During my college years, I worked on several projects, including selling internet cards. For those unfamiliar, before internet access came through DSL modems for home use or cellular networks on mobile devices, internet access was distributed through cards containing a phone number, a username, and a password. You could connect to the internet using these credentials through a dial-up modem. This job didn’t bring me much income since I was only a sales agent for other companies. The next business I got into was assembling computer parts to build custom systems for companies and organizations, which eventually transitioned into computer support services. I would frequent computer parts markets, which were a regular meeting spot for me and some friends at the time, and purchase components like CPUs, motherboards, graphics cards, sound cards, RAM, and hard drives from various vendors. Then, I would assemble these into a computer case.

When you connect the motherboard to the case’s power source and plug it into an outlet, power flows through the motherboard to the CPU. At this stage, you don’t have a graphics card to display anything, a sound card to produce audio, a modem to connect to networks, nor RAM or a hard disk for memory. In this state, the motherboard would usually emit different beeps to indicate the absence of these components, signaling that something was amiss. When you added the RAM, hard disk, and graphics card, the computer would boot for the first time, and you would proceed with installing the operating system via CD or DVD.

Now imagine you’ve installed the operating system, then removed the graphics card and sound card, and rebooted the computer. If the motherboard design allows booting without a graphics card, the computer will start up, but because you don’t have a graphics card—and probably haven’t connected a mouse or keyboard—there’s no way to interact with the computer.

Does this remind you of the analogy used in the section on the mind and mental contexts? If not, that’s fine; give it a moment for clarity to emerge.

Imagine if you suddenly lost your sense of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and proprioception—the sense that allows you to feel your own body. You aren’t unconscious, but no incoming information or, as this book refers to it, “content,” reaches your mind from outside.

The word consciousness has Latin roots, originating from:

con- meaning “with” or “together.” and scire, meaning “to know.”

Together, the term originally conveyed “knowing together” or “shared knowledge.” Over time, it evolved to mean awareness or alertness. In English, the term has gradually come to represent the ability to perceive and be aware of oneself and the surrounding environment, as well as having subjective experiences.

The definition of consciousness varies significantly across individuals and historical periods, and today’s scientific and philosophical interpretations diverge widely, providing ample room for discussion. Just as this book examines everything as a spectrum, I believe the term consciousness should be understood and applied as a spectrum.

Returning to our computer example: when do you consider your computer on? If we remove the sound card, graphics card, mouse, and keyboard, is it still on? My answer is yes. What if we also remove the hard disk and RAM?

Now, what if we remove the CPU from the motherboard and turn the power on again? Electricity flows to the motherboard, and your now-useless computer powers up! Can you still say your computer is on? That depends on how you define on. Even the beep pattern the motherboard emits, or whether it emits any beeps at all when components like the mouse, keyboard, or graphics card are disconnected, varies by manufacturer and model. These settings are continually updated, and standards were eventually established that all manufacturers had to follow.

Let’s return to our beloved brain. If you cut off all sensory channels that bring information from the environment, you’ll remain fully conscious, with thoughts and feelings still appearing in your awareness. Now, if we also find a way to suppress the emergence of thoughts and feelings—which is partially achievable by limiting the DMN (Default Mode Network) and reducing amygdala activity—you’ll experience a completely different state, though you’ll remain conscious.

So, are you conscious, or not? Does consciousness require sensory input, or does it simply mean you’re not unconscious?

Another question arises: what, exactly, defines unconsciousness?

Are animals, plants, bacteria, and viruses conscious beings?

Are we conscious and self-aware during sleep?

Where precisely is the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness?

Although these questions seem straightforward, their answers are complex and depend on the context of the discussion.

Sleep has different stages, each offering varying levels of consciousness, making it difficult to provide a straightforward answer to whether we’re “conscious” during sleep.

Does anesthesia before surgery—where people typically remember nothing afterward—render the brain inactive? Generally, anesthesia works by significantly impacting neurotransmitters and reducing their activity, placing the person in a mental state we refer to as unconsciousness.

During general anesthesia, key areas of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex, thalamus, hippocampus, somatosensory cortex, and cerebellum, are temporarily disabled. These areas are essential for awareness, pain perception, memory, and voluntary movement. Suppressing their function ensures the person has no conscious experience during surgery. By inhibiting excitatory neurotransmitters and enhancing inhibitory neurotransmitters, anesthesia effectively disrupts these processes.

For more precise scientific explanations of sleep and general anesthesia, refer to the resources provided at the end of this book.

Let’s return to our initial questions. After all this, what exactly is consciousness?

