The semantic nature of the human psyche is like a second layer overlaying the ordinary animal awareness. This is why humans are able to communicate so effectively with one another, and why it can be said that humans are specialised in adaptability. This semantic faculty is formed in infancy and continues to develop throughout life.  Its initial nature is that it reacts to or identifies with infant responses to inner and outer sensations, but with proper formation this can be transformed to give higher levels of knowing and control.

The first stages in its development beyond this point are formed under the influence of the family.  Later, the semantic layer is elaborated to form what might be described as an ‘information system.’ This varies in complexity and form from person to person. Further development is added by education and vocational training. As it normally is, the adult psyche formed in this way is in effect indiscriminate, its morality often only skin-deep. Although our articulate character gives the illusion that we control the moral faculty, in fact it cannot be controlled without long training which is almost totally unavailable in the West. 

Physicist and thinker David Bohm, before he died, showed how in our normal state of identification associative process not only governs our thoughts but makes connections between thought, emotion and the body.  Using the word ‘thought’ to refer to the whole associative process, he wrote: "It can deceive us about anything and everything. There is no limit to its power of deception. You could say that every trick we know, thought knows in the next moment. If we see a trick, then in the next moment thought has it there in the reflexes.  In other words, thought is us - thought is not different from us." ( David Bohm - Thought as a System -  p99 )