The late Joseph Campbell wrote extensively about these shared human sub-conscious connections. Carl Jung touched on that in his work on the human psyche. The energy under the experience is real, unfortunately the conscious mind only gets short glimpses behind the veil. I have been blessed with what I call "direct experiences" of that energy working as a nurse, especially when in the presence of the active dying patients. It's more real than anything that can be appreciated with the 5 senses. I think this energy and sub-conscious connection may actually defend us against psychological conditioning from power-holders or even advanced AI. At least that is my hope. Cheers.
""direct experiences" of that energy working as a nurse, especially when in the presence of the active dying patients" ---- Care to share any stories? This reminds me of an Uber ride I gave to a heart surgeon's assistant several years ago and the experience he told me about. He's the guy who runs the machines that keep someone alive during surgery. (The patient is cooled down and "legally dead" during surgery, and then electrically jolted back to life afterwards).
He said most patients remembered nothing during surgery. Which is normal since they are legally not alive. A few could remember feeling cold. Then there was one guy who was able to recite the conversation between the two surgeons, that happened while they were operating on him, which is difficult to do when your heart is stopped and you're legally dead. Very strange. And stranger that people have different experiences. Why don't all patients float around the operating table in spirit form? What does the differing experiences mean about that person, if anything?
I have thought deeply about this reply. I am sorry, but I cannot share the experiences in an on-line forum. What I can say, especially in light some responses regarding using substances to achieve a direct experience. I did do mushrooms several decades ago and some other mind-altering substances. The difference in my own personal experience is what I shall call wattage. I substance gave me an altered experience. It's kind of like having a normal light bulb and changing the tint to a different color or changing the focus of a lens from near to far. The direct experiences I am discussing have only happened in my life when completely sober, and not under the influence of chemicals. The main difference is the wattage. It's like going from a 40 watt bulb to a 1500 watt bulb. So much more powerful than an any experience your mind has observed. My wish for you is that you have such an experience before you die. I am pretty sure you will have such an experience when you die, but you won't be talking about it with your loved ones, because you won't be here anymore. One other small note the experiences happened spontaneously, and cannot be replicated again through any means I have tried. Cheers.
Thanks for sharing what you have! It may have been too personal or rude for me to have asked in the first place. I've never heard of the idea of these experiences being "second hand", due to physical (or mental?) proximity to someone having a first hand experience.
LOL, do you have any more sage advice? Give it up already, this advice didn't work in the 60s and was given out deliberately to disable people... There is nothing wrong with the medicines, but they don't do any of those things by default. Garbage in- Garbage out.
This is beautiful and resonant. The world really is so much more interconnected than our modern lens allows us to naturally see. Because we can’t perfectly synthesize it and seize it with our words, many (most?) will ignore ideas like this completely. Your writing has helped me a lot. Keep doing what you do, man
"I sit here in the dark, setting down words, and somewhere out there, past the wire, are people I will never see and never speak to and never learn their names, and I am reaching towards them anyway." I am out here, past the wire, and know basically SFA about economics, gold, assets etc, yet I enjoy all your posts and learn a lot from them. For which I thank you.
"Interbeing" is what Thich Nhat Hanh called it (though I don't want to be all "Zen" about it). I've always liked that word.
No1, I haven't been a follower for long, but I follow you now wherever you go, even when I can't understand everything ( financial). Your writing is amazing- so clear, intelligent, personal, creative. An ambidextrous mind that really delights and intrigues me. And now this article today, so welcome to see these thoughts and feelings expressed in our confusing times. I for one am glad you're in the world!
Allow me to throw a wet blanket on this hypothesis:
Near-simultaneous discovery in science shouldn’t be all that rare. Consider that you have people of similar intellectual stature who all study the same material, have read the same books, and are all standing on the shoulders of the same giants (to paraphrase Newton). The extant problems in their discipline are well known and are being worked on by any number of researchers who would like to attach their name to the solution. What’s surprising is not that near-simultaneous discovery happens, but that it doesn’t happen more often. Chances are it actually does, it just isn’t widely reported because it doesn’t generate the same interest as the Newton-Leibniz controversy. Imagine for example that you’re only days behind someone else in making an important discovery. What do you do? Bear in mind, in former times information travelled slowly, so you may very well have been first, but you didn’t get published in time and the discovery itself wasn’t recorded at the time it was made because you were awaiting confirmation by a colleague. Kind of awkward to claim authorship at that point, no?
