This diagram shows the medieval understanding of spheres of the cosmos, derived from Aristotle, and as per the standard explanation by Ptolemy. It came to be understood that at least the outermost sphere (marked "Primũ Mobile") has its own intellect, intelligence or nous - a cosmic equivalent to the human mind.
For centuries, philosophers from Plato forward have used the term noetic to refer to experiences that pioneering psychologist William James (1902) described as:
…states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority.
"The Sound Of Silence"
Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
"Fools," said I, "You do not know.
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence."
Isaiah 25:7
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow death up forever.
"If only I hadn't seen 'it'. That terrible 'it'."
The above sentence struck me as so so profound ... seems it helps to explain the past 20 or so years of my life.
Out of context the sentence is meaningless ... even in context the sentence is meaningless for most readers ... I find Tolstoy to be a very deep thinker.
The sentence stands alone as an allegory ... let me share a few of my thoughts.
1) The verb "see" is symbolic ... nothing is seen with the eyes or any other human sense receptor. Yet a "knowing" is communicated and idelibly stamped onto our conscienceness.
2) The pronoun 'it' is also symbolic ... but what it symbolizes can't be described or explained in words or images etc. Yet ... a "knowing" of what this 'it' represents is referred to above as the something that is idelibly stamped onto our conscienceness.
Robert Kenny defines the notion as: “Collective consciousness is a mode of awareness that emerges at the first transpersonal stage of consciousness, when our identities expand beyond our egos. A crucial capacity that accompanies this awareness is the ability to intuitively sense and work with the interactions between our and others energy fields, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. For example, just as Gene Rodenberry imagined a future where Star Trek’s Spock could mind meld with others, more of us are now becoming aware of our capacity not only to intuit each other’s thoughts and emotions, but also to consciously think and create together without communicating through our five senses.
While poking around I came across the ‘Global Consciousness Project’ … a significant and contemporary investigation of the capabilities of the individual and collective human mind. In an article written by Roger Nelson I found the question “Is there a sense in which mind is present in the world beyond the brain?”
Seems to me Rogers is posing the same question St Augustine posed 1,600 years ago ... “Surely that cannot be external to itself, it must be within the mind. How than can it fail to grasp it?” … Hmmm!
2 The Global Consciousness
Project (GCP)
CONCLUSIONS
The GCP is a long-term experiment that asks fundamental questions
about human consciousness. Our review describes evidence
for effects of collective attention—operationally defined global consciousness—on
a world-spanning network of physical devices. Careful
analysis examines multiple indicators of anomalous data structure
correlated specifically with moments of importance to
humans. The findings suggest that some aspect of consciousness
may be a source of anomalous effects in the material world. This is
a provocative notion, but it is arguably the best of several alternative
explanatory directions. The convergence of several independent
analytical findings provides strong evidence for the anomalies, and
to the extent these can be integrated into scientific models they will
enrich our understanding of consciousness.
Although a full exploitation of the structurally rich database is
in early stages, substantial progress has been made in understanding the GCP experiment. Physical insight into the nature of
the effect has already been gained by the analysis, and this allows
us to begin discriminating between theoretical approaches while
providing tools for refinement of the general hypothesis. Future
efforts will emphasize the human and participatory aspects of
the events we study.
We have argued that the GCP experiment is not easily explained
by conventional or spurious sources. Instead, we provisionally
conclude that the anomalous structure is correlated with
qualities or states of collective consciousness activity. Although
social and psychological variables are challenging to characterize,
an obvious suggestion is to look for changes in the level of
“coherence” among the people engaged by the events. Defining
this construct and developing it empirically will be important for
further progress.
In sum, the evidence suggests an interdependence of consciousness
and the environment, but the mechanisms for this
remain obscure. Substantial work remains before we can usefully
describe how consciousness relates to the experimental RNG
results beyond the empirical correlations. Our findings do not fit
readily into current scientific descriptions of the world, but facts
at the edges of our understanding can be expected to direct us
toward fundamental questions. As Richard Feynman remarked,
“The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that is most interesting.”30
It is important to consider different theoretical scenarios.
Quantum entanglement, retrocausation, active information
fields, and other ideas have been discussed in this context, but
these notions drawn from physics have only tenuous connections
to the GCP experiment. It is currently hard to see any
obviously good fit, but the research and especially the extended
analysis provides much needed input by establishing parameters
that can help discriminate models.
More broadly, the GCP results are of relevance for the study
of mind and brain because they bear directly on fundamental
questions of consciousness. Research in conventional brain science
tends to focus on the neural correlates that give rise to
consciousness, and tacitly or explicitly assume that consciousness
reduces to brain activity. The GCP results urge us to ask a
harder question: Are there direct correlates of consciousness to
be found outside the brain? The question is challenging because
it posits or points to phenomena that are anomalous and hence
mysterious from a conventional standpoint. The search for understanding
of mind and brain obviously must change dramatically
if consciousness correlates are found in the broader world.
Finally, the GCP results inspire deeper questions about our
relation to the world and each other. Might we find that the best
model, after all, resembles a coherent, extended consciousness
akin to Teilhard de Chardin’s aesthetic vision of a noosphere?
Although this is a possibility that is currently beyond the supply
lines of our scientific position, the experimental results are consistent
with the idea that subtle linkages exist between widely
separated people.
What should we take away from this scientific evidence of
interconnection? If we are persuaded that the subtle structuring
of random data does indicate an effect of human attention and
emotion in the physical world, it broadens our view of what
consciousness means. One implication is that our attention matters
in a way we may not have imagined possible, and that
cooperative intent can have subtle but real consequences. This is
cause for reflection about our responsibilities in an increasingly
connected world. Our future holds challenges of planetary scope
that will demand both scientific clarity and mutual cooperation.
On this we should be of one mind.