Plato and more recently Jung described the notion of Collective Unconscious. We are now seeing more published work on the notion of Collective Conscious. Seems humanity is moving into consciousness, we are awakening.
The next logical step is the notion of Collective Will. Perhaps we have been functioning for a zillion years with individual and collective will derived from our Collective Unconscious, our will being influenced without us being aware of it.
Wow! ... this hypothesis is quite exciting. This theory suggests mankind is moving from a very long period of grandiose DECEPTION through unconscious influences to a pure TRUTH ... from darkness to light.
Wow!! ... how I hope this is true!!
“Carl Jung was a student and follower of Freud. He was born in a small town in Switzerland in 1875 and all his life was fascinated by folk tales, myths and religious stories. Although he had a close friendship with Freud, early in their relationship his independent and questioning mind soon caused a break.
Jung did not accept Freud’s contention that the primary motivation behind behaviour was sexual urges. Instead of Freud’s instinctual drives of sex and aggression, Jung believed that people are motivated by a more general psychological energy that pushes them to achieve psychological growth, self-realization., psychic wholeness and harmony. Also, unlike Freud, he believed that personality continues to develop throughout the lifespan.
It is for his ideas of the collective unconscious that students of literature and mythology are indebted to Jung. In studying different cultures, he was struck by the universality of many themes, patterns, stories and images. These same images, he found, frequently appeared in the dreams of his patients. From these observations, Jung developed his theory of the collective unconscious and the archetypes.
Like Freud, Jung posited the existence of a conscious and an unconscious mind. A model that psychologists frequently use here is an iceberg. The part of the iceberg that is above the surface of the water is seen as the conscious mind. Consciousness is the part of the mind we know directly. It is where we think, feel, sense and intuit. It is through conscious activity that the person becomes an individual. It’s the part of the mind that we “live in” most of the time, and contains information that is in our immediate awareness Below the level of the conscious mind, and the bulk of the ice berg, is what Freud would call the unconscious, and what Jung would call the “personal unconscious.” Here we will find thoughts, feelings, urges and other information that is difficult to bring to consciousness. Experiences that do not reach consciousness, experiences that are not congruent with who we think we are, and things that have become “repressed” would make up the material at this level. The contents of the personal unconscious are available through hypnosis, guided imagery, and especially dreams. Although not directly accessible, material in the personal unconscious has gotten there sometime during our lifetime. For example, the reason you are going to school now, why you picked a particular shirt to wear or your choice of a career may be a choice you reached consciously. But it is also possible that education, career, or clothing style has been influenced by a great deal of unconscious material: parents’ preferences, childhood experiences, even movies you have seen but about which you do not think when you make choices or decisions. Thus, the depth psychologist would say that many decisions, indeed some of the most important ones that have to do with choosing a mate or a career, are determined by unconscious factors.
What Is the Collective Conscious?
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.
What is Collective Unconscious? … the term coined by Carl Jung
The collective unconscious is different. It’s like eye color. If someone were to ask you, How did you get your eye color, you would have to say that there was no choice. The collective unconscious is like this: inherited. It never came from our current environment. It is the part of the mind that is determined by heredity. So we inherit, as part of our humanity, a collective unconscious; the mind is pre-figured by evolution just as is the body. The individual is linked to the past of the whole species and the long stretch of evolution of the organism. Jung thus placed the psyche within the evolutionary process.
What’s in the collective unconscious? Psychological archetypes. This idea of psychological archetypes is among Jung’s most important contributions to Western thought. An ancient idea somewhat like Plato’s idea of Forms or patterns in the divine mind that determine the form material objects will take, the archetype is in all of us. The word archetype comes from the Greek arche meaning first, and type meaning imprint or pattern. Psychological archetypes are thus first prints, or patterns that form the basic blueprint for major dynamic counterparts of the human personality. For Jung, archetypes pre-exist in the collective unconscious of humanity. They repeat themselves eternally in the psyches of human beings and they determine how we both perceive and behave. These patterns are inborn within us. They are part of our inheritance as human beings. They reside as energy within the collective unconscious and are part the psychological life of all peoples everywhere at all times. They are inside us and they are outside us. We can meet them by going inward to our dreams or fantasies. We can meet them by going outward to our myths, legends, literature and religions. The archetype can be a pattern, such as a kind of story. Or it can be a figure, such as a kind of character
Jung proposes that our being is influenced by the collective unconsciousness (archetypes) and we can not escape this influence.
