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Alex Jones: Prophet of the Machine Elves

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MisterSwig

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I was watching Joe Rogan's marathon interview with Alex Jones the other day, and both of them described so-called "clockwork/machine elves" who appear to people in altered states of mind. Rogan says he sees them after taking DMT or ayahuasca. Jones claims to have experienced them too, and he has absolutely wild ideas regarding their interdimensional nature and purpose. For example, he thinks there are good ones and bad ones, but it's easier to contact the bad ones who want humans to kill each other. And so this explains why nations that get involved in such psychedelic, occultist practices end up committing genocide to appease the higher, evil beings.

If you're not familiar with machine elves, here is an introductory video about them.

In contrast to Jones, the guy in the above video has a more positive view of machine elves. His creatures have magical healing powers and want to help humans. And this fits with the popular narrative from South American shamans who say that DMT/ayahuasca can cure mental problems like depression.

The concept of "machine elves" originally comes from Terence McKenna, a famous ethnobotanist and mystic in the 1990s. It's impressive how his strange ideas have so quickly spread throughout our culture. Consider the fact that Rogan has the most popular talk show on the Internet, and his drug-fueled interview with Alex Jones attracted 180,000 livestream viewers in the middle of a weekday. Three days later, the nearly five-hour show, devoted largely to this alien belief system, already has five million views. Also, before Jones got banned from major social media platforms, he too had one of the biggest shows on the Internet. 

Jones is a freak. But the way he fits the idea of machine elves into real world events is obviously fascinating to millions of fans. He clearly has Rogan and many others completely bamboozled. While Rogan struggles to make sense of his infrequent, drug-induced experiences of the elves, Jones claims to be in regular contact due to low-oxygen, sleep apnea-related health issues. Jones has "seen everything." Nature herself blessed him with a superpower. He is an interdimensional prophet.

In the wake of McKenna and others, Jones is revealing the new religion of clockwork aliens. These machine-like beings reside in a super-realm beyond our own. Only an altered-class of human can experience them subjectively and communicate with them. And through secret interdimensional meetings with government leaders, these superior, seemingly omniscient creatures guide the course of humanity.

This belief system is ridiculously advanced in its religiosity. Jones literally can rant for hours about it. But the real power here is in the fact that so many psychedelic drug users claim to see the same sorts of images, which allows them to produce and spread a common vision. They share fractal, colorful, symmetrical depictions of these machine elves and the other world.

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These works of art bring people's visions into this world, as objects of reverence. The believers produce countless images and stories representing real experiences with these things. A new faith in subjective phenomena has taken hold of them. New dogmas drive their moral decisions. Politics revolve around alien conspiracies. Jones would have you believe that bloodthirsty interdimensional aliens conspire with breakaway shadow governments to decimate human populations. It sounds like an absurd story from The X-files, but there you have it being preached to millions by the likes of Alex Jones and Joe Rogan. 

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38 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

And this fits with the popular narrative from South American shamans who say that DMT/ayahuasca can cure mental problems like depression.

You're right that a mystical explanation creates a nice narrative for them. It's not even some new idea, ancient cultures of South America believed that psychedelic experiences involve spirits actually visiting you, or contacting shamans. But it's important to remember that these psychedelic experiences really do cure or relieve depression. It's hard to say if the intensity of the experience helps people to think about things differently, or changes neurotransmitters in such a way that depression is practically cured. People might explain this instead by saying spirits or other worldly energy causes the cure, that's the part that's nonsense.

I don't know why people like this feel like they need to insist on a mystical explanation. I guess it's more fun?

And besides that, if these mystical elves really do exist, why would they need to show up through a psychedelic drug? Even the mystical explanation itself makes no sense. I guess they would say it activates alternative methods of perception, so we end up seeing things that are otherwise invisible.

Not to mention if you imagine a person under the influence of a psychedelic drug, this is exactly what I would expect the imagined person would look like (kaleidoscopic and filled with fractals).