Correlation is not causation. We’ve all heard that one I hope. Of course when there’s strong correlation that’s a signal to look for a common underlying cause, but is this strong correlation? —> "A few years ago there was this small experiment: a researcher in Nottingham…etc.” The key word here is ’small.’ Note that we’re dealing with a statistical phenomenon, not something of absolute value. So, how many times was this experiment conducted and what was the distribution of results? I’d want to know that before I assigned any significance to it.
I think we can all agree that the primary motivation of living beings is survival. Safe to say that our individual and collective survival depends on recognizing patterns in the natural world. So it follows that we’re adept at pattern recognition since our survival depends on it, but along with that comes the tendency to see patterns where they don’t actually exist, or to attribute meaning to them where there is none. I would argue that most, if not all of what we call metaphysics falls in that category. A case of mistaken identity. The same can be said of religious beliefs, which on the whole are simply instances of circular reasoning. We marvel at the fact that people in the tail section survived a terrible crash and call that a miracle. Well, what about the people in the forward section that all perished? Did God arrange for all the sinners to be in the forward section? Did he also design the aircraft in a way that the tail would separate from the rest of the fuselage on impact? I think we all know the answer to that one.
This is not to deny the possibility of the supernatural, the mystical or the esoteric. But you have to tread very carefully when dealing with these topics because a large number of people, probably a majority, actually base their lives on these things and can become quite angry when you contradict them. They might even burn you at the stake or throw you in a duck pond to see if you float.
I am - at times - quick witted. Just not in real life. Dunno why behind a screen it's easier.
Just ask my kids 😂. They are tough... With me as a dad. I'm constantly teasing them. Sometimes my daughter says to me : dad, I'm with friends: "BEHAVE!!" 😋
There's a guy called Dean Radin who spent years gathering data on small experiments not unlike the one described here. After he crunched the numbers to ascertain the probability that all the results were just the result of chance, he
ended up with a probability of something like 1 to 10 trillion. Keep in mind that the usual cut-off point for statistical significance is p=0,05, i.e. 1 to 20.
It's described in his book "The Conscious Universe", if you are interested.
Personally, I've experienced things that I cannot possibly explain except by some kind of "aetheric" interconnection, so perhaps I'm biased ;)
She's cheating. That's an open question depending on your way of thinking. Mathematically she's correct. From a societal perspective the off-screen guy is correct.
And yes, I understand that's where the joke lives 😉
In stand-up you have to have a comeback for every possibility. If he'd said 'fewer' she could have said "correct, you'd have 50% fewer kids" and the joke would still be funny. Maybe not as funny, but at least she wouldn't have trapped herself.
When I was studying at university I wrote my essays while asleep. Even topics that I wasn't familiar with, I'd be pondering, "what the hell am I going to write about this"? Then one morning I would wake up and the whole essay would be there, fully written in my mind and I'd just tap it out on the computer, I'd know where the references should be, and it'd be done. I did extremely well at uni with several essays receiving top marks. I know it could be that my subconscious was distilling my study into something rational and logical, but I always felt there was something else. That was tapped into something that guided me. Who knows?
Here are your rules - I post this only cause I am an "Angel Investor" in Substack - even if small scale I was invited to invest early on and I did.
here are your "reply rules"
~
Gold and Geopolitics reply rules
1. Be polite
2. Argue with facts, not insults.
3. Treat others as you would like to be treated.
~
I would like to say I agree wholeheartedly with those "rules" and will abide by the terms.