We sometimes forget that language was invented by humans, created at a time when the scientific understanding we have today didn’t exist. True, language is dynamic; new words continually emerge, and definitions shift. But just because a word exists doesn’t mean we must relentlessly seek a scientific explanation for it. Self-awareness or consciousness is one of those words—an ancient, widely used term that can be divided into hundreds of different spectra, levels, and forms, each with varied interpretations.

When discussing this term in a professional setting with people from various disciplines, I realized that, strangely, we often aren’t talking about the same thing. Think of the analogy of dark chocolate versus Swiss chocolate from the section “Reality from the Zero Point.” A child who has only tasted sweet chocolate, one who’s only had dark chocolate, and one who’s never tried chocolate at all—would they understand chocolate the same way? The answer is obviously no.

Our understanding of concepts like consciousness varies greatly depending on mental backgrounds, genetics, environments, lived experiences, and belief systems. The same goes for the notion of the unconscious. Over recent decades, concepts like the subconscious mind or the submerged “iceberg” in psychology suggest that many of our behaviors are rooted in an subconscious mind, unknown to us. This awareness of the subconscious can be highly beneficial. Guided by this idea, psychologists use various tools, such as CBT, hypnosis, and other methods, to explore a person’s unconscious.

I want to be clear: I am not dismissing these highly useful tools; rather, I wish to highlight a critical question: Where exactly in the brain does the subconscious reside, and how does it function?

In neuroscience, we cannot assign a specific part of the brain as responsible for consciousness, behavior, or the subconscious mind. Similar to the “space of awareness” and mental backgrounds I frequently reference, these terms were created to help us describe our own and others’ experiences, but they don’t have a tangible existence within the brain. Still, they are practical in everyday conversations.

The concept of the subconscious mind emerged from the early works of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. Freud believed that many thoughts, desires, and memories that don’t reach our conscious awareness influence our behavior and emotions.

While paying deep respect to Freud, who contributed significantly to psychology, I must note that modern neuroscience does not localize an “unconscious or subconscious mind” to one specific area. Instead, various brain regions, like the basal ganglia, brainstem, and structures such as the cerebellum, are involved in these processes. It’s important to remember that during Freud’s time, there were no tools to study the brain like we have today. We lacked an understanding of neurotransmitters and the precise functions of different brain regions. FMRI, PET, and EEG in their current forms didn’t exist, so this is by no means a dismissal of Freud’s groundbreaking contributions. In fact, what we explain today will likely undergo profound transformations in the coming years.

In contemporary neuroscience, unconscious memories and forgotten experiences that influence our behavior are connected to implicit memory and deeper brain processes. Brain areas such as the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex play key roles in processing memories and emotional experiences. While some of these memories may not be consciously recalled, they still impact an individual’s life through shifts in feelings, automatic reactions, or behavioral patterns.

Recall the car accident trauma example from the personality section. In that example, I explained how a traumatic accident can create a mental pattern associating movement with potential danger, triggering anxiety symptoms even if the specific memory of the event is inaccessible. Therapeutic methods, like CBT, EMDR, neurofeedback, or countless other techniques developed daily, can help examine these stored memories.

The same principle applies to the example about fearing a wild animal in your home. You might not remember specific stories shared by parents or others warning about the dangers of wild animals, but the sight of a saber-toothed tiger in your house would immediately trigger a fight-or-flight response—even without a detailed memory of those past warnings.

In neuroscience, memory divides into two primary types: explicit memory, which relates to memories consciously recalled, and implicit memory, where memories subconsciously influence our behavior and emotions. In the case of trauma, like an accident, the memory is stored implicitly, meaning you may not consciously remember it, but your body still reacts emotionally.

Explicit and implicit memories are processed and stored differently within the brain, involving distinct mechanisms within the hippocampus.

• Explicit Memory, covering episodic memories (like daily events) and semantic memories (general knowledge), is heavily reliant on the hippocampus, which plays a key role in forming and retrieving these memories.

• Implicit Memory, which includes skills (like riding a bike) and emotional responses (like fear after an accident), relies on areas like the amygdala, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. This memory type is crucial for triggering automatic responses and habits and relies less on the hippocampus for activation.

In summary, the hippocampus primarily governs explicit memory, while implicit memory connects more closely to other brain structures, particularly the amygdala and limbic system for processing emotions.

I hope this brief mention of these elements hasn’t been confusing. Precise neuroscientific explanations on these topics are provided in the detailed resources at the end of this book.

In conclusion, I suggest the term “Conscious Attention” or “Interactive Attention.” Instead of saying, “I unconsciously walked to the door,” we might say, “I walked to the door without conscious attention.”

