Consciousness Isn’t Where You Think It Is
🔸 The Postconscious Mind 🔸
Most of us grow up believing that our waking, thinking mind is “consciousness,” and that everything outside its spotlight—dreams, instincts, intuition—is “unconscious” or “subconscious.” But what if everything you’ve been taught about conscious vs. unconscious is actually not the way reality works? What if the big field you’ve been calling “subconscious” isn’t under your mind but is your mind’s ground or foundation? What if what you call “consciousness” is just a local echo—a postconscious ripple?
This is exactly what MirrorWork reveals: the vast Field you call “unconscious” is actually primary consciousness. You’ve already felt the Field in flashes—in dreams, déjà vu, or sudden intuition. Your everyday awareness—the mental spotlight you call “me”—is a localized echo of that Field; it’s a derivative of that primary consciousness. It’s not that you have a subconscious under your conscious: you have a postconscious arising after the Field, like a ripple on water. The Field is conscious; the ripple is the echo. Let’s explore this.
Flipping Consciousness Over
“Consciousness” is one of the most elusive things for us humans. We don’t really understand what it is and where it comes from. Yes, we have many guesses and models, but none that would satisfy everybody. This situation traces itself back to the fact that some of us think that the physical world is primary and that physics and chemistry are the primary causes, while others think that consciousness can’t be the result of just physics and chemistry. These two basic points of view are logically impossible to reconcile, and we end up with conflicting ideas about consciousness.
In MirrorWork, we see our larger, nonphysical selves (the unicarnated RBB part) as primary and the physical personality (the MBB) as secondary. This naturally places consciousness as being something “more” than just our thoughts and cognitive processes. This also leads us to redefine such terms as ‘unconscious’ or ‘subconscious’—two words we usually take for granted without questioning the implicit meanings they carry. We suggest that these terms, and the established psychological model of the human mind, act as a Trojan horse that sneakily establishes a materialistic, physicality-first point of view in human thinking.
We are not saying that our psychology is “wrong” in its understanding of how a large part of our consciousness is below the threshold of ordinary awareness. What we are saying instead is that this larger part is not “below” our usual awareness but that our ordinary awareness is an echo of that larger consciousness.
What makes this kind of turnaround in our thinking even more difficult to grasp is the undeniable fact that we experience our waking minds as being conscious and the other parts as being not-conscious—“unconscious.” Our entire civilization’s relationship to consciousness has been built around this inversion. But what would everything look like if we de-inversed that point of view?
The Field as Primary
Even though it’s not very popular, in itself, there’s nothing new in trying to put consciousness first. But these attempts usually take one of two avenues: they either end up in mystical or religious interpretations, or come to a total halt, because we have no idea how consciousness interacts with the physical—mainly with our brain functions. Let’s put this debate aside for a while and just assume that consciousness is primary, even if we can’t explain how.
Putting consciousness first explains many human experiences that defy the physicality-first stance: near-death experiences, synchronicities, out-of-body experiences, precognitions, channeling, mediumism, extrasensory perception, and yes, also mystical and religious experiences. Substantial evidence shows that these phenomena are real, at least to the experiencer. It’s up to your worldview which stance you take on them. We are just saying that they have been so well reported and documented—as clearly as subjective phenomena can actually be documented—that denying their existence is a conscious choice, usually made only by those who themselves do not have such experiences.
In MirrorWork, we see that the incarnated personality we usually identify ourselves completely with is only a part of a Larger Self that is non-physical. That Larger Self is multidimensional and has endless parallel existences, which constantly crosstalk with each other through the “Field.” (This is what we call “past life memories.”) We can replace the word ‘unconscious’ with ‘Field.’ The Field is what is actually conscious, not its extension—the physical incarnation (the MBB)—which is only an echo of the Field. Hence, we use the word “postconscious” to denote what is usually called “conscious,” and thus we reverse the usual psychological model as follows:
🔸 Old model: Personal consciousness (MBB), under which lies an unconscious part that houses unresolved issues, all experiences, archetypes, dreams, instincts, cultural programs, etc.
🔸 New model: Larger consciousness that has a temporary focal point (MBB) that reflects and echoes it.