~
Now at my own site I setup some "reply rules" and let me post those as well on this message:
~
BK's Gardening Ambitions reply rules
I would like to make a "statement" regarding commentary at this Substack - essentially there are NO rules except one which is - "do not threaten or suggest physical harm upon any reader here or the host". Otherwise - say what you will and whatever you want. I commit to not banning anybody unless you break the rule above. Moreover, when I make a comment I generally make edits within minutes and have previously committed to NOT make any edits after 24 hours (barring something exceptional). BK
~
I don't think our rules contradict in each other in any way.
I also do think that even if we have never met, we obviously are aware of each other and our thoughts make a difference - some thought resonate and some don't - but together as Kropotkin espoused we are better no doubt.
This is something that has often puzzled me. Furthermore, in the scientific world, various people have from time to time postulated the existence of particles not yet witnessed....quarks, prions etc. and then hey presto they have appeared. It begs a few questions.......Are we actually creating our own reality? And if so, can we use this ability, this 'sympatheia', to consciously create intentional realities? Is this already being done by others, either consciously or unconciously, thus creating wars and chaos? If so, can we come together to consciously overwhelm a warlike 'sympatheia' with a peaceful one?
It's fascinating. He describes exactly how “the Aether” can reverberate across individuals. Like sheeps learning to cross a new type of gate. Suddenly they do it on totally different places on Earth. He calles it Morphic Resonance.
This is a science man, he doesn't just put out stuff. He minutiously reseaches and documents it, backed by actual empirical experiments. His books are a treasure.
It is good to contemplate the nature of life, as much as we have figured of it. There is a vast bulk of understanding of which we have yet to become aware. This life on Earth is not all there is, it is only what we are doing now, for reasons that mostly escape us.
In my understanding, the sole purpose of existing in the physical world is to determine who you are in relation to all the stresses, and to express that idea to the best of your ability. In other words, to make your life a reflection of who you truly are.
Speaking of the aether, and Emerson, who someone in the comments mentioned, here's the opening line of Emerson',s essay on Friendship: "We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Meager all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. "
There is a book called Bird by Bird, and the writer, Anna Lamott, describes ideas as finding the writer, the maker, the artist…the creative.
If the idea is not taken up, or later – after attempting to create that which had alighted – is left to go stale, the idea will leave that person and find another – sprite like (though not material)
Whether I truly believe that or not, it does seem to fit. And just like you I tend to trust what my intuition is telling me – there is a consciousness we are each a part of.
The brain then, for me, is a suppression valve, so not a personal supercomputer, and drawing down any idea doesn’t mean we are anything but attentive to it, and sometimes, like it or not, we are not the best person to talk that idea to fruition…
What you're reaching for has a long lineage. Emerson called it the Over-Soul: the single mind each of us is one lit window in, almost your exact phrase. The Stoics had sympatheia; the Vedantic traditions had something closer still. What strikes me is that the feeling survives every era that tries to explain it away: we keep arriving at it, alone, the way Darwin et al kept arriving at the same discovery without knowing the other was there.
I wonder if the simultaneity is less mysterious than it feels and more mysterious than it looks. The discoveries arrive together because the ground has been prepared: the tools, the questions, the moment all ripen at once. But that the preparation is shared, that strangers half a world apart are working the same soil - keeps its strangeness no matter how you account for it.
The writing-into-the-dark part I understand completely. Some of it is heard.
The late Joseph Campbell wrote extensively about these shared human sub-conscious connections. Carl Jung touched on that in his work on the human psyche. The energy under the experience is real, unfortunately the conscious mind only gets short glimpses behind the veil. I have been blessed with what I call "direct experiences" of that energy working as a nurse, especially when in the presence of the active dying patients. It's more real than anything that can be appreciated with the 5 senses. I think this energy and sub-conscious connection may actually defend us against psychological conditioning from power-holders or even advanced AI. At least that is my hope. Cheers.
""direct experiences" of that energy working as a nurse, especially when in the presence of the active dying patients" ---- Care to share any stories? This reminds me of an Uber ride I gave to a heart surgeon's assistant several years ago and the experience he told me about. He's the guy who runs the machines that keep someone alive during surgery. (The patient is cooled down and "legally dead" during surgery, and then electrically jolted back to life afterwards).
