Section 2 - Part A:

The characteristics of the subjective mind

As you have already learned, your Subconscious Mind lays hold of the Universal Mind and shares its wisdom and power. It would seem logical, therefore, to take our next step by considering the Subconscious Mind. But it is my judgment that we will make better progress by studying your Subjective Mind before attempting any detailed consideration of your Subconscious Mind.

Your Subjective Mind, you will remember, lies between your Objective and your Subconscious Minds, separating them somewhat like a partition.

You have also been told, in general language, that your Subjective Mind contains the storehouse of your memories. You never forget anything. This has been abundantly demonstrated by Psycho-analysis, which has evolved a method of making the individual remember many experiences of his life, almost from the day of his birth.

You have also discovered that the Subjective Mind contains the prison in which are confined all the desires, longings, passions and tendencies that you have tried to cast away, and that Conscience is their jailer.

These same prisoners of the Subjective realm are responsible for much mental and physical sickness. If you suffer from any purely nervous trouble, persistent anxiety, depression, hysteria, haunting fear, inability to concentrate, nightmares, unsociability, a feeling of being talked about, constant doubt, chronic indecision, obsessive thoughts, compulsive actions, heart palpitation, constipation, loss of appetite, or any one of a host of other afflictions which imitate the symptoms of physical diseases with or without any actual physical basis, then the chances are large that one of your subjective prisoners is the responsible cause. They are also responsible for several different kinds of psychosis or insanity.

There is no occasion for you to shudder at the thought of all these hideous prisoners in the jail of your mind. There is even less reason why you should despise them. They are the wayward children of your own mind. You have disowned them, and tried to cast them out of your mental house, but have succeeded only in driving them into the lower storey. You can never be fully well, successful and happy until you have released them, reclaimed them as your own, and educated them into goodness and obedience. This may seem to you to be a superhuman task, but really it will not be difficult once you have learned how to do it.

Releasing, reclaiming and re-educating these subjective prisoners is the principal business of Psycho-analysis, for when this has been done the more harmful effects of their imprisonment disappear. Psycho- analysis approaches this problem from above - that is, from the Objective Mind — and employs a masterfully reasoned and tedious process. Practical Psychology approaches the problem both from above and from below that is, from the Subconscious Mind as well as from the Objective Mind - bringing to bear upon it a wisdom and power which make the task more suitable for personal application. Here, as in all other realms of human life, it points out a royal road to attainment - a short-cut to marvellous success. The subject of practising self-analysis and releasing subjective prisoners will be fully treated in Part A of Lesson Four. 

The Secret of Dreams

Practically all human minds have these prisoners in their subjective prisons. No mind nor body, however, could long stand the strain of their constant close confinement. Sleep gives them something of an outing; and so in your dreams you do the things that in waking life you have forbidden yourself to do, or that you have decided you never will be able to do. Not infrequently you dream of doing immoral things, the very remembrance of which shocks you after you awake. 

But you remember only a very small and fragmentary part of your dreams. The vast majority of your dreams are wrought out so deep in your Subjective Mind that you do not remember them upon awakening. You remember only such parts of them as rise to the lower borderland of your Objective Mind. As a matter of fact, just as soon as you fall asleep your whole Subjective Mind springs into teeming activity. The jailer, Conscience, who dwells in the borderland between your Objective and Subjective Minds, nods and dozes while you sleep, and its prisoners take advantage of this opportunity to come forth from their cells and romp and play their make-believe games in the corridors of your Subjective Mind, for they are childish in their habits and play at doing the things you have denied them. Nevertheless, some of them are shrewd little people, and sometimes surprise you with their cunning. 

Symbols and Parables 

Most dreams seem foolish and unreasoned. The Subjective realm is very different from the Objective realm. Its language is a language of symbolism and parables. This is how it speaks in dreams, but when these symbols and parables are translated into objective language, they are anything but foolish and unreasoned. If you should hear a great masterpiece of literature recited in a strange language, it would seem to you merely a jumbled and senseless mass of chatter and jabbering, while one who understood the language might be deeply impressed by its beauty and profundity, and moved to tears by its pathos. So, it is with the language of dreams. 

