Mass Reality
In the same way that we participate in the creation of our bodies and the reality of our lives, so we influence the whole world and all of the events that happen in it. Our Higher Selves manufacture the atoms and molecules, but our collective daily thoughts and feelings influence the process.
Have you ever seen a cartoon where a depressed person has a black cloud over their head? If you feel consistently depressed, then there will be a depressed mental and emotional atmosphere around you, just like a black cloud. And people sense it. Similarly, if you are happy and joyful, you will be surrounded by a joyful atmosphere and this will also be quite apparent to people who come into contact with you. Indeed, our emotional atmospheres are infectious and interact as we mix with each other.
With a population of over six billion people on the planet, there is a lot of mixing and merging going on. So a collective mental and emotional climate surrounds the world, representing the sum total of six billion or so individual mental and emotional climates.
Have you ever seen a satellite picture of the earth from space? There are swirls of cloud, some storm fronts and some large areas of clear sky. A similar picture can be drawn for the collective mental and emotional climate. In some areas the climate might be joyful and in others it might be unhappy. These areas might be entire continents or they might be small areas such as a household, an office, or a building.
Of course within each of these areas there will be a spread of different mental and emotional climates corresponding to the differences in the people there. For instance, say the mental and emotional climate for a group or area was at level 7 out of 10, this would not mean that everyone living there was at level 7. There would be people at level 3 and 9, too, but taken collectively, the climate would average out at 7.
We tend to gravitate toward people and places that resonate with us. You might have noticed in your own life that there are places where you feel better or worse than usual —perhaps more positive or more peaceful, or more anxious or agitated. Wherever you go you are affected by the mental and emotional climate of the area.
So in the same way that our unconscious minds are linked to form a collective unconscious mind, our conscious mental and emotional states form a collective mental and emotional climate state. And just as our personal thoughts and emotions influence the biological events in our bodies and the daily events in our lives, so the collective thinking of a small or large group influences local or large-scale events.
Group Consciousness and Group Health
Group consciousness is the collective consciousness of any group — a family, village, town, city, nation, continent, or species — and plays a role in why some places can experience positive or negative states of health. Just as a disease in the body can be a consequence of mental stress, so an illness (like a cold, for example) in a family group can be sustained through collective patterns of thinking and feeling within the group.
Of course this can also be easily explained by considering the food we eat, our lifestyles and, in the case of disease, the physical spreading of viruses through contact or through the air. There are many causes of illness, but remember that consciousness precedes biology. It condenses to form it. It is not the other way around.
A friend recounted a funny story to me. He was on an airplane and his attention was drawn to a woman at the back of the plane shouting, “I’m going to be sick!” as she hurried towards the toilets at the front. He was having “one of those days” and he shook his head and thought to himself, I bet she stops right at me and throws up. You know what? She passed dozens of people, stopped right at him, turned to face him, and threw up over him.
You may have noticed that sometimes we do attract situations like magnets. Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and issues send a pulse through the web, causing people to bring us exactly what is appropriate to our current state of mind. And a disease-carrying insect or an airborne pathogen will respond just as well as a person will.
Of course, this does not mean that all diseases and events are the direct product of conscious thoughts and feelings. It is very clear that a vast number of people infected with, say, HIV and AIDS did not attract the disease through their thinking. In terms of mass disease, there must be a deeper spiritual significance as to why a person is born into those conditions, a purpose known only to the Higher Self. Some hope may lie in the fact that a change of mind can cure disease in an individual; therefore, a change of mind in a nation, through education, perhaps, could save many lives.
Transcending group consciousness is not easy. Individuals with different attitudes and beliefs usually begin to adopt a similar mind-set to the rest of the group. In the same way, though, many people educated to a new mind-set will influence others in the group. A mind-set of health will eventually eradicate a disease, partly through altering conditions inside the body, partly through inspiring individuals to act differently and change their habits, and also through unconsciously inspiring people in different parts of the world to find cures or provide aid. The bottom line is that eventually the stronger mind-set wins!
Changing the World
In general, events are more likely to occur in areas where the mental and emotional climate resonates with them. Areas where conflict has been regular throughout history are more likely to experience fighting, for example, than regions where this has not been the case. People in such areas have known conflict, so the idea is strong in the group consciousness and will inspire individuals to resolve their differences that way.
Changing the nature of events requires changing the group mind. History has taught us that this will most likely start with one person or a small group of individuals or even because of the introduction of new people to the group.
To reiterate, with some events — natural disasters and epidemics among them — there is no apparent link between the mental and emotional climate of an area and an event. However, all must have a spiritual source, known to the Higher Self of everyone affected, which we may or may not ever understand at a conscious level.
