Summary

Subconscious mind and spirituality are distinct concepts, yet they are related. The subconscious mind is the gateway to spirituality and spiritual growth. Mastering control over the mind - especially the subconscious - is the essential first step toward spiritual awakening. Through meditation, you can bridge the gap between conscious and subconscious awareness, unlocking inner peace, and transformative self-discovery. Discover the role of subconscious mind in your spiritual journey.

 

Introduction: Addressing a Reader's Query

Quote

Moments ago, I perused a paper by you regarding the subconscious and our lack of control of our overt actions. You have apparently written things regarding spirituality and this is what brings this email to you... If one has encountered supernatural/spiritual entities, can it be then suggested that those forces/things, etc., are but segments of one's "subconscious"?

If so, how can one gain access to harmony rather than "control' of these things?

Unquote

Essentially, the reader wanted to know whether spiritual or supernatural entities could be segments of the subconscious and how one might achieve harmony rather than mere control over these forces.

This article explores these concepts, clarifying that what is often considered supernatural is not really so. It is a natural aspect of spirituality, rooted in the immense potential of the human mind. Powers deemed to be supernatural are natural and normal powers of every human mind that can be activated by spirituality.

Subconscious mind and spirituality are distinct concepts, yet they are related. In this discussion, we begin by examining the subconscious mind, define spirituality, explore their relationship, and discuss how meditation paves the way to the superconscious state - a state of heightened awareness and true spiritual power. Finally, we consider whether science might one day offer faster, more reliable ways to reach this elevated state.

What is Subconscious Mind

The subconscious mind is a hidden "rule book" of beliefs, fears, and biases formed through repeated experiences, often in early childhood. These rules unconsciously drive our actions and decisions, much like a program running in the background.

A good way to understand the subconscious mind is through the example of an elephant in a circus.

You may have noticed that the huge elephants in the circus are tied to a small stake dug in the ground. The mighty elephant is strong enough to uproot the stake and break free. But the moment it is tied to the stake, it remains confined within the radius of the chain. Now why does the elephant do so?

This is because as a young elephant, it was tied to the same stake. It then tried to run away, but could not break free. It pulled and pulled repeatedly till it pained and its feet bled, and finally gave up. The repeated failures and the fear of pain and blood reinforced the belief that it cannot escape when tied to the stake.

This belief became ingrained in the elephant's subconscious mind and a rule was written in its subconscious rule book (Fig. 1):

Fig. 1: The Rule that the Baby Elephant wrote

Now years later, as a powerful adult, the elephant strong enough to uproot the stake, it does not even attempt to break free. This subconscious rule governs its behaviour for the rest of its life . Over time, the 'Rule Justification' (see Fig. 1) or the original cause - pain and bleeding - is forgotten and only the 'Rule Title' remains, resulting in the elephant responding mechanically.

It is quite possible that the conscious mind which framed the rule has passed on only the Rule Title to the subconscious mind, so the subconscious may not even have access to the justification – like the company's rule books or policy documents, which only have rules but no justification.

Driving a car is another example to understand the subconscious mind: initially, the conscious mind navigates every action and negotiates every pothole or bump, but with practice, the subconscious takes over, allowing the conscious mind to engage in other things like chatting with co-passengers, listening to a radio talk or watching the surroundings.

The Subconcious Rule Book

Based on whether our actions had positive or negative impact on us, we also made important judgements and decisions on do's and don'ts in life, things we should do and what we should not. We made our own inferences on where the life's potholes and bumps lie, what they look like, and what we should do in life to either avoid or manage them. We formed opinions and passed judgements about ourselves, about people around us; about what type of people are good and what type of people are bad. We accumulated some learning and created our behavioural ground rules, and added to our subconscious rule book. This rule-book is the foundation of our beliefs and biases which we carry all our life.

The problem with this rule book is that most of the rules are written in our early childhood, and hence are irrational. For instance, at an early age, we start associating people's physical traits or appearances with either negative or positive behaviour and character, adding irrational rules in our rule book. Such rules then unknowingly influence our judgments for a lifetime about who to make friends with and who to avoid.

In life, we formulate several such rules about what is good and bad, right and wrong, and "Do's and Don'ts".

These subconscious rules, often illogical and formed early in life, shape our beliefs, biases, and behaviours. While the subconscious rule book drives our actions, it remains hidden from our conscious awareness. One is not even conscious of the rule which drives the action. Most of us live our entire life unaware of the rules which drive our actions and decisions.

This set of rules which unconsciously drives our lives is the subconscious mind.

