State Dependency- the mind unlocked

Somehow I don't remember anything of my dream. I remember having one, maybe being a little happy about it but I can't be sure; then I lost it as soon as I woke up. In trying to process the dream however, an idea has been seeping into my mind, one that has been building and coalescing and stitching together for some time.

I am familiar with the idea of state dependency from psychology classes, where the state that you learn something is the optimal state to make use of what you've learned. Examples given were if you went to class high, you are likely best off taking the test high; if you do a task consistently in the morning you might have less success doing it in the evening, etc. The concept focuses mainly on major brain chemistry shifts, but it got me thinking about the man who lost 90% of his brain.

I read a story, which seemed true anyway, about a man who lost 90% of his brain. This happened slowly, over many years, but doctors only saw it after the fact, and could not understand how the man was alive. Not only was he alive though, he was a normally functioning man with a job and family. This got me thinking about how the brain is excellent at rewiring itself under pressure. There are many examples of people recovering from brain injuries or strokes, where the brain establishes pathways around the damaged area. It seems as though if the brain survives an instance of damage, it will begin working to recover the functionality it had that it has lost. This morning I am wondering about the limit that this can be taken to; the example of this man indicates the limit is significantly beyond what we generally believe it to be, and it seems that the factors to exceeding the commonly accepted limit were that the loss of brain matter happened slowly, but measurably, over years; for this reason the brain knew to make adjustments over time to compensate, and had effectively maximum capacity to do so at any given point in time because a small fraction of the brain was becoming unusable in any given day. By contrast, if 10% of the brain were injured at once then the remaining brain would only have 90% physical capacity to fix itself at that time, which may be significantly less in terms of processing capacity.

I have said before that it feels like this man must have relegated many tasks to muscle memory in order to remain viable. I am now thinking though that muscle memory would still need to be held at least in part in the brain, to know when to initiate it, and so this idea of state dependency might shed more light on how this was done, and how the brain operates. I have heard it said that the brain is usually only about 5%-10% active at any given time, doing a kind of wave over the course of the day. For most I am guessing this wave is fairly predictable, like a train on a track, to leverage the function of routine. In this way the brain can dedicate less processing power to broad steering, and so more processing power would be available for other things. The assumption drawn by the fact that each part of the brain is used in a given day is that it is necessary for this wave to exist in a physical space, rather than a smaller space utilizing a higher percentage at all times, but what if that is not the case?

It seems like the man missing most of his brain would be proof that the wave need not occur in physical space. While there was no mention of how his brain waves or percentage of use of his brain had been specifically altered, these things must have been altered in some way when compared a typical brain. This may have come in the form of a larger percentage of the matter remaining being used at one time, a smaller amount of overall brain matter being used at once when compared to an average brain, a rapidity of the speed of the wave/processing, or some combination of these and other factors. Since the processing has become materially different from a physical perspective but remains consistent at a minimum in the most fundamental of ways from a processing perspective, in the sense of survival/viability, it seems that there is significant flexibility in the way the brain can operate internally, while externally seeming to remain consistent.

I believe state dependency holds a major key to how this is done. As mentioned, the function of developing a routine seems to reduce the processing required to accomplish certain tasks. This seems to be possible not only on a large scale, but on smaller scales as well. Personally I have found that I can store complex functions at work, consisting of several minutes of an activity involving a precise combination of clicks and keystrokes, including many steps that differ each time the process is complete, without really needing to "think" about what I am doing, and without significant risk of error while in this largely mindless state. In this way it is as though I have become "state dependent," based on the input perceived for the task, with a kind of predictable cascade of states forming during the task, to allow for its completion despite needing some new inputs each time. While state dependency is often thought of as something much more significant or mind altering, I believe that with a focus on this process of establishing these patterns, it is possible to assign any manner of perceptible input as a "state" which can then initiate a pattern in the brain to accomplish a task. These tasks do truly become dependent though, as I have done this with previous jobs before, and soon after leaving those positions I could not recall how to handle even general tasks that I had processed with speed, accuracy, and effectiveness only months prior. I have also noticed that some changes that might otherwise seem minor (new keyboard, new website interface, etc) tend to throw this process off more than it should, and require tweaks to this cascade in order to function at optimum capacity again.