It is possible that a natural disaster on a very large scale, for instance, might happen so that we can grow from it and learn compassion. In the grander scheme of things, then, such events are created to move the world closer to enlightenment — to a higher level of consciousness. The Higher Selves of the individuals who lose their lives would have chosen to be part of the event, and at some level each person would have been aware of this. There can be no accidents in our conscious universe.
Essentially, our collective Higher Selves bring everything into materialization, and our collective mental and emotional state influences the process. It shapes the energy vibrations and particles on a global level, organizing them into a format that accurately reflects, as events, the average state of consciousness of humanity. And on the surface, our collective thoughts and feelings vibrate the web and inspire individuals and groups to act in such a way that the world reflects our state of consciousness. We get what we concentrate on in our own lives and we also get what we concentrate on in the world. A world of peace and joy reflects an overall inner climate of peace and joy, and a world where conflict is rife represents a significant degree of personal unrest and unhappiness.
Of course, this does not mean that everyone has the same influence over every event. Some people have a larger effect than others. If the average mental and emotional climate is 5 out of 10, people who are 8s and 9s, for instance, might have more of a sustaining effect on positive events, while people who are 2s and 3s might have more of an effect on situations of conflict.
But if you wish to change anything, start with yourself. Examine the contents of your own mind, honestly, and notice what you are feeding into the collective mental and emotional climate. Is there a conflict in your life that you are actively participating in? Or even in your mind? If you know of a conflict, whether in your family group, your work environment or an entire nation, notice if you judge the people involved. Do you condemn their actions? If so, then you merely feed the conflict. Think about it! Perhaps your contribution is not as great as that of the people directly participating, but you are still playing a role.
Therefore, make any changes to your own attitudes and behavior that you believe are required until what you project outwards is consistent with what you wish to see in the world. You will very quickly notice that the type of events in your life will change, and gradually the nature of world events will change, too, but it all begins with you.
You could even help others to change their mental and emotional climates, and then you will have a greater effect on the world. This is why the peace prayers described earlier, and others like them, influence world events. As more and more people join together, they have a greater effect. The group intentions project outward, sending large waves along the web that have a large effect upon the global mental and emotional climate, and this then shapes events in the world.
If many of us try to see the best in each other, forgiving where it is necessary, acting peacefully, joyfully, and kindly toward each other, then forgiveness, peace, joy, and kindness will color the mental and emotional atmosphere of the world and will be introduced into the world.
If enough of us want to help those in need and act on our desire with gestures as simple as flashing a genuine smile, saying something nice, making a donation, helping an elderly person with their shopping, allowing a car in front of us in a traffic jam, or even inviting someone to go in front of us in the supermarket line, then we will find that more assistance will reach people on a global scale. Those who need help might be thousands of miles away, but our intentions will vibrate the web and inspire those who are in the right place and have the necessary resources to offer help where it is needed.
It’s all down to us, with every breath we take, every thought we think. Each of us is far more grand, powerful and beautiful than we have ever imagined. And yes, that means you! How magnificent you are! You hold the power to change the world.
It Only Takes One More Drop
A very small number of people can have a huge effect on the mental and emotional climate of the world. Ever heard of the butterfly effect? A butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can cause a tornado at the other side. This has been proven mathematically.
Have you heard of the “Hundredth Monkey” experiment? It took place in 1952, when a group of scientists was studying the behavior of monkeys on the island of Koshima, off the coast of Japan. The monkeys were fed by dropping sweet potatoes on the sand, but the sand made the potatoes difficult to eat and eroded the monkeys’ teeth. Soon, one of the monkeys learned to wash the potatoes in the ocean and then taught some of the others to do the same. As you would expect, the practice of washing the potatoes gradually spread throughout the group. But at one point, all of a sudden, every monkey in the group started washing its food.
At the same time, an unrelated group of scientists studying monkeys on the mainland also noticed an odd change in behavior. All of a sudden, every one of the monkeys they were studying began to wash their food.
The two groups were not in contact, so there was no physical way for the second band of monkeys to have learned the practice from the first group. The idea of washing food had been transmitted through the monkeys’ group consciousness.
This type of phenomenon has been well documented. In another experiment, two sets of laboratory rats were bred through several generations by biologist W. E. Agar, in Melbourne, Australia, and were kept apart so that there was never any contact between them. One set was trained to find their way through a maze and the other set was not. The rats that were trained to run through the maze took 25 attempts, on average, to get through it before they memorized the route. Each successive generation learned the way slightly faster than the preceding ones, and this was attributed, at the time, to learned behavior being genetically inherited through the DNA.
By the 50th generation, the rats were getting through the maze much faster. At this point the group of rats that had not been trained, also now in the 50th generation, was tested on the maze. One would expect these rats to take about 25 attempts, as had the first generation of the other group. However, it was discovered that they made it through as fast as the rats that had “genetically inherited” the ability to run through the maze. Yet the two groups had never met. There was no genetic opportunity for the second group to inherit the knowledge. Once again, it had been transmitted through the group consciousness, so that when the untrained rats were tested on the maze, the knowledge was “in the air” as part of the mental and emotional climate in the area. They just downloaded it.
