Subconscient and Subliminal

Subconscient - Definition:

“The real subconscious is a nether diminished consciousness close to the Inconscient;”

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - I: The Double Soul in Man

“That part of us which we can strictly call subconscient because it is below the level of mind and conscious life, inferior and obscure, …, unmentalised, unobserved by the mind, uncontrolled by it in their action.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge

 

“For the subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge

 Subconscient - What is it made up of:

“About the subconscient — it is the sub-mental base of the being and is made up of impressions, instincts, habitual movements that are stored there. Whatever movement is impressed in it, it keeps.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Subconscient and the Inconscient

 

“The subconscient is a thing of habits and memories and repeats persistently or whenever it can old suppressed reactions, reflexes, mental, vital or physical responses.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga

“In our yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements, crudely repeated or disguised in strange forms can surge up into dream or into the waking nature.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga

Subconscient - Its role:

“… the subconscient is below the body-consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there. … the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Subconscient and the Inconscient 

“The subconscient is the support of habitual action — it can support good habits as well as bad.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga

  

Subliminal - Definition and What is it made up of:

“Subliminal is a general term used for all parts of the being which are not on the waking surface.” 

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Subconscient and the Inconscient

 “The inner mental, vital, physical, the psychic are not subconscious in this sense, but they can be spoken of as subliminal.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Subconscient and the Inconscient 

 “The subliminal self stands behind and supports the whole superficial man; it has in it a larger and more efficient mind behind the surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness behind the surface bodily existence. And above them it opens to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower subconscient ranges.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga 

“Our subliminal self is not, like our surface physical being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient; it is a meeting-place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - I: The Cosmic Illusion; Mind, Dream and Hallucination

 Subliminal - Its role:

“But the role of subliminal forces cannot be said to be small, since from there come all the greater aspirations, ideals, strivings towards a better self and better humanity without which man would be only a thinking animal — as also most of the art, poetry, philosophy, thirst for knowledge which relieve, if they do not yet dispel, the ignorance.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Subconscient and the Inconscient

 

Subconscient vs Subliminal:

“Subliminal is a general term used for all parts of the being which are not on the waking surface.

Subconscient is very often used in the same sense by European psychologists because they do not know the difference. But when I use the word, I mean always what is below the ordinary physical consciousness, not what is behind it.

The inner mental, vital, physical, the psychic are not subconscious in this sense, but they can be spoken of as subliminal.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Subconscient and the Inconscient 

 

“It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseen dynamisms which explain his surface activities.

But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know, — and even of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners, — is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal whole.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga

Subconscient vs Superconscient:

“Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body-consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there.

Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Subconscient and the Inconscient

Note: Headings are given by me.  

Date: 16/11/2024