EVERYONE has heard of the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, and there is a tendency to regard them as two completely separate units. This is an entirely misleading view. They are no more separate than two different parts of the same room. In fact, that is an analogy which we can pursue rather further, and liken the mind to a huge room with a light in only one end of it, so that only a small portion is illuminated with any degree of brightness, and beyond its immediate rays there is a space of shadows and twilight, and further still we find absolute darkness.We may imagine a steady progression of people into the brightly-lighted area. Some come from the dark shadows of the room, whilst others come in from outside, but they all go the same way in the end—into the shadows and into the darkness.Here is the key to the analogy. The brightly-lighted area is the conscious mind and contains those thoughts (people) which we are at this moment thinking. They may be new thoughts and impressions which have come in from outside or they may be old thoughts which have been stored up in the darkness but which we have recalled to the light.
Where the light is not good, but vision is still possible, we find those thoughts which are within immediate recall, i.e., memory; or thoughts in some way related to those in full light.
What is in the darkness or subconscious mind we will deal with in a moment.
Let me, with another illustration, try to make the matter clearer to you.
Supposing you were in a hall listening to a lecture. The speaker and his matter would be in your conscious mind. Just beyond its range you would find other matters of which you might be partially conscious. For instance, that the seats were hard or that the hall was too cold. And a little further still from the centre of complete consciousness, we would find those thoughts which might, at an instant, be called to the centre by some remark of the speaker’s which, momentarily, made you think of something else. For instance, the mention of food might conceivably bring to the centre of consciousness the thought that you were going to be late for your dinner.
Finally, we find the complete darkness or subconscious mind with which this section is primarily designed to deal.
A man lives in accordance with his beliefs, and his beliefs are the result of the credit or debit balance of the contents of his subconscious mind.
As it is so much simpler to drive home a point by means of an illustration, let us continue the analogy of the dark part of the room and its inhabitants.
If we penetrate the darkness we find that the room is large enough to accommodate every person (thought) that comes in. There is ample space for all and not a single one gets suffocated. But on closer examination we find that they are not pushed in anyhow, but are carefully grouped according to the interest they may have in common, and are labelled with the name of that interest, and even if their views on their common interest are totally opposed to each other, they nevertheless join the group.
Now let us take a hypothetical case and see the subconscious mind at work.
Suppose you, reader, have never in your life seen a dog. Then in your subconscious mind there will be a label with the word “Dog” on it but with, so far, no group of thoughts to which to attach it. Then one day you hear a noise and someone says that it is a dog barking. Immediately the thought that a dog is something that barks goes down and takes its place under the label “Dog.” And so on as your information about dogs grows, so the group of thoughts under that label gradually increases. Then perhaps someone says that a dog has five legs. Down goes that thought and takes its place in the group even though you may have seen a dog and so know that the though is a false one.
No thought or impression entering the mind is ever lost. Every thought or impression you have ever received, even from pre-natal existence, right through your life, is stored under its appropriate label in your subconscious mind until your death—and after.
In the first section above, we decided that the Psychic Life-Giving Urge is an organising force when brought into association with matter, and, as scientists have shown us, we find therein the greatest proof of survival after death, because it is surely common sense to state that that Force which organises and controls the indestructible, is itself Eternal.
When Death takes place, therefore, the mind shakes itself free of all that is physical and limited, and the Real You, which is the sum total, on balance, of your subconscious mind, emerges, untrammelled any longer by a consciousness of physical conditions and surroundings, to complete freedom of action for further experience on other less material planes.
To return to our illustration of the “Dog-Group” of thoughts as given above. If you are asked whether a dog has four legs or five, your answer is the result of a balance of the thoughts contained in that group. So are your actions all through your life. So the health of your subconscious mind is of primary importance to you and is certainly worthy of still further consideration.
A great truth lies in the analogy of the mind as a room of Darkness and Light, for the subconscious mind works completely “in the dark,” whilst the conscious mind works completely “in the light.”
The conscious mind, because it works in the light, is able to check up or reason about any information given to it, and need not react to that information, but the subconscious mind accepts as literal and complete truth every statement made to it and immediately sets to work to act upon it.
For instance, if a man is seated in a chair and hypnotised—by which we mean that his conscious mind is temporarily put to sleep—and then he is told that he is swimming in a rough sea, the subconscious mind will proceed to make the man go through all the motions of swimming or even of exhaustion. But an un-hypnotised man, in full possession of his conscious faculties, will immediately reject the suggestion that he is in the sea—he knows that he is safely in a chair and that is all there is to it as far as he is concerned.
The habitual liar does actually begin to believe his or her own lies, because he or she has told them so often and lived them so consistently that on balance in their subconscious mind they are the Realities.
To cure him or her and straighten them out, therefore, there must be given them an adequate number of truth-thoughts to ensure the balance working out on the right side.
What else does the subconscious mind do beside contain our beliefs?
It also directly controls all those actions of the body which we regard as automatic whether they be glandular, muscular or nervous. All our functional activities are guided by the subconscious mind.
This section is of great importance and I ask you to realise it to the full, as it is on these foundations that the whole structure of the Practice of Mental Science is built.
