The interpenetration of minds (4)

Friday, December 24, 2021

5 a.m. Setting for maximum focus, receptivity, clarity, presence, as I did, silently, yesterday after a graf or two. So, more on the interconnection of minds?

Perhaps the context begins to shed some light on aspects of Carl Jung’s thought that some have thought to be mystical speculation, and on scriptural statements that have not been obviously grounded in fact. A racial unconscious, an admonition to be your brother’s keeper: Do they not ring true, do they not suggest further connections, when examined in light of you (our) being both individual and part of all-one-thing?

I don’t know about further connections yet, but certainly they seem self-evident once we remember that what appeared to be separate was and is actually invisibly interconnected in uncounted ways.

If anything you do, think, feel, experience, may alter others in unpredictable fashion, and if at the same time you will be – and are – influenced similarly by others, then “No man is an island” is the merest statement of truth, not exaggerated, not high-flying, not even impractical or without consequences. “Love your neighbor as yourself” has a profounder reasoning behind it.

Yes, we get the point.

We know you do, Frank, because you and we are in active connection as we say it. But others may not be convinced. And it is for those who have not yet come to see things a certain way that explanations are necessary.

It seems to me that after so much preliminary covering of ground, anyone willing to be convinced is convinced. Anyone not willing, can’t be convinced.

But it is not that simple. For one thing, there are always more aspects of a situation to be considered. For another, someone unwilling or unable today may be willing and able tomorrow, or the day after that. Plus, you never know which statement or argument may be the spark someone needed. So there is very little downside to redundancy, and a very considerable upside.

Plus you get paid by the word, presumably, which is more than I do.

We’ll discuss it with accounting. Meanwhile, let’s mention something that ought to have occurred to people, but may not have done.

Very interesting. I don’t know that I saw it, entirely. I saw part of it.

Would you care to state it?

It was clear that interpenetration of minds means that emotion may be transferred, not merely thoughts. But I hadn’t considered that statement in connection with your earlier analogy of emotions being the laminal layer between an individual’s conscious and unconscious components.

And thus, in effect, any of you may at certain times be affected by emotions that are caused not by your own specific situation but by, let’s call it, spillover from those closest to you in some way.

Hence, crowd panic, group hysteria, psychic contagion.

Hence, too, and not so different, political movements, ideological convictions, fads, manias, shared political hallucinations (the “great panic” in Paris during the French Revolution, say).

As we said earlier, you are not primarily rational beings. Perhaps that statement will seem more evidently true now. Any given individual may be quite rational, either at any given time or, exceptionally, as a rule. But that isn’t going to be true of people in general nor – dare we say it – of any of you except now and then. Your periods of being driven by rationality blend invisibly (to you) with periods of being driven by group emotion, even of group thought, which by definition means, by motives not stemming from your individual mental constructions.

Yes, I see that.

But none of this is accidental; none of it is an interruption to your program; none of it is static in the recording. Pick your preferred metaphor. It is true that there is always chaos within the pattern, as there is always pattern within the chaos. Think of the yin-yang symbol, if you wish to have a symbol of the situation. No polarity is other than relative; life is not a divided thing but a unity, only the unity is not uniform but is endlessly diverse. Intricacy is far more interesting and productive than a sea of Jello would be, you will agree.

And if it is not accidental, the logical corollary is that it proceeds according to laws. This is true, but doesn’t mean that the laws are necessarily obvious. They may be, even, not discoverable. But their effects will be evident, once you learn to look for them.

You are saying, I think, that the sources of disruption in our individual lives proceed from the overall situation in some way.

And now we bring in the vast impersonal forces, you see, linking two concepts after a long, long separation in 3D time. But once you link them in your minds, it will seem clear enough.

That is very interesting. It’s true, I hadn’t connected the ideas. I have been accepting the existence of the vast impersonal forces, mainly on your say-so, but I have had not much of an idea of where they came from, what they were doing, or anything much more than initial consideration of how they affect us.

And now you begin to see. Like every other aspect of reality, they are necessarily “other” only as long as you define them that way; they are necessarily part of you, individually and as groups, only as long as you define them that way. Only, as it happens, you are less likely to assume the latter connection than the former.

And as you go on, I can feel my mental gears slipping cogs. I get half a connection to something and lose it as instead I follow your thought, writing it.

You are well worth the dollar an hour we pay you.

I do my humble best. I presume that those slipped cogs are ideas and connections that will re-emerge in due course.

Remember, everything connects to everything. Remember, too, that we are generating sparks, not building structures. It works out in time, given perseverance.

“Damn it, Jim, I’m a sparker, not a brick-layer.”

Exactly. Now, we suggest that you all spend some time thinking about the implied connection between discussing the interconnection of minds and the existence and effects of the vast impersonal forces. If you are in the habit of thinking with pen and paper – either writing words or sketching, or both – we suggest that some summation of this topic – and subsequent sharing of ideas and reactions among one another – will pay dividends.

I got, while writing that, that astrology hints at the structure behind how the forces shape themselves and come in on us.

That is an example of how you may proceed to strike sparks from sparks, and then share the resulting ideas. If we may offer a word of advice on procedure, don’t wait until you think you can demonstrate a thing logically; don’t think that because it came to you, you are somehow required to defend it; don’t fall in love with it and refuse to let it modify itself as you go along.

So shall we call this session something like “The vast impersonal forces and group mind,” or stick to (4)?

Continuing the numerical sequence has advantages. We’d recommend that.

Will do. Our thanks as always. I will probably do a session early tomorrow morning, then skip a day or two.

You may expect us to dock your pay accordingly.

I’m resigned to it. Be well, unseen-friends-and-closer-than-brothers.