’m not sure how to formulate my questions without violating maybe some PCT principles, so I will just use the language I would normally use.

question 1:
are following expressions synonyms in PCT world: being conscious of = being aware of = having your attention on = focussing on ?

question 2:
does it mean that there is no reorganization possible without being conscious of the relevant control systems that are reorganized? but then can’t you learn something (e.g. change reference levels) unconsciously, without you being aware that you are learning
something, so without consciousness of the control system that is being changed ? (e.g due to a traumatic experience there could be an unconcious change in reference states from “men with a beard are safe to approach” into “I better avoid men with a beard”)

question 3:
Let’s say I decide to do a “body scan” as relaxation exercise in which I focus on every body part, one after another. So I decide to bring my awareness to (= become conscious of /perceive the sensations in that body part ?) of my right hand thumb, index finger,
… wrist, forearm, … etc until I arrive at my toes and then try to bring my whole body at once into awareness/consciousness. Does PCT’s definition of consciousness mean there needs to be an error in the body parts’s control systems in order to become aware/conscious
of it? if so, please explain

question 4:
could you say that conciousness can be automatically drawn to control system units (e.g when error) AND you can also decide (use willpower) to bring your consciousness to some control units?

I have so many more questions in the pipeline, but I’ll start with these.

a kind request: for people who are so kind to formulate an answer to any of these questions: please do so in as easy language as possible. I find a lot of PCT literature difficult for my simple mind
:wink:

Thank you,
Maou

1 Like
5

Dear Mak, Martin, Eetu

Thank you for your responses! Even though not everything is cristal clear yet (will it ever be?), it helps to stimulate my thinking process and get some more clarity.

I had my own little reorganisation experience last night, that I want to share here. :slight_smile: After 3 hours of sleep I woke up and I couldn’t go back to sleep again, because my awareness was compulsively drawn to figuring out some PCT concepts. Each time I tried to bring my attention back to my breathing, after a few seconds I found myself back into PCT land. After a while struggling like this, I realised it was difficult to control where my awareness was focused on because there was a big error calling for my awareness: a big gap between my desired current level of understanding of PCT and my current level of understanding of PCT.

So then I was thinking “how can I decrease this error?”. Problem solving (reading all PCT literature over night) was not an option, so I had to elicit some reorganisation by changing my reference level! and how do I change this reference level? by going up one or more in the hierarchy! So I guided myself through a process that went more or less like this: “why” do I want a higher current level of understanding of PCT? to start writing my Master thesis NOW => why is NOW so important? What if I give myself a couple of extra weeks of reading before writing? some minor conflicts with other control systems came up and then I ended up in the system level with “quality of life” and found peace in the decision that I’m adding a couple of weeks just for reading, which dropped the reference level of my desired current understanding of PCT significantly, and brought the error to a minimum, freeing up my awareness to focus back on my breath and calm down and fall back to sleep…

Based on your answers I have more questions coming up, but I’m going to keep them for later, after I’ve read a bit more.

1 Like
6

Hi Malou

This is a lovely post. I like it because you are describing your own consciousness rather than trying to understand the PCT theory of consciousness, since there is really no PCT theory of consciousness, or at least not one that has been tested at all. To the extent that there is a PCT theory of consciousness it is described in a nice paper by Powers, which is available here, in case you haven’t read it:

At the end of this paper Powers does suggest some ways to test this theory of consciousness, such as it is. I think these suggested tests might give you a more concrete idea of what a theory of consciousness might look like from a PCT perspective. They work for me, anyway. But until we have some “objective” data to look at I think the best we can do in terms of figuring out how consciousness fits into a model of the behavior (including the mental behavior) of living systems is something like what you have done in your post: describe your own subjective experience with consciousness.

But I think the basic PCT model of organisms as input control systems does give us some guidance about how to do our subjective explorations of our own consciousness. Here’s a little list:

  1. Consciousness and purposeful behavior (control) are two different things. They are often conflated; things done on purpose often thought of as being done consciously. But PCT shows that purpose is control of perception and that perceptions can be (and are) controlled without conscious awareness. What this means to me is that you have to have a good understanding of the nature of purposeful behavior as control before you can have much hope of understanding how consciousness fits into our understanding of the nature of living control systems.

