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BellaMente
USA
147 Posts |
 Posted - Feb 19 2010 : 4:55:19 PM
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Okay, these contradictions have been confusing me for a very long time now:
We all have a conscious mind, subconscious mind, and lets say a collective unconscious mind, right?
Is the conscious mind a part of the subconscious mind? Are they connected? Or is the conscious mind the physical consciousness of the body?
If the conscious mind is just the physical consciousness of the body, then during sleep it somehow shuts off.
If the conscious mind is part of the subconscious mind, say the conscious is 5% and the subconscious is 95% of our minds, then when we sleep the conscious + subconscious aspect of "ourselves" leaves our bodies. BUT if the conscious mind leaves the body during sleep, then why do we not remember what occurs during sleep? Since most people do not remember what occurs when they sleep, this seems like the conscious+subconscious is involved in memory, for example, maybe memory is holographically recorded when the conscious mind is connected to the brain. But if this is true, then why do we remember dreams? When our conscious+subconscious mind leaves the body during astral projection, why can we remember the experiences?
Basically I am asking two questions:
(1) Is the conscious mind part of the subconscious mind or is it just the physical consciousness of the body?
(2) What role do the conscious and subconscious minds play in memory function?
Bella Mente
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Kirtanman
USA
1651 Posts |
Posted - Feb 19 2010 : 11:22:51 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by BellaMente
Okay, these contradictions have been confusing me for a very long time now:
We all have a conscious mind, subconscious mind, and lets say a collective unconscious mind, right?
Is the conscious mind a part of the subconscious mind? Are they connected? Or is the conscious mind the physical consciousness of the body?
If the conscious mind is just the physical consciousness of the body, then during sleep it somehow shuts off.
If the conscious mind is part of the subconscious mind, say the conscious is 5% and the subconscious is 95% of our minds, then when we sleep the conscious + subconscious aspect of "ourselves" leaves our bodies. BUT if the conscious mind leaves the body during sleep, then why do we not remember what occurs during sleep? Since most people do not remember what occurs when they sleep, this seems like the conscious+subconscious is involved in memory, for example, maybe memory is holographically recorded when the conscious mind is connected to the brain. But if this is true, then why do we remember dreams? When our conscious+subconscious mind leaves the body during astral projection, why can we remember the experiences?
Basically I am asking two questions:
(1) Is the conscious mind part of the subconscious mind or is it just the physical consciousness of the body?
(2) What role do the conscious and subconscious minds play in memory function?
Bella Mente
Hi Bellamente,
The so-called conscious mind is usually more a reaction of latent, subconscious conditioning projecting into the current moment (than true consciousness/awareness).
And we don't really "have" a subconscious mind ... it's more like: sense-of-limitation (the thought of "we" or "I" that "has" a conscious or subconscious mind) arises from the subconscious mind, just as all perception of limitation does.
It's all smoke and mirrors made of words and concepts, helpfully embedded in the body-mind (like your computer, body-mind "saves" whatever it's told to "save").
The so-called scientific model of consciousness was developed via this lens of misperception.
The accurate model has been known and articulated in yogic teachings for millenia.
From most-tangible through the less-tangible layers, to non-tangible awareness, we have four states/layers of consciousness, which have been understood, and symbollically-modeled, again, for millenia:
1 - Waking - Physical Perception (Earth)
2- Dreaming - Active Mental Perception (including Thinking) (Water)
3 - Deep Sleep - Latent Mental Conditioning; the Subconscious; the Sense-of-Self (including Memory) (Fire)
4 - Awareness - Substratum of the other 3 states, above (Air)
Prior to a certain amount of experience in meditation and/or other practices, it is common to only have conscious experience of states 1 and 2.
That's *why* consciousness disappears during sleep; formless consciousness literally does not compute (to the "thought called me", the "me I think I am"); if there's no form, it doesn't exist ... hence ... unconsciousness.
