Meditation – Auxiliary Memory

How Aware or Conscious Was I At 5 Years Old?

by James Wallace Harris, 6/8/26

In the first chapter of Michael Pollan’s new book, A World Appears, he makes a good case that consciousness evolved alongside biology, probably beginning in cells. For most of history, humans separated themselves from the animal world by claiming we had a soul, a divine spark, that animals lacked. Scientific studies of the mind are showing that’s not true.

Pollan found scientists who showed that plants could form and retain memories, anticipate, decide, and act on their goals. Their tiny bit of consciousness is nothing like ours, but it shows that consciousness is on a spectrum. There are profound implications if consciousness coevolved with biology, from the virus to the human brain. Research into consciousness and artificial intelligence is revealing a flood of new insights.

If life itself represents a spectrum of conscious development, I’m also assuming that any individual animal also shows a spectrum of conscious development over its lifetime.

I’m saying who I was at five is far different from who I am at seventy-four. The difference won’t be as big as between me and my cat, Ozzy, but I believe it’s huge. I’m not sure, but in some ways, five-year-old Ozzy might have been more aware than 5-year-old Jimmy. If we were both abandoned in the woods, Ozzy would have far better survival awareness.

I also believe my awareness/consciousness evolved significantly from 5 years 0 months to 5 years 12 months. I started the 1st grade when I was 5 years and 8 months old. School accelerated the evolution of my conscious mind.

I only have fleeting memories of life before turning five. I can remember only a few interactions with people. I have a few memories from Kindergarten. I had no knowledge of numbers, words, or letters. I had extremely limited spatial and temporal awareness.

I did what I was told, but I would have preferred to play on my own. I loved my toy truck, a little metal front-loader. I loved to climb trees. I loved TV, but we’re talking Captain Kangaroo and Kukla, Fran and Ollie. I had no idea what books and magazines were. I had no idea where I lived.

I’m not sure I had any particular self-awareness. Looking back, I think I was mostly unconscious of reality. If a stranger had walked up to me and pointed a gun at my head, I don’t think I would have been frightened or even known what a gun was. If my parents had left me alone in the house, I’m not sure I could have gotten my own food. I knew my father, mother, sister, and grandmother, but I was indifferent or clueless about everyone else. I don’t remember my Kindergarten teacher or any of my classmates.

My friend Linda has told many stories about her childhood, and she was far more aware than I was at the same ages. Girls mature sooner, but I think Linda was even exceptional for being a girl.

My point is, everyone evolves differently. The question is, how broad is the range of consciousness in humans? We know the range of intelligence is great, but what about awareness of reality? How many people are closer to a collie dog than to Einstein?

Nor is consciousness one thing. Elon Musk might be at the height of money-making consciousness, but fairly low at empathy for people.

Looking back at Jimmy at 5, I feel he was essentially unconscious compared to Jim at 74. I also sense that there are countless areas where I’m essentially unconscious at 74 compared to others at any age.

We say humans have five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Well, what lets me feel my heartbeat? What sense organ lets me feel cold? What sense organ lets me discern the passing of time? What sense organ does my wife have that lets her remember melodies that I lack?

How many levels of awareness are humans capable of achieving? How many aspects of reality can we discern? Science fiction, mysticism, spiritualists, and users of psychedelic drugs claim there are many levels of higher consciousness we could attain if we tried. Most sound like fantasies, but what if some are possible?

Over the centuries, there have been stories about supermen. Often, they have psychic abilities and other superpowers. Just consider Greek myths and Marvel Comics.

What are some truly possible higher states of consciousness? Compared to Jimmy at 5, I have a higher consciousness. What levels could I have achieved if I had known they existed and I had tried to attain them?

Artificial intelligence is a big topic right now. Computer scientists want to create AIs that are smarter than people. But what other things might AI become aware of that we can’t perceive?

We only perceive in a limited range of the electromagnetic spectrum. AIs could be built to perceive far more of the whole spectrum. What if they discover things we never could with our senses and even scientific instruments? Will we believe them?

If I could travel back in time to talk to Jimmy at 5, could I make him understand anything about being Jim at 74? I doubt it. He could not even conceive the concepts of time travel, aging, or growth.

