The Subconscious Mind: Obedient, Receptive, and the Soul’s Ancient Storehouse

Question

Sister, you said the subconscious mind holds all our impressions and sanskāras, but it’s also described as very receptive, obedient, and useful. How is that so?

Answer

Yes, it’s true — the subconscious mind is receptive, obedient, and very useful. Let’s understand this with an example.

Right now, we’re trying to understand this story. Can we do that using only the conscious mind? Not really. Why? Because the journey of the soul has been going on for countless ages. I am a soul, not a body, and over thousands of years this soul has taken many bodies — perhaps twenty lives, perhaps more. In each life, I’ve learned so many things. Where did all that learning go? It’s all stored in the subconscious mind, safely preserved there.

Everything we’ve ever learned leaves imprints, like coded memories, in the subconscious. Whatever I’ve learned in previous lives, that knowledge now helps me. For instance, as I explain something to you, my conscious mind understands a part of it, but then the subconscious quietly steps in and supports me — because it holds the wisdom gathered over many births.

In this way, the subconscious guides the conscious mind. It acts as its helper and servant. It’s obedient too.

Say you ask me a question and I don’t immediately know the answer consciously — suddenly, from deep inside, the answer just pops up. That’s the subconscious bringing it forth. The subconscious comes forward and supplies what’s already stored there.

You must have experienced this too. For example, you see someone on the street and can’t recall their name — you’ve met them hundreds of times, but your conscious mind won’t release the name. Then, after a few seconds, it suddenly appears: “Oh yes, that’s his name!” Clearly, it was stored somewhere — deep in the subconscious — and it surfaced when needed.

We often say in everyday language, “My computer wasn’t giving it, and suddenly it threw it out!” Our mind works like that. The subconscious processes and releases information when the conscious mind asks for it.

So, whenever we do anything — take any action, make any effort — the subconscious is always assisting.

The scriptures describe it beautifully: imagine a tree. Whatever portion of the tree we see above the ground — say two or four feet — below the surface, its roots extend nine times deeper. Likewise, our subconscious mind is about nine times larger than the conscious. Just think how much is stored there!

And why so much? Because the soul’s journey has been going on for thousands of years. We can’t see the soul’s journey — we only notice the body’s short journey. This body, the one called Radha, is only for this life. In the last life, perhaps the body’s name was Sarla; before that, something else. The body changes each time, but the soul remains the same.

So who is collecting all those experiences? The soul is. The body is just a vessel. The soul carries all it gathers along its journey. When the body dies, all those accumulated impressions and learnings stay with the soul. And when it takes another birth, it carries all that inner storehouse forward.

That’s why the scriptures say: it’s not the body’s journey — it’s the journey of consciousness, the journey of the soul.

And yes, one more thing: different thinkers and sages have described the divisions of the mind in different ways. Some call it unconscious (achaitanya), some subconscious (avachetana), and some even speak of a superconscious (atichaitanya). The names differ, but they’re all referring to these deeper layers of the same inner mind.