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17 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

And besides that, if these mystical elves really do exist, why would they need to show up through a psychedelic drug? Even the mystical explanation itself makes no sense. I guess they would say it activates alternative methods of perception, so we end up seeing things that are otherwise invisible.

Mystical explanations rarely make sense. Jones says that our minds have filters. We therefore need the drug to remove the filter and open the mental gateway to the alien dimension.

Another common theme I hear is that when the elves talk their words turn into objects. I guess this is a kind of creation myth, reminiscent of God speaking the world into existence in Genesis.

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I still can't believe Alex Jones and company had me over "Jade Helm" a few years back. I think these "conspiracy theory" guys just make shit up off the top of their heads and then spread it around tbh. "Inter-dimensional Machine Elves" lmao.

Edited by EC
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On 3/2/2019 at 1:40 AM, MisterSwig said:

Mystical explanations rarely make sense. Jones says that our minds have filters. We therefore need the drug to remove the filter and open the mental gateway to the alien dimension.  

Well that's arbitrary nonsense. But if, instead, you said "open the gateway to an unconscious part of the brain", then that would be a valid hypothesis.

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10 hours ago, Nicky said:

"open the gateway to an unconscious part of the brain", then that would be a valid hypothesis.

Not really.

First off, there isn't an unconscious part of the brain. There is a subconscious part, and there is a nonconscious part, but there isn't an unconscious part. There is no opening, searching, or exploring the unconscious part, because it doesn't even exist. 

Second, Freud and Jung would have us believe that there is an unconscious underlying our conscious life, with its own underlying nature, which must be brought to the surface to explore. So, for example, dream analysis would be examining your dreams to find hints of your unconscious workings. But the whole premise of unconsciousness as a psychological entity is pretty arbitrary, not based on any observations, it's an assumption that something exists which his beyond our awareness except through special techniques. The unconscious is a form of Western mysticism: the unconscious is only revealed to those with special modes of perception (psychoanalysis, psychedelic drugs, etc), whereupon we become closer to understanding the truth of our own psychology.

It doesn't have to be an alien dimension, but an unconscious part of the brain is just as arbitrary. 

What you can find out is the way making your mind more open to experiences helps to consider more zany ideas. There are many interesting questions to ask about how perception can be worked under the influences of a drug. But one thing is for certain: you aren't gaining special access to something in your mind. To even suggest that there is a gateway to open (that there is some kind of hidden psychological entity) is not a valid hypothesis. It's not like a Kantian thing (where the nature of reality can prevent understanding in some cases) which I wouldn't call mystical. It's the idea that there is something to reveal if we just had the right drugs or techniques.

So, there isn't even an alternative rational hypothesis for the idea behind a gateway to the unconscious.

Just for some fun, makes you wonder if the whole MO of Alex Jones is to parody every bizarre conspiracy out there:

 

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4 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Just for some fun, makes you wonder if the whole MO of Alex Jones is to parody every bizarre conspiracy out there:

I'm beginning to suspect that he's a straight-up charlatan. If you watch him discuss clockwork elves several years ago on YouTube, he says he's never seen the elves himself because he doesn't touch illegal drugs. But then on the recent Rogan podcast (around minute 46-48) he talks about sleep apnea and low oxygen naturally producing DMT in his body. He says that "since his first childhood memories, every night has been a DMT trip." So now he's "seen everything."

Jones has an ability to combine all sorts of weird fantasies, mix them with weird facts, and produce a compelling supernatural narrative. He appeals to both Christians, to whom the elves are demons, and atheists, to whom the elves are aliens. In the end Jones doesn't care whether you think they are Biblical or non-Biblical entities. What matters is that people believe he has "seen everything" in the other dimension, and that he has sources who tell him everything going on in this one.

I think we are witnessing a popular attempt to integrate Christian mythology with alien conspiracy theory.

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2 hours ago, Nicky said:

There's plenty of research proving this wrong, just a quick Google search away.