In recent months, I’ve been contemplating the evolution of my own consciousness. I think that evolution accelerated between 5 and 12. But then it exploded around 13. Most conceptual expansions peaked in my twenties. And most of my conceptual abilities have been declining since then. However, I feel my ability to generalize is still growing. That might be wisdom, or it might be a delusion.

The more I study my own mind and read books by scientists who study minds in general, the more I’m convinced that our consciousness coevolved with physics, chemistry, and biology. Thus, when my physical body dissolves with entropy, so will my mind.

There are even some scientists who still hold out that part of our awareness is metaphysical, and it will survive physical existence. Those scientists say artificial intelligence will never have that metaphysical spark they call the soul. I wonder something different.

What if the total gestalt of body, mind, awareness, sentience, and consciousness can be called our soul? But what if that soul is mortal? That collectively, all life on Earth has a kind of soul. too, but also mortal. Obviously, all life is evolving. But how much can we evolve as individuals?

Life and evolution are anti-entropic. Death is entropy. Is there a metaphysical existence that is not entropic?

JWH

The Limits of Learning

by James Wallace Harris, 8/18/25

I began work on the project I described in my last post (“What Should I Major in at Old Age University“) by looking through the books in my bookcases for titles that fit the project. The first one I found was Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio. After reading a few pages, I wanted to hear it. I bought the audiobook. After listening to fifteen pages, I knew this book was one I wanted to study thoroughly. I purchased the Kindle edition so I could highlight the passages I wanted to remember.

I was particularly taken with this paragraph:

We all have free access to consciousness, bubbling so easily and abundantly in our minds that without hesitation or apprehension we let it be turned off every night when we go to sleep and allow it to return every morning when the alarm clock rings, at least 365 times a year, not counting naps. And yet few things about our beings are as remarkable, foundational, and seemingly mysterious as consciousness. Without consciousness—that is, a mind endowed with subjectivity—you would have no way of knowing that you exist, let alone know who you are and what you think. Had subjectivity not begun, even if very modestly at first, in living creatures far simpler than we are, memory and reasoning are not likely to have expanded in the prodigious way they did, and the evolutionary road for language and the elaborate human version of consciousness we now possess would not have been paved. Creativity would not have flourished. There would have been no song, no painting, and no literature. Love would never have been love, just sex. Friendship would have been mere cooperative convenience. Pain would never have become suffering—not a bad thing, come to think of it—but an equivocal advantage given that pleasure would not have become bliss either. Had subjectivity not made its radical appearance, there would have been no knowing and no one to take notice, and consequently there would have been no history of what creatures did through the ages, no culture at all.

Damasio, Antonio. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I want to know everything Damasio is telling us. I want to remember it. I was never a good student, never good at remembering information for tests, and at age 73, my memory is like a sieve. There are both comprehensive barriers that I can’t overcome, and limitations to the knowledge I can digest and maintain.

To maximize my reading concentration, I concurrently listen to an audiobook edition while following along with the printed page with my eyes. Although Damasio’s prose set my mind on fire, I can’t paraphrase what I just read. I can vaguely say that he describes what he thinks the mind is and makes a case that feelings are an important aspect of understanding the mind. I remember that because I wondered if AIs can ever become conscious without feelings. Feelings must be tied to biology.

If I’m ever going to learn and remember what I read, I need to go beyond the momentary exposure to ideas I get through simple reading. It seems comic, or should I say tragic, or maybe ironic, or even pointless, that I’m finally getting down to developing study habits at 73.

The only way to prove you know something is to teach it. Teaching a topic requires comprehension. I feel that when reading, I do comprehend, but that’s probably a delusion. One way to explain something is to give an analogy that makes the idea understandable. Another method is to create an infographic, chart, or diagram.

Yesterday, when I set my goal to understand how my personality developed and to explain why people are delusional, I didn’t say I wanted to teach what I learned. I did write that my final proof of accomplishment is writing a thesis on what I learned. That is a kind of teaching. It makes allowances for my quick-to-forget brain.

