Psychosphere
Psychosphere - a term previously unnoticed has recently gained some traction after being mentioned in the HBO series True Detective. It is also a concept I find endlessly fascinating. As should you!
Simply put, it is the sphere of human thought. But since for most thought implies conscious thinking only, it would be better to say that the Psychosphere is a sphere of human consciousness. Imagine a biosphere, only instead of it being the global sum of ecosystems, the psychosphere is the sum of subtle fields of thought. And unlike the noosphere, which is the sphere of direct human thought, the psychosphere could more easily be imagined as a sphere of human emotion - or general consciousness - instead of specific thoughts.
It is also why, unlike the Noosphere, a psychosphere can have a distinct "flavour" where one specific emotional state is prevalent. Allow me to give a few examples as to what I mean.
If you have a rural area of 200 people where there's a serial killer, the people there can live an existence where the most prevalent emotion is that of subconscious fear. This can be imprinted in the psychosphere of that area.
Houses families can have their own psychopheres.
An event, such as an outdoor concert, can endow an area with its own psychospheric state. Every vibrational pulse adds to the total sum of the sphere. Words, action, sound, all of which have their basis in thought.
A meditative group can incept its own state into an already existent psychopshere. As shown by experiments like this.
There is some work being done on this, a rather strange project being one of these works. It is run online and spread over an egg network, called The Global Consciousness Project. The first paragraph is indeed promising and their pages show interesting data for those who are willing to figure out what all the numbers mean (it's not that hard):
"When human consciousness becomes coherent, the behavior of random systems may change. Random number generators (RNGs) based on quantum tunneling produce completely unpredictable sequences of zeroes and ones. But when a great event synchronizes the feelings of millions of people, our network of RNGs becomes subtly structured. We calculate one in a trillion odds that the effect is due to chance. The evidence suggests an emerging noosphere or the unifying field of consciousness described by sages in all cultures."
It's interesting how this kind of phenomena still resides in the sphere of pseudo-psychology. Collective Consciousness, Noosphere, and even the Collective Unconscious, all of these seem intrinsicly real, yet still remain outside normal investigative science, as we have not yet found an apparatus that could detect this field, aside of course the human brain.
We have become a species which places more trust in the results produced by machines than those of the human mind when it comes to fields of thought, despite the fact that the mind is thought itself. We even build machines to understand consciousness.
Also, what I mean by intrinsic reality is simply this: in deeper states of meditation and/or under the administration of certain psychotropic drugs, we can and will undeniably feel the presence and hard reality of this psychosphere. It can also happen quite spontaneously, and one does not need to attain a deep state of meditation or higher consciousness to become suddenly aware of this sphere and one's total immersion and inseparability from it. This experience, which can also be described as being present, or in intenser cases the experience of universal unity, cosmic consciousness, an Oceanic Experience, or even Satori, Samadhi, or a direct experience of God, has remained a constant throughout the ages, yet such (relatively)* subjective experiences yet remain in the realm of pseudo science or pseudo psychology. In fact all that is felt from the standpoint of Self, is the inseparable connection between Self and Other, and in stronger cases this sense melds into not just the feel of the connection between the Self and Other, but that the Self and Other are the same thing.
This experience remains no less consistent than the experience of love or desire, it is simply subtler and more prone to different interpretations and labeling, and does unfortunately not happen as often. When it does, it is much too quick to pass from immediate perception and replaced by the every-day imprints of normal perception.
In this regard it is interesting to note how our minds feel the compulsive need to label things. This sense is so pervasive and ingrained into us, that the mind, upon experiencing this, must in many cases immediately know what it was and give a name to it.
This labeling of things has lead us to "rediscover" things that have been known about for thousands of years.
A new name makes it feel as if it is new.
For instance, the Collective Consciousness was already talked about in the Bhagavad Gita, a text thousands of years old with a basis even older than that, yet put a new name on a concept - a name like psychosphere (which does sound cooler, doesn't it?) - and this becomes a new idea for those less aware of its origin and of other terms meaning the same thing.
