Hey Ryan, Exciting email! You asked: "did something change physically in order for you to not move your eyes?" Funny... What stopped was my eye movement. :) I just stopped/froze them. You wrote: "--I'm still not comfortable with the assumption of a mind - does not your quote above assume a split?" To me, the split is similar to the split you find between software and hardware in computing. It's a virtual split, because everything that we call "software" runs on a hardware platform. Every software change is reflected in electrical signals in the machine. And yet, we differentiate between hardware and software. Can't find one without the other, and yet we intuit that there's a distinction. It's like two sides of the same coin. Same thing with mind and body. Mental shifts always have their physical counterpart. They go hand in hand. And there's something non-physical that commands those shifts, whether physical or mental. After watching Ken Wilber shut down his brain waves while hooked up to an EEG, it becomes obvious that there's something non-physiological that runs the show. I once asked a friend of mine who works in computing what the difference is between hardware and software and what their relationship is. He gave me the most brilliant reply I've ever found. "Software aligns the hardware." And that's pretty much the best definition of mind that I can find, especially after re-reading Reframing and Frogs Into Princes. If parts/programs/whatever can conflict and generate cancer, there's some sort of software running the body. You can make a computer explode/crash by running specific software that overclocks your processor. Yes, the software is moving the computer's "physiology," but that "physiology" is not fully in charge. At the same time, the hardware limits/binds the possibilities of the software (as anyone who still operates a Pentium 233 computer can attest). So the relationship is intricate as heck. That's why I find Ken's model so useful. Every holon has an interior and exterior, and you can't separate one from the other. You can differentiate/distinguish them, but you need to integrate them to understand the system. As you type, think about this... You touch letters on your keyboard. Unbeknowst to the uninformed, those letters mean absolutely nothing to the machine. Under your key is an electrical transmittor that sends an electrical signal to the CPU, which in turn sends a signal to the screen, commanding it to light up a few pixels that your brain assembles to represent the letter you typed. Were you to look at the bits of electricity that actually make out this message, you'd never make out a meaningful message (unless of course, your "mind" knows how to convert those bits back into letters). In the same way, a shower of dopamine and a few electrical shocks and muscular contractions without the "mind's" interpretation engine will never have the meaning and effect that the representation of your loved one carries. Physiology by itself carries no meaning. Meaning is assembled by the mind. You can do syntax with physiology but not semantics. The mind, meaning and semantics are damn hard to control and very challenging to model. Physiology is essential to reaching meaning, it's an essential facet of every part of our mental experience, it's the support that carries the elements out of which meaning is assembled, but it will never be able to account for meaning by itself (or so is my conviction -- supply me with a counterexample should you have one). Now, should you challenge the need for meaning in our lives, I agree with you that mind is a useless and probably annoying creation that we well could do without. With all that said, I'd love to hear more about your epistemology of the conscious and unconscious minds since mind doesn't exist. Would you be so kind to indulge me? You're awesome, Ryan. Being challenged to think by intelligent queries... Rare treat! Martin