The great Swiss Psychologist, C.G. Jung, proved that our unconscious is not just a bunch of instincts and repressions, but contains “intelligence” that comes to us seemingly out of nowhere. What’s more, technologies for managing the unconscious have been in existence for thousands of years, yet conventional wisdom of the modern era has largely failed to take notice.

 “I very rarely ever think in words at all,” replied Albert Einstein when asked how he comes up with his ideas. This is a universal truth. We all, at least initially, think in images and symbols contained in our unconscious. Later, we use language to approximate these perceptions, at which time they become concepts, or to put it slightly differently, interpretations of perceptions.

The field of psychology addresses such matters, and not surprisingly, a summary of its mindshare is vital to the issue at hand. Starting with the easier one of the two main pieces of the human psyche, the conscious mind is simply part of the psyche that, at any given time, is aware of itself. And because we are always shifting our focus, our conscious mind is highly elastic, expanding and contracting based on multitudes of internal and external factors.

As such, it is “the will” of the conscious that determines which internal or external stimuli to act upon. And since the will is autonomous, it is often referred to as “free will.”  Therefore, our will is our reasoning engine that determines what makes sense (our logical mind), right from wrong (our moral character), individual preferences and character (our personality) and irrespective of the other three, what to believe in (our philosophy/religion, et al.)

The unconscious, on the other hand, is much more complex than its conscious counterpart. It comprises three subgroups that act almost entirely independent of each other: 1) the instinctual, 2) the habitual, and 3) the emotional.

The instinctual part of the unconscious is what manages basic physiological and biological needs without the need for conscious intervention. Food, shelter, clothing, sex, etc. are applicable here. At this point, it is worth mentioning that interplay between the conscious and the unconscious takes place. For instance, the instinctual part of the unconscious sends a signal to the conscious that the body is hungry. The conscious (will) then decides (freely) what to eat.

The habitual part of the unconscious contains certain actions that the conscious has performed so often that it no longer has to “think” about them. Riding a bicycle, brushing one’s teeth, even walking, are all actions that the conscious mind learned, mastered and then passed off to the unconscious so that it could move on to bigger and better things. This is why the adage, “You never forget how to ride a bicycle once you learn,” is inexorably true.

Now the most interesting and puzzling of the three is the emotional aspect of the unconscious. It is here where intuition, dreams, images, symbols as well a certain forms of inspiration, visions and ideas originate, under one “perceptual” umbrella.

Like the conscious mind, the emotional unconscious has its own governing apparatus—the ego. The ego is autonomous par excellence in that it is even independent of us (our will). In other words, when we tend to “react” emotionally to a situation, the ego is dominant. When we “act,” the will is dominant. The two entities coexist in relative disharmony, largely because the ego’s emotional desires are, more times than not, in conflict with the will’s reasoning. However, as tenuous as this relationship often is, both need each other, especially in the creative process.

Ancient cultures throughout the world intuitively (and independently of each other, which itself is evidence of a “collective unconscious”) recognized the need to manage (or control) the way the ego and the will interact. Indeed, issues of integration are as old as civilization itself, even though IT culture would lead you to believe that it started with the advent of the integrated circuit!

To this end, three technologies emerged in our prehistory: 1) invocation, 2) evocation and 3) collaboration. Of course, they weren’t known by these names. Invocation was known as “prayer” (what is called “push technology” in today’s eBusiness vernacular), evocation was known as “meditation” (pull technology) and collaboration was known as “ritual” that comprised both push and pull technologies (what is referred to today ironically as “collaboration”).

On philosophical grounds, Western civilization has largely discontinued the integration work between the will and the ego, even though virtually every culture outside of the Western world has not. Thus the notions of having “a hunch,” “a vision” or “an intuition” live on as orphan legacies, remnants of past metaphysical accomplishments stuck ambivalently in our conscious.