However, per Miguel's recent post (and a few thousand years of sacred tradition ) ... after a certain amount of meditation/spiritual practice, sleep begins to be experienced consciously. Sleep and samadhi are essentially the same; form-centric so-called consciousness just can't conceive of this, and so, when new to samadhi, falling asleep, or into a sleep-like state, is very common.
Then, there's the experience of breaking through into awareness ... pure, infinite awareness ... which has always been the light/screen which makes the rest of it possible to experience.
The Deep Sleep/Memory/Subconscious layer has just been the obscuring cloud-cover, which creates the (no)funhouse mirror effect of ego being real, and the focus of limitation being the actual self (per above, it's not).
As practices/meditation progress, the light of awareness dissolves the conditioning/memory/subconscious layer, the deep sleep layer, and the light of awareness of the actual self, replaces dreaming-thinking as the experiencing subject.
This doesn't mean it (conditioning) disappears entirely; but the memories of confusing conceptual conditioning with reality do dissolve.
And it's seen that other conditioning (enjoying certain flavors, certain types of music, etc.) ... "go with the body-mind", and have nothing at all to do with the actual self, which is simply this aware-space .... enjoying the experiencing of informing this moment.
This may not make any sense to you; it never really did to me either.
I just started experiencing it, and then the dots were pretty easy to connect, in terms of what the sacred teachings are saying.
(The Shiva Sutras say exactly what I'm saying, above; they just do so in hyper-efficient Sanskrit. )
I hope this is helpful.
Wholeheartedly,
Kirtanman |
Edited by - Kirtanman on Feb 20 2010 2:33:12 PM |
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Tibetan_Ice
Canada
758 Posts |
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karl
United Kingdom
1812 Posts |
Posted - Feb 20 2010 : 05:05:48 AM
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It's always a twist depending on your present thinking.
So these are things I have picked up. It does not make them true, it's just my understanding.
In a sleep state you are no longer conscious and although someone may tell you that they saw you sleeping and that you, in turn, witness others in the sleep state, as far as you are concerned while you are asleep (deep sleep)the world ceases to exist and so does your body. So, something must be aware at that point or the 'I am' would cease to exist completely, something makes it all come back to illusion and that's what most are trying to discover. It's not something external or apart, it is what you are.
When we talk of unconscious mind it is really one and the same. There cannot be two different minds. The unconscious mind (which you refer to as the sub-conscious mind)is responsible for all learning, it holds the memories and takes care of running the body and the world that you create during the wake state. You are then conscious of that projection and your body. The unconscious holds all of memory perfectly(it may not always be reachable, but it's all there perfectly in order) and gives an illusion of past and who we think we are.
In sleep state when dreams come they are considered latent consciousness. A bit like the Sun at early dawn. It illuminates the landscape weakly, not enough to really make out the surrounding area, a sort of distorted perspective which the mind uses generalisation, distortion and deletion to try and make sense out of.
That of course is only my perception of things, you can read whatever you like, the only one that truly knows the truth is yourself. That is the only place you can truly explore. Your sense that 'I am ' is the starting point. All the Yogis, Gurus, books, scientists etc can only give their own view point (which is infact only your own anyway). Nothing can be proved or disproved, there are no rights or wrongs. |
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amoux
United Kingdom
266 Posts |
Posted - Feb 20 2010 : 06:14:37 AM
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Roughly speaking, my understanding (from Freud and Jung) is that there is the conscious mind, the subconscious just under it, which is accessible through memory, the unconscious mind, which is a kind of storage house of repressed memory, trauma, the 'shadow' etc., and Jung suggests under that is the collective unconscious.
A good example I read of the difference between conscious and subconscious is when we need to recall a telephone number or an address. The information isn't simply floating about in our conscious mind, but it is there, in our subconscious, and through memory we can recall it. So the subconscious is available to the conscious mind. The unconscious not so much  |
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What is our conscious mind? Our subconscious?