What is Spirituality

The human mind holds immense but largely untapped potential. While scientists are divided on whether we use our entire brain power or part of it, it is largely agreed that we utilize only a fraction of our mental potential due to untrained or subconscious capacities.

Here is a concise definition: Simply said, spirituality is the ability to tap the immense, latent power within every human mind - an ability of realizing our full mental potential. It is natural human potential, achievable by each one of us through meditation and complete control of the mind.

Spirituality can also be called simply a state of mind - a heightened state of awareness as achieved by spiritual figures like Buddha. Some call it a superconscious state and I have called the "God State" (in my book "God in Two Minutes"). Spirituality is the pursuit of the 'God State'.

Spirituality has no relation with religion or the concept of god. God and religion are mere means, the goal is to reach the powerful spiritual state of mind.

While meditation bridges the abyss of subconscious mind, it goes far beyond to unleash a very powerful spiritual state of mind with almost mystical powers, as will be discussed in the section referred above.

In my paper presented at an international conference (click here to read), I introduce the Prem Spirituality Model^TM, which offers a more detailed explanation with illustrative diagrams.

To better grasp this concept, it helps to look at the key diagram representing Prem Spirituality Model. It draws a parallel between the scientific model of the physical world with the unseen dimensions of our mental world.

The key breakthrough in physical science occurred when we conceptualized the physical world using a three-dimensional Cartesian space, with x, y, and z axes representing distances in different directions (Fig. 2.1).

Fig. 2.1: Physical Space

Fig. 2.2: Mental/Spiritual Space

Fig. 2: Prem Spirituality Model

Drawing a parallel, the Prem Spirituality Model imagines a similar multidimensional space for the mental world, where instead of distances, feelings act as the axes (Fig. 2.2). While today's science cannot yet measure feelings, it's worth remembering that distances too were once immeasurable until the right tools were developed. A future Mind Science could measure them.

In this analogy, just as an object's potential energy increases with its elevation in physical space, a person's mental energy increases as they ascend to higher emotional or spiritual states in mental space. At the highest levels of this mental space lies what I call the "God State"-an extremely powerful state of mind representing peak spiritual bliss, insight and energy.

This diagram isn't science; it's a philosophical vision, suggesting that just as mathematics unveiled physical laws, a new science could reveal the mind's truths, freeing us from divisive myths. (More on this in Section "A Vision for the future".)

We shall come back to this model when we discuss the role of Meditation.

While we will discuss spirituality again later, we will first explore how Spirituality is related to the subconscious mind.

How the Subconscious and Spirituality are Related

The subconscious mind, with its hidden rule book, controls much of our behaviour, often irrationally due to rules formed in childhood, resulting in uncontrolled behaviour. Our actions are mostly controlled by our subconscious mind and we have no control on our subconscious mind.

Since spirituality means tapping the power of your mind, it is impossible to tap that power when you have no control over the mind. Moreover, spiritual power or the power of our mind can be activated or tapped when you reach a particular state of mind. State of mind depends on emotions and feelings and our emotions are impacted by our subconscious fears and biases. Spirituality, the ability to tap the mind's full potential, requires control over the mind, starting with the subconscious.

Hence spirituality requires gaining control over your mind, mainly the subconscious mind. Since the subconscious is buried deep and its contents are unknown, the first step toward spirituality is uncovering and understanding these hidden rules.

By bringing the subconscious rule book into conscious awareness, one can re-evaluate and rewrite irrational rules using the logical conscious mind. This process reduces the subconscious's control, fostering rational behaviour and peace of mind. Thus, working on the subconscious is the initial step on the spiritual path, laying the foundation for higher mental states.

The Role of Meditation in Spirituality

Let us examine the process of meditation to understand how it leads you to the goal of spirituality via the path of the subconscious mind.

We said that spirituality means reaching a state of mind with complete control of your mind. Meditation is a state of intense awareness achieved by stilling and concentrating the thought. Meditation allows you to delve inward, look into yourself and discover/dig out all the junk that you have stored inside.

As you calm your mind and go deeper and deeper, you reach the hidden realms of your subconscious mind. You then start unearthing hidden irrational rules and beliefs formed in childhood and buried deep within. Meditation creates an upheaval of all that is buried and hidden deeply inside. It helps you to uncover your subconscious rule book and possibly rewrite the old rules more logically. Since subconscious mind mostly controls your action and the rules could be illogical, the first step is to break that control by uncovering the hidden rules.

