If the human biological body has come to a pinnacle in its design (not incorporating genetic or molecular manipulation), then one must invariably look towards conscious development as the next realm...

individually we can see this to lie within our very own experiences:

'the purpose of human life must be to develop the entity by experience. In short, we are alive to learn...we are alive not merely to learn but also to develop our individual potential to the utmost' - Edward W. Russell - 'Design for Destiny'

And much of our experience is increasingly coming through social connectivity:

‘When we communicate and reflect among ourselves as citizens—publicly learning about and affirming our shared sentiments as an extended community—then we “know that we know.” In our dangerous and difficult time of global transition, it is not sufficient for civilizations to be wise; we must become “doubly wise” through social communication that clearly reveals our collective knowing to ourselves. Once there is a capacity for sustained and authentic social reflection, we will then have the means to achieve a shared understanding and a working consensus regarding appropriate actions for a positive future. Actions can then come quickly and voluntarily. We can mobilize ourselves purposefully, and each person can contribute his or her unique talents to building a life-affirming future. (Duane Elgin)

As our great metaphysical poet John Donne reminded us - no man is an island:

'No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde'

We are neither alone nor isolated - but must communicate, as a larger social body/organism, in order to evolve our collective consiousness. We must keep in touch.

Timothy Leary, in his book 'The Intelligence Agents' refers to Crowley when he says that:

"There are three ways to increase your intelligence:

1. Continually expand the scope, source, intensity of the information you receive.
2. Constantly revise your reality maps, and seek new metaphors about the future to understand what's happening now.
3. Develop external networks for increasing intelligence. In particular, spend all your time with people are smart or smarter than you. We assume that you are the Intelligence Agent from you gene pool, so you will seek Intelligence Agents from other gene-pools who will stimulate you to get smarter.

For further reference on Leary, check out the 'Fusion Anomaly' site

'Free Mojtaba and Arash Day'

22nd February 2005

For an informed and interesting article on collective intelligence & wisdom, there is this wonderful article (quite long) called 'Coming Together' - recommended

I've quoted from the futurist and thinker Barbera Marx Hubbard before: so I will again!

"Nature always creates new bodies for new frontiers; witness the sequence of bodies from fish to amphibians to mammals to humans, and now to universal humans. We are at the threshold of genuine newness. The only difference between us and other creatures who experienced a radical change is that we are entering the process consciously."

Barbara Marx Hubbard, Conscious Evolution

For a short interview with her - check out this page of 'What is Enlightenment?'

The concept of collective intelligence is coming to the fore as perhaps the evolutionary potential, or directional drive, behind the Internet, as well as our burgeoning electronically networked social-sphere. Although I recognise that electronic access is still closed to many sectors of our global sphere, and beyond the capacity of many developing countries - this is changing. Negroponte's move towards a $100 computer is a step here.

One working definition of collective intelligence is:
'the enhancement, optimal use, and fusion of skill, imagination, and intellectual energy, regardless of their qualitative diversity. This idea of collective intelligence obviously involves the sharing of memory, imagination, and experience through the widespread exchange of knowledge, new forms of flexible organisation and co-ordination in real time.' (Pierre Levy)

As I've discussed before, there are now many sites and movements devoted to this cause. See 'The Transitioner' for an extensive site that summaries the arguments and understandings on this topic.

If humanity is increasingly able to share its collective memory externally and as both an open-source and a pooled-resource, then we have an important opportunity opening before us as for the first time in our recorded history we have a species-collective.

In this way, both cultural and social evolution is a distributed and collective affair. Since biological evolution has now been overtaken by conscious cultural evolution (see earlier blog referring to Freeman Dyson), our ever-accelerating intelligence-mutation can be in the hands of the many rather than the few.

This is not new either - it is merely the actualisation of the Over-Mind... the Noosphere. What is new is its actuality in our foreseeable future.

We can be both as the particle and the wave: as the individual and the whole. We are the physical manifestation of our quantum potentiality.

For an exquisite journey through the spheres, try this link into our cosmic nebula

The well-respected Freeman Dyson - of Princeton's 'Institute for Advanced Study' - has commented upon what has been postulated as the post-Darwinian era. Here, cultural evolution has overtaken biological evolution:

"cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the driving force of change. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence" - quoted from 'The Darwinian Interlude'

Our progress, it is now being recognised, is being spearheaded by our spread of ideas, rather than genetic inheritance. And mobile communications are helping to foster this dramatic change. In turn, these technologies will allow for a greater dispertion of ideas, and thoughts, which can become as memes to influence our collective thought processes - a move towards a synergetic collective, global mind? What Teilhard de Chardin envisioned as the 'noosphere'?