He said most patients remembered nothing during surgery. Which is normal since they are legally not alive. A few could remember feeling cold. Then there was one guy who was able to recite the conversation between the two surgeons, that happened while they were operating on him, which is difficult to do when your heart is stopped and you're legally dead. Very strange. And stranger that people have different experiences. Why don't all patients float around the operating table in spirit form? What does the differing experiences mean about that person, if anything?
I have thought deeply about this reply. I am sorry, but I cannot share the experiences in an on-line forum. What I can say, especially in light some responses regarding using substances to achieve a direct experience. I did do mushrooms several decades ago and some other mind-altering substances. The difference in my own personal experience is what I shall call wattage. I substance gave me an altered experience. It's kind of like having a normal light bulb and changing the tint to a different color or changing the focus of a lens from near to far. The direct experiences I am discussing have only happened in my life when completely sober, and not under the influence of chemicals. The main difference is the wattage. It's like going from a 40 watt bulb to a 1500 watt bulb. So much more powerful than an any experience your mind has observed. My wish for you is that you have such an experience before you die. I am pretty sure you will have such an experience when you die, but you won't be talking about it with your loved ones, because you won't be here anymore. One other small note the experiences happened spontaneously, and cannot be replicated again through any means I have tried. Cheers.
Thanks for sharing what you have! It may have been too personal or rude for me to have asked in the first place. I've never heard of the idea of these experiences being "second hand", due to physical (or mental?) proximity to someone having a first hand experience.
Take some shroomz, you'll pierce the veil and the added bonus of dealing with any problems in your mind you've been ignoring or running from ;)
DMT might work better. My fav controlled substance. After Trenbolone 😁
LOL, do you have any more sage advice? Give it up already, this advice didn't work in the 60s and was given out deliberately to disable people... There is nothing wrong with the medicines, but they don't do any of those things by default. Garbage in- Garbage out.
This is beautiful and resonant. The world really is so much more interconnected than our modern lens allows us to naturally see. Because we can’t perfectly synthesize it and seize it with our words, many (most?) will ignore ideas like this completely. Your writing has helped me a lot. Keep doing what you do, man
No1, today’s article captured the magic that we readers admire of you writers. I agree with AA above: “Keep doing what you do, man” ❇️
"I sit here in the dark, setting down words, and somewhere out there, past the wire, are people I will never see and never speak to and never learn their names, and I am reaching towards them anyway." I am out here, past the wire, and know basically SFA about economics, gold, assets etc, yet I enjoy all your posts and learn a lot from them. For which I thank you.
"Interbeing" is what Thich Nhat Hanh called it (though I don't want to be all "Zen" about it). I've always liked that word.
Ram Dass called it "tuning into the Soul Plane" where there is only The 1 (us all no longer some1 or no1, just 1).
No1, I haven't been a follower for long, but I follow you now wherever you go, even when I can't understand everything ( financial). Your writing is amazing- so clear, intelligent, personal, creative. An ambidextrous mind that really delights and intrigues me. And now this article today, so welcome to see these thoughts and feelings expressed in our confusing times. I for one am glad you're in the world!
Allow me to throw a wet blanket on this hypothesis:
Near-simultaneous discovery in science shouldn’t be all that rare. Consider that you have people of similar intellectual stature who all study the same material, have read the same books, and are all standing on the shoulders of the same giants (to paraphrase Newton). The extant problems in their discipline are well known and are being worked on by any number of researchers who would like to attach their name to the solution. What’s surprising is not that near-simultaneous discovery happens, but that it doesn’t happen more often. Chances are it actually does, it just isn’t widely reported because it doesn’t generate the same interest as the Newton-Leibniz controversy. Imagine for example that you’re only days behind someone else in making an important discovery. What do you do? Bear in mind, in former times information travelled slowly, so you may very well have been first, but you didn’t get published in time and the discovery itself wasn’t recorded at the time it was made because you were awaiting confirmation by a colleague. Kind of awkward to claim authorship at that point, no?
