Power Of The Unconscious Mind

Nothing but true care and engagement can help us achieve our potential and find meaning in life.

- Richard Koch

We all carry around with us something of infinite power and creativity. Few of us realise that we do or tap into its power. I am talking about the unconscious mind—also called the subconscious. In this article, I give some examples of how it works, and then turn our attention to the key condition for using this fabulous and neglected asset.

The American playwright Neil Simon says, “I don’t write consciously—it is as if the muse sits on my shoulder.” He never knows how a play will end up, he says, “If I knew how it was going to come out in the end, it would probably ruin the play, since I would be giving the audience clues that would tip them offand spoil the psychological suspense.”

Mozart says that when he is “completely in myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer…or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I do not know, nor can I force them...all this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream…the committing to paper is quickly done, for everything is already finished.”

Henri Poincaré, the French polymath, made a mathematical breakthrough as a result of drinking black coffee, something he rarely did. He could not sleep. In his slumber “ideas rose in crowds: I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, making a stable combination. By the next morning…I had only to write out the results.”

He then went on a geological trip and forgot his mathematical work. “Having reached Coutances,” he wrote, “we entered an omnibus to go someplace or other. At the moment when I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts.” He had made yet another mathematical discovery.