Figure 1: The Bubble Diagram: Figure 1: This illustration shows how the bubble of thought arises as a flucuation of the field of creativity and intelligence, the underlying substrate of thought. This Vedic description of the structure of the mind is radically different from the computer models usually presented in cognitive psychology textbooks. In these models information is brought in through the senses, passed on to higher cognitive processors, and the computer like data storage of memory, then a response is emitted. In Vedic psychology, information is passed both horizontally, from one area of the brain to another, and also vertically, through the levels of mind.

When a thought begins, the silent source of pure consciousness becomes lively and a bubble of thought is generated. These "bubbles of thought are produced in a stream, one after another" (Maharishi, 1966 pg. 55), and they rise through the levels of mind. The bubble diagram in figure 1 shows the flow of thought outward from pure consciousness.

Kahneman (1973) developed the idea of attentional capacity, and in his conception, all mental processes gather their resources from a common energy source. He connected his model of attentional capacity with an electric generator, where the limited capacity caused dual tasks to interfere with each other by trying to claim the same resources. Kahneman envisioned attentional capacity as a reservoir or an electric generator from which a stream of attention flowed.

In Maharishišs model, the field of pure consciousness is an infinite reservoir of creativity and intelligence that lies at the source of thought. Attention flows out from this source to enliven the mind and senses. While there is one source of attention in Maharishišs Vedic psychology, it is constantly changing with the ebb and flow of internal mental activity. For example if an individual is looking at a garden the senses of sight and smell are lively. If a telephone rings the attention suddenly switches to hearing, and then rapidly to the motor organs, with a command to pick up the phone. This constant motion is one of the essential qualities of the mind, and it is why analogies of water and the sea are often used to describe the mind. One of the qualities that James (1890) mentioned about thoughts is that they are constantly in motion, constantly changing.

This pattern for the flow of attention in this model is much more complicated than the simple single resource pool model of Kahneman. In most modern models of the mind, processing is driven externally, with the demands from the environment determining the supply that is received. In Maharishišs model, the controller of attentional capacity is internal, and it is an internal conscious thinking mind and intellect that is assessing the needs of the environment, and parceling out its attentional resources as needed to accomplish the task at hand.

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