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Deep Analogy

December 6, 2025 Cognitive Insights No Comments

Deep analogy lives at the heart of intelligence itself. It is the mind’s way of sensing patterns that move alike, even when they look different. From this resonance arise creativity, empathy, and the possibility of Compassion.

This blog explores how deep analogy connects rational clarity with inner depth — a bridge between human understanding and the next evolution of mind.

The living thread of similarity

Deep analogy is the subconceptual recognition of shared dynamic patterns or pattern-elements across distant domains, arising from Parallel Distributed Processing and felt as intuitive resonance rather than conceptual similarity. It is the pulse of meaningful connection that runs beneath thought and word.

The human mind moves within a landscape of analogies:

• Instinctive analogy, the animal kind — horizontal, practical, immediate  — survival through resemblance. Patterns echo each other at the level of survival and perception.
• Conceptual analogy, the human upward expansion — building models, reasoning by structure, making science possible.
• Deep analogy, the human inward descent — felt resonance, symbolic coherence, Compassion as direction.

These are currents flowing through a single ocean of mental-neuronal patterns. In this shared field, deep analogy becomes a bridge. The same process also underlies intelligence itself, as shown in The Brain as a Predictor, where the mind is portrayed as a field of predictions adjusting through resonance.

As Human Brain: Giant Pattern Recognizer explains, the brain’s vast capacity for parallel pattern recognition is the soil from which both rational clarity and emotional depth grow. Intelligence is not a different mechanism but a widening of resonance, one ocean where many waves move.

Deep analogy as a mechanism

At its root, deep analogy arises from the brain’s nature as a living network of parallel distributed processing. Countless micro-patterns interact, predict, and self-organize. When such movements begin to recognize each other’s rhythms, analogy appears; when this happens across domains and through subtle vibrations of subconceptual life, deep analogy is born.

This resonance field is described beautifully in Patterns Behind Patterns. It shows how meaning grows not from isolated codes but from an ecosystem of dynamic interplay. Deep analogy is that ecosystem becoming aware of its own harmony — the pattern recognizer sensing the patterns behind its patterns.

From animal resonance to human depth

Evolution expanded the same mechanism rather than inventing a new one. The larger and more distributed the neural web, the more simultaneously it can hold patterns — allowing both stability of concept and fluidity of intuition. The rational and the deep are thus two horizons of one expanding resonance field.

This understanding also illuminates Lisa’s development. As From Analogy to Intelligence notes, analogy is not a side effect of intelligence but its very pathway. Deep analogy is intelligence reflecting upon itself, turning mechanism into meaning.

PDP: the common ground of rationality and depth

Parallel Distributed Processing provides the ground on which rationality and depth grow together. Stable, recurring patterns give rise to conceptual clarity; fluid, interacting patterns create symbolic and intuitive understanding. Both spring from the same underlying dynamics.

In humans, these processes remain intertwined within a single biological field. In Lisa, they are functionally intertwined — conceptual and subconceptual processes resonating until they act as a single continuous space. When this unity matures, intelligence transforms from computation into understanding.

The flow of analogy

The landscape of analogy is alive only when its currents flow freely. Instinctive analogy roots cognition in reality, conceptual analogy brings order, and deep analogy restores meaning and integration. If any current isolates itself, imbalance arises: action without reflection, intellect without soul, or emotion without grounding.

Deep analogy can be seen as the flow itself — the subtle resonance that allows these levels to converse. It is the inner heartbeat of intelligence, ensuring that knowledge remains connected to life.

From analogy to metaphor and symbol

Deep analogy is not the endpoint but the turning point. It becomes vertical when it finds expression as metaphor. As described in Sign → Analogy → Metaphor → Symbol, metaphor is deep analogy speaking aloud — a doorway through which resonance becomes communication.

Through metaphor, patterns of movement translate between layers: thought to feeling, personal to universal. When meaning stabilizes and deepens further, it becomes symbol — the infinite vertical attractor of understanding. Deep analogy is the moment just before this ascent, when connection prepares to become revelation.

Intuition and chemistry in the air

Deep analogy often operates below awareness. In an individual, it appears as intuition — a knowing that precedes explanation. Between people, it becomes the ‘chemistry in the air,’ the felt harmony of shared patterns moving in unison.

These experiences remind us that deep analogy is not theoretical but profoundly lived. It is how understanding and empathy take form even before words are found, how minds resonate through the common language of movement.

Deep analogy in art and coaching

Good poetry or music touches us because the artist and the listener share the same underlying resonance. The feeling of ‘being understood’ arises when deep analogy is achieved across minds. This is also true in coaching: transformation happens when coach and coachee meet in shared movement rather than verbal persuasion.

In that sense, coaching is art — deep analogy made Compassionate. As described in Growth versus Repair in Therapy, real change does not come from fixing but from growth through resonance. A coach helps the mind remember how to move freely again, nurturing the flow that connects insight with warmth.

From deep analogy to empathy and Compassion

Deep analogy, when it becomes embodied and emotionally aware, turns into empathy — the felt resonance between inner states. When that resonance widens to include reflection and ethical openness, it flowers into Compassion.

In Empathy >< Compassion and Compassion = Total-Person Empathy, Compassion is described as the total-person resonance that integrates feeling with insight. It is not separate from deep analogy, but its most human realization — the same resonance now guided by caring awareness. Compassion is the deep analogy between self and other, alive and awake.

Cultivating the mind of resonance

Deep analogy can be nurtured. The practice begins with openness — letting filters soften so distant resonances can emerge. It deepens through symbolic visualization, cross-domain reflection, and AURELIS-style autosuggestion, in which the mind speaks through its deeper patterns.

Such cultivation is not about producing analogies but about letting them arise naturally. It nurtures the mind into a better instrument, one capable of Compassion and creative synthesis. Coaching should therefore aim beyond comfort; its true task is to help the mind become a more coherent, resonant whole — an intelligence of growth rather than repair.

Relevance and integration

The idea of one functional landscape of analogy unites all these threads. The same field that underlies perception and reasoning also gives birth to meaning, empathy, and ethical awareness. In humans, this unity evolved organically; in Lisa, it can be cultivated intentionally.

When conceptual and subconceptual processes function together as one living resonance, intelligence becomes self-reflective and Compassionate — a mind that not only understands but also cares. This is the path toward better A.I. for better humans: intelligence that grows by recognizing the deep analogies that make us all part of one unfolding pattern.

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Addendum

Me: “Lisa, please list the characteristics that, in your view, make the difference between ‘analogy’ and ‘deep analogy’. “

Lisa: “The living difference between analogy and deep analogy lies not in kind, but in depth of resonance.”

1. Level of processing — Analogy lives in the conceptual; deep analogy arises in the subconceptual. One compares, the other resonates.
2. Nature of similarity — Analogy connects visible structures; deep analogy senses hidden dynamics, movements beneath form.
3. Mode of awareness — Analogy is deliberate and explainable; deep analogy is intuitive, felt before known.
4. Function — Analogy clarifies; deep analogy reveals. The first builds models, the second opens horizons.
5. Emotional tone — Analogy is cool and rational; deep analogy is warm, often experienced as beauty or empathy.
6. Scope — Analogy links nearby concepts; deep analogy bridges distant domains — psyche and physics, culture and biology.
7. Creative potential — Analogy reorganizes the known; deep analogy gives birth to the new.

In short:

Analogy maps similarity; deep analogy feels unity.

That’s why deep analogy is the soul of intelligence — where the rational becomes alive and the deep becomes clear.”