Lately, I've been experiencing a kind of shifting consciousness, sort of like watching a movie of myself being myself: the observed and the observer. At the same time, I sometimes feel that the separation between myself and others is thinner, smaller, hardly there at all: that our edges are sort of melting into each other.
It's like living in two dimensions at once: an external dimension that runs on space and time and action in the world, and an inner dimension where I exist free of space and time. Like in dreams, where we can be in several scenes at one time or jump between dreams without any apparent transition.
While I can comprehend this mobility of consciousness intellectually, I feel somewhat like a student who is being taught through experience:
.....See how easily your consciousness switches from inner to outer focus...How you can experience a moment from different perspectives? Do you see that if you choose, you can mentally and emotionally reach across that seemingly vast distance between you and the mind of another individual to better understand his or her feelings, thoughts and perspective?
Is this 'entanglement' that physicist David Bohm theorised to explain why subatomic particles reacted to each other no matter how far apart (a startling discovery by physicist Alain Aspect and his team), or that "spooky quantum action at distance and time" that, according to Australian quantum physicist S. Jay Olson, "allows us to send messages from the past to the future"? It probably is.
The conclusion Bohm drew from subatomic entanglement is that "At some deeper level of reality, such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something".
What is this fundamental something? Einstein spoke of a "spirit ...manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man". In religious teachings, this universal spirit is called the Mind of God...God Mind.
Some scientists are flirting with that idea, minus the God. Archaeologist John Hoffecher believes that it's something we evolved. Early in our evolution, he proposes, humans developed a kind of shared brain, a "super brain", that "spurred a modern capacity for novelty and invention". How such a brain could evolve from purely biological and chemical causes is beyond me, but I find the little fantasies of science quite endearing. Nevertheless, a step towards a grander view of Mind.
Hoffecher's super brain is in a way similar to, but not as mythopoeic as Carl Jung's 'collective consciousness', a concept of shared consciousness from which humanity's myths and universal dream symbols are born. A psychologist committed to being scientific, Jung at first stopped short of claiming a metaphysical origin for human consciousness, though his theories implied the existence of forces way beyond the capacity of the brain, and he came over time to spea more freely - and with authority - of the metaphysical
Based on evidence that the memory is not found in any one part of the brain and can even be retrieved after different parts of the brain have been damaged or removed, neuroscientist Karl Pribram and David Bohm came up with a Holonomic Theory of the brain, in which memory, and consciousness itself, is present in every part of the brain, in each cell. Mind may, in fact, not be a product of the brain at all. Twenty or so years later, Pribram wrote from a more daring perspective that:
"the basis function from which both matter and mind are “formed“ is flux .....that provides the ontological roots from which conscious experiences regarding matter (physical processes) as well as mind (psychological processes) become actualized in spacetime"
(Consciousness Reassessed, PCNL Library, http://www.paricenter.com/library/papers/pribram02.php).
There is no matter...not really. Everything, including mind, energy in motion.
(Mandelbrot - A fractal is a repeated image of itself at ever smaller scales. Image from Wikimedia Commons)
Rupert Sheldrake took the idea of a supermind a little further with his idea of 'morphic fields', energetic fields imprinted with certain informational patterns from which the consciousness of plants, animals and human beings draw the 'blueprints', one might say, according to which they pattern their morphology (physical characteristics), growth and potential.
You could think of these morphic fields as archetypes of a kind. Indeed, Sheldrake thinks that his theory of fields could help to explain the universality and persistence of mythic and psychological archetypes, and may also be related to the ancient Vedic concept of Akashic Records, on which are recorded all human knowledge, experience and memory. Like the Akashic records, morphic fields are non-local, existing in another dimension yet accessible on this plane of existence.
It sounds very much like the God mind at which Einstein hinted in his 'unified field theory', his magnificent and misunderstood theory that the fundamental universal force, the ONE force underlying all known phenomena, is electromagnetism. He was, I believe, much closer to the truth than others realised.
Edgar Cayce often referred to the "Creative Force" as energy in motion, a vibrating energy that brought the cosmos and us into being. In Vedic teachings, the life energy, the force of the spirit, is prana; in ancient Chinese teachings, it is chi or qi. It is that which permits life to exist, sustains life and its cycles of birth, growth, death and renewal.
In ancient Egypt, the creative force was most powerfully represented by the sun. It was not the sun that was really worshipped, but the power that created it: Ra, God of the sun and light.
(Akhenaten and his family receiving the blessings of the sun, God).
In the Arthurian myths, the creative force is represented by the Holy Grail, its energy visible and palpable in the beauty of its radiance. Jewish and Christian traditions also describe the creative force, the God force as light: the flame of the holy spirit descended onto the heads of the disciples; the burning bush; the unbearable radiance of God's face.
Light is the energy of which all the world is made, and it is electromagnetic.
How many times, for how many ages must we be taught before we understand? We are, from our smallest particles to the farthest reaches of our minds, one energy. Not only are we made of star dust, as Carl Sagan once said; we shine like stars. We are light energy. Indivisible. One.
We can, in certain conditions, experience it for ourselves.
Many people report mystical experiences during which they felt themselves as one with everything. A friend told me that she had such an experience after a hard climb. It was as though the whole world was aware of me, leaning towards me with loving support, she said. I knew that I was part of it all, and it all wanted the best for me.
You may experience that oneness in meditation. All of a sudden, your sense of being a distinct consciousness drops away and you know yourself as part of a great living network, a small point of light that glows to the edges of the universe.
People describe being filled with light, surrounded by light, and the certainty that this light is pure love. This is what mystics describe, this being in a state of oneness with everything, all part of the same fundamental One.
For most of us, even for mystics, I suspect, this awareness of Oneness is difficult to maintain. But we can learn to cultivate that sense of connectedness - with nature, with others, even with other aspects of our own psyches. We can stop from time to time, be still, and sense that the little persona who works, laughs, worries and seeks recognition is a part of something larger, a bigger mind that is, in turn, a small part of something even greater.
We can learn to stop and take note of the larger Self behind and around our everyday awareness. We can step aside from our busy lives for a moment and become aware that some part of us is not caught up in the whirl, a detached, a kind of objective, non-judging overseer or observer. This is also us, the abiding 'I AM' that is part of the One that is All.
We are all part of one mind: the Mind of God
When we awaken to Oneness, we experience not just the larger Self, but that great Consciousness in which it rests, out of which all flows and has flowed from the very beginning of time....even before time.
" Know ye that even though in the time ye are separate, yet still are ONE, in all times existent... Within thee is all time and space."
(from The Emerald Tablets, written by the sage, Hermes Trimegistus)
So how are you going to actualize Oneness in your daily life? How will you live the divine law of Oneness?
(Empyreon by Gustave Dore. The circle is the symbol of Oneness, here inviting us inward to the the radiant Divine).