Imagine using a flashlight, particularly before phone flashlights became the norm. Many flashlights had an adjuster to focus the light into a narrow beam or spread it to cover a wider area. Concentrating human focus can be compared to adjusting that flashlight. When you focus on a subject, it’s as if you’ve dialed up the concentration to maximum.

Stage spotlights work similarly, concentrating light on a single actor during a play, dimming the rest of the cast. If you lose the ability to use a focused beam and always work with a diffused one, you may still see the surroundings but with reduced clarity and depth.

Now, imagine that without your flashlight’s focus function, the beam spreads out, dimming overall brightness and limiting your visibility to only the nearby space. You’d still have some light but lack the clarity needed to illuminate distant areas or details further ahead.

Consider this scenario while reading or listening to this episode. A thought or a notification enters your mind. If your attention skills are intact, you can ignore this new content and return to the task at hand. But if you lose focus with each new appearance, finishing any task becomes impossible.

Social media, with its endless flow of attractive images and quick-changing videos, constantly triggers the brain’s spotlight to move between each new post. The brain quickly shifts focus, strengthening the part that lets you discard previous tasks, while the skill needed to stay engaged with a single subject diminishes.

Imagine a theater where the spotlight jumps every second from one spot to another, leaving most of the stage in darkness. Clearly, understanding the entire scene is impossible when the spotlight never rests.

To better grasp how active attention works in the brain, try this simple exercise. While listening to my voice, begin tracing a square, triangle, and then a circle in the air with your finger, repeating the shapes continuously. If this seems easy, vary the sequence. For example, after drawing a square, triangle, and circle, start with a triangle, then draw a square and another triangle, and keep changing the order.

As this exercise becomes routine, you’ll notice that your brain’s default mode network (DMN) quiets down as your focus centers on the task. If you try to read or listen to the book while doing this, you’ll notice that parts of my narration slip past your awareness. Why? New tasks require your focused attention, unlike activities that can be left on “autopilot,” like driving after lots of practice. With practice, you might be able to perform this task while following my narration, but the effect on your awareness remains significant.

Another experiment to highlight Interactive attention is a gathering. Try shifting your attention from your conversational partner to a different conversation across the room without turning your head. Then, do it again but now physically turn to look at the new speakers. This enjoyable challenge demonstrates your mind’s impressive ability to shift focus based on auditory cues alone.

A meditation technique, body scan meditation, provides yet another example of active attention. In this practice, when you shift awareness to various parts of your body, you experience different sensations as if a spotlight shines on each area you focus on.

This concept, which I’ve termed “Interactive attention,” resembles a flashlight or spotlight illuminating specific body parts. Some people interpret this experience as “energy flowing” or “energy concentrating” in certain areas, attributing it to ideas like chakras and mystical energy flows.

From a neuroscience perspective, these interpretations are metaphors. No energy truly moves or accumulates. Instead, the complex neural network within our bodies, comprising billions of neurons and guided by chemical reactions called action potentials, generates and transmits electrical signals through neurotransmitters across the body.

The appeal of these explanations is clear when we consider belief systems, simplicity, and cognitive biases. Those who grow up with oversimplified, mystical responses to life’s questions might naturally prefer energy and chakra explanations over neuroscientific ones.

When you focus on a specific body part, the neural networks tied to that area become more active. This process, called selective attention in neuroscience, heightens the brain’s sensory cortex activity for the body part you’re concentrating on. In effect, this directed focus intensifies neural activity, enhancing physical awareness in that area.

For example, when concentrating on your hand, neurons linked to that region in your brain grow more active, leading to sensations like warmth, heaviness, or even tingling in the hand. These sensations aren’t physical realities but products of mental focus and brain processing, which temporarily amplifies sensitivity in that area.

Directing attention to a painful area can sometimes increase pain perception, whereas focusing elsewhere might reduce it. This phenomenon demonstrates how attentional and cognitive processes in the brain shape sensory experience.

The brain’s ability to alter sensory experiences, producing new sensations merely by shifting attention, connects to neural plasticity, or the brain’s capacity to reorganize its networks in response to new experiences and practices.

If a person regularly focuses on specific body parts, the corresponding neural pathways may gradually change, strengthening the synaptic connections in those areas. This mechanism underlies meditation practices, influencing the prefrontal cortex and the cingulate cortex, which play central roles in regulating focus and managing attention.

In upcoming sections, I will discuss neural plasticity further. For those seeking precise details, I encourage consulting the scientific references provided.