Once you become aware of the subconscious rule book, you can work to free yourself from the bondage of subconscious mind. Meditation gives you complete control on your feelings and emotions like sadness, happiness, fear of the unknown, fear of death, etc. By becoming aware of the rules within the subconscious rule book, one can detach from their compulsive influence, replacing programmed reactions with balanced, conscious responses. This newfound control over the feelings and subconscious reduces irrational behaviour, leading to peace of mind and a more stable emotional state.

Spirituality as the True Enabler, Not the Subconscious

To me, the subconscious is more like a passive rulebook - a set of ingrained, often outdated, mental scripts that need to be unearthed, questioned, and ideally, rewritten. Meditation serves as the tool to discover these hidden rules and ultimately reprogram them.

Fig. 2.2 of our Spirituality Model will help us to understand this better, and hence is reproduced again below:

Fig. 2.2: Mental/Spiritual Space

The subconscious rules often act as barriers to free and conscious navigation in the mental space (refer Fig. 2.2). They produce uncontrolled, disruptive feelings. For example, certain triggers can evoke intense anger or fear, even when you consciously disapprove of such reactions. In essence, the subconscious forces unwanted shifts in our spiritual state and thus in the mental space - effectively tossing us around uncontrollably in the mental space against our will.

Meditation first liberates us from these subconscious constraints and brings a level of mastery over these emotions. It stabilizes your movement in the mental space - no longer are you involuntarily pushed around by subconscious patterns.

But its purpose extends beyond mere control - true spirituality involves consciously navigating toward the God State, the zone of highest energy in the mental space.

Meditation, in its early stages, helps you break free from the unconscious grip of the subconscious mind, bringing clarity and inner peace. In advanced stages, it becomes your guide toward elevated spiritual states.

In this sense, the subconscious mind is more of a limiting factor than a source of power. The true enabler of growth and elevation is spirituality. That is where my view differs from the widely held belief in the "power" of the subconscious mind.

Meditation Goes Beyond Peace of Mind: Toward A Powerful Spiritual State

Although the first stage of meditation is to ensure that your subconscious mind does not control you, the ultimate step is to ensure that YOU have complete control on the mind itself. You progressively reach, with total control of your feelings, the ultimate spiritual state attained by the likes of Buddha. (You move from low energy state L in Fig. 3 to high energy state H).

Fig. 3: Next Stage after Control of Subcosncious is to progressively move towards God zone with total control of your feelings.

Through meditation, one can progressively gain control over both the conscious and subconscious mind, leading to a higher mental state and mental energy. Meditation thus builds a bridge connecting your current reality to a spiritual realm.

Just as a physical state of a body or its position in the physical space can help it reach a higher potential energy, our mental state or position in the mental space can put us in a higher state of mental energy. This aspect is explained in details in my paper on Prem Spirituality Model.

Whereas subconscious rule book limits you and puts barriers in your life, the heightened spiritual state sets you free while unlocking extraordinary abilities often mistaken for supernatural powers.

Spirituality: Reaching the Powerful "God State"

Spirituality is often misunderstood and means different things to different people. For many, it can seem vague or even confusing.

Spirituality is wrongly conflated with religion or God. Spirituality is about harnessing the immense power latent within the human mind. It is the ability to tap into this power by achieving a specific state of mind, called the spiritual state, where positive emotions and mental clarity enhance one's mental energy.

Spirituality: Harnessing the Inner Power

In the spiritual state, negative emotions like fear, cynicism, and aggression are replaced by love, sympathy, and kindness, reflecting a stable, elevated mental state.

When you are able to have full control on your mind (not just the subconscious mind), you are in an extremely powerful state of mind that Buddha reached, and possibly many others like Christ, Mohammed and the ancient rishis. Buddha is said to have reached a state of enlightenment. Spirituality is an extremely powerful state of mind and each one of us can reach that state. When you have full control over your mind you can tap the immense, untapped power of your mind, comparable to the energy stored in an atom, unleashed by nuclear scientists discovering nuclear energy.

Spirituality: Unbelievable Insights into Outer World Too

As Swami Kriyananda notes in his article, "Meditation is Doorway to Superconsciousness" (Times of India, Oct 12, 2006), superconsciousness is a dynamic state of awareness achieved by stilling mental restlessness through meditation. This state enhances intuition and mental clarity, enabling profound insights into both the self and the universe.

Ancient sages not only knew the laws of the mental world, they probably knew the laws of the physical space too. For example, they were able to make some startling discoveries in the physical sciences too in fields like medicine, health, astrology and yoga, likely through spiritual insights.