Correlation is not causation. We’ve all heard that one I hope. Of course when there’s strong correlation that’s a signal to look for a common underlying cause, but is this strong correlation? —> "A few years ago there was this small experiment: a researcher in Nottingham…etc.” The key word here is ’small.’ Note that we’re dealing with a statistical phenomenon, not something of absolute value. So, how many times was this experiment conducted and what was the distribution of results? I’d want to know that before I assigned any significance to it.
I think we can all agree that the primary motivation of living beings is survival. Safe to say that our individual and collective survival depends on recognizing patterns in the natural world. So it follows that we’re adept at pattern recognition since our survival depends on it, but along with that comes the tendency to see patterns where they don’t actually exist, or to attribute meaning to them where there is none. I would argue that most, if not all of what we call metaphysics falls in that category. A case of mistaken identity. The same can be said of religious beliefs, which on the whole are simply instances of circular reasoning. We marvel at the fact that people in the tail section survived a terrible crash and call that a miracle. Well, what about the people in the forward section that all perished? Did God arrange for all the sinners to be in the forward section? Did he also design the aircraft in a way that the tail would separate from the rest of the fuselage on impact? I think we all know the answer to that one.
This is not to deny the possibility of the supernatural, the mystical or the esoteric. But you have to tread very carefully when dealing with these topics because a large number of people, probably a majority, actually base their lives on these things and can become quite angry when you contradict them. They might even burn you at the stake or throw you in a duck pond to see if you float.
Agreed. I am able to hold two competing ideas in my mind and let them battle 😉
So, kind of like Donald Trump then?
Yeah, just with less money, less power, less hair, less ego, less insanity and less competing ideas.
You're really fast on the comeback. Impressive. Maybe you should do stand up comedy?
If you want the room to be bored to death... 😁
I am - at times - quick witted. Just not in real life. Dunno why behind a screen it's easier.
Just ask my kids 😂. They are tough... With me as a dad. I'm constantly teasing them. Sometimes my daughter says to me : dad, I'm with friends: "BEHAVE!!" 😋
There's a guy called Dean Radin who spent years gathering data on small experiments not unlike the one described here. After he crunched the numbers to ascertain the probability that all the results were just the result of chance, he
ended up with a probability of something like 1 to 10 trillion. Keep in mind that the usual cut-off point for statistical significance is p=0,05, i.e. 1 to 20.
It's described in his book "The Conscious Universe", if you are interested.
Personally, I've experienced things that I cannot possibly explain except by some kind of "aetheric" interconnection, so perhaps I'm biased ;)
Thanks, have added one of his books to the pile.
Math is hard
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8PJv3kpaVkQ
She's cheating. That's an open question depending on your way of thinking. Mathematically she's correct. From a societal perspective the off-screen guy is correct.
And yes, I understand that's where the joke lives 😉
"She's cheating."
She's from Moldova. What do you expect?
In stand-up you have to have a comeback for every possibility. If he'd said 'fewer' she could have said "correct, you'd have 50% fewer kids" and the joke would still be funny. Maybe not as funny, but at least she wouldn't have trapped herself.
Notice how she weasels out of this one:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ekp41n6E_oQ
Anecdote: my very first girlfriend in high school was Armenian. There's got to be a joke there somewhere.
How's this? All the Moldovan girls turned me down.
There's a retort there, but then I'd be violating my own rules 🤣
Yeah, you should probably stay away from it 😉
I try but it keeps following me. Good thing I have a pocket calculator for the hard stuff, like multiplication and division.
When I was studying at university I wrote my essays while asleep. Even topics that I wasn't familiar with, I'd be pondering, "what the hell am I going to write about this"? Then one morning I would wake up and the whole essay would be there, fully written in my mind and I'd just tap it out on the computer, I'd know where the references should be, and it'd be done. I did extremely well at uni with several essays receiving top marks. I know it could be that my subconscious was distilling my study into something rational and logical, but I always felt there was something else. That was tapped into something that guided me. Who knows?
Here are your rules - I post this only cause I am an "Angel Investor" in Substack - even if small scale I was invited to invest early on and I did.
here are your "reply rules"
~
Gold and Geopolitics reply rules
1. Be polite
2. Argue with facts, not insults.
3. Treat others as you would like to be treated.
~
I would like to say I agree wholeheartedly with those "rules" and will abide by the terms.
