Is there a collective human conciousness ? and can individuals influence it ?

barrymanilow

Hi all ,

I know this sounds a bit far fetched but its an idea I am leaning towards more and more .

Do you think that there is a collective human conciousness and that on some level we are all one collective entity expressed in the world through billions of seperate human forms ?

If I practice meditation or try to live peacefully and if I grow spiritually am I also in some subtle or profound way impacting positively on everyone elses experience of life on earth ?

I got to these ideas from the The Film " I am " by Tom Shadyac and a piece in Eckhart Tolles book about frequency holders whose calling is to live in the now in order to anchor human conciousness and counteract collective human insanity .

or have I definitely lost it this time ?

any thoughts ?

YFlyer

Yes it's call The Maharishi Effect. It has been demonstrated that when 1% of the population practice Transcendental Meditation, or square root of 1% practicing together the TM Sidhi, has a positive influence on society.

For Ireland that would be just over 200 individuals.

Xenophile

Is there a collective human consciousness ? and can individuals influence it ?

Yes there is...............it's more of an unconsciousness.

Some light reading on this by Karl Jung can give a little enlightenment.

In my view the quality of Kindness can move mountains.

Joe1919

Stanford university has a discussion on similar below.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collective-intentionality/

Joe1919

Stanford university has a discussion on similar below.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collective-intentionality/

endacl

How would 200 Irish people doing nothing for half an hour a day influence Irish society?

looksee

I suspect there may be a glimmer of truth in the 'hive mind' idea, but I do not accept any of the OP's theories on it.

Drumpot

endacl wrote: »

How would 200 Irish people doing nothing for half an hour a day influence Irish society?

Your post was my instant thought, but after reflection I looked at it differently.

Its 200 less people potentially out doing their own thing, judging, hurrying , hurting others and frantically trying to change their physical surroundings to their own benefit.

What would make sense is that 200 people meditating on a similar conscious level would in theory infect or pass on their serenity/benefits to anybody who comes in contact with them. The multiply effect would filter down in some, lesser form to everybody else.

That's what I am learning from meditation and spirituality right now. Taking everything literally limited my understanding and ability to practise meditation.

Into The Blue

It's not a hive mind, it's that we don't understand just how much our mood influences others and how many people we influence on a daily basis.

Smiling and kind deeds are infectious. You extrapolate the figures from yourself and each person you interact with, each being the base of their own expotential scale, and its probably only a matter of days before you affect the lives of every person in a small country like ours.

endacl

Drumpot wrote: »

Your post was my instant thought, but after reflection I looked at it differently.

Its 200 less people potentially out doing their own thing, judging, hurrying , hurting others and frantically trying to change their physical surroundings to their own benefit.

What would make sense is that 200 people meditating on a similar conscious level would in theory infect or pass on their serenity/benefits to anybody who comes in contact with them. The multiply effect would filter down in some, lesser form to everybody else.

That's what I am learning from meditation and spirituality right now. Taking everything literally limited my understanding and ability to practise meditation.

But at any given time, at least 200 Irish people will be doing nothing.

How is serenity infected or passed on?

endacl

Into The Blue wrote: »

It's not a hive mind, it's that we don't understand just how much our mood influences others and how many people we influence on a daily basis.

Smiling and kind deeds are infectious. You extrapolate the figures from yourself and each person you interact with, each being the base of their own expotential scale, and its probably only a matter of days before you affect the lives of every person in a small country like ours.

You're presuming that each individual person will perceive the smile and interpret the deed in the same way. You're also not allowing for 'noise' in the system. You're not allowing for temperament, for experience, for culture, for state of mind. For any number of things.

You can't extrapolate those figures. The proof is demonstrated by the fact that we don't all walk around all day long with the same neutral expression on our faces, having cross-infected each other with the average of every mood available.

Drumpot

endacl wrote: »

But at any given time, at least 200 Irish people will be doing nothing.

How is serenity infected or passed on?

I can only account for my own actions/experience.

A simple comparison would be a day that's exactly the same in all things but in one instance I meditate and in another I start the day with no mental excercises to ground me.

If I meditate or take time to get mentally balanced before I start my day, I normally have a much more balanced or positive reaction to those around me. In any given day, positively or negatively I can effect/infect my wife, children, children of other parents, teacher of my children, clients, work associates, neighbours, other car drivers, shops I go into, online forums I use, people I phone, people I don't talk to (fighting/arguing).