But this rediscovering is good.
The name doesn't really matter as long as we are talking about the same thing. Many would call it God, and at the same time cringe at the term Collective Consciousness. Some would make differences between the Collective Consciousness and the Collective Unconscious. But really, they are all multiple terms for the same basic happening.
Building machines to understand consciousness is like trying to understand a philosophical thought through the workings of a computer. We forget that we already possess the best tool to understand consciousness.
The term psychosphere and what it implies is of course nothing new, books have been written on this subject, as physicists have been rediscovering the basic principles of unity which many spiritual texts of the world talk about (although some more directly than others). It is simply the language, the labels and the narrative that has altered. (Read Mysticism and the New Psychics by Michael Talbot)
There is now an emergence of a belief that there needs to be a wholly new outlook on what makes everything we inhabit. That if one truly wishes to understand the nature of things, one cannot understand them fully with the current system of science, because when you go deeper in reality, deeper into the core where all reality emanates from, one finds that the principles that make science understandable simply do not apply. A different set of rules govern each layer of reality, until at last you come deep enough where nothing can be separated from any other thing.
You begin to find that, just like the sages, mystics, shamans and yogis of all times, one needs to look within and from a standpoint of unity to understand, because there is no greater tool to understand consciousness than consciousness. It is made so that it may understand itself. It delights in this, because understanding that deepest self means understanding the very universe out of which if fazes into its three dimensions. Instead of crude matter which we can see and touch and feel, instead of energy in the form of force and other more subtler forces, there is only consciousness. Precipitated consciousness, manifesting in different forms, most of which wholly contingent upon the observer.
A good talk and much more detail on this can be found on youtube, in a form of a presentation from a perspective of a field theorist, Dr.John Hagelin.
*[the reason why I added relatively is because there seems to be a confusion as to why something remains relative, even if there are countless beings who have had an identical experience. The imprints received while having the experience differed, yet a fact that it happened and that it shared the same basic principles for all individuals cannot be denied.]
(Images Orbital Mechanics Complexity Graphics - Tatiana Plakhova)
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Nicely said!
ReplyDeleteI've been working on a story with this kind of angle, and trying to invent terms that would work for one of the concepts. I came up with "psychosphere," then wondered if the term had been coined. That's what got me here. I see it has been coined, but after a brief Wikipedia tour, it doesn't look as though anyone would object to my using it.
ReplyDeleteNo. I'm not a robot. Ever try the Turing test?
One of your links led me to that project using random number generators in an effort to correlate fluctuations with some actual events, and wonder why anyone would expect random number generators to detect such a thing. It's very early on, so my story may end up referring to "collective consciousness," but you're right about it not being as cool. I hadn't heard of "noosphere." The story may go "cyber-punk" yet.
Not sure who coined the phrase I think it was just "floating around" and you may have pulled it out of the collective yourself. Like I explain in the post, the meaning of the two is actually somewhat the same only the term is different. However, since the term is not any official term and subject to interpretation, one could say that psychosphere is more of an emotional imprint or general consciousness and does not contain any specific thoughts, while the nooshpere is a sphere of direct human thought that can be accessed in whatever means you can devise or imagine.
DeleteA fascinating read. Indeed, there are certain aspects within this existence that appears to be more elusive from the current model of scientific understanding, and it is evident when experiencing reality through the proverbial lenses of mind-alteration (psychedelics, as an example). However, this does not necessarily mean that one ought simply disregard the model altogether in favour of the aformebtioned "pseudo-science" perspective.
ReplyDeleteFurther, what many label as God could simply be the collective consciousness throughout the universe, and is felt, again, through mind alteration, but may also be expressed through thought experimentation.
I can continue conversing about the various sub-topics in this post (as I say, it's a fascinating read and deserves some thought provokation), however, I will end now so as not to make a terribly long rebuttal.
Thank you to whoever posted this entry, and keep up the good work! I look forward to any future reads.
Also, the Game has just been lost. ^.-"
Oh no, my idea is not to disregard the current model.
