Diving into the Realm of Enthralling Arrays in Man’s Subconscious
Did you ever solely rely on your Intuition or the so-called sixth sense while performing a task? Is it driven by our subconscious mind?
Were you ever stuck with a problem, pondering all day long for a solution in vain, only to fall asleep but instead realize an incredible solution while sleeping?
Well, according to some recent studies by psychologists from UC San Diego, sleep improves one’s ability to come up with creative solutions to problems by assisting the brain in forging connections among unrelated ideas and memories. During sleep, the neurons of the brain are reorganized, so we see new patterns, we see solutions, whereas before, we could only see obstacles.
As one story has it, 22-year-old Larry Page was struck in the middle of the night with a vision in which he somehow managed to download the entire Web and could just keep the links. He immediately grabbed a pen when he woke up and wrote down what became the basis for an algorithm. He used this algorithm to power a new Web search engine now known as Google.
Even Dmitri Mendeleev, exhausted from his effort of arranging elements in various sequences, fell asleep. He later recalled, “I saw in a dream, a table, where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper.” After his dream, Mendeleev drew the table he had envisioned, and while arranging the elements in order of increasing atomic mass, Mendeleev discovered what is now called the Periodic Law. Since the properties repeated themselves periodically, the table he had designed was termed the periodic table.
While you are asleep, your brain cycles between rapid eye movement(REM) and non-REM sleep. Most dreaming occurs during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which we cycle through periods during the night. Sleep studies show that our brain waves are almost as active during REM cycles as when we’re awake. Experts believe the brainstem generates REM sleep, and the forebrain generates dreams.
LUCID DREAMS
There’s this famous quote from Christopher Nolan’s Inception that pretty much sums up how one might feel about dreams.
“Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.”
But what if you were aware that you’re dreaming? You’ve just figured out that the events flashing in front of you aren’t real but just projections of your subconscious, ranging from your deepest desires to your biggest fears. Well, that leads us to lucid dreaming. Movies such as Inception have popularized lucid dreaming. This movie features impressive dream artisans who can control the shape and content of their dreams, as well as the dreams of others. Since you are aware that you’re in a dream, what you accomplish in lucid dreams exceeds the regular bounds of reality. You’ll be able to control what unfolds in the dream. It’s as if you’re directing a movie in your dream.
Lucid dreams, like most other dreams, usually occur during REM sleep.
But one may wonder how often these lucid dreams occur. Well, you might be shocked to find out that more than 40% of the population have never experienced a lucid dream, and for those people who have never experienced it before, it might seem impossible or nonsensical.
Lucid dreaming is a natural phenomenon and a learned skill that can be cultivated and improved. Lucidity is all about conscious awareness, and it becomes increasingly apparent that meditation and control of your thoughts are the key elements for lucid dreaming.
Robert Louis Stevenson, in one of his books, Across the Plains, devotes a whole chapter to dreams. He was a vivid dreamer and had the persistent habit of giving specific instructions to his subconscious every night prior to sleep. For example, if Stevenson’s funds were low ebb, his command to his subconscious would be something like this: “Give me a good thrilling novel which will be marketable and profitable.” His subconscious responded magnificently.
THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
We have only one mind that possesses two distinct characteristics. The difference between the two is well known to all thinking men and women today. The two functions of the mind are essentially different, and each is associated with distinct attributes and powers. The nomenclature generally used to distinguish the two functions of the mind is as follows: The objective and subjective mind, the conscious and subconscious mind, the waking and sleeping mind, and the voluntary and the involuntary mind.
WORKING OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS
Your Subconscious mind takes on the infinite power, energy, and wisdom within you. It has the capacity to line up all the laws of nature to get its way to bring about an immediate solution to your difficulties, but at other times, it may take days, weeks, or longer as its ways are past finding out.
Psychologists and psychiatrists point out that impressions are made in the brain cells when thoughts are conveyed to the subconscious. As soon as your subconscious accepts any idea, it proceeds to put it into effect immediately. It works with the association of ideas and uses every bit of knowledge you have gathered in your lifetime to achieve its purpose. A woman may say, “I wake up at three o’clock if I drink coffee at night.” Whenever she drinks coffee at night, her subconscious mind nudges her as if to say, “The boss wants you to stay awake tonight.”
“The infinite intelligence of my subconscious mind reveals to me my true place in life.”