In the recent past we hear more and more scholars and leaders talking about raising consciousness surely this must lead to a collective conscious. This collective conscience knows no national, religious or language barriers.
The essence of collective conscious is individual minds coming together with common purpose and common will to influence outcomes. There is no propaganda involved, no charismatic leaders espousing yet another form of dogma, no new scholastic philosophy. Simply one mind after another joining together in cyberspace without any physical connection, creating an Empire of the Mind
“The empires of the future are the Empires of the Mind”. Winston Churchill 1943
In all of human history empires have been built with brutality and coercion; military and religion. One need only look at recent history. The 20th century is the bloodiest century on record, the chalice of global supremacy passed to the US. Today the US has military bases in more than 150 countries. However, before the US could consolidate its empire after the turn of the century it had already started to crumble. One could say the US Empire never really came into being, leaving Churchill’s statement valid.
Was Churchill unknowingly referring to Collective Conscious with his statement about Empires of the Mind? What is an Empire of the Mind?
Simply stated … it is a collective conscious. A space created from the voluntary migration of individual minds from the collective unconscious to the collective conscious. It is the result of the revolution Krishnamurti often referred to … the revolution of each individual psyche. A revolution he insisted cannot be started by any external force … military, political, social or religious.
How does this revolution get started? It is already underway. The process involves migration from the collective unconscious to the collective conscious often referred to as spiritual awakening. Explosive growth will occur when the number of individual minds residing in the collective conscious reaches critical mass. The world as we know it will change dramatically. Dominator culture will embrace radically different characteristics with LOVE as the foundation and the Beatitudes as the Creed.
Seems to me there may be a common denominator in the work of Moses, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and the authors of the ancient Hindu Chakras.
In the book of numbers (Jewish Torah and Christian Bible) we are told the story of how at one time during the Exodus the Israelites were wandering around the Sinai desert being bitten by snakes ... and dying!
Moses asked God what to do about this and God instructed him to fashion a serpent out of bronze and place it on a stick. Instruct the people who are subsequently bitten by these snakes to stare upon the bronze snake and they would be healed.
Today some say the crucifix serves the same purpose as the bronze serpent in the desert. From a secular perspective this story foreshadowed modern psychology and psychiatry, of which Freud and Jung are considered the fathers.
In these behavioural sciences the therapy involves coaching the wounded individual into placing the details of the trauma in front of his/her face ... stare at it and talk about it etc ... and in the end ... be healed. W
If there is any truth in my interpretation of this particular biblical story ... the symbolism is first rate ... fantastic! Jung spent most of his life attempting to understand dreams and myths …symbols and symbolism found across a very long time span and numerous cultures.
Interpreting the Sinai Exodus experience of the Israelites, the venomous snake bites symbolize the hurtful experiences of our lives ... sometimes traumatic experiences.
These experiences poison our inner self, sometimes fatally! We become desensitized ... unable to ‘feel’ etc. Our bodies are still intact and we wander through life zombie like ... never completely whole again. (Jung's journey to Self represents a becoming whole again) We all do this everyday ... it's only a question of degree ... we metamorphose ourselves according to the need ... some call it charm, charisma, diplomacy
Sometimes the injury is so deep and so poisonous that are psyche creates a new person/personality to deal with the pain. Manifested in illnesses such as multiple personality syndrome, schizophrenia etc.
Interesting that today,.3,300 years after the Exodus experience of the Israelites in the Sinai desert, we still use the symbol of a serpent on a stick. Seems it is always associated with healing. Hmmm.
Freud's life work centred on the 'Root Chakra' ... sexuality and instinct. The fact that Freud's discovery was monumental in itself may explain why Freud was never able to move beyond the 'Root Chakra'.
Moses lead the exodus around 1300 BC ... the escape from slavery, the journey to freedom ... across the Sinai desert.
One might say that Freud lead the exodus around 1925 AD ... the escape from slavery ... being slaves to our unconscious without knowing it. The journey to freedom, reconciliation of our unconscious with our conscious mind ... across the Sinai desert ... after a long and sometimes difficult and painful healing journey.
Jung learned from Freud and collaborated with him for more than 12 years. Jung broke off his collaboration with Freud because he was compelled by his experiences and those of some of his patients, to move away from the genitals ... travel up the spine ... to the heart of our central nervous system ... the Crown Chakra(the human mind). Freud got stuck on the Root Chakra(sexuality).