Similarly, you may have noticed that when computers were first invented, people found it difficult to understand them. Nowadays they are far more complex, yet people master them very quickly, particularly children. The knowledge has been passed along through the collective consciousness, so each successive generation of people is more confident with computers and has an innate, basic awareness of them that is awakened when they begin to use them. Each user of a computer adds to the knowledge that is in the collective consciousness.
You might think of it as each user adding a layer of watercolor to a canvas. In time the color becomes very deep and highly visible, even at a distance. In the same way, the understanding of computers forms a print in the collective consciousness that becomes more “visible” with each successive generation.
Of course, in this case there are no isolated groups under study, like Agar’s rats, so the learned behavior is also genetically transmitted. Both ways of transmission occur.
Another thing that probably occurs is that information in the collective consciousness causes genes to switch on and off, perhaps altering the growth of the brain in such a way that makes it easier to understand technology. These genes may even have switched on and off in the womb.
Information travels fast through the collective unconscious and the collective mental and emotional climate. It is instantly available everywhere. But it usually takes a little while to be downloaded because of people’s personal mental and emotional “noise” — their thoughts and emotions, attitudes, and beliefs — just as it takes someone longer to understand about something if they have a lot on their mind.
Usually information is gradually downloaded into more and more people until a “critical” or “tipping” point is reached. Then the information appears to download into everyone else simultaneously.
This is how critical points work. Levels increase gradually until a specific point is reached, then change is extremely rapid. Think of more and more weight being added to a set of scales. When the weight reaches the tipping point, the scales tip over to the other side.
This process is well known in meteorology, as sudden weather changes occur due to the reaching of a critical point of air pressure, storm density, wind speed, or temperature. In the Hollywood movie The Day After Tomorrow, a tipping point is reached in polar icecap melting. After that there is no turning back. In just over a week, the entire planet is in an ice age.
Certain types of biological experiments also show the tipping-point process. Bacterium A is slowly transforming into B, then all of a sudden, at a certain point, it flicks over to completion. In some cases, the critical amount can be very small and in other cases it can be large. Many vital protein and enzyme transformations in the body happen in this way.
Analytical chemists also see this process at work. They use “indicators” that detect when an acid–alkali titration is complete. This is a standard experiment that is carried out from high schools to university research labs to analytical laboratories in the health-care industry. Lots of drops of substance A can be added to substance B and the mixture remains colorless, then suddenly, with the addition of only one or two more drops of A, the entire mixture turns pink —an instant change.
So it is with the mixture of our mental and emotional climates. If we consistently add drops of peace and love, kindness and sharing, tolerance and understanding, through our attitudes and our behavior toward each other, then once we reach a critical point, the world will change very quickly.
Just prior to the tipping point, it only takes one more drop for the color to change. Without that drop it never changes. So every drop is important. And you wondered how important you were!
Inspiring Peace
You don’t need to do big things to change the world —you only need to change yourself. A determined positive attitude creates good health and positive life experiences, and when many of us focus our thoughts in this way it inspires positive world events.
The same, of course, happens when we dwell on what is not desirable. Focusing on your distaste for war and the decisions surrounding it, for example, will not bring lasting peace. Although you intend peace, you also feed the conflict. A love of peace and a demonstration of peace in your own life are a more efficient formula for lasting peace. The peace you create within yourself then inspires you to speak and behave differently, which has a residual effect on everyone you come into contact with; and it vibrates through the web, inspiring peace in other people and other places.
Tolerance and willingness to try to understand the actions of another also make more of a lasting contribution toward peace than a desire for peace that is fueled by a hatred of war and all that it represents. St. Francis of Assisi once said, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” This is the key to peace in your personal life and in the world. Seek first to understand people before making a judgment, especially as you probably don’t know all of the facts. Many of us have unknowingly perpetrated conflicts through making assumptions.
If you find yourself consistently reacting angrily to something or someone, try to stop for a minute and ask yourself what contribution such behavior makes to the quality of your life or to the world. Then find a way of healing your thoughts, attitudes and beliefs.
The next time you find yourself speaking negatively about someone behind their back, stop and ask yourself what you will be doing to them, and what contribution your words are making to your life and to the world. You know what you do to your body with consistent negative thinking, so what do you suppose we do to the world every day when millions of us focus on the negative and go through our days in mental and emotional conflict with one another?
We are all intimately connected to every atom of the universe. We are all important; and our thoughts, feelings, and words are extremely powerful. Who we choose to be from this moment onward will affect the world.
So who do you choose to be?
