Dominant Social Monads?

Here is the question I've just submitted for consideration in the upcoming concall for chapter 7 of Integral Spirituality.  What do you think?  (note: the emphasis in the quotes is Ken's.)

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Single organisms have what Whitehead called a dominant monad, which simply means that it has an organizing or governing capacity that all its subcomponents follow…A social holon simply does not have a dominant monad.  If you and I are talking, we form a “we,” or social holon, but that “we” does not have a central “I,” or dominant monad, that commands you and me to do things, so that you and I will 100% obey…that just doesn't happen in social holons, anywhere.  You and I are definitely not related to this “we” in the same way [an organism's cells] are related to [the organism].  (Ken Wilber, p. 178, Integral Spirituality)

There are many ways to talk about these important differences between individual and social, but perhaps the most significant (and easiest to grasp) is indeed the fact that the we is not a super-I.  When you and I come together, and we begin talking, resonating, sharing, and understanding each other, a “we” forms - but that is not another I.  There is no I that is 100% controlling you and me, so that when it pulls the strings, you and I both do exactly what it says.  (Ken Wilber, p. 188, Integral Spirituality)

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I've  heard Andrew Cohen students talking about some sort of higher group consciousness phenomenon that has been occurring with increasing frequency and duration as they have worked together; I believe I've heard it described as an “overmind,” some sort of higher order agency-in-communion.  My question is: how does that phenomenon relate to what is stated above - is it some sort of “dominant monad” forming which in a sense “controls” the group, or is something else going on?  From what people say about it, it sounds like a lot more than the conventional “we” that occurs when two or more people are in conversation - even when deeply resonating; and sometimes it does sound like they are talking about some sort of “super-I.”  Also, I'm still very fuzzy on what exactly is being described - could you say more about how the participants experience it, and how they experience themselves in relation to this “higher mind” while the phenomenon is occurring?  Could it be the early stages of a dominant monad forming in groups of humans?  Have other (not Andrew Cohen) groups ever described anything similar?

A related question: do you consider it possible that a dominant social monad could form in the future in groups of humans, or even all humans?  And if so, how do you think this would happen and what would be the likely characteristics of such a dominant social monad?  Do you think it might occur through the increasing use of “cyborg” technology (arguably already occurring with humans networking thorough computers, cellphones, etc.)?

arthur

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

There is an experience that is not related to the individual (though the individual is very much a part of it) when several people come together and open up to the truth. This can happen spontaniously or through wilful intent, if people let down their guards. If people does it with wilful intent and know about the impersonal nature of such a experience they will be able not to grasp at it personally and thereby not stopping the whole unfolding. If on the other hand this communial experience happens spontaniously because people have for one reason or another lowered their guard and meet in joy and love in a shared interest, they might not understand the new context as it arises. We are speaking of a spiritual and religious experience so it will take on a wholistic meaning in revealing what life can be like when we meet in the truth, surrendered to the event itself.
People does taste a little of this in times of coming together in love but since there is no understanding as to its impersonal, non-dual context they will naturally personalize it immediately and therefore not being able to sustain it or learn from it. We all recognize this whenever we experience joy together with other people in an unselfconcious manner, for example when we play. Since goodness, joy, love, and togetherness is but the faint feelings arising when Oneness is being displayed.
In a spiritual or religious setting where we pursue this event intentionally and willfully there will be a much stronger and powerful possibillity to experience this. This, Andrew is very aware of and is therefore trying to cultivate that among his students. It has occured throughout history in different settings with different results. In Christianity we call it the coming together in the Holy Spirit, letting the Spirit guide and lead the way. This is most commonly experienced in a devotional time of worship. Many people do not understand what happens but they feel the prescence of something much bigger and the power of it is obvious. But since most people haven't understood the implications for oneself in that experience and because of it doesn't shift their attention or identification with their own personality to this bigger all-encompassing Spirit there is little room for taking it any further than a brief time of joy and celebration. Or, some other people run away when they feel this overwelming Oneness like when people can't stand the communial joy shared for example in a mass in church.