One of the spiritual techniques I am trying to practise, with difficulty, is to bring love into most scenarios. It's not easy, particularly if somebody is arguing or wronging you. But reacting to people or not reacting can have huge knock on effects to many people's lives.

endacl

But that has nothing to do with the OP's question around collective consciousness. Of course if you're nicer to the people you meet every day, the world will be a slightly nicer place for them, and fair play to you. If everybody did this the world would be a slightly nicer place for everybody. That would have a lot more to do with culture and environment than it would with collective unconscious though.

The bills would still come in. The fact that they were delivered with a smile wouldn't mean they didn't have to be paid. Your comparison is an over-simple one.

Drumpot

endacl wrote: »

But that has nothing to do with the OP's question around collective consciousness. Of course if you're nicer to the people you meet every day, the world will be a slightly nicer place for them, and fair play to you. If everybody did this the world would be a slightly nicer place for everybody. That would have a lot more to do with culture and environment than it would with collective unconscious though.

The bills would still come in. The fact that they were delivered with a smile wouldn't mean they didn't have to be paid. Your comparison is an over-simple one.

perhaps I am discussing something different to the OP or maybe it's exactly as simple as I suggest.

I find, in my journey to feel or understand spirituality that sometimes the single biggest thing holding me back is trying to over complicate or intellectualise specific parts of it. I see it in others, getting into the nitty gritty specifics when in fact this kind of discussion only blocks them from awknowledging or seeing the most basic parts of spirituality.

If people are all thinking and responding to each other on a similar level, you say it's cultural but perhaps it's more then that. Who is to say it's not something more then that? Cultural, is a human word used to understand or describe collective traits in a particular community.

I find, particularly in science community, that I find extremely interesting, that in trying to rationalise or intellectualise everything , that what can be lost is perhaps maybe there are some things we just are not meant to make a sense of. The human desire for knowledge and bracketing everything into some subject/category leads to animosity or derision , particularly when there is something that cannot be explained.

I don't understand how a plane flies and I don't need to. Likewise, I don't fully understand the concepts behind collective conscious but I don't believe it has to be a sort of science fiction kind of explanation. A few years ago, the science community thought that there had to be a restrictive conditions for there to be life in the universe. I didn't fully understand this rationale but I couldn't believe that we knew enough about our universe to presume such a major theory. Sure enough there is potential for life in many more conditions first thought possible.

Why is this relevant? Again, we presume certain conditions are required for certain things to be plausible and then we limit our search within these limited variables that we use as an anchor to our theory.

endacl

So, to paraphrase, don't question, reason or wonder? Because asking whether something can and/or does happen, and by what mechanism, may lead to the realisation that what you would like to be the case is not in fact the case?

Right. Got it.

Edit: How a plane flies is remarkably easy to understand. Air moves faster over the top surface of an aerofoil. This creates an area of localised low pressure (lift) over the wing, relative to higher pressure under, and the plane rises. Just because you don't understand something, doesn't mean it's inherently non-understandable. Bad example.

hydro1

barrymanilow wrote: »

Hi all ,

I know this sounds a bit far fetched but its an idea I am leaning towards more and more .

Do you think that there is a collective human conciousness and that on some level we are all one collective entity expressed in the world through billions of seperate human forms ?

If I practice meditation or try to live peacefully and if I grow spiritually am I also in some subtle or profound way impacting positively on everyone elses experience of life on earth ?

I got to these ideas from the The Film " I am " by Tom Shadyac and a piece in Eckhart Tolles book about frequency holders whose calling is to live in the now in order to anchor human conciousness and counteract collective human insanity .

or have I definitely lost it this time ?

any thoughts ?

I kinda agree with this but would say that its not human conciousness but the universe which is conscious, all living things and all matter and its the one conciousness. But think trying to understand this is bringing the mind into play which makes us think singular. I dont believe our mind can understand it a bit like an ant trying to read and understand topics in a newspaper.

A way which I think I have experienced this is when i meditate, my identity goes and I am simply aware and at that moment if someone beside was doing the same there would be no difference between each awareness. But once you start to think about it you are back in the mind and its gone.

Go Tobban

Not 100% related but Rupert Sheldarakes theory of morphic resonance might interest a few people in this thread

Marzipan85

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe’ —a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ~ Einstein