1. a level of consciousness at which a stimulus may affect behavior even though the person is not explicitly aware of it. See subliminal perception.

2. in the psychological theory of British writer Frederic William Henry Myers (1843–1901), a marginal region of consciousness that he posited as an explanation for telepathy and other alleged parapsychological phenomena. Myers believed that the subliminal consciousness had a transpersonal dimension, and this aspect of his theory is sometimes held to have influenced Carl Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious. See also superconscious.