It's only rare because we don't know so much about it. Andrew is trying to educate us about it. Now I understand what the Spirit is and what it wants. It wants us to come together so it can come into this world through many and reveal its independance from any one particular. So it will not be any ones property, but for all to share. That will liberate us profoundly but not in a personal context, but as a part of a truly human family, where we all will belong to eachother, bonded together through the Holy Spirit (for lack of a better word).

Andrews teaching has enabled me to understand Christianity and Jesus. There is profound wisdom inherent in Jesus teachings that is valid forever. Andrew gives a new, modern expression of a mystery that has been in the making since the beginning of time. And he propels it further, and clarifies our understanding.

Now, it is a challenge to understand it all, but do not hesitate because it is there for anyone to fully realize if you really want it.

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Matthew 18:

19 “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Also the Buddha understood the outcome of the flower of awakening and the fruit of fellowship:

“I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was living among the Sakyans. Now there is a Sakyan town named Sakkara. There Ven. Ananda went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to the Blessed One, sat to one side. As he was sitting there, Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, “This is half of the holy life, lord: having admirable people as friends, companions, & colleagues.”

“Don't say that, Ananda. Don't say that. Having admirable people as friends, companions, & colleagues is actually the whole of the holy life. When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, & colleagues, he can be expected to develop & pursue the noble eightfold path.”

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Great question Arthur. I will tell you a bit about the experiences I had with this phenomenon together with some other people of Andrew's; every time this kind of inter-subjective emergence occurs two things happen; I feel completely together with the others present (and so do others), like there are no boundaries, sometimes it even seems like I have access to everyone else's brain like I have to my own, and at the same time,  I feel more myself, more like an individual. I don't think there is a governing principle or Monad that takes over. I think it is much more interesting than that; because the unity comes out of each person's autonomous participation. Being authentically present and doing everything you need to do to leave the ego where it is, inside you, is what seems to make this happen.

Now what seems to happen is that if each one of us is independently present and no one insists on separation, we all start to recognize some universal principles, like that nothing is actually personal, but that all experience is just human experience and as such a result of and part of the process of evolution. You see why I find this so thilling? You realize you are consciousness and that you are all alone, that the development of human awareness and culture rests on your shoulders alone because only you know, and at the same time you are together, intimately one with, others who are also all alone in the entire universe. In this state (which is starting to become a stage now among us), which is a shared state of Enlightenment, you have access to the perennial spiritual wisdom that used to only be accessible to enlightened individuals. Can you imagine what individuals and collectives can do (for example in solving complex social or technological problems) when this developmental stage, which I believe it is, becomes more widely available?

Cheers, Arjan

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Arjan, thank you for sharing, very interesting stuff.

A minor theoretical AQAL detail: you cannot turn that kind of state into a structure, but merely stabilize it as a plateau.

Pelle

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

I think that's important, pelle, and thank you again since you've helped me understand that distinction better. I think it's important because it might influence how a group approachs it–some balance between state and stage training. But, in addition to a certain stage development, Ken also said that a certain turn around of the self is necessary.  In a group, I would also think that there would be variation in terms of state realization: some might be experiencing nondual, others causal, some subtle, and some might be participating effectively or at least not obstructing it with something less.

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

 I also think some people might see something suggestive of a monad or the like, a supermind.

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

I agree David, it is a seemingly subtle distinction but still important. And I don't think that calling the experience a state plateau takes anything away from it, any more than it would from a causal sage for example.
In addition the state training will most likely speed up the stage progression so it's really a win-win situation.

Could you say a bit more what you mean by: Ken also said that a certain turn around of the self is necessary.
Is that referring to ego-transcendence or the development of the sense of self? Or something else entirely…?

Pelle

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Just an aside … but Arjan? How is this distinguishable from other forms of mass or crowd psychology? Your description of feeling “completely together with the others present (and so do others), like there are no boundaries, sometimes it even seems like I have access to everyone else's brain like I have to my own, and at the same time,  I feel more myself, more like an individual” and the latter sentences about the “development of human awareness and culture rest[ing] on your shoulders” sounds similar to those of other earlier cultural movements, and disconcertingly close to those made by EST participants or those involved in early forms of Scientology. I'm wondering how you know this is different. And in asking this, I mean no offense! I'm not being critical … I'm merely curious about how to distinguish from the inside.

