What is Man?

According to Mark Twain's "What is Man?" short story, man is nothing but a mechanism incapable of creating original thoughts, and whatever thoughts he ever has he has because of getting influenced by the outside, from agents like people, or some event, or the feelings of others towards him. Nothing in him is original. Everybody is born with their own mechanism-- their own temperament!
What a man seeks all his life is spiritual contentment. This is his passion greatest!
The want of self-approval is the drive behind the search for spiritual contentment. Self-Approval is his Master.
Experiment, so, with your mechanism. To gain more control over it, try and be one with it: Practice it, not merely attempt to understand it.

The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes

I discussed in my first post about the subconscious and the conscious mind. Here is a theory on their function,which was quite popular back in the 70s, and a lot of its propositions were considered refreshing and thought-provoking and right and some still are considered so.
Here goes the theory of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes:

The bicameral mentality would be non-conscious in its inability to reason and articulate about mental contents through meta-reflection, reacting without explicitly realizing and without the meta-reflective ability to give an account of why one did so. The bicameral mind would thus lack metaconsciousness, autobiographical memory and the capacity for executive "ego functions" such as deliberate mind-wandering and conscious introspection of mental content. When Bicamerality as a method of social control was no longer adaptive in complex civilizations, this mental model was replaced by the conscious mode of thought which, Jaynes argued, is grounded in the acquisition of metaphorical language learned by exposure to narrative practice.

Now this is only a small excerpt from the whole theory,but I only wanted to talk about what the function of the subconscious and the conscious mind might be and how they are related.
Also, there arises a question in my mind:
So, according to Julian Jaynes, because of the increasing complexity of new burgeoning civilisations, the Bicameral model was replaced with the Conscious model, and this model is grounded in the acquisition of metaphorical language learned by exposure to narrative practice. Thus, does it mean that those not good enough at the expression of metaphorical language retain the Bicameral model to some extent, and that is the, maybe, primary model of thinking for them?

The first Lesson is to sit, and let the mind run on.

At the end of the previous article, I told you that I'd discuss with you the method to achieve a state of mind where the number of processes running in it become less. This is that method, and given in the words of Swami Vivekananda:

The first lesson, then, is to sit for some time and let the mind run on. The mind is bubbling up all the time. It is like that monkey jumping about. Let the monkey jump as much as he can; you simply wait and watch. Knowledge is power, says the proverb, and that is true. Until you know what the mind is doing you cannot control it. Give it the rein; many hideous thoughts may come into it; you will be astonished that it was possible for you to think such thoughts. But you will find that each day the mind's vagaries are becoming less and less violent, that each day it is becoming calmer. In the first few months you will find that the mind will have a great many thoughts, later you will find that they have somewhat decreased, and in a few more months they will be fewer and fewer, until at last the mind will be under perfect control; but we must patiently practice every day. As soon as the steam is turned on, the engine must run; as soon as things are before us we must perceive; so a man, to prove that he is not a machine, must demonstrate that he is under the control of nothing. This controlling of the mind, and not allowing it to join itself to the centres, is Pratyahara. How is this practised? It is a tremendous work, not to be done in a day. Only after a patient, continuous struggle for years can we succeed.

After you have practised Pratyahara for a time, take the next step, the Dhâranâ, holding the mind to certain points. What is meant by holding the mind to certain points? Forcing the mind to feel certain parts of the body to the exclusion of others. For instance, try to feel only the hand, to the exclusion of other parts of the body. When the Chitta, or mind-stuff, is confined and limited to a certain place it is Dharana. This Dharana is of various sorts, and along with it, it is better to have a little play of the imagination. For instance, the mind should be made to think of one point in the heart. That is very difficult; an easier way is to imagine a lotus there. That lotus is full of light, effulgent light. Put the mind there. Or think of the lotus in the brain as full of light, or of the different centres in the Sushumna mentioned before.

The Workings

On the deepest level of my mind, on its most visceral level, I fear Pain-- a lot!
Do I wish for something inspiring and creatively beautiful?
No.
Then?
I just want to avoid pain.
My mind soaks things up. It soaks up personalities, tics, habitual and verbal,both, thinking patterns etc. all to make living in this sea of entities with each a different feel to them,with each having different essences regarding the idea of convenience.
Why does my mind do that,soak things up? To avoid pain.
Fundamentally,Some run towards something,some away,some both; I away.
But then, Should I be necessarily be running towards something to be happy? I think not. Balance is what I should strive for. For what? To be Happy? No. To know the self, and everything else. To know!
My mind is aware of the, and I can only talk about my mind, subconscious processes in a very limited way. When calm, in a quiet place usually, it becomes more encompassing, so as to say, more aware of the subconscious processes. It feels, in such states, my conscious mind gets melded, somewhat, with these subconscious processes. The division vanishes, if just for a split second only. It happens then  when I allow my mind to soak up what these subconscious processes feels like. This I have observed cannot be done when I am tired after jogging or playing any sport because of the presence of unnecessary thoughts.
The mind focuses better on the workings of the subconscious and the creation of perception when the number of processes running in it is less, and for this one needs to exhaust it out. But how does one do that? In the next article, I'll discuss a method given by swami Vivekananda to achieve this.