  2. The hierarchical control model suggests (and was suggested by the fact) that we can become conscious (aware) of the world from different perceptual “points of view”. So our awareness is mobile (though we have no idea what moves it) so that we can move our consciousness around, so to speak, in order to experience the world in terms of different types of perceptual variables. According to the current PCT hypothesis we can become aware of the world in terms of intensities, sensations, configurations, transitions…system concepts. An interesting exercise is to see if you can become aware of your own experience form these different points of view.

  3. Another side of consciousness is supposedly something called “volition”; the ability to arbitrarily control a particular perceptions for no other reason than that you want to do it.Is volition a real capability of consciousness or is there always a high order reason for doing whatever we do – a higher order reason such as wanting to show that you are “free” to choose what you want to do (which would mean that you were not really free to do it because that was what you had ti do to show that you were free;-).

  4. Consciousness is often thought of as being self-talk. But in the PCT model of consciousness, such as it is, consciousness has no ability to talk or think, for that matter. What is your experience of the relationship between consciousness and self-talk.

I think there should be some serious research done on consciousness in order to test and develop a PCT model of consciousness. This seems like it should be something that people interested in clinical applications of PCT should be looking at very closely since consciousness (whatever that is) seems to be an essential component of all psychotherapies.

Best

Rick

1 Like
7

Dear Rick,

Thank you for your post!

If you talk about “conscious awareness” , does it mean there is also something like “unconscious awareness”? And does this mean that consciousness and awareness are not the same, according to you definitions?

If so, this would raise other questions in me: Mak talked about different levels of awareness, assuming that consciousness = high level of awareness. Martin talked about being more conscious or being less conscious of certain aspects of your environment (so different levels of consciousness). How can I make sense of different levels of awareness combined with different levels of consciousness, if I also assume that awareness and consciousness are not the same? Can I also perceive something with a high level of consciousness and low level of awareness?

I think consciousness and awareness are not exactly the same, but if that’s the case, I need some help to formulate clear definitions of both and how they relate.

In " a systems’s approach to consciousness", Bill says “somewhere in that hierarchy, we must eventually find all that is experiencable and that includes …”. Then he mentions the levels of perception until system concepts and then continues “In short, we must sooner or later come across every object of experience.” If I understand correctly Bill was also suggesting in other writings the possible existence of still higher levels of perception.

There is a level of perception or experience that I and my clients sometimes experience and that is the experience of “oneness”. This kind of experience usually comes after certain specific meditation practices or after a strong change/shift in therapy (most often when changing a reference level concerning a negative concept of self/other/the world by healing traumatic experiences on which these reference levels were based). This experience of “oneness” is characterised by a sense of self dissolving in the environment. Could “oneness” be a potential candidate for a level of perception higher than system concepts? and could it be that this level is only developed in adulthood, and only under certain circumstances? e.g when you change your negative concepts of self, other or the world that you acquired based on difficult life experiences into more “healthy” system concepts that serve you, others and the world? I’m very curious what you, Rick, and others from the PCT community are thinking of this!

I’m not sure what your definition is of “self-talk”. I think I can have self-talk about all levels of my experience and that this self-talk can be conscious or unconscious. For example I can suddenly “catch myself” (= become conscious) of self-talk that I was previously doing automatically without being conscious of it.

I have more questions about reorganisation and memory coming up, but will write a different post about that.

Warmly
Malou

8

Hi Malou

RM: purpose is control of perception and that perceptions can be (and are) controlled without conscious awareness.

ML: If you talk about “conscious awareness” , does it mean there is also something like “unconscious awareness”?

RM: No, I wasn’t being that clever;-) Consciousness is a difficult thing to talk about; I understand what it is because I have it (I think;-) but when I start talking about it I’m not sure I know what I’m talking about. Because when I start thinking more deeply about it I wonder how it is that I can be conscious of what consciousness is. I would describe consciousness as awareness of what I am experiencing (which I think of as my perceptual experience) but how can I be aware of my own awareness; what’s being aware of that. So then I think maybe what I am aware of as consciousness is not consciousness (awareness) but rather a perceptual experience that I think of as consciousness; and it['s the awareness of that perception (or consciousness) that is consciousness.