DeleteI was thinking more in the lines of pseudo-science and that calling it pseudo is a bit backwards at this point.
Pseudo comes from Greek False, or untrue, and these phenomena have, even with the conceptualization of quantum theory, became highly questionable and worth exploring, not to mention that the theory itself is at this point very old indeed. Many authors have pointed out how current models in physics mirror the most ancient beliefs in Hinduism and Buddhism (read Mysticism and the New Physics by Michael Talbot, for example).
My challenge then, is towards ideas like the psychosphere and anything "outside" being untrue or false stems from dissatisfaction in general of the correct model of scientific reality, which disregards the observer as the manifesting tool, and places the universal reality that can be measured by machines into the forefront as being the one which all reality-thinking individuals must subscribe to, while disregarding the validity and subjectively as being just as real, if not more, aspect of it. Aspects that can be directly experienced are regarded as illusions and beliefs (self-lies), and classified as being "within" and not at all something "without". That is to say, things experienced to be outside of the self are in modern science more often than not recognized only as illusion of that inner world (brain), as we still perceive the world through the duality of Outside/Inside, and not that the two are one and the same movement.
Also, long rebuttals are great ^^
A fascinating read. Indeed, there are certain aspects within this existence that appears to be more elusive from the current model of scientific understanding, and it is evident when experiencing reality through the proverbial lenses of mind-alteration (psychedelics, as an example). However, this does not necessarily mean that one ought simply disregard the model altogether in favour of the aformentioned "pseudo-science" perspective.
ReplyDeleteFurther, what many label as God could simply be the collective consciousness throughout the universe, and is felt, again, through mind alteration, but may also be expressed through thought experimentation.
I can continue conversing about the various sub-topics in this post (as I say, it's a fascinating read and deserves some thought provocation), however, I will end now so as not to make a terribly long rebuttal.
Thank you to whoever posted this entry, and keep up the good work! I look forward to any future reads.
Also, the Game has just been lost. ^.-"
The last chapter of my book Connecting with Coincidence is title the Psychosphere. Looks like several of us our pulling out the word which perhaps was floating around in the Psychosphere. I call it our mental atmosphere and locate it in the electromagnetic resonance chamber between the Earth's crust and the top of the ionosphere.
ReplyDeleteThat's cool. Do you mention anything similar to localized clusters or local psychospheric states?
Deleteno but that is a good idea and I am beginning to use the localized idea too.
ReplyDeleteWhat were your thoughts? I would say mental energy follows the same pattern as energy everywhere and has a propensity to coalesce, meaning it goes from pockets of energy or energetic bursts to form clusters of increased density and/or activity if a certain energetic state is maintained or activated by more than one individual, however it can also dissipate after a time. In this way I think centralized thought acts not only to propel the body into action, but go beyond the body boundary and exude an energetic burst into potentiality (space/time, from which the body is not sperate from, but is it), so each person is its own psychospheric event or energetic burst, effecting the local psychosphere in a minute way constantly.
DeleteWhat is contained in the Psychosphere? I think of it as energy-information. I also am beginning to think that there are clusters of energy-information separate from human minds that influence human minds, sometimes called angels, or higher intelligences, or gods. Perhaps it is better to think of these clusters in terms of mathematical principles rather than personifying them. How do you think an individual exchanges energy-information with the Psychosphere? there is a song about the Psychosphere, composed by a friend of mine and me but it will not paste here. If you want to listen, please email me at Bernard.Beitman@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteI would say there is no such thing as the Self at all, and all our thoughts are already there in the psychosphere. Our minds act merely as vibrational conduits, always picking up things that are already there, whith no thoughts as our own. There is no thinker, there are just thoughts, the only separating mechanism between the two is self-awareness without which these questions would never arise. You called this phenomena angels, intelligences and gods, but also mathematical principles, both of which are concepts created to aid in measuring and quantify what is already there. When you think about what the psychosphere might contain, you have to do the same thing when you believe that you are looking at thought. You have to project yourself away from thought and create a separateness between the thinker and the thought. But just like the psychosphere, there is no separateness there between what it is what it is not. It contains every possible expression in its potentiality and actualizes it through intent and emergent causality. There are pockets of increased intent or increased energetic activity which allow more possibilities in the actualization of causality, like for instance synchronous behavior or synchronicities, but I think these are structures of causality which are always entangled with themselves, as these two intents are the same intent, and as such have no indivisible transitions, but flow naturally through the psychosphere and are reflected completely in the psychospheric states. Not sure if I made it clear there. Also, sure, send the link to my email kz@kzfreeman.com
DeleteI first read it years ago in a book on the subject of chaos magic. (Peter J Carroll. Liber Null and Psychonaut: An Introduction to Chaos Magic)
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like an interesting read. Although it seems to focus more on the practical application of intent and influence through the psychosphere?
