Sigmund Freud

Conscious + Unconscious = Superconscious, or is it Quantum Conscious?

Could we become “superconscious” beings if we were able to master both our conscious and unconscious psyches?  If we are, in fact, connected to everything in the universe over a quantum field of energy, what could man become with awareness and control of our superconscious beings?

Let me back up.  In a previous post (https://edenrwatt.com/2010/09/can-our-conscious-and-unconscious-become-one/ ) I discussed concepts about the unconscious or subconsious explored by Freud and Jung.

Most of us are intimately acquainted with our conscious mind – the endless thoughts and emotions, judgements and reactions, the logic and reasoning abilities we use in our day to day life.  One of our greatest challenges is how to quiet our mind, master these thoughts, and keep ourselves present (instead of flying off into the past to relive encounters or in the future to imagine what we might say or do).

If we can gain mastery over our conscious mind, we have the potential to be powerful beings, present in our daily lives, loving and grateful, sending positive affirmations to our inner selves and to others.  If all of humanity were able to achieve this, we would already be evolving to a higher state as a species.

But what more is possible, if we could gain mastery and awareness of both conscious and unconscious?  What would that mean?  How would we be different?

Carl Jung identified the unconscious mind as having two distinct areas: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.  The personal unconscious contains our lost memories, painful experiences that are repressed, subliminal perceptions (that we may not have consciously observed), and other contents and abilities that are not yet ready for consciousness (representing our potential).

But beyond this personal, very individual level, Jung identified the collective unconscious which contains instinctive and other elements, a blueprint within our psyches, that have commonalities within tribes, races, nations, and even all of humanity.  Evidence appears in dreams, mythology, creative works such as art and literature, throughout the ages and all over the world.  Jung said the collective unconscious is “detached from anything personal and it is entirely universal and… its contents can be found everywhere...”  This deep inner part of our being has also been defined as the spiritual side, where we are connected to all life, to the universal life force that flows through all of us.  In “Vision Speak”, I imagined that we could consciously connect with others using this ‘vision source’.

Deepak Chopra has defined pure consciousness as the field of “all possibilities and infinite creativity“.

Taking these ideas to the another level…. for over two decades, scientists have been involved in discovery about the nature of consciousness (where is it?  what is it??)  Many have reached the conclusion that human consciousness can best be explored with quantum physics, hence the popular term – “Quantum Consciousness”.  Although the early scientists espousing these theories may have been considered renegades, with more and more scientific research backing these claims, they are now leading experts in this  emerging field.

If you haven’t seen the documentary movie called “What the Bleep do we Know?”, this is a good place to start.  It’s available in it’s entirety (in 12 parts) on Youtube.  Check out the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QlZ5O8_bGk  or the roster of scientists involved at http://whatthebleep.com/scientists/ .  Lynn McTaggart’s bestselling books – “The Field” and “The Intention Experiment” and Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” brought to public awareness the scientific breakthroughs in the areas of quantum physics and consciousness with progressive scientists such as those at the Institute for Noetic Science (http://noetic.org/).  Stuart Hameroff and Deepak Chopra and others have written and broadcast continued findings and dialog on this subject. 

The underlying discovery driving all of this excitement is that all living creatures are interconnected in a quantum field of energy.  Our thoughts, our dreams, our beings are not just encased within our bodies or our brains but actually exist at a quantum level beyond what we had ever imagined in a field of all possibility.

The implications for this are fantastic.  Our thoughts, our intentions, our consciousness create our reality.

And taking this to another place, I imagine that if we achieve a ‘superconscious’ state then we will be able to connect at a deeply spiritual and emotional level where words and misunderstanding will no longer be necessary.  I imagine that we will find other life in the universe – perhaps we will connect to those that have left us to move to another dimension or perhaps we will find other life forms who we may never meet and could certainly never talk to but within our superconscious spirit, maybe there will be a common vision source which will allow us to communicate..

I will cover more on this in future posts, especially an indepth review of some of the ideas behind quantum consciousness.

Can our Conscious and Unconscious become one?

