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The Nature of the Subconscient · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  CG Jung described what he called the collective unconscious, a
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  repository of archetypal images and experiences that are
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  universal to humanity. Sigmund Freud explored the
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  subconscious realms of the individual and how they impacted
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  the lives and responses of those individuals.
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  The understanding they gained and shared is the first opening
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  in Western psychology to the deeper implications of the
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  working of consciousness, which is both a unified field of
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  oneness and an individual experience factor built into
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  each person's own unique interactions with that universal
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  reality. When an individual remembers a
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  dream, he frequently finds that it contains images, movements,
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  individuals that provide a meaning, a warning, or an
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  insight. In some cases, the undigested
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  images received by the waking consciousness, but not directly
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  perceived or addressed at that time, reappear in the dream
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  state. There are also cases of an
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  individual seeing something that made no sense until sometime in
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  the future, when he met the individual he had seen in dream
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  and recognized the connection. This illustrates both the
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  universal and the individual aspects of the functioning of
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  the subconscious. Experiments in the use of
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  hypnotism provide us further insights.
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  In some cases, people have voluntarily undergone hypnotic
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  trance and are then asked to recall details of certain
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  incidents. They are able to report small
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  details that they had not actually noticed with their
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  conscious minds, perceptions which were kept and stored by
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  the subconscious without active recognition in the waking state.
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  This has helped solve certain mysteries, cases of crime or
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  tracking down and missing individuals, etcetera.
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  At a still deeper level, it must be recognized that all kinds of
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  embedded habits, instincts, behaviours that developed in
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  earlier stages of the evolutionary process, actually
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  are not part of our conscious being, but reside in the
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  subconscious and act from there essentially automatically when
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  anything triggers them. Many such behaviours and ways of
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  doing things are so deeply entrenched that they are able to
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  defeat the conscious mind and will consistently and thus
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  provide in some cases, a very much unwanted continuity of
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  processes that we would like to change.
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  Fiora Bindo has addressed this concern by his recognition that
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  human nature is not to be transformed solely by the action
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  of the mind and the willpower. It takes the instrumentality of
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  a yet higher force acting directly upon the subcontinent
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  to effectuate and solidify this type of transformative change.
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  Fiora Bindo notes quote The subconscient is universal as
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  well as individual like all the other main parts of the nature,
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  but there are different parts or planes of the subconscient.
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  All upon earth is based on the inconscient as it is called,
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  though it is not really inconscient at all, but rather a
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  complete subconscience, A suppressed or involved
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  consciousness in which there is everything but nothing is
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  formulated or expressed. The subconscient lies between
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  this inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body.
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  It contains the potentiality of all the primitive reactions to
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  life which struggle out to the surface from the dull and inert
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  strands of matter and formed by a constant development, a slowly
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  evolving and self formulating consciousness.
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  It contains them not as ideas, perceptions or conscious
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  reactions, but as fluid substance of these things.
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  But also all that is consciously experienced sinks down into the
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  subconscious, not as precise, though submerged memories, but
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  as obscure yet obstinate impressions of experience.
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  And these can come up at any time as dreams, as mechanical
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  repetitions of past thought, feelings, actions, etcetera,
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  etcetera. The subconscient is the main
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  cause why all things repeat themselves and nothing ever gets
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  changed except in appearance. It is the cause why people say
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  character cannot be changed. The cause also of the constant
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  return of things one hoped to have got rid of forever.
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  All seeds are there and all samskaras of the mind vital in
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  body. It is the main support of death
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  and disease, and the last fortress, seemingly impregnable
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  of the ignorance. All two that is suppressed
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  without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains as
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  seed, ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment.
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  End Quote reference. Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga,
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  Chapter 5. Physical consciousness,
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  subconscious sleep and dream illness.
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  Pages 87 to 88.