Unconscious

Encompasses everything that is not consciousness

March 18th 2026
The term ‘the unconscious’ has both a broad and a narrow meaning. In the broad sense, the unconscious encompasses everything that is not consciousness. But what is consciousness? It is a tiny screen upon which are reflected a few floating snippets of images and thoughts, and these multiply as the screen grows bigger and brighter. In this sense, the unconscious contains good and evil, heaven and hell, the past and the future.
Taken in the narrow sense, the unconscious represents only our lower self, our heritage of purely instinctive, animal tendencies that have their origin in prehistoric times and that are transmitted to us at birth.
Initiatic Science, which considers the broader conception of the word, divides the unconscious into two parts: a lower part that is darkness, an abyss, and a higher part that is light. In what it calls the unconscious, there are thus two poles: the subconscious (the realm of animals) and the superconscious (the realm of angels and archangels).