"However thoroughly you may study and master profound philosophy, compared to the depth of experiential truth it will be like placing a single strand of hair in the great sky. However exhaustively you may learn essential theories in the world, compared to the absoluteness of the untransmittable Reality it will be like throwing a drop of water into a deep ravine. There is all the difference in the world between them." (Shibayma, 205)
In Shodoka it is said,
"Be free in the universal Truth, and be free in explaining it. Thus the Truth and its working are perfectly interfused and never fall into emptiness." (Ibid., 208)
| 4.0000 | Existence of Unconscious or Subconscious Mind |
|---|---|
| 4.0100 | By existence we mean "reality as opposed to appearance, reality as presented in experience, the condition of a person aware of his (or her) radically contingent yet free and responsible nature." Woolf) |
| 4.0110 | We can ascribe existence to everything that is. Is includes all those non-things that are not. (We suggest here that non-things have existence in their non-being. For example, given a chair, all that is not-chair lets the chair be chair.) |
| 4.0111 | Existence, as the ground for those things that are not, lets them be or not be, as the case may be. |
| 4.0120 | There are many levels of existence along with matrices and paradigms for existence. These matrices are rules, givens, maps, tests, even attitudinal presuppositions we can use to discuss not only that a thing exists, but also what it is and how it is in its act of existing. |
| Return to Index | |
| 4.0200 | For our purposes, we can use existence to designate two general modes of human experience. |
| 4.0210 | Something exists on Earth. |
| 4.0211 | Here, reality has existence independent from thought. For example, the Golden Gate Bridge exists independently from the thought of the Golden Gate Bridge, even though the thought of the bridge existed before the bridge's actual reality. |
| 4.0212 | Such is the case for all human-made things. |
| 4.0213 | Something existing on Earth can be as it is in itself. It holds the capability for us to experience and perceive it through the medium of human sensation, internal or external. |
| 4.0220 | Something exists in Mind. |
| 4.0321 | Here a reality is only a thought and has not yet, if it can, leave the mind. For example, no thought of a pink elephant can exist as a pink elephant in the flesh, separate from the thought "pink elephant." Thus, is the thought (although existing as a thought) purely a product in imagination. No pink elephant exists extramentally. |
| 4.0222 | If something exists in mind, it cannot be as it is in itself. Rather, it is absent from spacial/temporal reality, existing only in form. Accordingly, we cannot either experience or perceive it. |
| Return to Index | |
| 4.0300 | A human being can exist in either one of the two modes: on Earth or in Mind. |
| 4.0310 | The human being on Earth immediately apprehends reality, i.e., has awakened and can "smell the coffee." We have unconditionally and absolutely accepted in full and open consciousness the filtering function of perceiving through mind. By accepting this given, we do not bind ourself to perceive through the filtering of mind. Mental constraints continue to exist. We experience them as such and can let them go. We then perceive directly, bracketing the effect of mental constraints upon the perceptual process. |
| 4.0320 | The human being in the mind exists in a fantasy world of the way s/he thinks it is. Hopes and fears, dreams, and expectations govern us. We do not see world/reality or self as is, but perhaps as we would like it to be. In this fantasy world there are goods and bads, rights and wrongs we predicate upon some external moral, political, cultural, or ethical code of conduct rather than upon the inherent givens of the moment. |
| Return to Index | |
| 4.1000 | The Unconscious Mind |
| 4.1010 | By unconscious we mean"the greater part of the psychic apparatus not ordinarily available to consciousness and manifested in overt behavior (as slips of the tongue or dissociated acts) or in dreams."Woolf) |
| 4.1020 | Thus, the unconscious includes all other forms of consciousness, by any label or description, that we are not actually aware of in any one moment. |
| 4.1021 | These other forms of consciousness we have described herein as the Ultra-consciousness, Transcendental Consciousness, and Infra-consciousness. (Cf. 3.1210). |
| Return to Index | |
| 4.2000 | The Sub-conscious Mind |
| 4.2010 | By subconscious we mean "existing in the mind, but not immediately available to consciousness, mental activity just below the threshold of consciousness." (Woolf). |
| 4.2011 | We also understand subconscious to refer to the specific locus of the Id in the psychoanalytic model. |
| 4.2012 | We have designated the subconscious mind (cf. 3.1700) as the band of habit and instinct, analogous to the Psychoanalytic model's depiction of the subconscious. |
| 4.2100 | Given the various connotations of the subconscious, we can note that the subconscious mind involves anything we could be internally aware of now and are not. |
| 4.2110 | The Unconscious Mind, on the other hand, involves anything that we are not aware of here and now and probably cannot be. |
| Return to Index | |
| 4.3000 | Concluding Remarks |
| 4.3100 | The subconscious and unconscious mind exist in the ways we have briefly discussed here. We note that there are other designations for each. |
| 4.3200 | As we have inferred, the unconscious and subconscious mind are not separate, generic minds in their own right. Rather, they are distinct expressions of mind itself. |
| 4.3201 | As we evolve in our understanding (i.e., experience) of mind, we apprehend mind through a sense of ever-increasing extension and inclusion. We realize that as extension and inclusion increase, then we can take ever increasing responsibility for how we use or do not use mind. We then act with ever-increasing integration and integrity. |
| 4.3202 | Eventually, we come to experience that we ourself create unconscious and sub-conscious mind. We experience that in themselves they have no reality but in mind and thus are mental fantasies that we can use to avoid our responsibility for being cause before cause and effect. |
| Return to Index |
White Robed Monks of St. Benedict