The advantage of subliminal information is that since it isn’t perceptible consciously – it isn’t noticed – it isn’t discriminated against consciously before it reaches the memory store. It arrives unmodified – it hasn’t been censored or changed by the conscious mind. So a suggestion such as “there is no desire to smoke” will be recorded as such even if the conscious mind knows otherwise.
Subliminal messages constantly presented to the subconscious mind provide an alternative set of information for the subconscious to process. This information is then re-submitted to the conscious mind for it to consciously decide upon. The critical point comes when the smoker realizes he has choice. Once this point has been passed the subconscious will offer up information that coincides with the decision made.
DixonN,.F. (1971)
Subliminal Perception: The Nature of a Controversy, London McGraw-Hill.
source: http://www.hypnosisdepot.com/Psychovisual_More_detail.htm
Ernest Hartmann, a theorist working on this question, in his book Dreams and Nightmares: The Origin and Meaning of Dreams discusses the nature of dreams and nightmares, as well as emotions and feelings associated with dreaming, and the ways in which, as a social species, we enact scenarios in the dreamscape that have meaningful implications for social life. Hartmann is a neuroscientist and author whose studies on dreaming and sleep stages in laboratory settings have helped him to evolve the theory, now widely accepted in the field of neuroscience, that dreams are the vehicle to memory and learning in both human beings and animals, and claims that emotionally salient dream content plays a part in resolving our daytime emotions, suggesting that dreams make connections between traumatic and other new material and older material in the mind by engaging in visual metaphors guided by the emotion of the dreamer
Hartmann’s theories lend support to earlier theories of psychology and human development first proposed by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, the great early-20th Century psychologist and the great mid-20th Century mythologist and anthropological scholar, whose works have been the inspiration for some of the most powerful myths of modern creation, including most prominently, George Lucas’ Star Wars saga. Campbell, following the psychological studies of Jung, believed that on some fundamental psychological level we as human beings all share similar traits that define us as such. Human beings are born, like other animals, with certain innate instincts which allow us to exist and thrive in the world. Dreaming and the related mechanisms of the unconscious mind are cases in point of the principal biological functions that allow the human mind to cope with and survive the forces that play upon it naturally as a condition of our existence. Human beings, just like baby chicks and other animals, are born with certain innate paradigms ingrained into their subconscious– paradigms which register and resonate within us without the benefit of prior experience. These paradigms are the Jungian archetypes, and they manifest themselves continually and repeatedly throughout the stages of human collective and individual evolution. They are present in our dreams, and, as Campbell explains repeatedly throughout the body of his work, formulate the underlying basis for all mythology, the parts that go into the making of the Hero’s Quest, a story of ritual initiation to the cycle of death and rebirth which in thousands of different mythological, literary, and religious forms tells the one fundamental story in human existence—the story of the fall from innocence into experience of the world. This is the human story: the story of how we move from our sheltered and infantile experience of timelessness and immortality to a realization of time and change. It is the story of what it means to become aware of the real world. Ironically, it has always taken, and must take, the form of symbolism, manifested in our mythology, and dreams.
source: http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/dreams/amedina/
PARADOX of live. What defines us, also destroys us – Second Law of Thermodynamics
choice
This week, for instance, Professor John-Dylan Haynes and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Germany report the findings of an extraordinary experiment which seems to show that “free will” – the most cherished tenet of humanity, which decrees that Man has total control of his own actions – may, in fact, be little more than an illusion.
It is a troubling suggestion. As Prof Haynes says: “The impression that we are freely able to choose between different possible courses of action is fundamental to our mental health.”
If we are not in control after all, then that makes humans little more than automatons.
In his experiment, volunteers were asked to view a stream of letters on a computer screen and told, at some point, of their choosing, to press a button either with their left or right index finger – and remember the letter that was on the screen when they did so.
The volunteers were also connected to brain-scanning MRI machines which were able to monitor and analyse brain patterns.
These “mind-reading” scanners could recognise when the brain had decided on a course of action.
To the researchers’ astonishment, it turned out that the volunteers’ brains would reach a decision about pressing one of the buttons several seconds before the volunteers actually thought they had made up their minds.
The implications are hugely significant, because the experiment suggests that what we think of as a “conscious decision” may, in fact, be no such thing.
The traditional “folk science” picture of the mind has our “conscious self” as a little man sitting in our heads, pushing buttons and pulling levers, filing “thoughts”, receiving messages from eyes and ears and making our muscles move.
What Prof Haynes’s experiment seems to show is that we need a new picture; instead of that little man pushing and pulling levers, he is merely a passive observer, lazing back in his chair and watching it all happen.
It is as though what we are actually aware of is no more than a film show, and the decision-making is made purely unconsciously.
It is a disturbing picture, because it reinforces the view that we are mere machines, pieces of biological clockwork that have no more free will than a Swiss watch.
This sounds counter to common sense, but the more you think about it the more it is clear that much of what we do is done on “autopilot” and that free will is rarely necessary.
Your conscious mind is what most people associate with who you are, because that is where most people live day to day. But it’s by no means where all the action takes place.
Your conscious mind is a bit like the captain of a ship standing on the bridge giving out orders. In reality it’s the crew in the engine room below deck (the subconscious and the deeper unconscious) that carry out the orders. The captain may be in charge of the ship and give the orders but its the crew that actually guides the ship, all according to what training they had been given over the years to best do so.
The conscious mind communicates to the outside world and the inner self through speech, pictures, writing, physical movement, and thought.
The subconscious mind, on the other hand, is in charge of our recent memories, and is in continuous contact with the resources of the unconscious mind.
The unconscious mind is the storehouse of all memories and past experiences, both those that have been repressed through trauma and those that have simply been consciously forgotten and no longer important to us. It’s from these memories and experiences that our beliefs, habits, and behaviors are formed.
source: http://www.mindset-habits.com/conscious-subconscious-unconscious-mind/
The Man Who Was Afraid of PeopleYears ago, I had a man ask me for help with “social phobia.” Now for those who are unfamiliar with this condition, it basically means the person is incapable of going out into the world of people without suffering serious anxiety and panic.
What did I do?
I began by asking this man to come up with three scenes in which he could picture himself panicking in and around people. In each case, he experienced hyperawareness. Then he got startled. Then he went into shock.
The result?
In each case, was unable to picture anything beyond the point at which he had been startled.
So what did I do?
At first, the man could neither see nor imagine that anything good had happened in these scenes. He simply felt people had laughed at him until he went into shock. And then he suffered. And nothing more.
In all three cases though, when I helped him to see what had happened after the startle point, in all three cases, he pictured kindness on the faces of at least some of the people present, this with no prompting whatsoever from me.
Obviously, having never pictured this kindness before, he had repeatedly relived these experiences, and every single similar life experience, as if the outcome was always the same; painful humiliations wherein he was ridiculed and felt alone.
In other words, being able to see the colors of personality and knowing how the human mind processes these colors are two very different things, at least as far as understanding how different the levels of complexity are between these two things.
source: http://theemergencesite.com/Theory/Consciousness-Subconsciousness-2.htm
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