Subconsciousness

“ We have an extraordinary and inexhaustible power of inventing surprises for our intellect, both in our dreams and in inventive states of meditation. Some people call these things manifestations of the subconsciousness. I prefer to think of them as manifestations of the long-neglected powers of the instinct. ”

“ What I claim is that a good deal, if not the most of what is described as subconsciousness, is essentially of the same inner, subjective experience of what we otherwise describe as conscious awareness, inasmuch as introspective experience, both direct and indirect, given by immediate experience and by memory, as well as by reactions and behavior are the same as found in fully conscious states. ”

“ Both sensation and emotion represent conditions of activity, whereas, so far as self-consciousness is equal to differentiating them, subconsciousness and unconscious cerebration respectively represent passivity and activity. ”

“ Foremost in importance is the discovery that, in addition to the ordinary realm of conscious thought, there exists in all of us a second realm—that of the so-called subconscious—in which, quite without any will-directed effort of our own, the most varied mental processes are carried on. ”

“ In other words, there are in us mental processes which have consciousness, but no self-consciousness. This is precisely what I mean by the subconscious,―mental states which have consciousness, but do not reach the personal consciousness. In short, the only possible psychological assumption is a subconscious consciousness. ”

“ We learn of our internal machinery by what it does. We must infer a part of our minds which introspection does not reveal, a mind within the mind, able to work for us even while we are unaware of its existence. This inner mind is usually known as the subconscious, the mind under the level of consciousness. [16] We forget a name, but we know that it will come to us if we think about something else. Presently, out of somewhere, there flashes the word we want. Where was it in the meanwhile, and what hunted it out from among all our other memories and sent it up into consciousness? ”

“ Through the conception of the subconscious as resolvable, on the one hand, into the unconscious, passive or active physiological dispositions, and, on the other hand, into coactive conscious states, the subconscious becomes simplified and intelligible. It offers a basis on which may be constructed comprehensible theories of memory, suggestibility, post-hypnotic phenomena, dreams, automatic writing and similar phenomena, artificial hallucinations, the protean phenomena of hysteria, and the psycho-neuroses, as well as the mechanism of thought. ”

“ They give meaning to new experiences, color our judgments, shape our beliefs, determine our interests, and, if wrongly handled, make their way into consciousness as neurotic symptoms.
However, the subconscious is not all emotion. It is a mind capable of elaborate thought, able to calculate, to scheme, to answer doubts, to solve problems, to fabricate the purposeful, fantastic allegories of dreams and to create from mere knowledge the inspired works of genius. ”

“ Which incarnation and self-manifestation seems to be the whole goal of the unconscious soul: the whole goal of life. Thus it is that the unconscious brings forth not only consciousness, but tissue and organs also. And all the time the working of each organ depends on the primary spontaneous-conscious center of which it is the issue—if you like, the soul-center. And consciousness is like a web woven finally in the mind from the various silken strands spun forth from the primal center of the unconscious. ”

“ Hence we are hearing a great deal about the subconscious mind, or subliminal consciousness as some prefer to call it. Now that our attention has been directed to it, we are coming to see, as is usual with every new discovery, that after a fashion we knew it all along. The subconscious mind seems to be the seat of inspiration and intuition. ”

“ Nor may we be able to determine the intrinsic nature of a subconscious process—whether it is a conscious or unconscious one, but only the actuality of the process, the conditions of its activity, and the phenomena which it induces.
A subconscious process may be provisionally defined as one of which the personality is unaware, which, therefore, is outside the personal consciousness, and which is a factor in the determination of conscious and bodily phenomena, or produces effects analogous to those which might be directly or indirectly induced by consciousness. ”

“ To explore the most sacred depths of the unconscious, to labor in what I have just called the subsoil of consciousness, that will be the principal task of psychology in the century which is opening. I do not doubt that wonderful discoveries await it there, as important perhaps as have been in the preceding centuries the discoveries of the physical and natural sciences. ”

“ Nor, excepting in special pathological and artificial dissociated conditions, is the distinction between the conscious and subconscious at any moment always sharp and precise; it is often rather a matter of vividness and shading, and whether a conscious state is in the focus of attention or in the fringe. ”

“ The first seat of our primal consciousnesses the solar plexus, the great nerve-center situated behind the stomach. From this center we are first dynamically conscious. For the primal consciousness is always dynamic, and never, like mental consciousness, static. Thought, let us say what we will about its magic powers, is instrumental only, the soul's finest instrument for the business of living. Thought is just a means to action and living. But life and action take rise actually at the great centers of dynamic consciousness. ”

“ All happens as if subconscious processes had been at work, as if the problem had been going through a subconscious incubation, switching in this and switching in that set of facts, and presenting them to consciousness, the final selection of the deciding point of view being left to the latter. The subconscious garners from the storehouse of past experiences, those which have a bearing on the question and are required for its solution, brings them into consciousness, and then our logical conscious processes form the judgment. ”

“ It seems to me that before we can get anywhere at all, we've got to draw the line between the conscious and the subconscious. What bothers me is, am I conscious of having a subconscious, or not? Sometimes I think I am, and then again I'm doubtful. ”

“ For consistency's sake the dynamic conceptions which I would apply to mental states in consciousness must be applied also to these mental states existing subconsciously. Subconscious ideas and sensations must be capable of development in intensity and in perfection of finish, so to speak; must be able to awaken associated ideas, to produce bodily movements, to affect secretion and other metabolic processes. It would appear possible that the dissociated processes underlying them may suddenly effect union with the upper system, thus intruding the subconscious state into the upper consciousness. ”