Unconscious mind doesn't mean what you think it means. I've seen you do it before, use it to refer to the subconscious or nonconscious, but that's not what the unconscious means. But anyway, keep up with the snarky responses that don't teach anyone anything. Maybe try some DMT and open a gateway to your unconscious, figure out why you do it.

2 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

I think we are witnessing a popular attempt to integrate Christian mythology with alien conspiracy theory.

I don't think its that well planned out. It's just whatever extravagant idea is cool, and it will change from day to day.

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On 3/2/2019 at 4:40 PM, EC said:

I think these "conspiracy theory" guys just make shit up off the top of their heads and then spread it around tbh. "Inter-dimensional Machine Elves" lmao.

The problem is that the machine elves are based on real experiences people have while on DMT. Scientists like McKenna have studied the phenomenon and some actually come away believing these entities exist in another dimension. Until science explains what's really going on here, people like Jones can build believable conspiracy theories on top of this subjective, metaphysical foundation, as long as their fantasies aren't clearly contradicted by accepted facts. But even hard facts are limited in their influence on the subjectivist's mind. I watch Jones' followers on YouTube, some of whom refer to themselves as "matrix breakers." They don't accept this reality as real and mentally try to "break through" to the other side, like in the movie The Matrix. It's completely absurd, but I'm convinced they believe it, unlike Jones, whom I do think is full of shit.

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13 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Unconscious mind doesn't mean what you think it means. I've seen you do it before, use it to refer to the subconscious or nonconscious, but that's not what the unconscious means.

Yes, one can interpret the definition in several ways so for communication on this forum it has to be defined.

Unconcious (of everything) can refer to "being dead". 

Or it can simply mean that which one is not conscious "of", which may include what you may have denied. what you have never seen but is out there, or what you were not taught or not interested in knowing, or even mistakes.

But then there is the issue of "will", as in "I did this with conscious intent" vs. "I did this through habit".

Unconscious can simply mean that which is not conscious, which may include what you may have denied it to be (nonconscious, subconscious, sleep etc.).

There are even more definitions but I think I understand where you are going with it and in psychology, it does not mean what it means in philosophy. 

In philosophy, unconscious seems to refer to "not knowing". (usually needs a target)  And being conscious is simply awareness/knowing.

I assume someone has compiled the possible meanings so we don't talk about different things. Otherwise, each of us will have to be more verbose, indicating the definition used.

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4 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

The problem is that the machine elves are based on real experiences people have while on DMT. Scientists like McKenna have studied the phenomenon and some actually come away believing these entities exist in another dimension. Until science explains what's really going on here, people like Jones can build believable conspiracy theories on top of this subjective, metaphysical foundation, as long as their fantasies aren't clearly contradicted by accepted facts. 

I mean, I fully believe people are seeing these things while "tripping" on drugs, I just don't believe that they are inter-dimensional "elves" without any sort of proof. I just think they are highly likely to be drug enhanced hallucinations.  But I would be open to at least minimally exploring evidence to the contrary. I do agree that Alex Jones is just a charlatan though. 

Edited by EC
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If we're talking about the adjectives, unconscious versus nonconscious, I don't see much difference in meaning. They both describe the state of not being conscious--asleep or knocked out, for example. And if we're talking about the noun forms, then I'm not aware of nonconscious as an actual thing. That goes for unconscious as a thing, too, unless it merely serves as a synonym for the subconscious, for which we have indirect evidence, such as emotional responses.

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5 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

Or it can simply mean that which one is not conscious "of", which may include what you may have denied. what you have never seen but is out there, or what you were not taught or not interested in knowing, or even mistakes.

