In my musings about synchronistic events I’ve brought up the concept of a core spirit from which everything comes into being and then returns. I’ve also briefly explored this core in the form of the Unus Mundus that perhaps the psychic taps into whether by accident or on purpose so as to “see” material information that seems to be beyond the reality of the moment. Some have referred to this core spirit as the “source field”– an field of information that transcends all space, matter, energy, and time.

From all that I’ve read it seems as though this super-reality stream is available to all of us and may actually be something that impinges on both the sleeping and waking dream. It may be a collective set of archetypal images (e.g. death, the hero, the Great Mother and Great Father, the Divine Child, the masculine and feminine aspects, etc.) that affects us all. Carl Jung called it the Collective Unconscious.

In the Collective Unconscious mind time and space seem relative. It’s as though, thought Carl Jung, it exists outside and independent of the individual and yet it influences the individual’s experience of reality itself– both the internal and the external. It is perhaps at this level that we are all connected and it exists independent of us until we personalize it.

Am I suggesting that there is an ability for the human mind to project itself outside of its physical body? Yes the mind is part of the physical receptor called the brain, but some research suggests that some people have found a way of projecting their minds beyond the physical limits of their bodies. This is variously known as Clairvoyance or Remote Viewing . Positive result studies have been flawed and at present there are no published studies that support this skill. However, there is tantalizing research as recent as 2002 involving the remote viewer Ingo Swann at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) that does point to enough suggestive evidence to warrant further research.

The difficulty with testing for this ability is that the human mind is incredibly perceptive, often at an unconscious level, and it is very difficult to design a study that totally eradicates all outside cues that could influence the results.

In the book The Dragon’s Treasure: A Dreamer’s Guide to Inner Discovery I devote parts of more than one chapter to the psychic arts, the Collective Unconscious, Synchronicity, and the power of intuition. I also look at the interesting possibility of the brain being analogous to a T.V. or radio receiver attuned to the frequency of some informational source outside the body.

In the posting of March 9, 2014 on my earlier blog I looked at the quantum phenomenon of “entanglement” and how two entangled (mirrored twin) electrons can communicate with each other instantaneously regardless of the distance between them. Technically this means that they operate in a superluminal (faster than light) environment.

Though science has not been able to devise an experiment to support or disprove the reality of telepathy absence of evidence does not mean the absence of the reality. What we do know is that telepathy shows up in a tremendous number of dreams across all cultures around the world. It’s as though the unconscious mind is thumbing its symbolic nose at the prevailing rational world view.

Synchronistic events i.e. events linked by meaning seem to happen all the time, for example, people who have not seen or talked to each other for years suddenly call just as one is having the thought of them, couples uncannily finish each others sentences or have the same thought, some people even share the same dream. Sometimes in dreams someone comes to you to give a message such as “your mother is sick, call her” and sure enough the call reveals that their mother has been injured.

Some of this may be about hidden symbolic significance beneath the waking world appearances. Sometimes what seems telepathic may be about emotional bridges between human beings. It may be possible that when two people share similar symbolic images and who are in a close emotional relationship actually link at a deeper level.

Finally, all of this brings up the concept of 'consciousness', what is it? Is it a function of our brains or something outside? If it is outside, might this explain some of what we call paranormal experiences?

Consciousness. What is it?

"There is an Indian fable of three beings who drank from a river: one was a god, and he drank ambrosia; one was a man, and he drank water; and one was a demon, and he drank filth. What you get is a function of your own consciousness."   

–Joseph Campbell, Myths of Light,"The Jiva's Journey," p. 46

Of what do psychologists and philosophers speak when they invoke the word “Consciousness?”

At a fundamental psychological level some define it as “awareness,” that is further defined as knowledge gained through personal perception, the recognition of something felt—that is ‘sensed.’

In the above quote from Joseph Campbell there seems to be another layer implied e.g. something residing between what is perceived and what is processed. In short, something is acting upon the information coming into the individual that affects the processing of it—a filter if you will. We all have these filters–they are our judgments, expectations, beliefs, philosophies, experiences and memories. These things affect our level of consciousness, our level of alertness to reality if you will. So the quote seems to speak to the type of filter, or the clarity of the filter, being employed.

At a deeper, and more spiritual, or philosophical, level consciousness has been defined as the “Knower” or the “Observer”–something that observes itself, the ground-state of our being. It is, some say, what you experience when you have quieted the mind from its incessant chatter. Others say it is what the chatter is being directed toward e.g. what is listening when you talk to yourself.

At first glance this consciousness, this knower, appears to be located somewhere alongside our mind, the mind that is the ego-thing that’s doing all the chattering. But is it alongside, or even local for that matter? How do we explain the phenomena of distance viewing, or distant communication as when you’re thinking of cousin Harry whom you’ve not heard from in ages and the phone rings? Coincidence or synchronicity?

There’s a great deal of research that’s been done (some funded through DARPA, the federal department of all things spooky that can be used militarily) looking into the reality of distant viewing and finding it to be real under certain conditions. Some people can instantly ‘see’ things that are happening miles away (The Russians just love this stuff!).

Some physicists (e.g. Fred Allan Wolfe, David Hawkins, and Gary Zukav) have played around with the ground-state, or ‘universal field’, idea of consciousness as well as the concept of remote connectedness that is implied by remote viewing and have made some tentative conclusions that consciousness is independent of the sentient creatures it seems to inhabit–so much so that it exists eternally, or at least since the Big Bang.

It seems that to the degree to which a person can cleanse their perception filters and thus get a clearer perception of reality this also affects their ability to connect with this level of consciousness. It may even be this consciousness that makes it possible to see things beyond ones temporal location.