To get back to Arthur's original question, though … while I do think it makes sense to distinguish between some kind of dominant social monad that would result in, say, some form of mind control in which the individuals' actions were wholly determined by the group, and the fact that there does exist some kind of emergent property that arises when, as Arjun described, people are deeply together in some way. I've certainly experienced the latter myself in community building workshops and other process groups. And I'd venture that those involved in complicated team activities would venture the same - there is a palpable experience of something more-than the team. (I used to row crew in college, and there two something similar occurred.)

In any case, I think it would be hubris to say that social holons are merely the sum of the indvividuals that comprise them. (I dont' think this is Wilber's claim, but I'll just put it out there.) I'm more inclined to think that we merely lack the cognition to understand the workings and enmeshments and relationships between we as individuals and the collective whole. And just because we don't have the intellectual capacity to outline (or even conceive of) how the “dominant social monad” might affect us, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Acutally, now that I think about it, why not use an example like a corporation or government? It has its own self-organizing principles, it's own desire to maintain its integrity and 'identity.' Those who operate within it must subscribe to its order, or risk being ejected. It's fair to say that if we want to remain a part of that social monad, we do behave according to its demands. And if social creatures as rudimentary as ants can be a part of a greater collective intelligence, why in the world would the social lives of human beings not be a part of something similar?

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

“Now what seems to happen is that if each one of us is independently present and no one insists on separation, we all start to recognize some universal principles, like that nothing is actually personal, but that all experience is just human experience and as such a result of and part of the process of evolution.”

Thank you Arjan

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Okay, I don't have nearly as much experience as some–I'm just a beginner–but I have had two strong experiences of this. In one case, it was mostly, to my recollection, just like a state that descended on the group and everybody enjoyed it, without too much, or perhaps any, suggestion of a monad. People in the group experienced it on different levels and some not very much, but there was a central group that felt it deeply and that was sufficiently commited to the whole thing to make it happen. I don't know if this reference works for you, but if you've ever had a state experience with other people on a psychedelic drug trip, that wouldn't be too far from what happened here. Only in this case no drugs had been involved, and the context was not postmodern, green meme–everyone realized that they had a higher self and a lower self, and everyone was trying their best to be their highest self.

The psychedelic drug reference also works for the second time, which happened on a long retreat. In fact afterwards I discussed the experience with another guy who had been in the group, a guy a little older than me who had been into psychedilic drugs in the sixties, and he said something like, “If somebody had seen that, they would have thought we were on drugs.” And I laughed, and he said, “No, they really would have. They would have thought we were on drugs.” And then I saw it from the perspective of someone walking in, someone who didn't know what was going on but was able to recognize when other people were on a LSD trip or something, and saw that that is exactly what it would have looked like to him or her. But there was nothing degenerate about it, or self indulgent or relativistic, which is often what happens in the drug culture–it was totally positive and forward moving, looking to the future. There was one guy in the group from a Bible Belt  state, and he, like everyone else, had his own, slightly different interpretation of it. At one point he was overcome with emotion and laid his head and hands down over the table saying something about doing God's work, I don't remember his exact words. Something about the opportunity to do God's work and how this was the most important thing to him. Or if he had the opportunity to do God's work how grateful he would be, something like that.

In this group there was something, to me, that was suggestive of a monad–not to say there was a monad, but something about it that suggested that there could have been something like that. For awhile it was just so well ordered, so perfeclty ordered. For awhile, when someone else was talking, everyone else was all eyes and ears. For awhile when someone else was talking I didn't have a thought about what I would say next and then, the next moment, without premeditating it, I would be speaking from my best mind and heart, the deepest part of myself that I knew, and then I was all eyes and ears again–as well as other sensory stuff–as it went on to the next person. And noone, for a while, was speaking at the same time nor was there anyone for a while, it seemed, who had an impulse to speak when someone else was speaking. It was as though one mind was running the show–at least that seemed to be a possible explanation. There was a very palpable sense of some higher consciousness that had descended on the group. I had the feeling–and I said this at one point–that this sort of communion is what we most deeply want, but it was more of a nondual communion–when it was with someone else you were all awareness beyond the personal self.
 
