Communicating through the “Collective Unconscious”

Communicating through the “Collective Unconscious”

Prof. Victor F. Petrenko, PhD, PhD

Prof. Petrenko is back, and this time he shows that we may be regularly, though implicitly, using the so-called “collective unconscious”—a transpersonal field of subjectivity we all share, but which we can’t explicitly access through introspection—to tap into each other’s minds, minds in the animal kingdom as a whole, and perhaps even beyond.

I brought up this story to emphasize that the content of the collective unconscious tapped into by Jung’s mind is by no means universal for the entire human race. And the streams of the collective unconscious that the Hindus or Chinese, Persians or South American Indians tap into is filled with different archetypal images. If we move deeper into the evolutionary tree, we will even find layers of experience of our animal ancestors [38].

For example, Henry Bergson, in his brilliant book “Creative Evolution,” raised the issue of reception and transmission of holistic states at the level of the unconscious. He points to how a wasp paralyzes a caterpillar by a precise sting [5]. Bergson suggested that the wasp unmistakably finds the caterpillar’s ganglion not as a result of learning, which behaviorists later described as the development of a skill by ‘trial and error,’ but by directly sensing it, as if the caterpillar’s ganglion were inside the wasp. That is, by means of the wasp’s own psyche. Henri Bergson called this mechanism of cognition “creative intuition” and believed that it is inherent in all living beings because they share common ancestors. In modern psychology, intuition has a slightly different meaning related to transcending the boundaries of stereotypical thinking [60, 2]. Meanwhile, Bergson’s interpretation of intuition has remained practically undeveloped.

A Russian philosopher of the Silver Age, N.O. Lossky, explained the possibility of intuitive empathy by the coordination of “substantive subjects”—a kind of resonance of the souls of living beings. When it comes to human interaction, emotional closeness is the empathic tuning fork for mutual understanding.

So, psychologist A.G. Suleimanian examined the forms of telepathic communication between members of a primitive tribe based on the ethnographic research of the South African writer L.G. Green [69]. According to Green, the ‘smoke language’ of the African Bushmen and Australian aborigines, by means of which rather detailed messages are transmitted, is not a language in the proper sense of the word, since the amount of information transmitted is too high for such a primitive signaling system. Bonfires are only a trigger that urges the natives to tune in to receive a message. “I make a fire to let others know that I have already begun to think,” one Australian aborigine explained to the writer, “and they, too, begin to think until our thoughts coincide.” [69, 68]. Analyzing Green’s findings, Suleimanian compared them with those in the psychological literature on telepathy. He linked them to the natives’ ability for extreme concentration, also inherent in animals, and to the very close and intimate relationships between tribesmen. He also found that similar telepathic phenomena could apply to the so-called ‘civilized people’ in extraordinary circumstances. There is ample evidence that mothers experience seemingly unreasonable anxiety about children hundreds of kilometers away, and who, indeed, turn out to be in trouble at that time.

That's an interesting article. I liked the part about the ‘smoke language’ where the fire is only a signal to others to 'tune in', rather than the message itself.

Some of those things must be fairly common even among modern societies. For years I've used some form of mind-contact to guide my activities, it is something very practical. I don't think I would be alone or unique in this, my guess is it is widespread, maybe ordinary. Though I do think some of those tribal traditions must have a richer and more complete understanding.

In this part of the article, Jung is discussed:

In the context of the problem of the unconscious, let us consider one of Jung’s most vivid dreams:

    I was in a house I did not know, which had two stories. It was “my house.” I found myself in the upper story, where there was a kind of salon furnished with fine old pieces in Rococo style. On the walls hung a number of precious old paintings. I wondered that this should be my house, and thought, “Not bad.” But then it occurred to me that I did not know what the lower floor looked like. Descending the stairs, I reached the ground floor. There everything was much older, and I realized that this part of the house must date from about the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The furnishings were medieval; the floors were of red brick. Everywhere it was rather dark. I went from one room to another, thinking, “Now I really must explore the whole house.” I came upon a heavy door and opened it. Beyond it, I discovered a stone stairway that led down into the cellar. Descending again, I found myself in a beautifully vaulted room which looked exceedingly ancient. Examining the walls, I discovered layers of brick among the ordinary stone blocks, and chips of brick in the mortar. As soon as I saw this, I knew that the walls dated from Roman times. My interest by now was intense. I looked more closely at the floor. It was of stone slabs, and in one of these I discovered a ring. When I pulled it, the stone slab lifted, and again I saw a stairway of narrow stone steps leading down into the depths. These, too, I descended, and entered a low cave cut into the rock. Thick dust lay on the floor, and in the dust were scattered bones and broken pottery, like remains of a primitive culture. I discovered two human skulls, obviously very old and half disintegrated. Then I awoke [15].

My thoughts on reading that was that it resembled a past-life regression through multiple lifetimes, though not  in every respect.