Nonetheless Jung consistently acknowledged Freud's pioneering work and always recognized that Freud opened the door to this new knowledge or understanding. Freud was the equivalent of Moses.
George Sand is a 19th century French writer wrote something to the effect ... "often it is the tiny insignificant details of a persons' life that are most revealing"
Seems ironic that Freud would refer to his student, colleague and friend(Jung before their separation) as his 'Crown Prince" and Jung would move on to work on what is known as the "Crown" chakra in Hinduism. Maybe Freud experienced one of his own 'Freudian slips' ... a prophetic one!!
The Crown Chakra is known in Hindi as understanding ... presumably ultimate understanding ... perhaps the same as Nirvana in Buddhism.
Seems to me Jung labelled this 'state' the 'collective unconscious' ... a dimension of reality where all human history(past present and future) thought etc resides ... a reality that cannot be described with human words or concepts ... at best only understood through the use of symbols.
Jung spent much of his adult life attempting to provide empirical evidence that this 'collective unconscious' communicates to us mere mortals in our dreams ... seems to suggest the same phenomenon known to mankind for eons and often called 'visions' ... we read of this in ancient Judaism ... the prophets often experienced visions ... the Book of Revelations is a well known example. North American Indians encouraged the pursuit of 'visions' as well as sharing them ... the well known mystic 'Black Elk' is an example ... he started to feel better after he shared his personal 'vision' and the tribe acted out the 'vision' in a tribal ceremony which was continued until the 'white man' wiped out the tribe.
The activity referred to as 'communication' has a friendly connotation ... suggesting the communication from the 'collective unconscious' has friendly motives ... intended to help mankind understand his existence, purpose etc
Also inferred in the activity 'communication' is the capability of whatever this 'collective unconscious' is to break through our built in radar and security system. Perhaps this is why it so often happens in the sleeping state ... awake we would not allow it to 'break through'
This is not to suggest whatever 'power' embedded in this 'collective unconscious' is inferior to our mere mortal capabilities ... not at all. Seems we have countless examples of where this 'collective unconscious' breaks through so to speak ... in our awaken state ... in some cases we call it 'psychic capability' ... telepathy ... intuition ... etc etc . In some of the more serious cases the recipients are compelled to live in places like the Homewood in Guelph ... or are drugged into a 'vegetative state'.
This would suggest that not all 'communication' from this 'collective unconscious' is friendly ... hmmm
The next logical step is the notion of Collective Will. Perhaps we have been functioning for a zillion years with individual and collective will derived from our Collective Unconscious, our will being influenced without us being aware of it.
Wow! ... this hypothesis is quite exciting. This theory suggests mankind is moving from a very long period of grandiose DECEPTION through unconscious influences to a pure TRUTH ... from darkness to light.
Wow!! ... how I hope this is true!!
“Carl Jung was a student and follower of Freud. He was born in a small town in Switzerland in 1875 and all his life was fascinated by folk tales, myths and religious stories. Although he had a close friendship with Freud, early in their relationship his independent and questioning mind soon caused a break.
Jung did not accept Freud’s contention that the primary motivation behind behaviour was sexual urges. Instead of Freud’s instinctual drives of sex and aggression, Jung believed that people are motivated by a more general psychological energy that pushes them to achieve psychological growth, self-realization., psychic wholeness and harmony. Also, unlike Freud, he believed that personality continues to develop throughout the lifespan.
It is for his ideas of the collective unconscious that students of literature and mythology are indebted to Jung. In studying different cultures, he was struck by the universality of many themes, patterns, stories and images. These same images, he found, frequently appeared in the dreams of his patients. From these observations, Jung developed his theory of the collective unconscious and the archetypes.
Like Freud, Jung posited the existence of a conscious and an unconscious mind. A model that psychologists frequently use here is an iceberg. The part of the iceberg that is above the surface of the water is seen as the conscious mind. Consciousness is the part of the mind we know directly. It is where we think, feel, sense and intuit. It is through conscious activity that the person becomes an individual. It’s the part of the mind that we “live in” most of the time, and contains information that is in our immediate awareness Below the level of the conscious mind, and the bulk of the ice berg, is what Freud would call the unconscious, and what Jung would call the “personal unconscious.” Here we will find thoughts, feelings, urges and other information that is difficult to bring to consciousness. Experiences that do not reach consciousness, experiences that are not congruent with who we think we are, and things that have become “repressed” would make up the material at this level. The contents of the personal unconscious are available through hypnosis, guided imagery, and especially dreams. Although not directly accessible, material in the personal unconscious has gotten there sometime during our lifetime. For example, the reason you are going to school now, why you picked a particular shirt to wear or your choice of a career may be a choice you reached consciously. But it is also possible that education, career, or clothing style has been influenced by a great deal of unconscious material: parents’ preferences, childhood experiences, even movies you have seen but about which you do not think when you make choices or decisions. Thus, the depth psychologist would say that many decisions, indeed some of the most important ones that have to do with choosing a mate or a career, are determined by unconscious factors.