DeleteI have my doubts how much influence a ritual like that can have on something that is inherently chaotic.
very cool!
ReplyDeleteBernie Beitman
Very interesting stuff and remarkably synchronistic with thoughts that have come to me about the nature, origins, operations and differentiated contents of the psychosphere.
ReplyDeleteTo be clear, after reading Freeman's and others' comments upon it on this site I dont have much doubt anymore about this sphere's existence, nor many other of Freeman's and the mentined other's best thoughts. We're getting to something, a truth as significant as the
discovery of the nature and properties of gravity or light.
I'd only add, specifically, my fairly certain agreement with Freeman's located of the psychosphere, least wise as related to life on Planet Earth. In fact I'm inclined to think of this sphere as as with what has traditionally be referred to in Myth and Psychology (modern myth) as the Psyche.
In an order I am not sure of (yet) I would also tentatively assert the following:
The nature of the sphere is energic, but of it's own kind, meaning as different perhaps in quality or properties as that twixt, say light and gravity. To wit it is distinctly psychological in its nature. And for humans even more so distinclty so a place of both thought and emotion, which both pre-exist and become more distinct in the present by identification or renaming.
Indeed I would assert that the psychoshpere origins are volutionary, the earliest of its forms being first representatives the most basic instincts, to survive and thrive, obviously present in all forms of organic life (and who knows, maybe the larger cosmo-geological life of the Planet and all its (above-crusts spheres).
In any the eveolutionary view explains the human affinities and influences of human thought, feeling and the behaviors they generate, upon on plants and the plant's influences upon on humans. Naturally it follows similarly with the relations twixt humans and animals, some obviously brighter and with more congruous affinities than others, same being true for human to human relations, concrete and abstract, proximate and remote. And more to the point of pursuing this it these influences could also be sharply dialectical, or oppositional leading to violence and death of one living things over another. Sound and feal familiar given the current trends of our ecological crisis toward ever greater extinction of diversity, much to our perils the deadly kings and queens of the jungle.
I need to go at the moment, but want to add one more thing. I dont think the psychosphere is chaos. It strikes me more as an organized phenomena, in what others have also seen as subfields of energy within the sphere some much older more conetrated and so more influential, consciously or unconsciously on human behavir. For instance, the subfield occupies or comprising patriarchy or alpha maileism and the subsequent order it creates, dominance by force, a-social by submission, and violent conflict in relations to challenge
is a much more powerful energic subfield of the larger psychosphere
energic field in general than say the more ephemeral and decaying
energy of advertising that sells the perfect, new and improved laundry or a perfect bra or a men's hair dye. The former is a more
significant thing that we might want to change, the latter are a matter of very little consequence.
But enough for now my new friends. And thank you so much for your thoughts and feelings about this topic. I shall return. Dean Tripp
dtripp202@gmail.com
Nicely put, Dean. I also think the origins seem to be evolutionary.
DeleteTo me an important distinction, which also ties to Synchronicities, is that the Psychosphere seems to be an emphatic system that responds to individual states (emotion and sense-response) and creates movement in according to the individual's emotional states. So opposed to responding directly to thoughts and will it creates movement and psychospheric states as a direct reflection to the movement which animates these thoughts in the first place.