RM: As you can see, I find thinking about consciousness to be rather baffling (and the source, long ago, of a rather bad acid trip) which is why I stick to just trying to understand purposeful behavior (controlling) and leave the consciousness stuff to real smart people, like Tim Carey, my co-author on the book Controlling people: The Paradoxical nature of human nature. What we discuss in that book is about as far as I’m able to go into the world of paradox and recursion.

ML: If so, this would raise other questions in me: Mak talked about different levels of awareness, assuming that consciousness = high level of awareness. Martin talked about being more conscious or being less conscious of certain aspects of your environment (so different levels of consciousness). How can I make sense of different levels of awareness combined with different levels of consciousness, if I also assume that awareness and consciousness are not the same? Can I also perceive something with a high level of consciousness and low level of awareness?

RM: Luckily, since I didn’t mean to imply that there can be conscious and unconscious awareness you don’t have to answer those questions for yourself. For me consciousness = awareness. Bill thought consciousness = awareness + volition. I prefer my idea since, from my own experience, when I try to arbitrarily will some behavior (like lifting a finger, which Bill calls an example of volition) I can always detect a higher level goal that is being achieved by doing that.

RM: I think the idea that there are different levels (degrees) of awareness is interesting. I guess something like that occurs when I wake from sleep. And what’s going on with those dreams that come during sleep. Sometimes I am aware (conscious) of being in them and sometimes not.

ML: I think consciousness and awareness are not exactly the same, but if that’s the case, I need some help to formulate clear definitions of both and how they relate.

RM: Why do you think consciousness and awareness are different? What is different about them? I think you have to be able to describe this before you can get to a good definition. And ultimately what we need, I think, is not just a good definition but a good model of consciousness and/or awareness. Definitions are a good start but I find that I don’t really feel like I understand something until I can see how it might work and am able to test that idea in an experiment.

RM: The hierarchical control model suggests (and was suggested by the fact) that we can become conscious (aware) of the world from different perceptual “points of view”.

ML: In " a systems’s approach to consciousness", Bill says “somewhere in that hierarchy, we must eventually find all that is experiencable and that includes …”. Then he mentions the levels of perception until system concepts and then continues “In short, we must sooner or later come across every object of experience.” If I understand correctly Bill was also suggesting in other writings the possible existence of still higher levels of perception.

RM: Yes, he certainly allowed for that possibility.

ML: There is a level of perception or experience that I and my clients sometimes experience and that is the experience of “oneness”. This kind of experience usually comes after certain specific meditation practices or after a strong change/shift in therapy (most often when changing a reference level concerning a negative concept of self/other/the world by healing traumatic experiences on which these reference levels were based). This experience of “oneness” is characterised by a sense of self dissolving in the environment. Could “oneness” be a potential candidate for a level of perception higher than system concepts? and could it be that this level is only developed in adulthood, and only under certain circumstances? e.g when you change your negative concepts of self, other or the world that you acquired based on difficult life experiences into more “healthy” system concepts that serve you, others and the world? I’m very curious what you, Rick, and others from the PCT community are thinking of this!

RM: “Oneness” is a pretty vague description of a perceptual variable. It could refer to perceptual experiences I’ve had. But it’s pretty hard to describe any perceptual variables with words so I’ll just assume that I know what you are talking about. And I would say my experience that I would call “oneness” is more like an emotion that a perceptual aspect of the environment (like other high level perceptions). It could be what you say. But this is the stuff for PCT research. If we could think of ways to test for control of these presumed higher level perceptual variables we could make this much more tangible, so that even I might be able to understand it;-)

RM: As for developing the ability to control such higher level perceptual variables only as an adult, there is certainly evidence for the development of the ability to control more and more complex perceptions as one matures. So, yes, if “oneness” is, indeed, a higher level controlled variable, it probably doesn’t develop until one’s late teens (at least, that’s when I started trying to control for it; but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now;-)

RM: What is your experience of the relationship between consciousness and self-talk.

