The Myth of Conscious-Subconscious

This is the second in a mini-series entitled Conscious Self-Persuasion: Beyond Hypnosis and the Waking Sleep.

Our goal in this mini-series is to investigate and clarify our understanding of hypnosis in its various forms, and to differentiate it from the practical application of the what we will call Conscious Self Persuasion.

We established n the last post that mass hypnosis, and individual hypnosis, both hetero-hypnosis and autohypnosis, as well as the associated paranormal and psi phenomena, are all, by and large, acknowledged by the scientific community. The trouble is, there is no authoritative definition of this extraordinary phenomenon we call hypnosis, and its exact mechanism is not understood. Yet we would do well to try to understand and apprehend for our own benefit such an extraordinary creative power. Hence, the need to consider the standpoints of Neville’s, or esoteric, psychology, along with its associated metaphysics.

False dichotomy; conscious-subconscious
It is no exaggeration to say that the authors I mentioned in the autohypnosis popular genre I mentioned, as well as the eminent authority CG Jung, all perpetuate in their writings the popular notion of “consciousness”, which is nothing more than waking-state thinking, or, at best, knowing that one has this thought or that emotion (i.e., apperception).

The researchers who are trying to explain hypnosis suffer from exactly the same affliction. Everyone has the plain old popular notion of consciousness as though it were actually the normal waking state. In doing so, they malign and abuse the real idea and practice of consciousness, and they completely misconstrue the nature and content of the habitual waking state. Gurdjieff once said that scientists are trying to define consciousness where it does not exist. The corollary is that the hypnosis researchers are trying to define hypnosis, while being immersed in it.

Did we not already establish in S01E01 that, following GI Gurdjieff, it would be absurd to characterize as conscious the mental state in which millions of men slaughter each other? Did we forget that everyone (including ourselves, researchers, hypnosis patients and doctors) is already complying sheep-like with the manufactured narratives and mass propaganda campaigns we described?

Neville, writing in 1951, was already out in front of this problem. While discussing in practical terms the interaction with what he agrees, provisionally, to call the subconscious, he states that, in fact, there are no clear demarcations:

Consciousness [i.e., the mind] is really one and undivided, but for creation’s sake it appears to be divided into two. (Feeling is the Secret)

If the popular distinction between “conscious” and “subconscious” doesn’t actually exist, it follows that the normal waking state of the hypnosis patient, as in everyone, lacks self remembering consciousness and so is essentially subconscious. The subject’s mind easily runs like watercolours into adjacent subconscious states of induction, fantasy, guided memory recall, etc. One of the studies I checked determined that 6 prior research projects had sought the correlation between what is called “suggestibility” and response to hypnosis. The answer was 0 (zero) correlation. You don’t need to be what science considers to be suggestible to be hypnotized.

What is colloquially accepted as the “waking state” is scarcely distinguishable from its many variants exhibited under so-called trance; they are all patchy and ephemeral; i.e., all subconscious in character. There is no need to create another discrete category. One psychologist intuited this:

...we do not need to postulate the existence of some special hypnotic process or altered state in addition to other ordinary psychological variables such as motivation, relaxation, imagination, absorption, expectancies, attitudes, beliefs, concentration, suggestibility, placebo effects, selective attention, role-enactment, compliance with instructions, etc. (Wagstaff, Graham “Making the Distinction Between the ‘Hypnotic’ and ‘Non-Hypnotic’ ” Journal of Mind-Body Regulation, Mar 2014).

Wagstaff invented a curious circular definition of hypnosis; viz., acceptance of the suggestion – or belief in the suggestion – that one is in an altered state (Wagstaff, ibid), without acknowledging the reality of a distinct state called “hypnosis”. Thus, the psyche of the subject moves to a state of acceptance or belief in something that is vague or pretended. In other words, it is self-delusion.

Along the same line of thought, another psychologist rejects the popular picture of hypnosis and proposes a “social-psychological interpretation of hypnotic behavior”. Why? Because he identified a voluntary response by the subject to meet perceived implicit demands of the operator (Spanos, N. “Hypnotic behavior: A social-psychological interpretation of amnesia, analgesia, and ‘trance logic’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9:3 , September 1986).

Please check the podcast episode S02E14, either audio or transcript, for the complete discussion, where we consider the roles of mental state and belief in the creation of reality.