The Community of Consciousness

 

April 1

Over the last couple of days, multiple discussions about how we form a brotherhood in our efforts to become whole within ourselves; and that the action of doing this is not actually in order to serve ourselves — although that’s in part a consequence of the effort — but to serve everyone else, and the planet.

This idea of ourselves—which is anything but theoretical—as part of a collective, a single organism that functions as a whole, is the most essential part of spiritual understanding. In order to understand it well, we have to understand to some extent by analogy, using the mind quite precisely as an instrument that perceives relationship.

In considering our practical biology, we now know that we are not individual organisms. We are not just a collection of about, give or take, 15 trillion cells; those cells are, functionally, a collection of trillions upon trillions of molecules. In turn, we are not just “ourselves;” billions upon billions of “foreign” bacteria live within us, and trillions of viruses. We depend on all these tiny separate and individual creatures, on their micro-communities, for our very life itself. Our own cells form larger collective communities that make organs. And so on. 

An individuality emerges; and it has a superior awareness that we call our “consciousness.” Yet consciousness, at every level, can only be formed by community. There is no “consciousness” that exists by itself apart from others.

Our planet is in turn a “single” meta-consciousness of its own formed from all the living organisms on it. When I speak of our experience as ”chemical participation” in this vast organism, I indicate that it’s possible (unlike the abilities of our individual cells) to become aware of our place and what we’re doing. Indeed this is one of the natural functions of true awareness, which most humans don’t have. If we acquire it, we certainly understand that we are part of a whole thing called organic life on earth. What we furthermore don’t understand is that this has more than just physical aspects to it; in the same way that the body has a soul which is a metaphysical entity, so the planet itself has a metaphysical entity; as does the solar system. There is a metaphysical part of the solar system, and its intelligence, that participates in the body of a much larger entity called a galaxy; and so on. There is, in other words, a functional and practical metaphysical entity that creates the fabric of the universe and its whole intelligence. 

Romanticizing all this by way of emotive rapture doesn’t serve the scale, the depth, the profundity of the phenomenon. We can only serve that scale organically.

We are built, in our own small part, to organically sense all of these things; but only with effort. It doesn’t come just because we think about it; the participation begins in the molecular and chemical action of our Being, not in the thoughts that arise as a consequence of it. Thought must be the director of the orchestra, conductor, the perceiver; yet the thought has the ability to perceive with more than just thought itself. Sensation and feeling are also forms of thought. All three of these forms of thought need to be awakened in order for us to become an effective node in the network of awareness that we share on an individual, communal, and planetary basis.

Even one taste of this helps us to understand how limited we are within the contracted limitations of our own selfishness and our obsession with how everything is for us. The body isn’t that intelligent on its own; all it knows is “everything should be mine.” 

Mankind is automatically enslaved by this. It takes a greater Being to understand differently.

Yet the effort to acquire a greater Being is usually a weak one. When our own desires prevail, the desires of the body, we don’t grow up; we remain as children, greedy and emotionally dysfunctional. Only by struggling against what we think we are can we become what we actually are.

In this way it’s helpful to understand that I think like a child; I feel like a child; and I sense like a child. All of these parts are dominated by the ego of the body, which wants only for itself. I can’t get rid of that part; but if I struggle with it, I can help it to see from a larger perspective and to become more interested in a greater good. 

The myth of the hero centers around the struggle; to see a communal call to being that is greater than the safety or gratification of the individual. All goodness in human culture and in the soul itself centers around this idea in one way or another.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.