Our thinking minds work entirely in the unconscious realm according to neuroscientists Peter Halligan and David Oakley

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, which is not so startling when you consider the brain and self as a whole. Our senses receive a cacophony of information about the environment in which we live; that this information is reported to some unconscious Central Executive Structure is no surprise: to do necessary filtering and sorting of the information at a conscious level would be to drive us mad. We are conscious of an executive summary of the unconscious brain's deliberations on the current situation outside the body, weighed against the historical information stored within.

Our brains develop according to the accumulated stimuli received since birth, a combination of nature and nurture. Each of us is the sum of our histories. Most of us are free to choose the environment in which we live. We are also free to choose among courses of action and to select those that are most congenial or uncongenial to our mind and body. And most of us are free to choose the stimuli we allow to impinge upon our brains. It is reasonable to discover that all the brain's work is done in an unconscious state: How often have you worked to solve a difficult problem, gone to bed in despair of a solution, got up the next day to find the answer within thirty minutes of addressing the problem again? Fu-Manchu speaks from frequent personal experience.

All a person has to do is to feed the brain with the proper information, ask the questions, and wait for the answers to become conscious. Wise persons feed their brains with information as often as they feed their bodies with food. A comprehensive diet is as important to the mind as it is to the body, because one never knows when or how deep will be the need to draw upon the resources available. A diet of junk-food is as bad for the body as it is for the mind.

Truly alarming is the grist fed to most mills.