How Your Subconscious Mind Controls You And How to Move Toward a Free Life

Maria Fonseca

Thu Jul 03 2025

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In an age that celebrates innovation, autonomy, and self-expression, the idea that much of our daily life is governed by unconscious forces can seem counterintuitive—if not unsettling. We like to believe we are rational, self-directed individuals. But beneath the surface, our subconscious mind continuously shapes our decisions, drives our emotions, and filters our perceptions—often without our awareness. This article reflects on the insights of two visionary thinkers—Rudolf Steiner and Georg Kühlewind—who explored the nature of the subconscious mind long before it became a subject of mainstream psychology or neuroscience. Their work not only anticipates findings now confirmed by science but also offers a profound path toward conscious freedom and the capacity to think original, self-directed thoughts.

In an age that celebrates innovation, autonomy, and self-expression, the idea that most of our daily lives are governed by unconscious forces can seem counterintuitive—if not unsettling. We like to believe we are rational, self-directed individuals. But beneath the surface, our subconscious mind is shaping decisions, driving emotions, and filtering perceptions in ways we rarely notice.

From emotional reactions to belief systems, from habits to moral judgments, the subconscious mind governs the vast majority of our inner life. What we often call “thinking” is more accurately described as reacting, repeating, or retrieving. This becomes even more critical when we realize that increasingly, machines—AI systems—are also starting to think for us.

Two profound thinkers, Rudolf Steiner and Georg Kühlewind, explored this inner dynamic long before neuroscience or artificial intelligence entered the mainstream. Their works reveal not only the mechanics of our subconscious control, but also the path toward something radically different: conscious freedom.

The Subconscious Mind: Your Hidden Master

And what is the subconscious mind? It is a reservoir of accumulated experience—memories, learned behaviors, repressed emotions, cultural assumptions, and psychological patterns. It operates behind the scenes, influencing up to 95% of our behavior, according to leading psychologists.

You don’t decide to feel anxious in a crowd—it just happens. You don’t rationally choose every word in conversation—most language flows from trained patterns. Even the values you hold—about success, love, money, justice—are often absorbed unconsciously through family, schooling, religion, and media.

The subconscious is not “bad.” In fact, it's vital to functioning. It stores learned motor skills and shortcuts that keep us efficient. But problems arise when we mistake subconscious programming for conscious will. That’s when we confuse reaction with intention—and freedom becomes illusion.

This was a core insight of Rudolf Steiner, who a long time before present day neuroscience, explored and wrote about how human beings are capable of freedom, but only if they become aware of what is usually unconscious.

Rudolf Steiner and The Philosophy of Freedom

Rudolf Steiner began his intellectual journey as a scholar and editor of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s scientific writings, a role that profoundly shaped his understanding of the relationship between perception, thinking, and nature. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Steiner saw in Goethe not just a poet, but a rigorous thinker who approached the natural world with deep reverence and intuitive insight. This encounter led Steiner to explore the inner activity of thinking itself—not just as a tool for understanding the world, but as a spiritual path. It was from this foundation that he developed his seminal work, The Philosophy of Freedom, in which he asked: What does it mean to think freely? and How can we become truly self-aware beings in the modern world?

In his landmark work The Philosophy of Freedom (1894), Steiner offers a radical idea: that true freedom is not found in resisting rules or asserting personal desires. Rather, it arises when an individual acts out of conscious, self-generated thought—what he calls “moral intuition.”

“To be free means to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts—those that spring from the core of one’s being, not from outer authority or inherited norms.”
— Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom

For Steiner, most people are not free because their thoughts are not really theirs. They are driven by impulses, emotions, social conditioning, and cultural norms. Even intellectuals often recycle inherited paradigms rather than engage in authentic thinking.

Steiner proposes that freedom is an inner activity—the act of thinking about thinking. Only when we become observers of our own thought process can we distinguish between what is borrowed and what is born from within.

This kind of pure thinking is not abstract or academic. It is conscious participation in truth, in which thought is experienced as a spiritual activity rather than a mechanical process. The more we train ourselves to think in this way, the more our actions can arise from insight rather than impulse—from soul freedom rather than social conformity.

Georg Kühlewind: The Subconscious Mind as Inner Automation

Georg Kühlewind, a Hungarian scientist and spiritual philosopher inspired by Steiner, explored the subconscious from a slightly different angle. He understood the modern psyche as fragmented, overstimulated, and increasingly passive. To Kühlewind, the subconscious was not simply a storehouse—it was an active surrogate thinker.

The subconscious doesn’t just harbor memories or feelings—it thinks for us, silently and automatically. It produces thoughts that feel spontaneous but are actually preconditioned by past experience and latent habits. What we often call “my opinion” is frequently nothing more than a conditioned response dressed in rational language.

In his book Stages of Consciousness, Kühlewind writes:

“The subconscious is the constant thinker. It generates content without attention. Only when attention arises—when I truly attend to a thought—does something new, something free, begin to emerge.”