In this context, it refers to the sort of unconscious that Freud talked about. It's the kind Nicky was referring to, which he brilliantly demonstrated. It refers to the underlying aspects of consciousness, that is, forms of thinking that go on beneath our awareness, but is thinking nonetheless. This is what people mean by it. This is what people mean in the context of psychology, "the" unconscious. I mean, you might be right in terms of philosophy, for some pretty nuanced meanings, but that's a very different context than the one we're talking about (psychological states specifically)

 

5 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

I assume someone has compiled the possible meanings so we don't talk about different things. Otherwise, each of us will have to be more verbose, indicating the definition used.

The definition on Wikipedia is the standard meaning for psychology. 

3 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

And if we're talking about the noun forms, then I'm not aware of nonconscious as an actual thing.

I used to think that subconscious was a synonym for the unconscious. But the more I've heard and read about this concept, and seeing how the whole idea originates from Freud and the psychoanalytic tradition, the weirder and weirder it became. It's the whole idea of the iceberg, where the surface is the thoughts we are aware of as the superego and some of the ego, and there is a vast area underneath where our psychological fears, obsessions, desires, and so on are influencing us. Essentially, it offers the idea that there are aspects of thinking which are beyond our awareness (but which might be uncovered through things like dream analysis or drugs or talking about your relationship with your mother). And I really do mean thinking.

It's different than the subconscious, which includes psychological processes easily accessible to our conscious thinking process, not at all hiding from us or requiring uncovering or gateway to them. Basically, introspection accesses it fine. That's basically the basis to cognitive behavioral therapy (it's no accident that Objectivism is extremely compatible with cognitive behavioral therapy, with so much emphasis on the fact we can control and introspect on any of our behaviors and psychological hangups). Psychedelic drugs can play a role here as well, but it doesn't have to do with the unconscious.

I used the word nonconscious in a probably confusing way. I was thinking of things like processes like tracking objects with your eyes, habituation, being reminded of something. These processes are not accessible by conscious control. We are aware that they happen, sometimes, but they play no direct role for your psychological identity (Gestalt psychologists used to think that we could alter ourselves psychologically by influencing perception, but that never really panned out).

When it comes to psychedelics, I think many people try to interpret the experiences as some kind of validation of the unconscious. Throwing in the added mystical stuff is probably more entertaining to some people, but the core of issue I think even among the most intensely mystical people is belief in some kind of unconscious mind. Jung had the collective unconscious, and it's no surprise that he used it to explain the ways mythology originates from a psychological perspective (as opposed to a literary or sociological perspective of the origins of mythology).

 

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19 hours ago, EC said:

I just think [machine elves] are highly likely to be drug enhanced hallucinations.  But I would be open to at least minimally exploring evidence to the contrary.

The reports sound like a mix between hallucinations and dreams. The visions occur while the subject is awake, like a hallucination, but the person also typically claims to lose self-awareness ("ego death"), lose track of time, and have trouble recalling particulars afterward, as if it were a dream fading from memory. I think that's strong evidence of an imaginary state, as opposed to a real interdimensional experience. I suppose some of the dream-like qualities could be explained by an inability to comprehend the other dimension. It's difficult to retain and articulate information you don't understand. But the reports establish only the drug's similar chemical effect on the human brain. Claims of interdimensional contact presume a causal factor for that psychedelic experience which goes beyond the DMT and the human being.

So how might one prove whether the other dimension exists independently of the altered human being? I don't know. If such a realm does not exist, then you cannot prove a negative. And evidence for the positive consists entirely of trip reports. Some "psychonauts" try to bring objects back from the other dimension into this world. But they haven't been successful.

I've also considered reports from blind or colorblind people who take DMT. But they aren't very helpful or consistent.

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On multiple occasions I have looked at a photograph of a woman, been sexually aroused by it, then looked closer and seen that it had been retouched so that some of the strands of hair spelled S-E-X.  Once I became conscious of this, the sexual arousal went away.  How does this sort of subliminal effect fit in with what is being said about subconscious and nonconscious?

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2 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

How does this sort of subliminal effect fit in with what is being said about subconscious and nonconscious?

My guess is that you were initially aroused primarily by the female form. Was she naked or sexually suggestive in appearance? And then once you noticed the hidden word, the image was sort of spoiled for you.