I have heard as well that the brain does not "forget" anything, but rather the pathways to the information do not get used. This is interesting because even in cases of brain damage that can be recovered from, the fact that processes can be relearned in practice, the ability for the brain to reroute in order to recover functionality, indicates that the functions of at least knowledge of the functions were not actually stored in that location, in the sense of how we might understand location. This is similar to saying that if you lose your cell phone, one that was given to you at birth, you would not expect to be able to make a new cell phone, especially since presumably you only had the one and you have no specific knowledge of how to make them or spare materials to make them with, but making a new cell phone is what the brain does in these cases. The blueprints for the functions would have to be held "elsewhere" and my suspicion is that this "elsewhere" is not strictly a location in our reality, but rather held and perhaps redundantly held in locations outside of our "space." The brain operates in many "dimensions" at once, creating structures that can be seen as up to 11 dimensions in size. While it would make sense that if 100% of the 3 dimensional brain were gone, that 100% of the 11 dimensional structures would be gone at that point in time in the brain, the question is, if any amount of the physical brain remains, how much of that network of structures would remain? Comparatively an analogy for the size difference we're taking about here for the brain being gone compared to the capacity of an 11 dimensional structure might be like be like taking a grain of sand off a beach, in the scope of all beaches in the universe. While this feels comparable from a storage perspective, from a processing perspective it feels more like removing the grain of sand removes all sand from reality, which is an interesting combination of perspectives, in its disparity.

It is somewhat difficult to picture a storage capacity that encompasses more dimensions than the space that is used, but I feel like a book would be a good analogy for how this might work. In this 3 dimension space, information is stored, in an encoded fashion, in effectively two dimensions. While the pages are technically in 3 dimensions as well, the information could be represented in 2 dimensions if the method of making truly 2D pages existed, so the fact that 3 dimensional objects are used for pages instead seems to be a limitation to the process of paper making. I am unsure if this limitation exists in translating to the analogy of the brain or not, or if it exists exclusively from dimension 3 to dimension 4 due to physical processing restrictions but then ceases to be an issue after that. Without this limitation, the amount of "pages" within a "book" would have no limit. So in the book analogy one would simply need to know where in the book to turn in order to gain the information needed, and then a lot of information could be gained in a single page. I imagine that in the same way the brain can operate by perhaps opening "the book of the workday" and then you would simply flip through the pages to provide your body with the instructions needed to perform tasks based on the inputs received. Now if this reader could become effectively automated as well, like a speed reader going through a "choose your own adventure" book, rapidly flipping to each page as required, such tasks could be almost entirely automated using very little space and processing power, in this case a single +1 dimensional "book" for all related +0 dimensional "pages" or tasks.

Continuing this analogy, it is possible for books to contain multiple layers of information in the same pages of text. I have come to understand that the Bible, in Hebrew, does this by using a number code embedded within the language. In this way there is the regular surface language that is encoded, and one or more encrypted messages on each "page." Returning to the brain, this could be seen as another dimension of storage, for one who knows the encryption, or it may not even take up an additional level, as long as the encryption key has been stored. Already, using only 2, possibly 3 different levels of dimensions, we see that a single book can posses a plethora of storage, seemingly more than what would be needed to survive and thrive in this place. While this does not make it much easier to comprehend the possibilities associated with the storage capacity available within the brain, it does make the path to those storage levels easier to comprehend.

Isaiah 42 begins

Isaiah 42:1

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
    and he will bring justice to the nations."

While I feel like this whole chapter in Isaiah relates directly to this concept I am laying out, and includes the only reference in the Bible that I am presently familiar with where God self compares to a woman in childbirth (Isaiah 42:14), the specific passage I want to highlight is Isaiah 42:16.

"I will lead the blind by ways they have not known,
    along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;"

In this analogy with the brain this feels like a promise that once this image of the process can be retained, the library and all libraries will become available. In this case the "library" would be like the first +1 or possibly +2 dimension in the brain's ability to process, and connection would be found to other libraries as well, unlocking +3. While the amount of information even at this level is presently unfathomable, the promise seems to be that the overall processing capacity need not be fathomed in its entirety, as long as the process of accessing it is retained in some way. In this analogy the process that would need to be understood is that you are walking into libraries, using the reference systems available, finding a book, and reading the instructions for the scenario at hand. This would translate into operating in a knowledgeable way in effectively any scenario. God is essentially using this timeframe to establish a mental framework that can be viewed consciously from our perspective, a communication method between conscious and subconscious, such that the one traveling and reading can do so in all places and not end up lost or overwhelmed as reality shifts around them, or down "unfamiliar paths." I imagine that once this process is encoded, everything is in place to proceed beyond this first level.