Reading gives the illusion of “Oh, I see,” and then you forget. I need to develop a note-taking system. And I think I need to mindmap what I read. I need to knuckle down and learn Obsidian. That’s a note-taking software program that allows for hyperlinks. And other tools will help me organize and temporarily remember information so I can summarize what I learn in prose.

But I really need to amend my goal. I don’t think I can say I learned anything unless I can teach it to someone else by conversing with them. I know mansplainers are looked down on, but I’m terrible at explaining things verbally.

I can write blogs because I have all the time I need to compose and revise. I can look things up. Explaining things in a lecture, or even a conversation, involves memory and comprehension at levels I cannot muster.

I need to go beyond reading. I need to go beyond writing. For my study project, I need to get into teaching. Since I don’t want to become a boring mansplainer, I need to learn the art of the Socratic dialogue.

JWH

Gimme That Old Time Meditation

By James Wallace Harris, Thursday, October 29, 2015

Meditation is gaining secular and even scientific acceptance. I first heard about meditation in the mid-sixties when The Beatles ran off with that guru. I even took up meditation in the 1970s during the New Age movement. For most of the last half-century, meditation was something aging hippies in sandals pursued. Then in the last decade, meditation has been embraced by therapists, human resource departments, Christian churches and even the military. All of this is well chronicled in 10% Happier: How I Tamed The Voice In My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, And Found Self-Help That Actually Works – A True Story by Dan Harris. Dan Harris is a reporter and anchor for various ABC television shows. His high-stress career and obsessive personality started causing on-air panic attacks and he began searching for solutions. Harris slowly embraced Buddhism and meditation because of covering stories about them while assigned the religion beat. His book is about his struggle to discover if there is any validity to meditation and Buddhism, and how to separate provable results from spiritual woo-woo. Essentially, he demystifies Buddhism and meditation. This is a great book for anyone skeptical about ancient self-help practices.

What I really liked about this book was Harris’ skepticism. As a reporter he knew how to ask hard questions, and whenever he met a new guru he didn’t hold back. Over the course of this story, Harris meets star gurus of the self-help circuit who promises the masses various forms of enlightening and happiness. Harris eventually concludes, on average, meditation has helped him to become 10% happier. He also believes if he works at it, he might even get an even higher return, but that meditation is no magic pill for transforming anxiety and depression into bliss. In other words, there is no free lunch.

What’s really involved is learning how our brains work. Meditation was discovered long before science, but it’s essentially a systematic way of observing our own brain. We can supplement meditative experiences with modern scientific research on the brain. I highly recommend The Brain with David Eagleman, a 6-part documentary currently running on PBS that’s based on his book. Last night’s episode was about the unconscious mind and how little our conscious mind knows. We all need to become amateur brain researchers to study our own minds, and meditation is a good observing technique.

Harris first encountered Eckhart Tolle after his panic attacks and was very receptive to his message. However, Tolle troubled him with a lot of mumbo-jumbo spiritual talk. Eventually Harris met Deepak Chopra and even the Dali Lama. With each guru he kept pushing them for exactness, and felt each man had some real understanding, but was often confused or turned off by weird unscientific terminology. Harris then he found psychiatrist, Mark Epstein, who was also exploring Buddhism, meditation and mindfulness. Epstein introduced Harris to Joseph Goldstein, a master meditation teacher. Harris, who is Jewish, found practical kinship with these two Jewish meditators, and they connected him to scientists doing actual research on meditation.

This path took Harris years, and he carefully explains all his ups and downs trying to stay sane and happy while pursuing a high pressured job. Harris always felt Eastern wisdom seemed to conflict with Western ambition. At one point he even felt meditation had made him happier and kinder, but mellowness had deflated his drive to get ahead. By the end of the book, Harris is working on increased ambition combined with increased work towards Enlightenment, which is a goal I’d think most Americans would embrace. We all want success and happiness.

10% Happier shows a real difference between Eastern and Western religions. Western theologies just ask their followers to believe, whereas Buddhism asks their follows to work hard and observe. The Buddhists even have a saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road kill him.” That’s to remind their followers that it’s very easy to get caught up in bullshit.

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