What is the conscious mind and the subconscious mind?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
hare krishna question from keshav prabhu what is the difference between unconscious mind and conscious mind where are they located which mind is responsible for reality and which for imagination is it correct that they exist simultaneously if they exist then how can i difference between real and imaginary answer the technical words that are used as generally subconscious mind not unconscious mind when we are talking about western modes of thought so actually speaking the mind itself is neither is neither conscious nor unconscious or subconscious the mind is simply the root for consciousness r-o-u-t-e so the consciousness comes from the soul so it is originally soul that is conscious and the mind is the root through which that consciousness moves forwards now while the consciousness is rooted through the mind then at that time it doesn’t necessarily go through all the whole all everything that is stored in the mind at the same time so whatever area through which the consciousness goes up goes outwards then that is the area which we call as conscious mind and that which we are not conscious of that is the subconscious mind now the word unconscious mind is sometimes used as the equivalent of subconscious and sometimes it is just used when a person is unconscious so i’ll focus on the usage of subconscious mind that means the soul is here so the soul is here and from the soul consciousness coming out the mind is here and through the mind the consciousness goes out and then we see there’s a gross body and there is the world outside so now the soul’s consciousness doesn’t go through everything that is in the mind so for example right now when i’m speaking i am focusing my consciousness is going through that information which is relevant to the question at hand there is much that is not relevant and that’s why it’s not focusing on that so now that is what we are conscious right now but when modern psychologists like say Sigmund Freud and others who study a lot on a subconscious not just Sigmund Freud Carl Jung and many others have studied the subconscious so their idea is that even in the even in the subconscious there are things which we can become conscious of we think about them but we’re not thinking about them right now and there are things which we are never conscious of they’ve gone so deep that we are practically we have become unconscious of them entirely so it’s like right now in a computer i am using some data but there is much other data which i’m not using i can use if i want but if there is some data which i had which has gone so deep and it has become hidden now so it’s not available and if in that hidden area say some virus is there and the virus is corrupting the computer i won’t come to know also so this was something the idea of some modern thinkers that deep within our subconscious there are there are forces there are impressions caused by past events which are influencing us and we don’t we don’t know about those influences right now so that’s why there was a whole scheme of psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis has become quite a controversial profession because whether a person is recovering lost memories or injecting false memories is very difficult to decide unless the psychoanalyst is very unbiased. So when Srila Prabhupada was asked about this, Srila Prabhupada does talk about subconscious mind in a few places in his purports for example he says that sometimes material desires come up within us suddenly without any provocation so just like in a water fermentation happens below then suddenly bubbles will come up even if no stone is being thrown so like that sometimes our desires some passions may come up even when there is no external provocation so that those are coming from the subconscious but Srila Prabhupada said conscious or subconscious the important point is that both are material and both ultimately if we look from the Vedic perspective are not taking the soul towards Krishna so it is not that our attraction to Krishna is at the level of subconscious mind it is actually even deeper it is beyond the mind itself it is at the level of the soul, soul is attracted to Krishna. So Srila Prabhupada did not give much credence to psychotherapy he said even if we found find out what were the past shocks that a person has got and which have got percolated in the subconscious you know material life is giving us shocks again and again so rather than trying to do a post-mortem about past shocks one follow a process that will take us beyond the world of shocks so as devotees we shouldn’t focus too much on the whole subconscious mind business although sometimes it can give us some understanding about ourselves and we can use that understanding wherever we get it but we don’t have to get too caught up in it.
Now the idea that one mind is responsible for reality and one is for imagination that is actually something entirely different that is talking about the left brain and the right brain which according to certain thinkers the left brain is responsible for logic and the right brain is responsible for creativity. Now to say that this maps on reality and illusion is an oversimplification that goes into error zone so and but even this simplistic division of the brain like one area is about logic the other area is about visualization and creativity. Researchers have found that this is this was simplistic and it has become dated many many neurologists now say that the whole brain is involved in every activity certain areas of the brain may be more involved in logical thinking other areas may be more involved in creative thinking but all areas are involved and certainly it is not that you can conveniently divide the brain into half so the whole brain functions as a unit and if we have to decide what is reality and what is illusion the basis for deciding it is we can’t find out if it’s coming from left brain or right brain conscious mind or subconscious mind we have an epistemology our method of acquiring knowledge is based on guru sadhu shastra and then based on guru sadhu shastra we also use paktakshana anuman for practical functioning in the world and when paktakshana anuman give knowledge that is not in disagreement with guru sadhu shastra then we can use that knowledge also for our functioning but essentially we have to use our intelligence and not bother about the conscious or the right brain we use our intelligence think seriously and by that a serious thinking based on guru sadhu shastra we discern between what is reality and what is illusion thank you