Matter of Mind

According to the Theory of Self-Relativity, our consciousness and our mind are a result of our physical-brain’s activities and without our brain and its estimated 86 Billion neurons and 100 Trillion neural-networks; our consciousness, our intelligence, and our self-identity would not exist. Therefore, without our brain; our mind would not exist.

Our consciousness, our mind, and our thoughts are derivatives of our physical-brain’s activities and without our physical-brain our “Self” would not exist. The evolution of our brain is the main cause of our survival and intellectual progress. Our brain is an information-processor that adapts and evolves as the human species adapts and evolves and becomes more intelligent.

Intelligence is the modern component for natural-selection and the more intelligent a species becomes the better chance of its adaptation and survival to its environment will be. The evolution of our brain and its ability to process information is the primary natural-selection component that has caused our continuous existence and our advancement as a species. As humans progressed and as they became more intelligent, the human brain size, especially the prefrontal-cortex grew causing us to become even more adaptable to our environment and to have a better chance of survival. According to the Theory of Self-Relativity;

The advancements in science and technology now clearly show how our physical-brain creates our intelligence. Due to our understanding of the brain, its neural-networks and its neural-circuitry we can now dis theories and claims of non-physicality causing our intelligence, consciousness, and our self-identity. Although the emergence of such mental attributes is still up for debate, we now know that our physical-brain creates its “non-physical” and “immaterial-byproducts” such as our intelligence, language, thinking, and even our consciousness. By understanding the physical nature and activities of the brain’s neural-circuits we do not need to assign spirits, ghosts, or souls to our “Self” to define our existence; we now understand that everything relating to our existence is matter-based.

As a natural information-processor, our physical-brain creates our non-physical characteristics such as intelligence, consciousness, and thinking-ability. Our brain also evolves and becomes a stronger and faster information-processor as it creates more intelligence and as it gathers and analyzes more information. The evolution of our brain and intelligence is apparent in the growth of the size of the human brain throughout our evolutionary period. A larger brain size allows for bigger data and information storage capacity as well as faster data and information processing ability. This increase in information processing ability is directly related to the evolutionary increase in human brain size. By increasing brain size through evolution humans were able to increase memory and make information processing and computation via analytical-thinking even faster. This repetitive cycle of faster processing leading to a larger brain size and a larger brain size leading to an increase in faster processing ability is responsible for the intellectual advancement of human-beings. Therefore, unlike many spiritual, ancient, and unscientific motivational programs that advocate not-thinking or slowing down our thinking; It is this evolutionary change that reflects the Theory of Self-Relativity’s self-improvement model which advocates that in the modern-era to improve and succeed we need to think quicker and cleverer; not to slow down or abstain from thinking.

As discussed in the book and on this website on the “Science of Change” page; change and time are created as a result of “The Law of Entropy” which states that the degree of the disorder of a system continues to increase. Hence, it is due to entropy that time exists and since entropy constantly increases this creates the forward direction of time. Science describes that the entropy or disorderliness of The-Universe always approaches maximum, indicating that The-Universe and therefore everything in The-Universe is becoming more disorderly as it changes and expands continuously through time and into the future. This means that The-Universe and everything in it is constantly changing as time goes-by; therefore,

This forward change in time is known as “The arrow-of-time.” The arrow-of-time indicates that time changes constantly and consistently and time only travels in one direction; forward. The arrow-of-time also dictates that as a system advances through time, it will statistically become more disordered because of entropy. The arrow-of-time, entropy, and motion represent that things change constantly as time itself changes consistently.

The arrow-of-time causes things to change with time and time changes as it moves in a forward direction. It is the arrow-of-time that differentiates the past from the present and the present from the future. The reason why the arrow-of-time only moves forward hence why time could not move backward is because of the increasing entropy of The-Universe. This forward change of time is referred to as “the passage-of-time.” Since the passage-of-time only moves forward and it cannot move backward, so does change; change can only move forward. This is why things change in the future but the past cannot be changed; for example, we can peel a banana but we cannot unpeel a banana back to how it was before we peeled it, or we can break a glass but we cannot unbreak a glass to its original shape after we broke it. This is because of entropy and the arrow-of-time. Therefore, according to the Theory of Self-Relativity;

Time is created as a result of entropy and motion. Time is the sequence of different moments or slices of time stitched in continuation. Reality, time, and our lives are connected moments similar to the film slides in a movie reel. When each slide and each moment is played consecutively, we get the awareness and sensation of changing times. Therefore, time could only move forward, and consequently; everyone and everything could only move forward in time, which means “we are all time-dependent.”