They remain because they are critical to the creative process, and at times, are knowledge in themselves. Or if not knowledge, they certainly comprise information, or what sociologist and epistemologist Gale Richard Walker calls “in formation, i.e., control of the transfer of energy necessary to create or sustain […knowledge].”

But the situation may not be so dire after all. A bit of a Renaissance is taking place today. Intuition is being resurrected from the ashes of primordial wisdom and given a new name, one that is becoming common throughout corporate America—emotional intelligence. Though this repurposing has left most of intuition’s muscle behind, it does, reintegrate the will with the ego (via conscious intent). The problem, as many non-Westerners point out, is that it does so in such a banal way that intuition is diluted to a point of meaningless.

But for us Westerners, acknowledging the need to get the will and the ego to “place nice” so that emotions are controlled in such a way that they only are used when appropriate and to some tactical advantage, seems to be a big deal. In fact, there are over 80 books on the topic currently in print! Whether this is progress or prosaic folly continues is a matter of considerable debate.

However we may figure into the emotional intelligence trend, the fact remains that most of the unconscious remains neglected in Western consciousness, even though the creative side of knowledge, or what could be called “net-new knowledge,” is impossible without it.

Working with the unconscious “consciously” and beyond the purview of emotional intelligence, is extraordinarily powerful yet hard to appreciate without witnessing it. Fortunately, I was able to do so during a recent trip to Peru, where I spent a month with several shamans of the Quero nation, the direct descendants of the Inka.

For them, the images and symbols that Einstein alluded to in the opening paragraph are their primary focus. They recognize that the objects and symbols in their unconscious become clearer and more powerful the more they work with them. (From what I could tell, it didn’t really matter what they did ritualistically, but rather, their dedication and commitment to doing it—what we would call “conviction.”) The more they acknowledged their unconscious, the more their unconscious collaborated with them (their will).

One particular shaman from the Amazon collected a series of herbs and plants to treat a woman from the States suffering from terminal lung cancer because, as he put it, a certain plant told him which ingredients would be needed to cure her. Again, it is not important whether a plant actually talked to this shaman. What is important, is that he received expert advice on how to solve a problem, without the aid of an expert, an unconscious phenomenon that is supported by our current understanding of the “collective unconscious,” the intelligent side of the unconscious that every person possesses but only few have learned to master.

Such apparent “miracles” are not uncommon among shamans and other healers throughout the world, and are regarded by many formerly skeptical anthropologists today as fact (after subjected to the rigors of scientific investigation and verification). In other words, we can know certain things without studying them. This could explain how countless kinds of inventions, innovations as well as new perspectives are developed from people who don’t seem to have the knowledge to do what they’re doing!

The most telling example of this occurred while I was working with another shaman in the Peruvian Andes. After days of observing his healing sessions, and after much Q&A, I began to realize that what he referred to as an “imprint,” something he could see deep inside the patient’s body for which all diseases originated, was actually one’s DNA! Even more amazing was his indifference to what the person was suffering from. In fact, he often didn’t ask the patient what was wrong. He would see a dense demarcation in the imprint and then repair it, with seemingly little more than his mind, or so he claimed.

Of course these fascinating anecdotes appear to have little to do with modern technology and its impact on business, yet they have everything to do with managing knowledge.

Without a doubt, the modern day software developer would be quite “stretched” to even consider this wider context. Indeed, this points to how far we truly are from facilitating the growth, expansion and distribution of knowledge, let alone, basing an economy on it. As such, there’s no shame in retreating back to the good old information age, where ones and zeros still possess a magical quality.

John David Balla is a former eBusiness analyst and systems integrator who now subsists as a corporate dropout in search of knowledge that brings forth healing, wisdom and freedom by bridging conventional paradigms of technology and consciousness with ancient ones. He is also Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for the Sedona, AZ-based startup, Virtual Onramp, LLC, a video asset management solutions company focused on delivering the most powerful, easy to use, and affordable Internet Video Solutions to small-to-midsize businesses. He can be reached at john@virtualonramp.com