What Is the Collective Conscious?
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.
What is Collective Unconscious? … the term coined by Carl Jung
The collective unconscious is different. It’s like eye color. If someone were to ask you, How did you get your eye color, you would have to say that there was no choice. The collective unconscious is like this: inherited. It never came from our current environment. It is the part of the mind that is determined by heredity. So we inherit, as part of our humanity, a collective unconscious; the mind is pre-figured by evolution just as is the body. The individual is linked to the past of the whole species and the long stretch of evolution of the organism. Jung thus placed the psyche within the evolutionary process.
What’s in the collective unconscious? Psychological archetypes. This idea of psychological archetypes is among Jung’s most important contributions to Western thought. An ancient idea somewhat like Plato’s idea of Forms or patterns in the divine mind that determine the form material objects will take, the archetype is in all of us. The word archetype comes from the Greek arche meaning first, and type meaning imprint or pattern. Psychological archetypes are thus first prints, or patterns that form the basic blueprint for major dynamic counterparts of the human personality. For Jung, archetypes pre-exist in the collective unconscious of humanity. They repeat themselves eternally in the psyches of human beings and they determine how we both perceive and behave. These patterns are inborn within us. They are part of our inheritance as human beings. They reside as energy within the collective unconscious and are part the psychological life of all peoples everywhere at all times. They are inside us and they are outside us. We can meet them by going inward to our dreams or fantasies. We can meet them by going outward to our myths, legends, literature and religions. The archetype can be a pattern, such as a kind of story. Or it can be a figure, such as a kind of character
Jung proposes that our being is influenced by the collective unconsciousness (archetypes) and we can not escape this influence.
In the recent past we hear more and more scholars and leaders talking about raising consciousness surely this must lead to a collective conscious. This collective conscience knows no national, religious or language barriers.
The essence of collective conscious is individual minds coming together with common purpose and common will to influence outcomes. There is no propaganda involved, no charismatic leaders espousing yet another form of dogma, no new scholastic philosophy. Simply one mind after another joining together in cyberspace without any physical connection, creating an Empire of the Mind
“The empires of the future are the Empires of the Mind”. Winston Churchill 1943
In all of human history empires have been built with brutality and coercion; military and religion. One need only look at recent history. The 20th century is the bloodiest century on record, the chalice of global supremacy passed to the US. Today the US has military bases in more than 150 countries. However, before the US could consolidate its empire after the turn of the century it had already started to crumble. One could say the US Empire never really came into being, leaving Churchill’s statement valid.
Was Churchill unknowingly referring to Collective Conscious with his statement about Empires of the Mind? What is an Empire of the Mind?
Simply stated … it is a collective conscious. A space created from the voluntary migration of individual minds from the collective unconscious to the collective conscious. It is the result of the revolution Krishnamurti often referred to … the revolution of each individual psyche. A revolution he insisted cannot be started by any external force … military, political, social or religious.
How does this revolution get started? It is already underway. The process involves migration from the collective unconscious to the collective conscious often referred to as spiritual awakening. Explosive growth will occur when the number of individual minds residing in the collective conscious reaches critical mass. The world as we know it will change dramatically. Dominator culture will embrace radically different characteristics with LOVE as the foundation and the Beatitudes as the Creed.
Seems to me there may be a common denominator in the work of Moses, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and the authors of the ancient Hindu Chakras.
In the book of numbers (Jewish Torah and Christian Bible) we are told the story of how at one time during the Exodus the Israelites were wandering around the Sinai desert being bitten by snakes ... and dying!
Moses asked God what to do about this and God instructed him to fashion a serpent out of bronze and place it on a stick. Instruct the people who are subsequently bitten by these snakes to stare upon the bronze snake and they would be healed.
Today some say the crucifix serves the same purpose as the bronze serpent in the desert. From a secular perspective this story foreshadowed modern psychology and psychiatry, of which Freud and Jung are considered the fathers.
