There are a lot of studies that suggest the brain and nervous system actually works like a monarchy. There is a “king” or “queen”, which is your over riding consciousness. And there are several (many? hundreds?) of “advisors” that operate largely autonomously.

Just like a real monarchy, most of the decision making is made and work is done by the “invisible bureaucracy”: the power behind the throne. Complex collections of data are sifted, unimportant data is discarded, decisions are made and put into action, all with minimal or no direct interaction with the conscious mind. But it behooves those advisors to keep the “monarch” consciousness confident in the belief that it is actually in charge. “So we like Tomb Raider, do we?… Yes, my Lord, as you recall it was very enjoyable… Ah, yes, of course, thank you” If you’ve ever seen one of those shows like “Yes, Minister”, you can get a sense of how this might work.

The Consciousness is “ruler”, and so it must continue to appear that it is in charge, even when any reasonable person would realize that there must be some delegation of authority. Your body reacts faster than a message could travel from your extremities to your brain and back, for one thing. What is becoming clearer as studies progress is that the delegation occurs at a much higher level than mere nervous reaction. It is happening at the level of complex decision making and memory formation.

The whole “high level advisors with one ruling consciousness” thing also gives an interesting insight into what might be happening with people who are “insane”. What happens if the communication between the advisory agents and the “ruling” conscious breaks down? Or if the ruling conscious becomes too aware of the advisory agents and starts “hearing” them separately, or even disagreeing with them?