The only things that could manage to cheat the laws-of-physics and to stay stagnant or even go back in time would be immaterial-things such as the supernatural. As discussed, an immaterial-thing is something that is not made of matter therefore it would have to exist outside the laws-of-physics. Since we have scientifically proven that no such an immaterial-thing could exist or at the minimum if it did, we wouldn’t know about it because it would not be able to interact with the physical Universe that we live in; therefore, nothing material could ever stay stagnant in time or go back in time.

However, there is only one entity associated with matter that manages to not move forward in time and could actually move-back or stay-back in time and that is our “mind.” Although our mind is “immaterial”, it is not an immaterial-thing that could exist independently and without adhering to the laws-of-physics. Our mind is an “immaterial-byproduct” of our material-brain therefore, our immaterial-mind only exists because our material-brain is actually producing it. However, since our mind is an immaterial-outcome; it is this ability of the mind to go-back and stay-back in time that is one of the causes of why we have difficulty changing, improving and transforming.

While time, our body, The-Universe and everything in it change and move forward in time; our mind, if it is dealing with unresolved, cluttering and nonfactual-thoughts which are strongly associated with difficult memories and emotions; can actually go-back or stay-back in time and fall out of sync with the true state of Our-Universe. When our material-existence moves forward with the passage-of-time but our immaterial-mind stays-back in time, that is when we start falling out of sync or even disconnecting from reality by having conflicting-thoughts and troubling-feelings.

The reason why our mind wants to go back in time or wants to stay back in time is because we have unresolved-thoughts and negativities that are causing our current discomfort and negativities. Since Theory of Self-Relativity metaphorically divides the mind into the primitive-mind and the intelligent-mind and since the primitive-mind whose purpose is to keep us safe is our default mental-state; our primitive-mind wants to distance us from current negativities hence it tries to go back in time in order to fix unresolved issues. When negativities remain unresolved, they cause uncertainty and as discussed uncertainty is a major contributor to further negative-feelings such as sadness, anger and even fear. Since the past is known, therefore things that were uncertain in the past are now certain however current uncertainties remain uncertain and because our primitive-mind likes to deal with certainty it continuously tries to take us back in time in order to correct the certain past so that our present would automatically become favorable.

Although our intelligent-mind knows and wants us to resolve negativities at the present moment; when we have unresolved negativities, our primitive-mind which is dominant tries to go back in time to resolve the negativity in the past so that we would feel better in the present moment. Our primitive-mind goes back in time and stays back in time because we previously refused to change things that needed to be changed. Instead of addressing the dislikable truth and instead of putting in effort to make a change then, we chose to avoid dealing with the negativity by simply thinking positive-thoughts or by ignoring the dislikable-facts that indicated we needed to make a change. In order to abstain from feeling negative then and fixing the negativity in the past, we continued forward with the negativity by believing in comforting beliefs or by thinking positively.

Thereby, instead of facing the dislikable-truth and making changes in order to make the truth favorable for us, we chose to overlook the troubling facts and we moved forward without any resolution or elimination of those issues. When issues and difficulties are carried forward and are not resolved or eliminated neither are their underlying causes and it is these leftover problems that create our negative-feelings because our mind, by creating negative-feelings is trying to send us a message that we must face our leftover and unresolved issues. Therefore, our mind which is our “Self”, by being shackled to past unresolved problems, prevents us from moving forward with changing time. Our mind is trying to signal us that we must change or eliminate these unresolved situations that are causing our ruminating-thoughts so that our mind could finally let go and to be able to move forward to the present-moment by getting back into sync with present reality so that it can begin to move forward with time.

By understanding the laws-of-physics and by realizing that our immaterial-mind could not exist separately from our physical-existence and its relativities with The-Universe; we can then objectively understand why change, especially changing our thinking-system is critical to our existence. Our mental-state is directly relative to our physical and material-existence and although our mind cannot exist independently of our physical existence; by staying behind in time and by not moving forward in sync with the passage-of-time, our mind actually disables our material “Self” from being able to move forward in life and with time.

Since entropy which is an ever-increasing degree of disorder causes The-Universe and everything in it including our Self to change constantly; we must also train our mind to change parallel with time and with The-Universe so that it can learn to problem-solve in the present and to plan for the future so that when the future becomes the present; the present moment of now would be the best possible present moment.