Alternatively, you automatically processed the word in her hair but were not focused on it. The perception triggered thoughts associated with sex, and your own thoughts made you aroused. Then you focused on the word, and the experience was spoiled. 

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23 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

How does this sort of subliminal effect fit in with what is being said about subconscious and nonconscious?

Swig gave some good possibilities. It might have to do with memory, it might have to do with word processing. After all, when you read, it's not like you literally concentrate on each and every word and try to actively recall every letter and sound. I could imagine some people might want to call this unconscious processing, and perhaps they could make an argument that it would be a good word to use. There are all kinds of plausible emotional processing explanations, or strictly cognitive, or mixed even. There's a lot of research about priming effects as well, but I don't think those are very good theories.

The metaphorical gateway that drugs like DMT supposedly access, the exact wording that Nicky used, Implies something different from the first paragraph.

What would we be accessing about automatic processes that go on in the mind? I mean, we would be saying there is something to access about what goes on when we read. But it's not like people say they are better understanding how they rapidly put together words that make sense in a meaningful way. I don't think it would make much sense to say we access that even. Or think about how we retrieve memories. Are you aware of the content that goes on as you sort through your vast sum of knowledge? We have content of images, but the images aren't the retrieval itself.

The type of access people usually mean is access to repressed emotions, hidden desires, and various other constructions like the collective unconscious, or the id, or some other process with content. They mean something to access or introspect on. Furthermore, we would need a gateway to these, we can't just wander in there. This is the foundation of even needing a psychoanalyst like Jung, and the same foundation we would need for mechanical elves. Either way, you're accessing a special type of content, whether provided by aliens that look like they're from the matrix, or a drug trip, or a hypnosis session trying to uncover your repressed emotions. 

A drug trip can help you think more openly, or consider emotions that you consciously deny (apparently it's a lot harder to evade your emotions during a drug trip), or the insane visuals remind you of something fun you did when you were 10 years old. But these are all things you can access normally without special techniques. It doesn't really make sense to say there's a gateway to something that requires no special knowledge or techniques to get there. At best the "gateway" is a bad metaphor (with a lottttttt of baggage)

 

 

 

 

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15 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Or think about how we retrieve memories. Are you aware of the content that goes on as you sort through your vast sum of knowledge? We have content of images, but the images aren't the retrieval itself.)

 

This more of general comment. When I retrieve a memory it's similar to a paused movie. I can make it play if I want to. Or, and I think this is the cool part, I can use the "paused movie" to "jump" to other memories that are associated with the original memory I wanted to bring to mind. 

This is really enhanced when you think of a dream, and then it bring up another associated dream. You can quickly jump from dream to dream until you are remembering dreams from countless years ago. 

I think this association jumping of memories shows directly how the brain organizes information. I'll admit I don't quite understand it, but I find it very intriguing. 

Edited by dream_weaver
removed blank quote box per request.
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14 hours ago, Eiuol said:

A drug trip can help you think more openly, or consider emotions that you consciously deny (apparently it's a lot harder to evade your emotions during a drug trip), or the insane visuals remind you of something fun you did when you were 10 years old. But these are all things you can access normally without special techniques. It doesn't really make sense to say there's a gateway to something that requires no special knowledge or techniques. At best the "gateway" is a bad metaphor (with a lottttttt of baggage)