I wonder if the next great stage in mankind’s evolution will occur when our conscious and unconscious “minds” become so connected and in tune with one another that they become one.  What would this mean for future generations?   If one believes that the unconscious mind is akin to our soul, our spirit within, which connects us to the greater life force and to every other living being in the universe, then this transformation could indeed be glorious.

Some of my readers may be thinking that I have just taken a great leap with my opening statements, so let me back up, starting with the early pioneers of the unconscious mind – Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.  Jung was also a key influencer for Joseph Campbell, a mythologist who applied Jungian theory to his vast knowledge of mythology, spirituality, and religion.  Campbell’s work, among many others, has continued to advance us on this journey to understand our psyche and our connection to one another throughout time, particularly at this ‘unconscious’ level.  And today’s thought leaders are progressing these concepts to new realms as we are now able to connect quantum theories into our understanding of consciousness.

So first a (very) brief history…

One book I recommend in this area is Carl Jung’s last work, before his death in 1961 which was his only project not targeted for psychology and medical professionals but rather it was intended for the general public, so that we could all benefit from an insight into his lifework.    This book – “Man and his Symbols”, edited with an introduction by Carl Jung – was a great source of information for me when I was working on “Vision Speak”.  Jung’s quotations referenced below are all from his writing in this book.

“Man and his Symbols”, although intended for the ‘layman, is still not exactly a ‘light read’ so for those who may not be familiar with the breakthroughs and disconnect between the two most famous psychologists of all time, here’s a brief (and simplified) view of Freud and Jung’s material on the topic of the conscious versus unconscious mind. 

In the nineteenth-century psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists were beginning to inquire into both the existence and importance of the ‘unconscious’ or ‘subconscious’ mind.  The most renowned figure of this period, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), developed comprehensive theories on this subject and early psychoanalytical techniques with an emphasis on the importance of dreams. 

Freud believed that dreams were the key to exposing repressed desires and memories, using techniques such as free association, to cure people of neuroses. 

Freud’s younger colleague – Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) – disputed some of Freud’s theories on the unconscious mind.  He said Freud “worked on the assumption that dreams are not a matter of chance but are associated with conscious thoughts and problems.”  Jung maintained that a psychoanalyst could work directly with a patient without need to lead them away from the actual dreams which he believed had “some special and more significant function of their own”.  In other words, “one should pay more attention to the actual form and content of a dream, rather than allowing free association to lead one off through a train of ideas to complexes that could as easily be reached by other means.”

“..part of the unconscious consists of a multitude of temporarily obscured thoughts, impressions, and images that, in spite of being lost, continue to influence our conscious minds.”  These hidden areas of our unconscious can be uncovered – sometimes triggered by our senses (such as the sound of music or smells from the past), possibly revealed by unconscious behaviours.  Sometimes lost memories can be exposed in hypnosis and often appear symbolically in our dreams.  But the unconscious is much more than just a repository of past information that is no longer ‘stored’ in our conscious.

“..it is a fact that, in addition to memories from a long-distant conscious past, completely new thoughts and creative ideas can also present themselves from the unconscious…”  In fact, our most creative and innovative ideas and inspirations come from this part of our psyche and, we can also attribute our instinctive, psychic, and intuitive insights as coming from the unconscious.

However, one of Jung’s most important theories – the collective unconscious – came when he explored the unconscious mind as it related to more spiritual realms such as religion and mythology, which Freud thought ‘unscientific’. 

More on this in future posts …  but, for now, here are some more words from Carl Jung from “Man and his Symbols” on the subject of the collective unconscious.

“Just as the human body represents a whole museum of organs, each with a long evolutionary history behind it, so we should expect to find that the mind is organized in a similar way.  It can no more be a product without history than is the body in which it exists.

The experienced investigator of the mind can similarly see the analogies between the dream pictures of modern man and the products of the primitive mind, its “collective images,” and its mythological motifs.

My views about the “archaic remnants,” which I call “archetypes” or “primordial images,” have been constantly criticized by people who lack sufficient knowledge of the psychology of dreams and mythology.”