Daily Meditation: Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Since the advent of psychoanalysis, the word ‘unconscious’ …

02/13/2007

Since the advent of psychoanalysis, the word ‘unconscious’ is used a great deal, and it can be understood in a broad or narrow sense. In the broad sense, the unconscious embraces all that is not our consciousness, this little screen on which barely a few fragmentary images and thoughts are reflected. These images and thoughts progressively multiply as the screen becomes larger and clearer. In this sense, the unconscious contains good and evil, heaven and hell, the past and the future. But, understood in a narrow sense, the unconscious represents only the lower self, that legacy of purely instinctive, animal tendencies which date back to prehistoric times and are transmitted to humans at birth. Initiatic Science understands the unconscious in the broad sense and divides it into two parts: the lower part, which is darkness, the abyss, and the higher part, which is light. In initiatic Science, the two poles of the unconscious are represented by the subconscious (the lower self) and the superconscious (the higher Self).