I have learned to trust this process in myself, accepting that I need not keep any particular full idea in my head, but that by taking the time to structure an idea (specifically by writing it down, such as here and now for this one) my subconscious brain is capable of codifying the idea. I feel like these codified structures end up being a portion of one's treasures in heaven, as such methodologies feel key to traversing such a space without losing your way, and once forged can be easily donned, like clothing or armor and etc, to actively gain their use. This all ties in to the ideas I've presented in this blog of reality crafting and fighting dragons, just utilizing a more intentional approach than the typical method of tasking the subconscious with gathering materials, compiling them into items, only loosely choosing the dragons that one faces consciously, and keeping an eye out for things. Even in this very basic understanding of the process it feels as though one can assist more directly in such tasks or chores, in a way not done before, and perhaps in just enough of a way to allow for the superconductor of how the mind is supposed to operate to form.

It seems reasonable that if a man can survive with 10% of his brain, then the current normal function of the brain being 10% used at any given time, but 100% used over the course of a day, is not the ultimately intended function of the brain. It feels like we are in a classroom at this point, with training wheels on, ones specifically designed to reveal their existence and purpose before the end of this timeline. I can imagine a man with 10% of his brain utilizing 100% of what remains at all times to accomplish the same tasks as before, and not being worse off for it. Using the library analogy, if the remaining books are properly encoded and encrypted, and state dependency/muscle memory are used for as many things as possible, it seems like the remaining structure could be used to process all the information that was processed before, without needing to wander within the physical field of the brain. Now other methods could be used to allow for the same effective physical space to still allow for each area of the brain to have a rest period, which may be required or preferable, such as reducing the load of what was stored (which seems like it did happen to a degree in his case). Also, increasing the rate of processing might be possible as well, allowing for space to be freed up by utilizing the remaining space X% more per moment; I am unsure if this technique is possible though, as the rate at which information travels may already be at the physical limit. It may also be possible to use processors that have additional connections, something that seems to have already occurred at least once in our genetic code. I read at one time that there are switches in our brain with multiple pathways, and it seems that in humans these cells have more switches than the same cells in animals, which has given us a huge advantage in processing information. Assuming this is true, if these cells  were edited to possess more switches again then less space could be used to process the same amount of information as well. 

Regardless of how these things might be done when at capacity though, the fact remains for most that our current brains are not utilized at capacity. This suggests that, without any physical alteration, a switch could be flipped such that the processing within the brain increases unfathomably in terms of subconscious structures while the physical change would be ~10 times. Having personally tried to walk this path of increased mental processing power at times it is clear why this has not happened already- the realm we are in is quite frustrating when operating at higher processing levels, but unable to make changes. It is almost like these walls built externally (society at large, for one) are primarily there to make sure that one does not inadvertently or falsely undergo these changes, part of the training wheel structure, as it were. That being said, it feels like these walls were meant to be very solid along the lines that we operate in right now, but paper thin once this switch is actually flipped. This is to say that once one is ready, the change itself changes one's interaction with the physical realm they are in so completely that barriers seemingly insurmountable before are as if they do not exist after. These barriers would not be limited to social structure and other similar constructs that are commonly considered "conceptual" either, except in the sense that even our understanding of science, since we do not understand everything but do understand that there are many pockets within reality that likely contain vast amounts of tangible insights that we do not presently know, is a concept or construct along these lines as well. From this perspective, the gifts of The Holy Spirit might be translated rather simply into a partner to walk along with in these libraries and beyond. When information is needed, or perhaps simply sought by the right person with the right heart (as the partner knows how to put books back in their place and that the one seeking is not going to burn anything down), then you are guided to where that information is stored and you are capable of reading and using it in full. It is fascinating to me that all of this is already built into us, in the wilderness of our brains, unused at any given moment, just waiting to be unlocked and explored.

So by conceiving of limitation beyond what has actually been imposed upon me, I have conceived of potential that has been intended. In love, I still wait patiently to see how this will manifest, not insisting, but eagerly expecting, the moment this switch is flipped.