I had a very brief, slight experience of it a third time–sharing some sort of state with others who were committed to being their best selves–and I had that same feeling, that it's what I most deeply wanted on a soul level, but it's a feeling that's easy to lose touch with if you aren't around people with a similar interest. Communion in a relative state just isn't very satisfying: it's all frustration, attachement, rejection. There's a possibility for a different sort of communion in higher states, but it's dependant on people being very commited to being their highest selves.

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

David:
In this group there was something, to me, that was suggestive of a
monad–not to say there was a monad, but something about it that
suggested that there could have been something like that. For awhile it
was just so well ordered, so perfeclty ordered.

I feel that it's important to distinguish coherence, as well as a group state, from a dominant monad. Occam's razor tells us that we should make as few assumptions as possible and I do not see the need to assume the existence of a dominant monad in order to explain your experience (nor the experience of Arjan).

I've been dancing argentine tango for ten years, and these kinds of experiences within the dancing couple are not extremely uncommon. My own interpretation of these experiences is that both dancers open up to a form of communication that is beyond the rational ego, something largely unconcious, and that this form of communication is so effective that a coherence appears seemingly out of nowhere and the dancers all of a sudden dance perfectly together. The feeling can certainly be that of being two puppets controlled by a puppeteer, but I believe this is because we underestimate how effectively and powerfully we can communicate beyond our rational selves.

Pelle

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Siona:
Just an aside … but Arjan? How is this distinguishable from other forms of mass or crowd psychology?

That's a very good point Siona. How do we distinguish pre-rational, pre-conventional mass psychology where people temporarily lose touch with their sense of self, from a truly transrational we-space that may include higher states?
Arjan says “I feel more myself, more like an individual”, and that to me is one indication that it is a transrational phenomenon that is being described.

Siona:
I do think it makes sense to distinguish between some kind of dominant social monad that would result in, say, some form of mind control in which the individuals' actions were wholly determined by the group, and the fact that there does exist some kind of emergent property that arises when, as Arjun described, people are deeply together in some way.

This is another great point. From my own experience I am inclined to believe more in arising emergent properties than a dominant monad, but I try to stay open-minded about it.
I believe that humans have very efficient ways of unconscious communication and that this “highway of information exchange” enables the emergent properties.


Siona:
Acutally, now that I think about it, why not use an example like a corporation or government? It has its own self-organizing principles, it's own desire to maintain its integrity and 'identity.' Those who operate within it must subscribe to its order, or risk being ejected. It's fair to say that if we want to remain a part of that social monad, we do behave according to its demands.

Ok, now we're talking about LR institutions, as opposed to LL we-space. Both of the lower quadrants are obviously of interest when discussing dominant social monads, but let's just remember what we are talking about so we don't compare apples to oranges.


Pelle

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Thanks Pelle, I think that is the point, the collectivity rests on autonomy in the state experience that I described. The reason there are no boundaries is, I believe, because everyone is independently doing the very best they can to see objectively, and that way you can often agree on what you perceive, but also strongly disagree, it all seems to contribute to a higher 'we' and a more pronouced 'I' at the same time. (I think this is what it means to trancend and include individualism!)

I would also love to tell you a bit abotu what we are doing to try to make this state experience into a stage, but essentially (it is late here :)) it comes down to exploring the perspective that the state experience reveals to us, and then to try to live according to that perspective rather than to try to hold the state, (something I consider impossible and more importantly, useless)

Wow, this is great to be exploring this together!
Love, Arjan

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Pell: Thank you for the distinction, but I'm a little confused. How are governments solely Lower-Right? Can't they too be described from within? Surely the collective cultural experience in a communist bureaucracy is different from that of the collective cultural experience of a democratic republic. How is it possible to determine whether the fact of the social entity's self-perpetuation is based on its exterior structure or its collective interior will? It doesn't seem to me that we're so much comparing apples and orages as just looking at them from different points of view. 

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Siona, if you are making those kinds of distinctions then everything is fine. An institution is LR, the culture of an institution is LL. My sole point is that we make sure we know what we are referring to, and obviously you do.

