THE SUBCONSCIOUS & THE SUPERCONSCIOUS PLANES OF MIND. William Walker Atkinson
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the world which makes up our being we only perceive the highest points—the lightedup peaks of a continent whose lower levels remain in the shade. Beneath ordinary sensations are their components— that is to say, the elementary sensations, which must be combined into groups to reach our consciousness. Outside a little luminous circle lies a large ring of twilight, and beyond this an indefinite night; but the events of this twilight and this night are as real as those within the luminous circle." Maudsley says: "Examine closely, and without bias, the ordinary mental operations of daily life, and you will surely discover that consciousness has not onetenth part of the function therein which it is commonly assumed to have…In every conscious state there are at work conscious, subconscious, and infraconscious energies, the last as indispensable as the first."
Kay said: "Every impression or thought that has once been before consciousness remains ever after impressed in the mind. It may never again come up before consciousness, but it will doubtless remain in that vast ultraconscious region of the mind, unconsciously moulding and fashioning our subsequent thoughts and actions. It is only a small part of what exists in the mind that we are at any time conscious of. There is always much that is known to be in the mind that exists in it unconsciously, and must be stored away somewhere. We may be able to recall it into consciousness when we wish to do so, but at other times the mind is unconscious of its existence."
Morrell said: "We have every reason to believe that mental power when once called forth follows the analogy of everything we see in the material universe in the fact of its perpetuity. Every single effort of mind is a creation which can never go back again into nonentity. It may slumber in the depths of forgetfulness as light and heat slumber in the coal seams, but there it is, ready at the bidding of some appropriate stimulus to come again out of the darkness into the light of consciousness…. What is termed ‘common sense’ is nothing but a substratum of experiences out of which our judgments flow, while the experiences themselves are hidden away in the unconscious depths of our intellectual nature; and even the flow of public opinion is formed by ideas which lie tacitly in the national mind, and come into consciousness, generally, a long time after they have been really operating and shaping the course of events in human history." Carpenter said: "Man’s ordinary commonsense is the resultant of the unconscious coordination of a long succession of small experiences mostly forgotten, or perhaps never brought out into distinct consciousness."
The study of the subject of Memory led many of the psychologists of the last generation to assume as a necessity the existence of a great "unconscious" storehouse in which all the records impressed upon the mind were preserved. Other branches of psychology forced their investigators to assume a great area of the mind, lying outside of the field of consciousness, to account for certain phenomena. And, so, gradually the idea of the existence of this undiscovered and unexplored country of the mind came to be accepted as orthodox by all except the ultraconservatives, and investigation in the said direction was encouraged instead of discouraged or forbidden as has been the case previously. And arising from the thought on the subject of the "unconscious mind" we find the evolving conception of there being various strata, planes, or regions of mind of varying stages of consciousness—that, instead of there being but one plane of consciousness, there were many—that instead of there being an "unconscious region" there was one, or more, additional plane of consciousness, operating under general laws and being as much a part of the general consciousness as is that plane which we speak of as the ordinary consciousness. This was the beginning of the various dualmind theories, which we shall now consider.
Chapter II.
The Manifold Mind.
ARISING naturally from the speculations regarding the "unconscious mind" we find the conception of the "dualmind" taking a prominent place on the stage of psychological consideration. From the idea of an unconscious area of mind was evolved the conception of two minds possessed by the individual, each independent and yet both working together in the production of mental phenomena. It is difficult to determine the beginning of this conception. Traces of it and vague hints regarding it may be found in many of the earlier writings. While there seems to have been a dawning conception of the subconscious mind as a separate mind on the part of many thinkers and writers in the latter part of the Twentieth Century, yet to two men must be given the credit of attracting the public notice to the subject, and of the presentation of the thought in a positive, clear form. We refer to Frederic W. H. Myers and Thomson J. Hudson, respectively. Both of these men offered a dualmind theory or working hypothesis as a basis for a correct understanding of what has been called "Psychic Phenomena," by which is meant the phenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance, hypnotism, tranceconditions, etc.
Myers evolved the idea that the self was not only a unity but was also a coordination, and that it "possesses faculties and powers unexercised and unexercisable by the consciousness that finds employment in the direction of the affairs of everyday life," as Bruce so well states it. In 1887 he first made public his theory of the "Subliminal Self," as he called this secondary or hidden mind. After that time, for several years, he wrote and spoke frequently on the subject, and in the year last mentioned his full theory was embodied in his work entitled "Human Personality," which was published after his death.
Myers stated his conception of the Subliminal Self in his great work, as follows: "The idea of a threshold (limen, Schwelle) of consciousness—of a level above which sensation or thought must rise before it can enter into our conscious life—is a simple and familiar one. The word subliminal—meaning ‘beneath the threshold’—has already been used to define those sensations which are too feeble to be individually recognized. I propose to extend the meaning of the term, so as to make it cover all that takes place beneath the ordinary threshold, or say, if preferred, the ordinary margin of consciousness—not only those faint stimulations whose very faintness keeps them submerged, but much else which psychology as yet scarcely recognizes—sensations, thoughts, emotions, which may be strong, definite and independent; but which, by the original constitution of our being, seldom merge into that supraliminal current of consciousness which we habitually identify with ourselves. Perceiving that these submerged thoughts and emotions possess the characteristics which we associate with conscious life, I feel bound to speak of a subliminal, or ultramarginal, consciousness—a consciousness which we shall see, for instance, uttering or writing sentences quite as complex and coherent as the supraliminal consciousness could make them. Perceiving further that this conscious life beneath the threshold or beneath the margin seems to be no discontinuous or intermittent thing; that not only are these isolated subliminal processes comparable with isolated supraliminal processes (as when a problem is solved by some unknown procedure in a dream), but that there also is a continuous subliminal chain of memory (or more chains than one) involving just that kind of individual and persistent revival of old impressions and response to new ones, which we commonly call a Self—I find it permissible and convenient to speak of subliminal Selves or more briefly of a Subliminal Self. I do not intend by using this term assume that there are two correlative and parallel selves existing always within each of us. Rather I mean by the Subliminal Self that part of the Self which is commonly subliminal; and I conceive that there may be—not only cooperations between these quasiindependent trains of thought—but also upheavals and alternations of personality of many kinds, so that what was once below the surface may for a time, or permanently, rise above it. And I conceive also that no Self of which we can here have cognizance, is in reality more than a fragment of a larger Self—revealed in a fashion at once shifting and limited through an organism not so framed as to afford it full manifestation."
Perhaps to Hudson, even more than to Myers, is due the widespread interest in the dualmind theory or conception. In 1893, Hudson, in his work entitled "The Law of Psychic Phenomena," boldly enunciated his now famous theory of the "Subjective Mind," which at once caught the popular fancy, and which he elaborated in his subsequent works. Hudson’s dualmind theory can best be stated in his own words. In his work, above mentioned, he states: "Man has, or appears to have, two minds, each endowed with separate and distinct attributes and powers; each capable, under certain conditions,