Today I started a book called The Social Animal, and it seemed interesting enough. I'm not one to read a lot of science-based literature because, as I have mentioned before, I am not a science person. David Brooks, however, describes a prosperous couple who are perfectly normal and fit perfectly into the category of perfectly average human beings. This couple achieves success and happiness in life, and the author sets out to show us how and why their brains worked to lead them to success.
In the preface to this story, I learned the differences between our unconscious and conscious minds, and this was scientific information that I am pleased to say pointed directly to God (an assurance I also saw in God's Not Dead).
The way Brooks, as well as many of the scientists and philosophers which he quoted, described it is that our conscious mind is what drives our desires and greeds. It is what emphasizes the need for reason and analysis, fortune and status. The unconscious mind, on the other hand, is what holds our passions and desire for a connection with others.
Humans have the ability to take in roughly 11 million pieces of information every moment, and we are only able to process about 40 of them. We can almost assume that the conscious mind we listen to every day is virtually nonexistent, for our unconscious mind does all the work. And we don't even hear it most of the time.
Brooks describes our unconscious as the part of us that takes over when we lose all self-consciousness as we "get lost in a challenge, a cause, the love of another or the love of God" (see! He even mentions the existence of the Supreme Being!).
What I see in this scientific observation of our minds as a true connection to the Bible in particular is how focused the unconscious is on fellowship. Brooks tells us that as scientists have looked deeper into the unconscious mind, the separations between individual people get fuzzier and fuzzier. As we make connections with more people and become closer to particular ones, we inadvertently allow parts of them to become parts of us. In conclusion he says, "We become who we are in conjunction with other people becoming who they are."
The Bible tells us that faith, hope and love remain, but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13). No scientist I have heard of would ever directly tell us that because our unconscious minds are so interdependent on a connection with other humans, that must be what the Bible means in a love created by the Christian God. They won't admit it because who on earth would believe anything based on ancient Scripture over scientific experiment or readings? But here, there is both. Brooks, as well as a number of other scientists who study human behavior, believe that our unconscious mind is "where spiritual states arise and dance from soul to soul." And that, "if there is a divine creativity, surely it is active in this inner soul sphere, where brain matter produces emotion, where love rewires the neurons."
Those who have worked their way to success and fortune through the use of analytic and reason-based living will beg to differ, but our unconscious mind is the greatest gift we have each been given. It is what allows for the creativity that pushes the worlds forward every day; it is what connects us to other human beings and allows us to fall deeply in love. It is, I now believe, the strongest way we have to connect to God as we know it.
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