WILL an appeal, by the afflicted, to the subconscious mind, result in mental or physical harmony? In other words, is the subconscious mind, so called, a healer of disease? Let us examine for a moment this claimant to healing power, and scrutinize more or less closely its credentials. What is the so-called subconscious mind?
Assuming for the moment the hypothesis of the academic psychologists, with its classification of mind as the "conscious, the subconscious, and the superconscious," to be "scientific" the subconscious mind must of necessity abide in or be exemplified by the lower strata of consciousness; in other words, in the under, or lower, or imperfect state of consciousness. But consciousness, according to Watts, "must be an essential attribute of Spirit" (implying that Spirit must be the source of all life, without which there can be no consciousness), which implies reason, coherence, coordination, intelligence; subconsciousness must therefore necessarily constitute a condition or state of life expressed by lower intelligence, an imperfect or limited consciousness, a consciousness which is not able to exemplify reason. The mind of the animal propensities is of imperfect consciousness, falling below coherence, mental coordination, intelligence; the radical opposite of the super or spiritual consciousness, the "oversold" of the transcendentalists.
The subconscious mind, then, is the mind expressed by the verdict of the material senses,—the five physical senses, —unmodified by the correctives of reason, coherence, mental coordination or intelligence, and represents in varying degree all forms of life not able to cognize reason, intelligence, or any of the attributes of Spirit, and no other conclusion is logically or scientifically possible if the academic classification of mind is scientifically correct. Webster, however, also defines mind as "the intelligent power in man;" the "subconscious" is therefore not mind at all, because it falls below "intelligent power." But as this "subconscious mind" is, by its own limitations, confined to the material, the things revealed to or cognized by the senses, it could by no possibility have been the Mind that was in Christ Jesus,—the Mind that enabled him to perform his mighty works, for they were done in absolute defiance of all so-called material "law," which he never recognized as law.