In these behavioural sciences the therapy involves coaching the wounded individual into placing the details of the trauma in front of his/her face ... stare at it and talk about it etc ... and in the end ... be healed. W
If there is any truth in my interpretation of this particular biblical story ... the symbolism is first rate ... fantastic! Jung spent most of his life attempting to understand dreams and myths …symbols and symbolism found across a very long time span and numerous cultures.
Interpreting the Sinai Exodus experience of the Israelites, the venomous snake bites symbolize the hurtful experiences of our lives ... sometimes traumatic experiences.
These experiences poison our inner self, sometimes fatally! We become desensitized ... unable to ‘feel’ etc. Our bodies are still intact and we wander through life zombie like ... never completely whole again. (Jung's journey to Self represents a becoming whole again) We all do this everyday ... it's only a question of degree ... we metamorphose ourselves according to the need ... some call it charm, charisma, diplomacy
Sometimes the injury is so deep and so poisonous that are psyche creates a new person/personality to deal with the pain. Manifested in illnesses such as multiple personality syndrome, schizophrenia etc.
Interesting that today,.3,300 years after the Exodus experience of the Israelites in the Sinai desert, we still use the symbol of a serpent on a stick. Seems it is always associated with healing. Hmmm.
Freud's life work centred on the 'Root Chakra' ... sexuality and instinct. The fact that Freud's discovery was monumental in itself may explain why Freud was never able to move beyond the 'Root Chakra'.
Moses lead the exodus around 1300 BC ... the escape from slavery, the journey to freedom ... across the Sinai desert.
One might say that Freud lead the exodus around 1925 AD ... the escape from slavery ... being slaves to our unconscious without knowing it. The journey to freedom, reconciliation of our unconscious with our conscious mind ... across the Sinai desert ... after a long and sometimes difficult and painful healing journey.
Jung learned from Freud and collaborated with him for more than 12 years. Jung broke off his collaboration with Freud because he was compelled by his experiences and those of some of his patients, to move away from the genitals ... travel up the spine ... to the heart of our central nervous system ... the Crown Chakra(the human mind). Freud got stuck on the Root Chakra(sexuality).
Nonetheless Jung consistently acknowledged Freud's pioneering work and always recognized that Freud opened the door to this new knowledge or understanding. Freud was the equivalent of Moses.
George Sand is a 19th century French writer wrote something to the effect ... "often it is the tiny insignificant details of a persons' life that are most revealing"
Seems ironic that Freud would refer to his student, colleague and friend(Jung before their separation) as his 'Crown Prince" and Jung would move on to work on what is known as the "Crown" chakra in Hinduism. Maybe Freud experienced one of his own 'Freudian slips' ... a prophetic one!!
The Crown Chakra is known in Hindi as understanding ... presumably ultimate understanding ... perhaps the same as Nirvana in Buddhism.
Seems to me Jung labelled this 'state' the 'collective unconscious' ... a dimension of reality where all human history(past present and future) thought etc resides ... a reality that cannot be described with human words or concepts ... at best only understood through the use of symbols.
Jung spent much of his adult life attempting to provide empirical evidence that this 'collective unconscious' communicates to us mere mortals in our dreams ... seems to suggest the same phenomenon known to mankind for eons and often called 'visions' ... we read of this in ancient Judaism ... the prophets often experienced visions ... the Book of Revelations is a well known example. North American Indians encouraged the pursuit of 'visions' as well as sharing them ... the well known mystic 'Black Elk' is an example ... he started to feel better after he shared his personal 'vision' and the tribe acted out the 'vision' in a tribal ceremony which was continued until the 'white man' wiped out the tribe.
The activity referred to as 'communication' has a friendly connotation ... suggesting the communication from the 'collective unconscious' has friendly motives ... intended to help mankind understand his existence, purpose etc
Also inferred in the activity 'communication' is the capability of whatever this 'collective unconscious' is to break through our built in radar and security system. Perhaps this is why it so often happens in the sleeping state ... awake we would not allow it to 'break through'
This is not to suggest whatever 'power' embedded in this 'collective unconscious' is inferior to our mere mortal capabilities ... not at all. Seems we have countless examples of where this 'collective unconscious' breaks through so to speak ... in our awaken state ... in some cases we call it 'psychic capability' ... telepathy ... intuition ... etc etc . In some of the more serious cases the recipients are compelled to live in places like the Homewood in Guelph ... or are drugged into a 'vegetative state'.
This would suggest that not all 'communication' from this 'collective unconscious' is friendly ... hmmm