ML: I’m not sure what your definition is of “self-talk”. I think I can have self-talk about all levels of my experience and that this self-talk can be conscious or unconscious.
For example I can suddenly “catch myself” (= become conscious) of self-talk that I was previously doing automatically without being conscious of it.

RM: Yes, that’s the self-talk I was talking about, though I’ve never had the experience of doing self-talk unconsciously. But what I was wondering was whether the self-talk is what you think of as being conscious. I probably used to think of it that way; my self-monologues seemed like my consciousness talking about my behaving self as its object. But I now think of consciousness that exists with or without self-talk. I think that’s actually the goal of certain religious practices; the goal is to get to a state where there is no “monkey chatter”; just pure consciousness; just the silent awareness of experience. I think that’s what is meant by “oneness” or nirvana" or whatever. Bill said it was what happened with some people when he did MOL with them and they “hit the ceiling”, so to speak; there was no higher level from which to experience the world; no higher point of view. So you just “are”. I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten up there myself but I’m happy down here with my Bach and a glass of sparkling water;-)

ML: I have more questions about reorganisation and memory coming up, but will write a different post about that.

RM: Just don’t become a questionable person;-)

Best

Rick

2 Likes
9

Dear Rick,

Thank you for sharing what Bill said, because that’s exactly what I meant in my post when I was talking about experiences of “oneness” of my clients and of myself in therapy, that are accompanying big shifts. To me the experience of “just being”, “oneness”, “pure consciousness”, … (I believe there are different shades) doesn’t feel at all like an emotion as you described earlier, but more as a different level of experience, and that’s why I suggested it could maybe be a level higher than system concept.

and what do I need to do to become a questionable person?:wink:

Warmly
Malou

1 Like
10

RM: Great. I agree. I was thinking of something else that was emotional. I don’t know if I ever got the “oneness” experience. Probably reflects my spiritual shortcomings;-)

ML: and what do I need to do to become a questionable person?:wink:

RM: I would take some evil deed. But please don’t try; I like you as the questioning person that you are! :wink:

Best

Rick

1 Like
11

Hi Malou and others involved in the discussion,

Interesting questions that lay bare what we don’t know yet or haven’t really figured out that well from a PCT standpoint.

I’d like to add a few of my thoughts. I don’t know if and how they answer your questions, but I imagine your reorganisation of these topics is continuing anyway, and I’ll just add my perceptions to the pile. Please note that I don’t take the levels specifically as dogma, there may be more, they may have other organizations (I know Rick is afraid of dogma in the absence of evidence), but the framework laid out by Bill Powers is way to valuable not to use in our thinking (even though evidence in a strict sense is lacking).

The first question was about distinctions between consciousness, awareness, focus and those concepts.

My idea is that this process takes different forms at different levels of the hierarchy. That’s why we have many names. But since these names are not originated in PCT and the hierarchy of perceptions is not a common framework (not even in PCT), I doubt that much has been written about it yet.

Our use of consciousness (in Dutch “Zelfbewustzijn”) is tied to our perception of ‘self’, and our use of higher level perceptions (many of which verbal). I’d say consciousness refers to processes involving the Programs (L9) and Principles (L10) levels.

Going lower, we have sequential perceptions (Sequences, level 8), Categories (Level 7), Relationships (level 6). It’s hard to apply ‘consciousness’ to these levels, it’s more a matter of awareness (Dutch: gewaarzijn). There is no ‘I’ in these levels because this level of control is not necessary. For example: controlling a sequence level perception is simply done by following the track you’re on. “You” don’t have to make any decisions.

Even lower level perceptions are more difficult to isolate in awareness, I’d say sometimes these perceptions come into attention, such as events (level 5), transitions (level 4). It’s on these levels that the perception of time appears.

The lowest levels don’t have a perception of time so our concept of awareness or consciousness (which includes some sense of process - meaning going from one form to another) is even more difficult. For example level 3 configurations, level 2 sensations, level 1 intensities. These experiences take a well trained meditator or facilitation by psychedelics to be experienced in isolation, I guess.