Pelle

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Arthur, thank you for starting this interesting discussion.  In your question to Ken, you asked if any other groups have experienced something similar.  And then in response to Arjan, Siona pointed out that Arjan's description seemed to mirror experiences of group resonance and communion that occur in many different contexts.  So, I think if you submit this question to Ken, you might take that into account as well – asking whether or not he (or Andrew) thinks something entirely new is happening in the context of Andrew's work.

Just reading Arjan's description, I recognized similar experiences that I've had in several different contexts. One of the strongest early ones was at a Krishnamurti gathering, after a day of listening to K speak, dialoguing in small groups, sitting quietly to attend to nature and our minds, and so on.  At some point, during one of the group dialogues, a palpable group resonance emerged that seemed larger than all of us, without diminishing us but rather somehow enlivening us.  What was most striking was that we seemed to be sharing thoughts – someone would say something, and other people would remark that they'd been thinking the same thing.  We were a disparate group, with members from many different cultures, but we were all “alive” to the same sets of concerns, and to each other, down to very subtle levels, which seemed very remarkable to us.  We were acting independently, but there was the sense of “something else” also acting in and through us.

Personally, I've experienced mind- and heart-opening communion with others while making music.  Here, the experiences have been very moving on an energetic and emotional level, but they seemed – to me now, looking back at them – to be missing an awareness of presence, of Big Mind as the ground and essence of our being-together.  This is different from the Krishnamurti context above, where we were alive and “attuned” to choiceless awareness.

In communities of Time-Space-Knowledge practitioners, I've experienced and heard a number of accounts about a deep group resonance and intimacy that emerges in the course of practice and dialogue.  In TSK terms, this is often described as a function and quality of time.  TSK is similar in some ways to Cohen's teachings, in that it initiates the dynamic unfolding of what Cohen calls “impersonal enlightenment.”  This impersonal element is not sub-personal, but transpersonal, and bears with it a deep sense of appreciation and intimacy, in which the positionings of the self are seen as limited or circumscribed focal settings in this deeper sea of intimacy and unbounded knowing.

An element in the TSK setting that may or may not relate to what Cohen's people are describing is the presence, in these experiences of transpersonal intersubjective resonance, of an awareness of the unknown – which in TSK is described in terms of dynamic time and the “future infinitive.”  It is a future-centered flowering, in a sense, which may relate, in some ways at least, to the evolutionary thrust of Cohen's model.

I am not very familiar with Saniel Bonder's work, but from the little I've read of his teachings, it seems he is also entering similar waters to those Cohen is charting – what Saniel calls a “waking down” in mutuality.

I'd be interested to hear from any of Cohen's students on this thread if they think something unique is happening for them.  In some ways, I expect it must be, just as the kind of LL connections forming in Krishnamurti or TSK circles will have their own flavors…

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Balder said:

 

“Personally, I've experienced mind- and heart-opening communion with others while making music.  Here, the experiences have been very moving on an energetic and emotional level, but they seemed - to me now, looking back at them - to be missing an awareness of presence, of Big Mind as the ground and essence of our being-together.  This is different from the Krishnamurti context above, where we were alive and “attuned” to choiceless awareness.”

Liebnitz and Giordano Bruno expanded the Greek definition of monad as an irreducible entity, as an atom seemed to the Greeks, to that of a single, focused entity at the center of system, or matrix.  What was important to L&B was that the monad had god-like attributes, an ability to connect with the entire universe.  To think that any such thing would evidence itself (or seem to, which is a vital consideration) from within a group of people who were gathered with a sharply focused intention is not out of the question.  For this to occur, boundaries must not only become perfectly flexible, they must almost be dropped entirely as the individuating force of the ego is a stealthy foe to be sure.  If the ego has not been properly “right-sized,” it will prevent an individual from dropping their boundaries far enough to truly surrender to the group. 

Just saying, OK, for the moment, I am going to go into this room and leave my ego outside with my shoes, is way not enough.  The ego will just laugh and slink deeper into the shadows knowing something very interesting and exploitable is about to happen.

