Conscious Mind and Subconscious Mind

Chapter 12

WE ARE ALL well acquainted with the conscious mind. Through its use we establish our relations with the outer realm and recognize our individual entities. Indeed, there are some who claim that the conscious mind is the only mind there is. They are simply holding a thus far undiscovered country to be undiscoverable. Of such persons as these Cardinal Newman spoke when he said that they "are only possessed by their knowledge, not possessed of it." But in due season they will awake and respond to the call of Spirit to "come up higher."

The subconscious mind is the vast, silent realm that lies back of the conscious mind and between it and the superconscious. To one who does not understand its nature and its office, it is the "great gulf fixed" between his present state and the attainment of his highest desire, his good. The subconscious may be called the sensitive plate of mind. Its true office is to receive impressions from the superconscious and to reproduce them upon the canvas of the conscious mind. Man, however, having lost the consciousness of the indwelling Father as an ever present reality, has reversed the process and impresses the subconscious