God Beyond Religion: Collective Consciousness, the Mind at Large

 A fascinating cognitive psychologist, Donald Hoffman is doing research that is extremely interesting to me. He has written a book called "A Case Against Reality." No, this is not a book review. I have not read the book, although it is now on my bucket list. I have watched some interesting YouTube videos in which he has been interviewed and in so doing has explained his theory. While his scientific knowledge is above my pay grade, I do take him seriously and I sense at an intuitive level that he and his researchers are on to something. 

Here is a link to a video that is long, but worth the time taken to listen to it. The Case Against Reality by zdoggMD.

Here is my distillation of the essence of the video but again, I repeat, it is worth the time spent to watch and listen to it. His claim is that the material world we experience is an interface with a vast network of conscious agents and that there is so much more to objective reality at that level than we see or know. In fact, there is so much going on at the basic level of the conscious source, it is detrimental to survival, and the entities that are the most successful in evolving do not look deeper into the reality behind the interface. It is a key to their survival and advancement. 

The bottom line of his theory, that he claims he and his researchers have proven mathematically, is that the material world is similar to a solid holographic simulation created in the conscious mind, and that a vast community of what he calls conscious agents create reality. These conscious agents combine to make very more complicated structures. According to him, what we see and experience is not reality but an interface to a greater reality similar to a virtual reality video game.

This is interesting in light of a small book written by Aldous Huxley entitled "The Doors of Perception." Huxley, a British philosopher who is most famous for his novel "Brave New World" was able to participate in controlled studies in the use of the drug mescaline which is a derivative of the peyote plant. The changes in perception he had while on the drug caused him to believe the idea that there is what he called "mind at large." Further, that the brain and nervous system actually acts as a reducing valve to this universal consciousness that aids in survival by limiting unnecessary stimuli and information.

Here is an excerpt from page six of "The Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley. "That which, in the language of religion, is called "this world" is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language. The various "other7 worlds," with which human beings erratically make contact are so many elements in the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large. Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate "spiritual exercises," or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs."

What Huxley was able to do with drugs, others, seers and mystics are able to do naturally or in a state of meditation. It is interesting to me that what Huxley was postulating back in the 1950's is similar in nature to what Donald Hoffman is finding in scientific studies and mathematical models. It is also borne out by the fact that quantum physicists see the sub atomic, particulate world as being conscious. This is a theme and idea that has been put forth and repeated over the centuries by shaman and mystics the world over.

It was also suggested by Carl Jung in his concept of collective consciousness and the collective unconscious. He reasoned that the similarities throughout history of ideas in cultures that did not communicate with one another demonstrated that there were certain archetypes that were universal and able to be accessed by the minds of people that were the thought products of their ancestors. All of these ideas point to the fact that consciousness is the driving force in creation and the experience we have of the material world.

I intuitively sense that all of the mystical revelation about the nature of spiritual reality and the true essence of the world has come from this cosmic consciousness. Whether it is called the mind at large, collective consciousness, cosmic consciousness, or the conscious creative source it is the essential building block of all that exists in objective reality, and it is available in a source that resides outside the human brain.