“ We have also seen that it is not only these mental experiences which occupied the focus of our attention that leave their counterpart in neurograms, but those as well of which we are only partially aware—absent-minded thoughts and acts and sensations and perceptions which never entered our awareness at all—subconscious or coconscious ideas as they are called. Finally, we have seen that the mental experiences of every state, normal, artificial, or pathological, whatever may be the state of the personal consciousness, are subject to the same principle of conservation. ”

“ We may easily dispense with the phrase "substance of the mind," if we wish to avoid a term of matter; but if mind is constituted by the perception of feelings excited in the nervous system, what is it that perceives? Is there a something that is reached by the feelings which constitute sensations in the great nerve-center, which takes cognizance of them, which combines them into portions of consciousness, or is consciousness nothing but a succession of sensations, and if so, what is "thought"? ”

“ In a mind thus disassembled nearly every mental phenomenon, conscious and subconscious—conflicts, hallucinations, coconscious processes, defense reactions, etc.,—can be observed in an isolated form and systematically studied. ”

“ It seems a trivial function of the body and yet it is the Key to the Soul——"
"The Key to the Soul?"
"Man sleeps," he said, "and his Conscious Mind is in abeyance. But his Subconscious Mind is still awake. It functions. ”

“ Numerous instances might be cited to show that our subconscious mind is the record storehouse of all that has ever happened to us. Every thought, every experience, whatever passes before the eye, or that we see or hear or feel is registered accurately in our brain by our subconscious mind. ”

“ Now, if it be true that the consciousness aroused by objects around us, through sensation, is an accompaniment of certain physiological changes in the brain, it is clear that the localization of their points of origin in special parts of the skin, and the outward projection of the objects exciting vision, is an act of the mind quite distinct from [311] the mere passive response in consciousness which we call an impression, and more complex than that mental activity which, through discrimination and recognition, converts the bare impression into a sensation. ”

“ The mind often manifests, through the cranial nerves, states of mind of which the person is unconscious. While consciousness is the power by which one knows his own states of mind, there is no proof that consciousness takes note of all one’s states of mind. ”

“ The fact that the subconscious mind seems to function in a realm apart from anything that has to do with our conscious mental processes, and also that it has some definite functions as both directing and building functions to perform in connection with the body, and that it is at the same time subject to suggestion and direction from the active thinking mind, would indicate that it may be the true connecting link, the medium of exchange, between the soul and the body, the connector of the spiritual and the material so far as man is concerned. ”

“ But the experience leaves its 'unimaginable touch' on the matter of the convolutions, and the next impression which a sense-organ transmits produces a cerebral reaction in which the awakened vestige of the last impression plays its part. Another sort of feeling and a higher grade of cognition are the consequence. 'Ideas' about the object mingle with the awareness of its mere sensible presence, we name it, class it, compare it, utter propositions concerning it, and the complication of the possible consciousness which an incoming current may arouse, goes on increasing to the end of life. ”

“ We come now to consider the mental apparatus which is at the disposal of the self: to ask what it can tell us of the method by which she may escape from the prison of the sense-world, transcend its rhythm, and attain knowledge of—or conscious contact with—a supra-sensible Reality. ”

“ The fraction that could accurately show the relation of the conscious to the unconscious part of ourselves would have such a small numerator and such a huge denominator that we might well wonder where consciousness came in at all. [26] Some one has likened the subconscious to the great far-reaching depths of the Mammoth Cave, and consciousness to the tiny, flickering lamp which we carry to light our way in the darkness. However, ever the subconscious mind is becoming explorable, and it may be that science is giving the tiny lamp the revealing power of a great searchlight. ”

“ The sub-conscious nature, the brain of the medium, or his astral body, the fluidic mind, the unknown powers latent in sensitive organisms, might we not consider these as the mirror which we have just imagined? ”

“ The subconscious, in fact, is a kind of vast store-house, wherein are preserved, seemingly without time limit and in the most perfect detail, memory-images of everything we have seen, heard, or otherwise experienced through our sense-organs. ”

“ In these one's real consciousness may be lost in sleep while the subliminal self, the alter-ego which never slumbers nor sleeps, rises to the surface and speaks in no uncertain tones. The mind sees with the startling clearness as if in a vision. ”

“ As the subconscious and its processes are fundamentals both in the structure of personality and in viiithe many mechanisms through which personality, normal and abnormal, finds expression, the first eight lectures are devoted to its exposition. Indeed, as has been said, the subconscious is not only the most important problem of psychology, it is the problem. The study of its phenomena must be preliminary to that of the functioning mechanisms of both the normal mind and of those special pathological conditions—the psycho-neuroses—which modern investigators are tracing to its perversions. ”

“ To feel, to [Pg 5] experience a sensation, or to perceive, implies consciousness; it is that which is transmitted by the nerves to the sensorium, either by the organs of sense, or by the internal nerves; as pain, or feelings of which we are conscious. Consciousness is the test, the evidence, the proof of sensation or perception. ”

“ I go straight to the facts, without saying I go to perception, or sensation, or thought, or any special mode at all. What I find when I look at my consciousness at all is that what I cannot divest myself of, or not have in consciousness, if I have any consciousness at all, is a sequence of different feelings. ”

“ There is, first, in the order of our consciousness and in the degree of its undeniableness, the element of our actual impressions, the flux of our consciousness as it apprehends particular sights and sounds, smells and tastes and touches; particular sensations of rest and movement, pleasure and pain, memory, judgment, and volition, a flux, “changeless in its ceaseless change.” We have so far found neither a true object for thought, nor a subject which can think. ”