He argued that we live in a hypnotic state of half-consciousness, pulled between fleeting impressions and old thought-forms. The solution is what he called “inner work”—a quiet, sustained practice of attention and presence. Through focused thinking, self-observation, and meditative stillness, we begin to pierce the veil of subconscious automation and open to a more luminous, self-aware consciousness.

When AI Becomes Your Subconscious Mind

In today’s world, the idea that the subconscious “thinks for us” has taken on a new dimension—artificial intelligence.

AI systems now make decisions for us across every domain of life: they recommend what we watch and read, guide our travel, organize our newsfeeds, track our health, and even anticipate what we might want to buy or say. They learn from our patterns—clicks, searches, preferences—and then serve us a reality shaped by those past behaviors.

In essence, AI has become an externalized subconscious: a vast machine that observes, records, and reacts faster than we can consciously process.

This would have deeply concerned Kühlewind. While he saw the subconscious as something internal to be redeemed through awareness, AI represents a technological subconscious—one we rarely challenge or examine. If left unchecked, it can lead to a further abdication of thought.

When Netflix chooses your next show, or an AI chatbot offers an answer before you've formed your own, it may seem harmless. But over time, this outsourcing of inner effort dulls our powers of judgment, imagination, and discernment. It becomes easier to follow the suggested path than to ask a deeper question. Like the subconscious, AI tends to reinforce what already is rather than open us to what could be.

This is not an argument against AI. Technology can be an extraordinary tool for liberation. But only if we remain awake. Only if we think before the system does it for us.

From Subconscious Control to Free Soul: A Path of Inner Work

From Subconscious Control to Free Soul: A Path of Inner Work

So how do we reclaim ourselves—from both internal automation and external suggestion? 

Both Steiner and Kühlewind provide us with a map. Here are six steps inspired by their work to help move from subconscious control to conscious freedom.

1. Observe Your Thinking

Begin each day with the quiet intention to watch your thoughts. Notice what arises. Is this thought truly yours, or did it come from habit, fear, or someone else’s voice? This practice begins to loosen the grip of automation.

2. Create Inner Stillness

Silence is the antidote to subconscious chatter. Set aside time for meditation or contemplative silence. In stillness, the surface thoughts settle, and deeper intuitions can arise. This is the space where freedom begins.

3. Disrupt the Predictable

Change small habits. Drive a different route. Read something outside your usual interests. By doing this, you begin to break subconscious loops and awaken new faculties of attention.

4. Engage in Moral Imagination

Don’t ask only: What should I do? Ask: What wants to arise here? What action would express my highest understanding? This can be seen as a kind of moral artistry—where our ethical actions are not dictated by convention, but shaped by the living presence of consciousness, attuned to both inner truth and outer reality. It is here that freedom becomes not a slogan, but a spiritual deed.Moral imagination is the faculty of creating new responses to old situations, not based on rules but on conscious insight.

5. Resist Passive Consumption

Before clicking on the next video or accepting the next AI-generated suggestion, pause. Ask: Do I want this, or was it planted in me? Curate your digital life with intention. Let technology serve your growth, not replace your attention.

6. Practice Loving Attention

For Kühlewind, the key to transforming subconscious forces was attention infused with love—not critique or force. Bring warm, receptive awareness to your thoughts and emotions. Let them soften and transform in the light of your presence.

Why This Journey Matters Now

We are living in an era where freedom is under subtle siege—not from tyrants or institutions, but from invisible systems and internal habits. They have always been there, but now, they are more evident than ever. The subconscious mind, paired with AI algorithms and cultural conditioning, can lull us into a life of unconscious reaction.

But within each of us is a spark that cannot be programmed: the capacity for self-aware, morally infused thinking. A capacity to begin again, to act from the center rather than the periphery. This is the freedom Steiner described—not freedom from responsibility, but freedom for creative participation in the world.

This path takes effort. It’s quieter than revolution and slower than technology. But it is the foundation of all true change—the transformation of the human being from an echo of the past to a co-creator of the future

And what about thinking freely? 

Freedom is not given. It is not achieved by merely resisting control. Freedom is grown—in the garden of attention, under the light of self-awareness, watered by practice.

Kühlewind called it the path of inner schooling.  Or growing into becoming truly human.

So the next time a thought arises, ask gently:

Is this mine?
Is this true?
Is this free?

And from that question, a new life can begin.

Further Reading:

Rudolf Steiner – The Philosophy of Freedom (also known as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity)

Georg Kühlewind – Stages of Consciousness, Working with Anthroposophy, Starry World

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Maria Fonseca

Maria Fonseca is an interdisciplinary educator, writer, artist and researcher whose work bridges the realms of academic knowledge, community engagement, and spiritual inquiry. With a background in Fine Art and a doctorate in creative practice, Maria has spent over a decade exploring the intersections of human experience, cultural meaning, and collective transformation.