Let us remember: 'Every Thought has a parallel action' (Mevlana)

There is a definite shift in thought towards collective intelligence, both in the number of web-sites now dealing with the issue as well as numerous publications: from collective holographic theories to mind-field consciousness. One particular book of note, which is a culmination of one scientist-philosopher's 40 year search for unified meaning is Ervin Laszlo's 'Science & The Akashic Field'.

Of web-sites worth looking into: one of them is publishing research into concepts of 'resonance', 'coherence', 'holography', and 'collective wisdom', and related topics: it calls itself the 'Collective Wisdom Initiative'.

A second is a research project established at Princeton University and calls itself 'The Global Consciousness Project (GCP)': it states that it is "an international effort involving researchers from several institutions and countries, designed to explore whether the construct of interconnected consciousness can be scientifically validated through objective measurement."

It is encouraging to see that work into this realm of connected mind/intelligence is being taken up by both academic and lay persons. It indicates that there is a definite shift from the old paradigmatic thinking of reductionist, rational Cartesian thought towards the more holistic, interconnected, co-participating realm.

Trends indicate that co-evolving relationships of cooperation will become the new paradigm of human evolution towards sustainable structures. This may seem somewhat optimistic, yet the alternative is a grim picture for the future of our global species. I, for one, prefer to seed our collective consciousness with thoughts of the possible, our positive potential.

It is interesting to learn that 'Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database':

Here is a brief summary:

New York Times, December 14, 2004

'Google plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web. Google plans to digitize nearly all the eight million books in Stanford University's collection and the seven million at the University of Michigan. The goal is to create a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's books, scholarly papers and special collections. The Library of Congress and a group of international libraries also announced a plan to create a publicly available digital archive of one million books on the Internet, with 70,000 volumes online by next April.'

This will be significant in creating a further step towards the 'World-Wide Mind' or 'Global Brain' that has been much talked of. The more information such as is held by libraries is made available for the general 'accessed' individuals can only be a step in the right direction.

There is an interesting article called Faster Forward which speaks to 4 of our major futurist thinkers - from social organisation, to conscious evolution, to the spirituality of machines: well worth a read. It is an article from the 'What is Enlightenment' magazine, also worth a dip into.

Another avenue that is opening up and becoming a more recognised and debated issue is the concept of 'collective intelligence' - and related fields of collective wisdom and consciousness. This area is expanding rapidly, with many rewarding and insightful contributions - in fact, it's hard to keep track of what is being released. One web-blog of note is 'Blog of Collective Intelligence' and 'Minding the Planet' - both of which can be accessed via the links of the right of my page under the heading 'Blogs of Note'.

There are also moves to take collective intelligence into democracy and social institutions - see the 'Co-Intelligence Institute'

Another writer-teacher has said :

"The goal of the spiritual life in the twenty-first century is to become one with the forward movement of the life-process, one with the evolutionary impulse emanating from the source of creation itself. The purpose of enlightenment in the time we are living in is not the transcendence of this world, but its transformation, using our very own lives as the vehicles for this most urgent endeavor. It's up to each and every one of us to do whatever we need to do to raise ourselves to a much higher level of engagement with life, so that our very consciousness becomes enlightened with the knowledge of its own meaning and purpose.

It is only recently that we have begun to understand how crucial a role we play in the evolutionary process. We all participate in this mystery called human incarnation, but usually our participation is unconscious. That means we don't truly know who we are, what we are doing, or why we are here. And because of this, our capacity to participate in life remains superficial. The spiritual impulse, which is not different from the impulse to evolve, is experienced in the human heart as the longing for liberation. That longing, if it is pursued to the end, culminates dramatically in the life-changing revelation of not only the source of our very being, but also our raison d'etre, the purpose of human incarnation beyond ego. That purpose is the abandoned, unconditional, deeply committed, CONSCIOUS participation in the life-process for the sake of the evolution of consciousness itself. This revelation, and our response to it, is the goal of spiritual life, and the meaning of enlightenment in the twenty-first century."
Andrew Cohen

All this falls into line with the avenues I have also been following - the 'imaginal cells' are beginning to awaken...

