CONCEPT OF MIND Consciousness is that part of the mind which comprises only a small part of the total mind, and in many ways it is the least significant part. The subconscious, on the other hand, is really running the show most of the time. This position is manifest in almost everything we do. You would be a person who does only those things he consciously decided to do. You would have no problem resisting anything; nothing would be too much of a temptation for you. You would have no mental blocks, you would not dream, and you would have unbelievable concentration and memory. But the part of the mind that makes us do silly things, and the part which keeps us from doing some of the things we fervently wish we could do, is certainly not the conscious part. So with a little reflection the subconscious' power and influence over our every behavior is obvious. Without the subconscious mind it is very difficult to even speculate on where dreams come from. For that matter where do many of our thoughts come from? And why can't we control those thoughts? Behavior, which is only slightly removed from thought, is the same problem. None of us always acts the way we know we should. Why not? The answer to all of these questions and conundrums is of course that the subconscious part of the mind is really running the show. It has a vested interest in much of what we do. When it wants or needs a certain behavior or condition, it makes no difference that we may consciously know better or wish for something different. When we want to change things we must do so by changing the subconscious mind. We have to bring it into conformity with what we consciously want. Habit control, behaviors of all sorts, mental functioning involved in learning and remembering—we can exert an influence on all of these things by informing or influencing the subconscious mind. In short, we can influence much of the world with our mind. This statement can be justified without recourse to extrasensory perception or psychic phenomena of any kind. As humans we have a unique ability to regulate our way of thinking. We can manipulate it in specific, strategic directions. we first learned a form of crude manipulation when we discovered that we could get our parents to change their minds about something we wanted—give in to us—if we badgered them long enough about it. We learned more about this as we got older and found we could also influence people other than our parents. Some of them, anyway, some of the time. As we continued to get older and more experienced we found it possible to influence with ever more subtle cues. A slightly raised eyebrow, a minimally noticeable hand gesture, or the teeniest movement of the lips can sometimes have a profound effect on the behavior of others. Is it so to expect that even more subtle cues, cues of which others and we are not consciously aware, can have the ability to shape other people's behavior? Yes it can, and in a most profound way. These cues constitute the stuff of subliminal communication and their effects are all the more profound precisely because others subliminally perceive them. Anything that is subliminally perceived does not cause the perceiver to raise his conscious guard. Thus these kinds of message slip right through, in most cases, without even a trace of conscious filtering. With the combination of technique and the philosophical and scientific concepts in these we can achieve both inner and outer mastery. Or if not mastery, at least a very strong influence. Instead of beating our brains out trying to force yourself and others to conform to our wishes through conscious efforts, we put the focus where the real power is: at the subconscious level. Although the subconscious is all-powerful, it is not immutable. It is changeable. Sometimes desirable changes happen spontaneously. But not often enough. If we were to wait for spontaneous changes for everything we wanted, we would not see many changes in a lifetime. The Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) A state of consciousness that differs significantly from baseline or normal consciousness often identified with a brain state that differs significantly from the brain state at baseline or normal consciousness. However, it is not the Brain State itself that constitutes an ASC. The brain state is an objective matter, but it should not be equated with an EEG or MRI reading. Otherwise, we would end up counting such things as sneezing, coughing, sleeping, being in a coma, thinking of the color red, and being dead as ASCs. Brain state readings reveal brain activity or inactivity, but are not a good measure of ASCs. The baseline brain state might be best defined by the presence of two important subjective characteristics: the psychological sense of a self at the center of one’s perception and a sense that this self is identified with one’s body. States of consciousness where one loses the sense of identity with one’s body or with one’s perceptions are definitely ASCs. Such states may be spontaneously achieved, instigated by such things as trauma, sleep disturbance, sensory deprivation or sensory overload, neurochemical imbalance, epileptic seizure, or fever. They may also be induced by social behavior, such as frenzied dancing or chanting. Finally, they may be induced by electrically parts of the brain or by ingesting psychotropic drugs. There is little evidence that ASCs can transport one into a transcendent realm of higher consciousness or truth, but there is ample evidence that some ASCs bring about extremely pleasant feelings and can profoundly affect personality. Some religious experiences, for example, are described as providing a very pleasant sense of divine presence and of the oneness, interrelatedness and significance of all things. Drugs such as LSD and mescaline can induce similar feelings. Some patients suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy think of their disease as temporal lobe “ecstasy,” since it leaves them with a feeling of being united with God (Ramachandran 1998). Also, by electrically stimulating the temporal lobes, Michael Persinger has been able to duplicate the sense of presence, the sense of leaving the body, and other feelings associated with mysticism and alien abduction (Persinger 1987). Dr. Olaf Blanke of Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland found that electrically stimulating the right angular gyrus (located at the juncture of the temporal and parietal lobes) triggers out-of-body experiences. The mechanisms that trigger these feelings are completely natural. They may be a pleasant side effect of some evolutionary adaptation, but as yet we do not know why such brain states are triggered. And while it is an extremely interesting discovery that religious experiences can be induced by disease, electrodes, and by drugs, it hardly seems a compelling reason for believing in God. Although it might be a compelling reason for taking drugs, like our ancient Indian yogi to drink somarasa (a kind of alcohol drink) to induce the sub conscious mind and to be with that state for hours and hours. The unconscious mind…..!!! The unconscious or subconscious mind, according to classical Freudian psychoanalysis, is a "part" of the mind which stores repressed memories. The theory of repression maintains that some experiences are too painful to be reminded of, so the mind stuffs them in the cellar. These painful, repressed memories manifest themselves in neurotic or psychotic behavior and in dreams. The unconscious mind is also thought by some, such as Jung and Tart, to be a reservoir of transcendent truths. It is assumed that the unconscious is distinguished from the conscious by the fact that we are aware of conscious experience, but unaware of the unconscious. However, it is establish as a fact that some conscious perception goes on without self-consciousness. It is possible to be unaware of having experienced something and unable to remember the experience, but still give evidence that one has had the experience. The causes for memories to be lost, because of inattentiveness in the original experience and because the original experience occurred at an age when the brain was not fully developed. Memories are also lost because we have no recognizable need to reference the original experience. (Many fragments of pleasant experiences, such as the name of a place or a product, may be influencing present choices without one's being aware of it.) Memories are lost because of brain damage, loss of consciousness during an experience, neurochemical imbalance, cognitive restructuring, and sensory, emotional or hormonal overload. On the other hand, all the empirical evidence indicates that the more traumatic an experience the more likely one is to remember it. Novel visual images, which would frequently accompany traumas, stimulate the hippocampus, left inferior prefrontal cavity, and will generally become part of long-term memory. Neuroscience tells us that a memory is a set of connections among groups of neurons that participate in the encoding process. Encoding can take place in several parts of the brain. Neural connections go across various parts of the brain; the stronger the connections, the stronger the memory. Recollection of an event can occur by a stimulus to any of the parts of the brain where a neural connection for the memory occurs. If part of the brain is damaged, access to any neural data that was there is lost. On the other hand, if the brain is healthy and a person is fully conscious when experiencing some trauma, the likelihood that they will forget the event. Long-term memory requires elaborate encoding in the inner part of the temporal lobes. This area of the brain is undeveloped in very young children (under the age of three). Hence, it is very unlikely that any story of having a memory of life in the cradle or in the womb is accurate. The brains of infants and very young children are capable of storing fragmented memories, however. Such memories cannot be explicit or deeply encoded, but they can nevertheless influence. you can visit my group on: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Yoga_Meditation_International/