THE mind in action is conscious, subconscious and superconscious. We are aware of all conscious activity. We are aware of some subconscious activities expressed in our dreams, mingled with our conscious mentation, and in the functional operations of our bodies. The vast part of subconscious activity never rises to the plane of consciousness.
We know superconscious activity as it expresses in our dreams, in a vision, and consciously as a special illumination. The superconscious must express all its operations in symbolism, symbols created by the conscious and subconscious. Apart from these symbols, we cannot intelligibly describe the things known in superconscious.
We may cease to be conscious of the feelings and experiences of life anytime because of the weakness of their individual elements, because the connection between them ceases, or because sleep or some artificial hypnotic inhibits them. They continue unconsciously until the inhibition passes or else the activities of life break down the body because of lack of conscious oversight. A physical stimulus may take effect without any sensation, as when food arrives in the stomach, exciting the flow of gastric juice, starting peristaltic motion, and starting the liver and pancreas. Yet we are aware only of the mechanical part of this process, the chewing and swallowing, and the general feeling of satisfaction that results.
We may have ideas and experiences of which we are, at the time, largely unconscious. For instance you may be unconsciously in love. You do not know it. However, everyone else does, and eventually it emerges into your consciousness.
Memory furnishes another field in which to observe the action of the conscious and the subconscious. Memory reproduces mental images of experiences and ideas. These seem to be lost, but we store up their impressions. Often they spring up spontaneously, at other times we recall them by a little conscious effort and association, while very often they refuse to come into consciousness no matter how much we may try to recall them.
Then we resort to the time-honored device of turning the attention to other things, and a subconscious trigger causes the memory-image to emerge into mental view.
We often study some problem, gather a mass of facts about it, attempt to set them in order, and the conscious effort ends in confusion and disorder. When we abandon the conscious effort, the subconscious, which has been at work all the time, has a chance to project into consciousness a perfect plan or outline of the subject, which is a logical deduction from the main facts. If we fail to solve a problem, we lie down to sleep, and in the dream state the subconscious can reveal the solution, which it has already grasped.
In the act of hearing, the passing of the vibration through the half dozen steps of transmission to the brain are all unconscious, yet they are an integral part of the process of hearing and classifying of sound, which is a conscious action.
We never really become aware of many subconscious links in all conscious work. A proposition, which we learned to understand by means of proof, remains long after we forget the proof itself. Most of the things we believe are bare outlines, the reasons for which we have forgotten, if we ever knew them.
Many conscious ideas arise from some subconscious decision as, for instance, those qualities classed as instinct, tact, etc. Selfish tendencies often persist after the first causes have passed away. A person begins to drink to drown trouble and continues drinking, unaware that his motive has subconsciously shifted. His only possibility for a cure will be by discovering a motive powerful enough to hold him, and by arousing his will power to carry that motive into effect.
Conscious motives pass, but their effects remain in the subconscious. Instinct acts for ends of which we are not conscious at all. Conscious efforts leave behind them subconscious effects. Four hundred years of the spirit of Egypt had so permeated the subconscious life of Israel that it required generations to eradicate it. It takes more than one generation to erase the effects of slavery from the consciousness so that one will not wince at the crack of the whip.
It is also true that what one does mechanically may eventually gain complete control over the conscious and the subconscious, and he will do the thing wholeheartedly. Take a person whose whole habit of life has been pessimistic and depressed, and who is accustomed consequently to being weak and ill. Let him start in the most mechanical way to affirm the positive side of life (joy, hope, and love), and very soon it will sink into his conscious and subconscious. The new habit will change his whole mental and physical condition.
We may also conceive and carry conscious and subconscious processes simultaneously. We can do any automatic task while carrying on a totally different mental process, and be totally oblivious to what our fingers are doing. Knitting is a good example.
This interplay of conscious and subconscious is ever present in our life of thought, emotion and action. Things that move us profoundly have large elements of subconscious ideation in them. Much of the emotional activities like love, hope, and faith, is subconscious. The subconscious facts and processes lie below all the sharply defined conscious processes, merely waiting some shock or movement to project them into full consciousness.
The study of the dream state, intermediate between the conscious and the subconscious, is instructive. Dreams may reveal the connection between our sleeping and waking states, and the relations of the conscious and subconscious. In all our dreams we may usually discover some relation between the substance of our dream and the facts of the waking state, either recent or remote.
The subconscious is always connected with the conscious world by touch, sound and the other senses. A soldier can sleep in the midst of a battle, yet will awaken at a whispered signal. A mother will sleep soundly, yet will awaken at the first movement of her child. We may set our mind to awaken at a certain hour, and sleep undisturbed until then. These all illustrate the interplay of conscious and subconscious activity in our waking and sleeping states.
Analyzing a person’s dreams will often detect the presence of a hatred for or fear of some person or thing, or the unsuspected influence of some past act, which fills the life with disharmony, bringing ills to both body and mind.
Expecting very much improvement will be useless until they consciously remember these secret states and acts; the very explanation of such conditions will often begin the cure. We need to address any idea that begins to assume prominence in sleeping or waking states, at once.
Thomas Parker Boyd
The Secrets, Mysteries & Powers of The Subconscious Mind
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