> Essentially, everything we experience in life is manipulated and controlled by our subconscious.

> In all three scenarios, the subconscious mind has the power to manipulate what we experience. I conjecture that's what happened to schizophrenics - they altered their subconscious somehow, and truly perceive themselves as their delusion. In the second, there would be no other people to see you, so you'd be creating the "true" reality - the only reality. And in the third, your renegade subconscious would truly be manipulating the "real" world.

> The soul. I believe the soul is located not in the heart, but in the subconscious. That's how true passions tend to knock obstacles out of your way for you - the subconscious manipulates them. Taking control would mean the loss of your soul, the loss of love, the loss of passion. You would no longer care about anything. You'd be a robot.


Markus, have you ever read and/or studied the ideas of a certain theorist named Freud? I suggest you do. Although his methodology was crap, he had some very interesting ideas that are quite similar to yours, many of which (well, all of which) had to do with discovering the subconscious. Psychoanalysis, in general, involves the discovery and manipulation of the subconscious (in theory - whether it actually does that is questionable). (Of course, there is again the point that Sartre brought up - that if there was a subconsious, we couldnt find out about it or discover what's in it because if we did, it wouldnt be subconscious.)

A lot of the beginning of your post had to do with the difference between perception and reality. Of course we all create subjective realities - however, since many of our subjective realities are so similar (we all read the same words on this forum, for example) we can conclude that there *is* a real, objective reality.

heh. real reality. that's insightful....

beth"posting for the first time"ina