And then back again to the highest levels. Our current highest level is that of system concepts (L11). I interpret that level as our way to control for the unity of our experience. For example, I control for the system concept of PCT, and when I encounter a statement, I can ‘sense’ that it fits my system concept of PCT or not. I can regard the statement as true or untrue. I also hold many other system concepts, for example about my self (this is like me, or not like me), about the truth of perceptual experiences (I haven’t seen angels, but I saw one, I’d have a conflict in my system concept of what’s possible in this world).

You also offer some thoughts about how to interpret the experience of ‘oneness’ such as in therapy. An important aspect of the hierarchical organization of perceptions that the step from one level to a level up, is always a many-to-one step. Such that a set of categories make up a sequence, a set of sequences form programs, a set of programs is a principle. The set is always more (at least different) from the part.
This means to me that every level-up gain of control could feel like a unifying experience. If I can’t make a choice in what to do (a Program-level conflict) and I have a sudden insight into what’s important, and this means that the choice doesn’t actually matter that much, it’s a unifying experience between level 9 and 10.
Of course the most intense experiences are those in which our sense of self dissolves in the greater sense of everything. That would be a glimpse of a level 12 experience, where the truth of me as a single unity is suddenly one of many truths possible. From reasoning I’d say that level 12 involves a way to combine conflicting system concepts under one unifying perception. I think that borders on religious experiences although I think mediation practice and Eastern Philosophy are an easier connection.

Those are my thoughts on consciousness and awareness in the levels.

Next question is how to connect the dots between awareness and reorganization.
Somehow, awareness always involves error. Please note that error is not a signal that something is ‘wrong’. It’s a signal of difference between reference and perception, and could also mean suprise, new, unexpectedness, difference. Also, error is never stable because it is part of the loop that is constantly changing. Resolving error in one system involves creating error in another system. I have trouble thinking of ways to be aware without error.

I become aware of something in my environment, if something changes. I become aware if something is missing. I can pick up my keys from the hook in the halway unaware, but become aware only when they are missing. That’s error.

Reorganization as I understand it now, happens when control systems can’t resolve their error in their own system (on their own level). Higher level changes are needed. So when error within a system exceeds a certain level (a reference within the reorganization system that is orthogonally connected to all control systems) connect up-level control systems randomly change their output until the error is reduced to acceptable values.

Following this, and my example with the keys: my normal “keys on the hook” control system (sequence level) can’t resolve the error, and I need to test out multiple programs (keys on the table, in the car, in my purse, lost) to find my keys. This is reorganization, and awareness at the same time.

I’m curious to see where all these thoughts take us,

Eva

1 Like
12

Hi Eva, Hi all,

Thank you for your post Eva.

I like your description of “many-to-one” steps in the hierarchical organization of perceptions. I’ve read about it before, but somehow it’s only now that it really sinks in.
It is indeed very compatible with my assumption of a “oneness” level as 12th level of perception, where all system concepts are connected/merged into one whole. From that level of experience: I am me, I am you, I am nature, …all is true at the same time. It is just “I am”.
It might explain the big shifts I see in clients when I work with them on difficult interpersonal experiences: one very powerful exercise (only to be done after doing some preparatory work) is to ask them to “become” the other party and describe and feel the perceptions/experiences in the situation from the other party’s point of view, as if they were them. In other words, the “I am me” and “I am you” becomes very tangible in that exercise and usually gives a lot of emotional release and “aha” moments. It also makes me reflect on the powerful changes that are described in psychedelic research for people receiving psychedelic assisted therapy (and I admit, I have experienced it myself - in a legal setting) : the oneness experience might help to resolve conflicts of system concepts (but usually only after processing deep emotions connected with those conflicting control systems)

I’ll write more about my experience of working with clients dealing with conflicting system concepts in a separate post “reorganization and memory reconsolidation”

Why do you see consciousness or awareness as a process? I think it is more like a state: “being aware of …” (either automatically caused by error, or by will without error involved - see later). E.g. I can decide to bring my awareness to sensations in my left thumb and for as long as I want be conscious or aware of that perception.

How so? Can’t I be aware of a perception (e.g sensations in my left thumb) AND experience no difference between what I perceive and what I want to perceive ( error = zero)?

Warmly
Malou