Clearing his throat nervously, Salsbury wondered if Dawson was broadminded enough to grasp the value of what he was about to be told. “Are you familiar with the term ‘subliminal perception’?”
“It has to do with the subconscious mind.”
“That’s right-as far as it goes. I’m afraid I’m going to sound rather pedantic, but a lecture is in order.”
Dawson leaned back as Salsbury leaned forward. “By all means.”
Extracting two eight-by-ten photographs from the briefcase, Salsbury said, “Do you see any difference between photo A and photo B?”
Dawson examined them closely. They were black and white studies of Salsbury’s face. “They’re identical.”
“On the surface, yes. They’re prints of the same photograph.”
“What’s the point?”
“I’ll explain later. Hold on to them for now.”
Dawson stared suspiciously at the pictures. Was this some sort of game? He didn’t like games. They were a waste of time. While you were playing a game, you could just as easily be earning money.
“The human mind,” Salsbury said, “has two primary monitors for data input: the conscious and the subconscious.”
“My church recognizes the subconscious,” Dawson said affably. “Not all churches will admit it exists.”
Unable to see the point of that, Salsbury ignored it. “These monitors observe and store two different sets of data. In a manner of speaking, the conscious mind is aware only of what happens in its direct line of sight, while the subconscious has peripheral vision. These two halves of the mind operate independently of each other, and often in opposition to each other-”
“Only in the abnormal mind,” Dawson said.
“No, no. In everyone’s mind. Yours and mine included.”
Disturbed that anyone should think his mind performed in any state other than perfect harmony with itself, Dawson started to speak.
“For example,” Salsbury said quickly, “a man is sitting at a bar. A beautiful woman takes the stool next to his. With conscious intent he tries to seduce her. At the same time, however, without being consciously aware of it, he may be terrified of sexual involvement. He may be afraid of rejection, failure, or impotency. With his conscious mind he performs as society expects him to perform in the company of a sexy woman. But his subconscious works effectively against his conscious. Therefore, he alienates the woman. He talks too loudly and brashly. Although he’s ordinarily an interesting fellow, he bores her with stock market reports. He spills his drink on her. That behavior is the product of his subconscious fear. His outer mind says ‘Go’ even as his inner mind shouts ‘Stop.'”
Dawson’s expression was sour. He didn’t appreciate the nature of the example. Nevertheless, he said, “Go on.”
“The subconscious is the dominant mind. The conscious sleeps, but the subconscious never does. The conscious has no access to the data in the subconscious, but the subconscious knows everything that transpires in the conscious mind. The conscious is essentially nothing more than a computer, while the subconscious is the computer programmer.
“The data stored in the different halves of the mind are collected in the same way: through the five known senses. But the subconscious sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels far more than does the outer mind. It apprehends everything that passes too quickly or too subtly to impress the conscious mind. For our purposes, in fact, that is the definition of ‘subliminal’: anything that happens too quickly or too subtly to make an impression on the conscious mind. More than ninety percent of the stimuli that we observe through our five senses is subliminal input.”
“Ninety percent?” Dawson said. “You mean I see, feel, smell, taste, and hear ten times more than I think I do? An example?”
Salsbury had one ready. “The human eye fixates on objects at least one hundred thousand times a day. A fixation lasts from a fraction of a second to a third of a minute. However, if you tried to list the hundred thousand things you had looked at today, you wouldn’t be able to recall more than a few hundred of them. The rest of those stimuli were observed by and stored in the subconscious-as were the additional two million stimuli reported to the brain by the other four senses.”