To state the matter briefly and bluntly, when you are asleep your Subjective Mind plays at doing the things you have wanted to do but did not do while you were awake. Although you never actually forget anything, you may in your dreams do things that you wanted to do so long ago that you seem to have forgotten them. And since your dreams are worked out in symbols and parables, you may not recognise the thing you play at doing in your dreams as being anything you ever wanted to do. If you should look into a little girl's impoverished doll's house, you probably would not recognise the bits of broken crockery, crushed leaves, sticks, mud, sawdust, sand, pebbles, and bits of paper, as being plates, stew, bread, jelly, cake, pie, toffee and serviettes, but she makes believe that they are these things, and thus symbolically keeps house, the privilege of actual housekeeping being denied her. Your Subjective Mind plays in this way with symbols in your dreams. 

By this time, you have probably glimpsed the reason why the Subjective Mind prevents the ordinary thoughts of the Objective Mind from reaching the Subconscious. Suppose a certain chain of thoughts should arise in the Objective Mind and move towards the Subconscious. 

In order to reach its destination, it would have to pass through the Subjective realm, where it would become entangled in the mass of fancies, symbols and unreasoned whims of that realm. There it would be broken up, symbolised, modified, scattered and absorbed. It would be like a child sent to the shop for certain articles, engaging in childish reveries and day-dreams along the way, and entirely forgetting what he or she was sent for. And the Subconscious Mind would go serenely forward with the intricate work in its wonderful laboratories of life, entirely unaware that any chain of objective thoughts had ever headed in its direction. 

Did you observe that I said "chain of thoughts", and not merely "thought"? There is a difference - a tremendously important difference. A chain of thoughts can't get through, but a thought can. A chain of thoughts is held together by Reason; and Reason, as we know it, cannot pass through the Subjective realm. 

Therefore, the thought that reaches the Subconscious Mind, and sets its wonderful wisdom and power in motion to materialize the thought, must be unreasoned, and therefore single, i.e., not linked to any other thought by Reason. This is merely a forward glance to a future stage of our journey, inspired by our present consideration of the characteristics of the Subjective Mind.

Try a Simple Experiment 

I now want to tell you how to conduct a simple experiment that will enable you to understand better the general nature of your Subjective Mind, and at the same time help to educate a function that will be useful to you later on.

Search your mind for the memory of some person whose name you cannot recall. Then sit down at a table in a quiet room, with a writing- pad before you and a pencil in your hand. Think of the features of the person whose name you cannot recall, and of any other facts concerning him or her that you can distinctly remember. Then ask yourself: "What do I remember next?" And when the next memory comes write it down, no matter how foolish or irrelevant it may seem. Again, ask yourself: "What do I remember next?" and again write down the answer. 

This process may lead you over a long winding trail of memories; but eventually you will either recall the name, or else no more memories will come. In the latter case put your pencil and pad on one side ready for your next "sitting" and try again on another occasion. You will go over a different trail at each subsequent attempt; and you may spend much time and use up the pad before you find the name you are seeking, but it will come if you persist. 

The name may finally come to you in any one of a thousand roundabout ways, but rarely directly. For instance, if the name you are trying to recall is "Blackman", your Subjective Mind may not spell it out. It may give it to you in pictures and symbols - possibly by calling your attention to some event in which a Negro took a prominent part. If the name is "Hare", you may finally remember some event in which a rabbit figured. 

A pioneer psycho-analyst, the late Dr. A. A. Brill, tells of an instance. in which he tried to remember the name of a former patient called Lapin. Twenty-eight times the end of his chain of memories brought him to the recollection of a rabbit-hunt, and of a ludicrous incident in which a rabbit was involved, the last memory-picture being of the rabbit bounding away through the bushes. Dr. Brill spoke French quite as well as he spoke English, and the French word for "rabbit" is lapin. His Subjective Mind had told him the patient's name every time he had asked it, but it was talking to him in French, and he was trying to understand in English. He finally discovered his mistake, and realised that the laugh was on his Objective Mind, and not his Subjective. 

Free Association of Ideas 

I think you may have here gone ahead of me to a realisation of the fact that this little trick may be used for digging up other facts and data, just as well as for discovering names. And in its practice, you will brush up your entire memory and put into usable shape a large quantity of valuable information that you are not now using. If you could readily remember everything you have ever heard, or read, or seen, or otherwise perceived, you would be a veritable walking encyclopaedia of information, a great deal of which would be useful in the solution of your problems and the acquirement of the things necessary to make you successful and happy. This little exercise in what we psychologists call "free association of ideas", if regularly practised, will gradually bring these stored-away memories to light, and evolve you into something like a walking encyclopaedia. At the same time, and without any additional effort on your part, it will make your memory of current facts, names, events and data very much keener and more active, because it will familiarize you with your memory storeroom and thereby immeasurably lessen the chances of things being mislaid in it.