The term "bhugol" (in Sanskrit language, bhu=earth, gol=round) raises the question: did those who coined it have spiritual insights into the physical world, such as the earth's round shape, long before scientific confirmation?

This suggests they not only knew the laws of the mental world but also understood the laws of physical space and the universe, demonstrating the profound reach of the superconscious state.

Meditation and spirituality pulls you out of the deep chasm of the subconscious mind to the heights of the superconscious mind.

I visualise that in future spirituality will be explained by a new science called the spiritual science using a new language like mathematics which I call Mentomatics^TM, and will no longer be associated with god and religion. This is discussed in the section "A Vision for the Future: Spiritual Science and Beyond"

The Powerful Spiritual State: Super-Human or Human?

Spirituality allows one to tap these powers, such as heightened intuition and insight into the laws of the physical and mental worlds. The fact that remarkable discoveries were made in medicine, astrology and yoga through spiritual practice before the advent of modern science suggests that these powers are not external or supernatural but inherent to and latent in every human mind.

The term "superhuman" is thus a misnomer. It is certainly not super human, as it is within reach of each one of us. Each one of us has the potential to be a Buddha. Spirituality is not about becoming something beyond human but about realizing the supreme, untapped power already within us.

It can be called not superhuman, but a Superconscious state - a heightened state of awareness.

A Vision for the Future: Spiritual Science and Beyond

I envision a future where spirituality is no longer a mystical concept locked within temples but a quantifiable science researched in laboratories and taught in universities. Just as physics and mathematics explain the laws of the physical world, a new framework of spiritual science will decode the laws governing mental and spiritual energy.

Most importantly, breakthroughs in this field will empower the common man to harness his innate spiritual potential through scientifically designed tools and devices.

Spiritual Revolution is a visualisation of such a future. After the industrial and information revolution, the world will witness a spiritual revolution. While the physical world has moved from the Stone Age to the Space Age, we are still in the dark ages when it comes to understanding the mental and spiritual world.

The Science of Mental Energy

With advancements in the science of the mind, "spiritual experiences" or "godly states" will no longer be mysteries explained through metaphors or myths. They will be scientific states of mind, measurable and reproducible, much like physical phenomena today. We will be able to navigate the mind's dimensions with precision, just as we navigate the physical world today.

From Bullock Carts to Mental Jets: The Evolution of Spiritual Practice

The Need for a New Scientific Language: Mentomatics^TM

Had Newton and Einstein relied only on spoken language instead of mathematics, their discoveries too might have been lost or mythologized.

Science Will Dissolve the Myth of Mysticism

To me, spirituality holds the potential to evolve into a fully articulated spiritual or mental science in the future.

Just as early humans attributed rain and thunder to gods before science explained them, spirituality today is often conflated with religion. But I believe a true science of the mind will emerge, dissociating spiritual phenomena like bliss, divine experiences, and inner transformation from faith and offering measurable, reproducible principles.

When this happens, spirituality will be accessed through devices - ushering in an era where mind power is as tangible as electricity.

Humanity will unlock mind powers with unprecedented ease, enabling each of us to realize our full potential without dogma. Spirituality will become a science of personal transformation, not a set of rituals or beliefs.

If the physical world once leaped from the age of bullock carts to jet engines, the mental world too is waiting for its scientific breakthrough. I am sure that future generations will view our contemporary beliefs in spirituality, religion, and God much like we view pre-scientific myths: with bemusement, if not outright ridicule.

The Spiritual Revolution has already begun - in thought. Soon, it will manifest in action, discovery, and transformation.

This vision may seem unbelievable - even impossible - today. But the scientific marvels we take for granted now would have been unthinkable just a few centuries ago. When envisioning the future, we must dare to think the unthinkable, guided by one unwavering truth: nothing is truly impossible.

Conclusion

Meditation is the current best path to uncover and rewrite subconscious rules, leading to peace of mind and, ultimately, the superconscious state. This state, often mistaken for the supernatural, is a natural human potential, offering profound control over emotions and insights into the universe. As spiritual science evolves, humanity may unlock these powers with unprecedented ease, heralding a new era of mental exploration.

References:

Ref1: What is Subconscious Mind? How Does it Control Our Actions? https://premkamble.com/subconc1

Ref2: God in Two Minutes - A Summary https://premkamble.com/god2

Ref3: Prem Spirituality Model™ - Spiritualily for the Common Man thru a Spiritual Revolution https://premkamble.com/premmodel

Ref4: Is God a Myth? https://premkamble.com/godmyth

Ref5: What is Mentomatics? https://premkamble.com/mentomatics