[reprinted from my former site How to Tune a Human, March 28, 2010]
In another article (‘What is the Unconscious Mind?‘), I described how the so-called Unconscious Mind consists entirely of things learned by habit or happenstance, and which then sunk below what we call consciousness, so as to operate automatically to promote our survival.
There are many things which our culture believes are automatic and unknowing processes — such as regulating our blood pressure, remembering to breathe, regulating the salinity of our blood and the acidity of our stomach acid — and that these processes are built into the body, are automatic, and cannot be controlled.
Yet we know by observation that there are yogis who have in fact taken control of many of these processes, and so we know it can be done. But why don’t you and me have awareness of these things?