– Joseph Murphy
THE PRIME DIFFERENCE
The conscious and the subconscious aren’t two minds. They are merely two spheres of activity within one mind. The conscious mind is the reasoning mind and the phase that chooses(decisive one). For example, you choose your books, home, and friends. On the contrary, without any conscious choice on your part, your heart is kept functioning automatically; the process of digestion, circulation, breathing, and other involuntary processes are carried by your subconscious mind through processes of your conscious control.
Your subconscious mind accepts what is impressed upon it or what you consciously believe. It doesn’t reason things like the conscious mind, and it doesn’t argue controversially. Also, remember that the subconscious mind doesn’t engage in proving whether your thoughts are good or bad, true or false, but it responds according to the nature of your thoughts or suggestions. For example, suppose you consciously assume something is true, even though it may be false. In that case, your subconscious mind will accept it as true and proceed to bring about results, which must necessarily follow because you consciously assumed it to be true.
“Our subconscious minds have no sense of humor, play no jokes, and cannot tell the difference between reality and an imagined thought or image. What we continually think about will eventually manifest in our lives.”
–Robert Collier
The subconscious mind never sleeps and never rests. It is always on its job. One can discover its miracle-working power by plainly stating to your subconscious prior to sleep that you wish a certain specific thing to be accomplished. You will be delighted to discover that forces within you will be “released,” leading to the desired result. Here, then, is a source of power and wisdom that places you in touch with omnipotence, or the power that moves the world, guides the planets in their course, and causes the sun to shine.
It was through the subconscious mind that Shakespeare perceived great truths hidden from the average man of his day. Undoubtedly, his subconscious mind’s response caused the Greek sculptor Phidias to portray beauty, order, symmetry, and proportion in marble and bronze. It also enabled the Italian artist, Raphael, to paint Madonnas and Ludwig van Beethoven to compose symphonies.
INTUITION
And coming to the question asked initially, intuition is a process of getting knowledge and understanding through means rather than thinking, learning, or the five senses. Intuition is a subconscious process that brings information, solutions, and understanding on how to proceed into the conscious mind.
Our “intuitions” are simply opinions; our philosophical theories are the same. Some are commonsensical, some are sophisticated; some are particular, some are more firmly held, and some are less. But they are all opinions.
Ramanujan is the icon of mathematical intuition. His case is a spectacular example of how mathematical language is inscribed in the brains of all human beings. In the same way that Mozart visualized music, this young Indian could sprout mathematical formulas with which he tried to explain the world. Ramanujan eventually said that the formulas came to him in a dream, presented as mathematical truths by his family’s goddess, Namagiri Amman (generally known in India as Lakshmi, the wife of Vishnu).
“Intuition is the perception via the unconscious that brings forth ideas, images, new possibilities and ways out of blocked situations.”
– Carl Jung
A BEAUTIFUL ANALOGY
An excellent way to get acquainted with the two functions of the mind is to look upon your mind as a garden. You are a gardener, and you are planting seeds (thoughts) in your subconscious mind all day long, based on your habitual thinking. As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment. So begin to sow thoughts of peace, happiness, right action, goodwill, and prosperity. Think calmly with interest in these qualities and accept them entirely in your conscious reasoning mind. Continue to plant these wonderful seeds (thoughts) in the garden of your mind, and you will reap a glorious harvest. Your subconscious mind may be likened to the soil, which will grow all kinds of seeds, good or bad. “Do men gather grapes or thorns or figs of thistles?” Therefore, every thought is a cause, and every condition is an effect. For this reason, it is essential that you take charge of your thoughts so as to bring forth only desirable conditions.
SUBCONSCIOUS-INFINITE STOREHOUSE OF KNOWLEDGE
Thus one can achieve great heights in life with the help of their subconscious, and it depends on how one is communicating with it and what commands are being given. In order to achieve your goals, keep thinking about them just before you sleep and just after you wake up as the subconscious mind comes into action (becomes active) during this time. Trust your subconscious completely. Know that its tendency is always lifeward. Occasionally, your subconscious answers you in a very vivid dream and a vision in the night.
“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.”
– Earl Nightingale
This is just a glimpse of what our subconscious can do. Don’t you think it’s time to train your subconscious mind and unlock your true potential while you are conscious?
By,
Samuel Cripps
GNS Preetam
Prachi Sinha
Credits: “The Power of your subconscious mind” by Joseph Murphy is taken as a datum for this blog.
Registrations for Technothlon’22 are open. Click here to enroll for FREE!