That sounds about right. I've never done the harder psychedelics. But I have some experience with marijuana, more so when I was in college. It tends to broaden my introspection and narrow my extrospection. It stimulates imagination and apparently suppresses recollection. This creates an experience where I'm focused on integrating fantastic thoughts with little foundation in reality. I tend to work on civilization-level conspiracy theories, involving either nefarious aliens or governments.  Once my paranoia was aimed at specific individuals, but I think that was because I had just met them and they were messing with me. It's hard to control the paranoia-based thoughts, but when I do I can concentrate on less conspiratorial and more natural theories, still I'm almost entirely in my own imagination and have trouble connecting the theory to reality. I know people who habitually use weed to relax and relieve pain. I'm guessing they don't have much going on upstairs to begin with. Or else they don't share their weird thoughts with me. Most of my friends, though, have also gone to conspiracy fantasyland while under the influence. I'm not too interested in taking the harder psychedelics, because I've never wanted to lose sense of my own ego. I get enough of that during sleep and dreaming. And I've never actually figured out some amazing fact while on drugs. All my real breakthroughs happened while I was as sober as could be, even the things I believe to be true about the mind and the subconscious.

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In my experiences with S-E-X subliminals, the women were not naked or sexually suggestive.  One was a businesswoman, dressed as such, in her office.  There was no perceptible delay and no conscious thought between first seeing the picture and experiencing the arousal.  Presumably I 

On 3/6/2019 at 4:48 PM, MisterSwig said:

automatically processed the word in her hair but

was not even consciously aware of it, let alone focused on it.  I had to look for it to find it.

I was not aroused by the sexy picture someone posted one time, with the comment to the effect that we can't tell whether she's sexy without knowing about her character.  (I think it was an old post on a necro'd thread.)

My question was whether the seemingly instantaneous process of becoming aroused, which must have been triggered by the word in the hair, was subconscious, nonconscious, or what.   

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1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

My question was whether the seemingly instantaneous process of becoming aroused, which must have been triggered by the word in the hair, was subconscious, nonconscious, or what.

There are a couple things going on here. First, you are conscious of seeing a businesswoman. I'm assuming you're generally attracted to women. So there's that perfectly conscious experience. And second, there is a hidden word "sex" in her hair, of which you're not conscious, but are probably processing at the subconscious level. Your brain now automatically integrates these perceptions in accordance with your value system and returns nervous signals associated with sexual activity, causing you to become aroused. Essentially your brain went on autopilot because it did not receive any conscious direction from you since you were not focusing on the word in her hair. Once you felt the arousal and said something like, "This isn't right," you began focusing and investigating, and you noticed the word. You then fed new information to your brain (it's only a word in her hair), and your nervous signals were adjusted accordingly. How's that?

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15 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

How's that?

Obviously.

I was trying to clarify the concepts of subconscious and nonconscious, and in particular the distinction between them and whether any other categories needed to be added, by asking which category the subliminal effect fit under. 

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1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

I was trying to clarify the concepts of subconscious and nonconscious, and in particular the distinction between them and whether any other categories needed to be added, by asking which category the subliminal effect fit under. 

1

Trying to grapple with this one, but still confused.

The "subliminal effect" seems to be an interpretation of perception. But (interpretation/interpreting) is not necessarily a form of consciousness. (but the result of it is)

Emotions are a form of interpretation of reality that is not consciously done (chosen) but consciously experienced.

In that way, the "subliminal effect"  could be categorized as a type of subconscious activity/processing.  With this formulation, that would imply that emotions are also a subconscious activity/processing. The problem is that emotions, per se, are something perceived/experienced, not a type of consciousness.

On the other hand, "being emotional" could be categorized as a type of consciousness (psychologically speaking), as in panic-stricken, or calm, or fascinated or aroused in this case. But the raw emotions of anger, fear, sadness, sexual arousal etc. is an experience/perception (perceived).

So, "subliminal effect" has to be looked at as "subliminal experience", which in this case is the arousal itself. Then that experience can be categorized as subconscious. But one is fully conscious when experiencing the arousal so the question is "what causes one experience to be considered as conscious, but another as subconscious"? What is the key difference?

Another complication is: One could say sleepwalking is subconscious. But one is not conscious of doing it. So is that an unconscious or nonconscious experience?

From a philosophical/epistemological sense, the validity of "experience" or the truthfulness of the form of consciousness seems to be of most concern. Psychology does not make such a judgment, it is just a study of the states.

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