~
Now at my own site I setup some "reply rules" and let me post those as well on this message:
~
BK's Gardening Ambitions reply rules
I would like to make a "statement" regarding commentary at this Substack - essentially there are NO rules except one which is - "do not threaten or suggest physical harm upon any reader here or the host". Otherwise - say what you will and whatever you want. I commit to not banning anybody unless you break the rule above. Moreover, when I make a comment I generally make edits within minutes and have previously committed to NOT make any edits after 24 hours (barring something exceptional). BK
~
I don't think our rules contradict in each other in any way.
I also do think that even if we have never met, we obviously are aware of each other and our thoughts make a difference - some thought resonate and some don't - but together as Kropotkin espoused we are better no doubt.
~
Warm Regards,
BK
This is something that has often puzzled me. Furthermore, in the scientific world, various people have from time to time postulated the existence of particles not yet witnessed....quarks, prions etc. and then hey presto they have appeared. It begs a few questions.......Are we actually creating our own reality? And if so, can we use this ability, this 'sympatheia', to consciously create intentional realities? Is this already being done by others, either consciously or unconciously, thus creating wars and chaos? If so, can we come together to consciously overwhelm a warlike 'sympatheia' with a peaceful one?
Are you aware of Rupert Sheldrake's work? https://substack.com/@rupertsheldrake
It's fascinating. He describes exactly how “the Aether” can reverberate across individuals. Like sheeps learning to cross a new type of gate. Suddenly they do it on totally different places on Earth. He calles it Morphic Resonance.
This is a science man, he doesn't just put out stuff. He minutiously reseaches and documents it, backed by actual empirical experiments. His books are a treasure.
Highly recommended.
Like the 100 monkey theory!
It is good to contemplate the nature of life, as much as we have figured of it. There is a vast bulk of understanding of which we have yet to become aware. This life on Earth is not all there is, it is only what we are doing now, for reasons that mostly escape us.
In my understanding, the sole purpose of existing in the physical world is to determine who you are in relation to all the stresses, and to express that idea to the best of your ability. In other words, to make your life a reflection of who you truly are.
Insightful article! We are indeed interconnected.
The older I get (75), the more I realize I can only see it sideways, not looking directly at it.
Speaking of the aether, and Emerson, who someone in the comments mentioned, here's the opening line of Emerson',s essay on Friendship: "We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Meager all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. "
There is a book called Bird by Bird, and the writer, Anna Lamott, describes ideas as finding the writer, the maker, the artist…the creative.
If the idea is not taken up, or later – after attempting to create that which had alighted – is left to go stale, the idea will leave that person and find another – sprite like (though not material)
Whether I truly believe that or not, it does seem to fit. And just like you I tend to trust what my intuition is telling me – there is a consciousness we are each a part of.
The brain then, for me, is a suppression valve, so not a personal supercomputer, and drawing down any idea doesn’t mean we are anything but attentive to it, and sometimes, like it or not, we are not the best person to talk that idea to fruition…
Take note Musk!
Great thoughts and so insightful! Thank you!!
What you're reaching for has a long lineage. Emerson called it the Over-Soul: the single mind each of us is one lit window in, almost your exact phrase. The Stoics had sympatheia; the Vedantic traditions had something closer still. What strikes me is that the feeling survives every era that tries to explain it away: we keep arriving at it, alone, the way Darwin et al kept arriving at the same discovery without knowing the other was there.
I wonder if the simultaneity is less mysterious than it feels and more mysterious than it looks. The discoveries arrive together because the ground has been prepared: the tools, the questions, the moment all ripen at once. But that the preparation is shared, that strangers half a world apart are working the same soil - keeps its strangeness no matter how you account for it.
The writing-into-the-dark part I understand completely. Some of it is heard.
Yes, our deeper interconnections of mind are what is real. The separate-biomachines appearance is the illusion.
You can test this in many ways.
That karma works is the outcome of such an investigation.