An interesting phenomena of note, which I've recently been drawn to, in my own searches connecting physiology with inner development, is the issue concerning 'imaginal cells' : here, we supposedly have cells that vibrate at a different frequency from our regular cells. At first these cells are destroyed by the immune system which considers them as foreign cells. however, when they have multiplied sufficiently they enable a transformation to occur in the physical body that can be a further stage of biological transformation. These cells are supposedly responsible for the caterpillar's metamorphosis into a butterfly. For some interesting comments on this, see 'Are We All Butterflies?'

You also wish to do a search for Norie Huddle's book 'Butterfly' which, in a non-academic yet playful way, outlines this - although it's a hard to find book, it seems - at least in the UK.

Another website-article which discusses this, I've found, is at the 'ThinkHolistic' site, from which the quote below is taken:

"Imaginal cells have an encoding program, and when is time for them to awaken they proliferate until they begin to resonate en mass.

It is my sense that most of us possess an awareness of these Imaginal cells at the subliminal level of consciousness and that if we are doing deep inner work then the evolved self can be ready to awaken within us to their presence if we ask for the decoding of these cells. As we become aware of Imaginal cells we actually learn, grow, become stronger, and evolve. "

Although the 'holistic' site has a different take on the role and function of these cells, it adds to their overall presence. If anyone has more info on imaginal cells, I would be grateful to learn of it.

To supplement what is being suggested by studies of molecules and their effect from 'vibrations', I definitely recommend a book by anthropologist Jeremy Narby called 'The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge'

This book deals with Shamanistic experiences and creates an inspiring and novel link to the body's molecular structure - specifically the design of the DNA - and how the DNA emanates biophotons. This also links neatly to what I have said before concerning the scholarly work of biophysicist Mae-Wan Ho - especially her recent work called 'The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms' : if all our molecular structure is liquid crystal, emitting biophotons, then we are susceptible to outside electromagnetic disturbances...just as our own DNA molecular structure can be affected by our own deep thoughts (the electromagnetic impulses from our brains) - ever wondered why there is indeed the 'Power of Prayer'?

Intention, deep concentrated thought, and meditation, contemplation, are ways to influence the well-being of our body through harmonising and balancing our electromagnetic 'biophoton' emissions... thus establishing a mind-body mesh...

Shamanistic work is highly revealing in this context: for general reading concerning healing through shamanistic practices I would recommend two books by Siberian psychiatrist Olga Kharitidi: 'Entering the Circle: Ancient Secrets of Siberian Wisdom Discovered by a Russian Psychiatrist' and 'The Master of Lucid Dreams: In the Heart of Asia a Russian Psychiatrist Learns How to Heal the Spirits of Trauma '

To add what was written in the last post - about the water molecules that change - I have finally found the reference to it. It is a book called 'Hidden Messages in Water' by Masaru Emoto. The synopsis states that:

"The Hidden Messages In Water explores water's susceptibility to human words, emotions and thoughts. Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto has been researching this new field of science by freezing samples of water that have been exposed to either positive or negative words, emotions and music. Through photographs Dr. Emoto has found that water exposed to positive influences produces beautiful, perfectly formed crystals, while water exposed to negativity produces ugly, malformed crystals. Because the worls and our bodies are both composed of 70per cent water, the power to change the essence of water means that humans have the power to evoke change on a global or personal scale, by way of water."

This sounds like an interesting avenue to explore. I shall certainly be obtaining a copy soon.

Again , I wish to come back to the human nervous system as being fundamental to any concept of our inner and outer 'evolutionary' trajectory. It carries a programming structure, in the form of DNA, and works with electrical impulses and so is affected by, and influences, other electrical fields. Thus, the new generation of humans being born into the ‘Information Age’ of an electronic environment are being impacted upon with electrical signals that must have some effect upon the human nervous system. To what degree can the human nervous system mutate under these new environmental impacts, knowing how we do that evolutionary change is dynamic in accordance with such impacts?

