Series 1 - Lesson 5 - Annotation 3
What is the subconscious phase of mind?
3. The subconscious phase of mind in each person is the feeling nature as well as the storehouse in which is kept whatever he has made out of the portion of substance that has been given him. Of this substance he forms his body and his world. In the store-house he keeps patterns of the results that have accrued from the experiences through which his body has passed on the path of life, from single cell to complex organism. Each cell has a capacity for instinctive knowing that is based on the sensations experienced by the fleshly body. The subconsciousness is the seat of various feelings, the feelings of pleasure and pain as responses made to the sensation. The pleasure causes a desire to bring about conditions that enable a person to repeat the sensation. Feelings that are responses consciously or subconsciously to sensations make up his emotional nature.
As a storehouse has its goods arranged, so the subconscious stores of instinct and feeling are organized into habits, opinions, beliefs, memories. These give rise to moods, temperaments, and attitudes of mind from which man acts spontaneously. The subconscious phase of mind has no power of choice; it works deductively, handing out its supplies as they are requisitioned by its master, the conscious phase of mind. From the standpoint of time, the subconsciousness is each one's past (minus what he has eliminated by conscious or unconscious denial), active in the present, projecting into the future. It is the total personal mind (consciousness) of each human being as well as the accumulated race mind (consciousness).
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Preceding Entry: Why does evil appear in the world?
Following Entry: Why is it important for the overcomer to understand the functioning of the subconscious phase of mind?
