Distinguishing the Subconscient from the Subliminal Aspects of Consciousness

There is considerable confusion about the “subconscient” and the “subliminal” aspects of consciousness. Essentially, the subliminal references aspects of the independent levels of consciousness that embody the subtle physical, the subtle vital and the subtle mental. These levels are independent of the individual and we only experience a limited range of these layers of consciousness based on the ability of our senses and mind to receive, organize and relate to the larger vibratory patterns. Anything that falls outside that range of perception would be ‘subliminal’, in other words, unable to be directly picked up by our normal sense operations, even though still impacting and affecting us by virtue of their very vibratory activity. We thus tend to experience the effect without recognizing the source of the action of these subliminal levels of awareness.

The subconscient, on the other hand, represents impressions, sensations, events, activities that are picked up and experienced by our senses, but which do not get our conscious attention, or if they briefly get conscious attention, they are released and simply go into an unorganized mass of impressions that can arise when they are triggered by some stimulus or other, and which can impact the way we understand, and respond to situations. The subconscient may be impressions directly experienced by the individual, or it may be impressions that are collectively part of the general human inheritance in what C.G. Jung called the “collective unconscious” which throws up archetypes to our awareness from time to time.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “… 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. For if these impressions rise up most in dream in an incoherent and disorganized manner, they can also and do rise up into our waking consciousness as a mechanical repetition of old thoughts, old mental, vital and physical habits or an obscure stimulus to sensations, actions, emotions which do not originate in or from our conscious thought or will and are even often opposed to its perceptions, choice or dictates. In the subconscient there is an obscure mind full of obstinate Sanskaras, impressions, associations, fixed notions, hiabitual reactions formed by our past, an obscure vital full of the seeds of habitual desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body-consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organized, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pp. 53-54