I was reminded by a friend recently of a study done upon the crystalline structure of water. A sample of water was taken from a pure, flowing waterfall in nature and its crystalline molecular structure recorded. This same sample was then divided and some placed next to a TV and another in a busy work/office environment. Within a day, both samples were taken for examination and found that their molecular crystalline structure had become slightly deformed (although still, of course, maintaining its molecular cohesion as water). Yet the structure was not as 'clear-cut' as previously...more 'blurred' according to my friend. Later, these two samples were placed with both a church and another 'meditative' environment: within two days they were examined and found to have reverted back to their crisp crystalline molecular structure - I must find this article to verify this.

Yet it appears reasonable to me: we are heavily influenced by the resonations of those things/people around us. We sometimes refer to this as 'bad vibes' or feeling drained... yet we are molecular organisms, thus responsive to harmony and disharmony around us. Is it not our responsibility then to place ourselves in those situations and environments that are harmonious to us?

This is similar to the ritualistic need for prayer or meditation: to create a coherent resonance within our molecular structure (see my earlier posts on 'quantum coherence'). The state of our minds affect both our cellular structure (and hence our physical state) as well as the well-being of those closely around us.

This is not esoterica anymore - it is science.

It is worth remembering that:

"To the empowering principle that the people can withhold legitimacy, and thus change the world, we now add another:by deliberately changing their internal images of reality, people can change the world."

This concerns the idea of our legitimacy. What we think, how we think, and the beliefs that we choose to adapt are of crucial importance not only for us but for those around us since what we 'give off' in terms of attraction, vibes, or energy (whatever you wish to name it) influences the immediate surroundings, and the events and emotions that inhabit those surroundings.

Do we really wish to give-out our legitimacy so easily - this refers to our opinions, agreements, and support. Those in governing positions are constantly vying for our legitimate support - and never more so before a general election! They think we are stupid, so they clamour for our support with stupid fictions and deceit. Why give away your personal beliefs so easily. Our beliefs, perceptions, and state of mind are crucial for how we understand the world around us, and how that world performs for us. To give away our right and legitimacy over our sense of reality is to buy into the belief systems of others who are, more often that not, wishing to take our support/opinions in order to foster their own position of control.

We are sovereign to ourselves: we need to think, act, and have the correct intentions for our own lives, and not to have fear over a sense of inner belief, whatever the pressure from outside banal forms of social consensus.

Begin each day with your own personal self-affirmations. Act in balance with your own personal intentions.

Thought creates Experience: Experience creates Reality

To begin the small step of integrating one's thoughts into our everyday experiences, it is a recommended practice to start each day with an affirmed Intention: each morning, state to yourself what you wish to get out of the day; dispel fears, anxieties, and doubts. Focus only on the positive, and know that the reality you experience around you may not necessarily be the one most helpful to you. So don't swallow it - take what it useful and block the rest.

What you allow in, is your choice. It is always your choice. Treat your consciousness with kindness. Be a conscious part of your own reality by inner faith in who you are, what you are doing, and what you want to achieve - let the mind work on the rest...

It has been the approach of this site to encourage a 'change of mind' - for this is literally all we need: a new mind.

It has been said that:


"Throughout history, the really fundamental changes in societies have come about not from dictates of governments and the results of battles but through vast numbers of people changing their minds- sometimes only a little bit... by deliberately changing the internal image of reality, people can change the world. Perhaps the only limits to the human mind as those we believe in." (Willis Harman - Institute of Noetic Sciences)

I wanted to stress again that we participate within a cultural hypnosis where the version of 'reality' is agreed upon and handed down through generations, and passed onto all within early years of growing-up:

"We may from time to time, especially in early childhood, have experiences that do not conform to this cultural norm-but we eventually "correct" these perceptions and cease experiencing the anomalies, through the power of the socialising process. And so each of us is literally hypnotised from infancy to perceived the world the way people in our culture perceive it." (W.H.)

The power of one's life, goals, and achievements require a faith in one's own 'change of mind'.

Again, science attempts to catch-up with the way things are. Just a small thing: 'experts' have now recognised that people are 'Human-Bacteria Hybrids'. And that there are more bacterial cells in our bodies than our own... once we can get beyond the sanctity that we place on ourselves, our feelings of superior 'uniqueness' we may begin to understand that not only are we 'human-bacteria hybrids' but hybrids to the whole world, cosmos, and of all existence.

Everything is interrelated and interconnected - we are hybridised and woven with everything: it is only our cultural hypnosis that makes us believe in our 'reality' of seperateness.

Link to article:

http://go.hotwired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65252,00.html/wn_ascii