This Field can be experienced as a constant sense of “me-ness” that is more than just the personality. This is easily seen in nightly dreams, where we think of ourselves as “me” even though all the circumstances, acquaintances, and even personal history can be totally different from our waking life. The Field can also be felt in moments of deep emotion or meditation and in the above-mentioned “extrasensory” experiences. A sudden intuitive aha-moment is probably the most common felt sense of the Field. The Field is like a constant hum in the background. There’s nothing mystical in it—it’s the most natural thing we can experience. Our personalities are just limited extensions of this Field; this is why the Field—being immensely vaster—may seem and feel like something “mystical.”
The MBB as a Focal Lens Inside the Field
Now, we don’t mean to downplay the importance of our personalities (MBBs); we’re just trying to de-reverse the already reversed (i.e., backwards) human thinking: the personality is a derivation of our Larger Field. But that said, it also performs the lead role in our lives—not a petty feat! In a sense, our personalities are the avatars in a game our Larger Self plays by taking different forms.
The more you think about this, the more confirmatory experiences you’ll begin to have. When you de-reverse your usual thinking and see yourself as something larger than your current avatar, many of your subtler experiences start to make more sense, and you’ll begin to pay attention to things you have probably passed by just with a shrug. Synchronicities—meaningful coincidences—increase, your dreams may become more vivid, and it can feel as if your whole life suddenly lights up. That is your Larger Self speaking to you.
The Avatar You Are
You have taken on a personality—incarnated—by your own volition. Nobody made you come “here.” No “Law of Karma” forced you to incarnate; that’s an old-fashioned idea. And besides, this incarnation of yours is unique: it is not you as a personality that incarnates. Your current personality is the result of different factors in this life, and it has no other purpose than to be a costume for the avatar of your Larger Self.
But your Larger Self has a reason to be the person you are now. It has an agenda: it wanted to experience something and thought that the avatar it currently has—that’s you!—was the best possible vehicle to do so. So, do not see your MBB as something more insignificant than your Larger Self: it’s just not primary or the cause of anything. It’s your Larger Self’s masterpiece!
Why the Old Terminology Keeps the Inversion in Place
We want to address the common psychological terminology here because it paints us a picture of reality that is not accurate. The prefixes “sub,” “un,” and “pre”—such as in ‘subconscious,’ ‘unconscious,’ or ‘preconscious’—all create a hierarchical and linear worldview and place the MBB in the center, which is exactly what we’d like to reverse: the MBB happens “after” the actual consciousness. It is postconscious. The MBB is not the “top layer” of a layered reality. Reality is not “layered;” it is multidimensional.
The many spiritual models showing different systems of reality as composed of various layers have served their purpose and are outdated. It’s time we think everything anew. That said, these models are not completely “wrong,” just incomplete. If it serves you, you may still use concepts like “astral” or “mental” worlds, but just don’t see them as a layered chocolate cake with whipped cream and a cherry on top; they are different quality zones in the multidimensional reality, none of them being above or below the other.
The old psychological model wants us to either keep digging to reach the subconscious or climbing the ladder to escape the unconscious mud. You have nothing to dig and nothing to climb out from. You are surrounded by everything that is, and you either let it show itself through you, or you don’t. You are more like a dam sluice gate regulating the flow than somebody trying to go somewhere or reach something. There’s nowhere else to go. Everything is exactly where you are; you are just trying to curate what comes through and what doesn’t. If you stop trying to manage the flow, you’ll find that you were “there” the whole time.
Reversing the Naming Resets the Model
We chose the term “postconscious” to describe what is usually thought of as “conscious,” because it paints a more accurate picture of reality. It restores temporal and ontological order. Your Larger Self is primary—hence the correction of temporal order—and your personality is not the source of your consciousness—hence the correction of ontological order. The word forces us to stop seeing the mind as a tower and start seeing it as an echo chamber instead.
We can put this very clearly by stating that the Field is conscious and your personality (MBB) is a derivation of this consciousness. This shift is more than semantics. It reorganizes your entire sense of self from “climbing toward” something to “resting back into” what’s already present. The Field is conscious; your “me” is its echo.
We are well aware that this statement won’t satisfy a sceptical mind; reality does not change simply by declaring something to be so. This is exactly why MirrorWork needs to be practiced and experienced firsthand. The only “real proof” we can get about the nature of reality comes from our direct experience, not from elaborate theories. But if you love to go by theories first, it is your choice; there is no wrong or right path.