Killing the ego is out of the question as it lives in every word of our stories both personal and worldly.  Sooner sail to heaven and stab Lucifer on his throne.  The ego can be right-sized by editing the bullshit out of our own stories and replacing lies and other fudgings with the truth.  It cannot be tortured or beaten out of you, you cannot pay to have it removed, no amount of subjugation or imposed humiliation will do it either.  The ego, when in danger of this kind of threat, will retreat further and further into the psyche - far enough that it will appear to have disappeared.  But it is still in there full force, just waiting for the opportunity to either flower again, or get its host into a dark corner and kill it.

If the individuals in a group have not right-sized their egos, no matter how OHM'd up they get, no matter how convinced they are of their sincerity, commonality, and desire to do “right,” the free-floating, out-sized portions of their egos can merge into a monad and their heartfelt desires will turn to righteousness.

Humans are not like ants except by choice and on occasion.  Our beingness is about individuation and the struggle to avoid the rigid boundaries of independence in favor of the flexible boundaries of autonomy.  Ants are ants.  Their success depends on an absolute knowing of the will of their monad queen.

After such an experience as has been described above by Arjan, where this very cool thing seemed to happen, I would like to ask the following:  How long did the effect last?  Did it get better and better each time you did it?  Did you feel at all uneasy about your state of being during, immediately after, or days later?  Did you feel guilty about harboring any selfish or narcissistic thoughts during or after the experience?  Who supplied your intention?  What was your intention, specifically?

best,
Michael

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Thank you, pelle. That is a very good distinction to make. You and I could get together in a room and learn to clap our hands together and it wouldn't necessarily be a monad that had taken us over. But there is another phenomonen I think we need to look at.

Okay, I know that he was perhaps a little metaphysical and premodern and did not fully understand the implications of evolution, but Ken Wilber did call him the “greatest sage of the twentieth century,” so please listen to a few words from Ramana Maharshi:

Q:   I see you doing things. How can you say you never perform actions?

A:    The radio sings and speaks, but if you open it you will find noone inside. Similarly, my existence is like the space; though the body speaks like a radio; there is noone inside as a doer… . the fact is that any amount of action can be performed, and performed quite well, by the jnani, without his identifying himself with it or imaginging that he is the doer. Some power acts through his body and uses his body to get the work done.

Andrew writes in An Unconditinal Relationship to Life: “I woke up early one morning and without a trace of premeditation heard myself utter the words out loud: 'My life is yours. Do with me what you will.'… 'Thy will be done' is the war cry of 'I surrender!' of the true seeker who has now become a finder. Only love, only love, only love. Not my will, but thy will be done.”

When he told his teacher about it, his teacher (Poonja) said something like, “I'm glad you have found a friend you will never meet.”

And Ken calls it the second face of God. Of course he doesn't have a metapyhsical explanation for it, and I don't think a metaphysical explanation is necessary, but there is still something there that's a great mystery and needs to be considered. And I believe this same phenomen has emerged through collectives at times, though not everyone will be aware of it. Very few people seem to be interested in this aspect of it.

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Michael asked;

After such an experience as has been described above by Arjan, where this very cool thing seemed to happen, I would like to ask the following:  How long did the effect last?

I am not sure what you mean by the effect, the feeling? That probably didn't last long, I don't remember, it sort of ended when we ended the get-together I guess. Or do you mean the effect it had on me and what I thought was possible for humans when they come together and (temporarily) transcend ego? If that is what you meant; that effect is still lasting today.

Did it get better and better each time you did it? 

Yes absolutely, it kept and still keeps continuing to get easier and better. It was absolutely, incredibly, undoably difficult to get us to do this the first time, (one of the things Cohen gets criticized for is that he kept pushing us, but that is a different thread). But when this happened it started to happen with groups of people that we knew of all over the world, people with much less experience. And that kept continuing to date; I think once some people break through a ceiling like that others benefit from it, isn't that how it works?

Did you feel at all uneasy about your state of being during, immediately after, or days later?

No, I don't recall any uneasiness at any time during or after this

Did you feel guilty about harboring any selfish or narcissistic thoughts during or after the experience?

No I did not, thoughts like that are part of what can be spoken about since we all have them and seen in this kind of impersonal intimacy they seem to loose their ‘spell' because thoughts are at all times only thoughts and there is nothing wrong with having whatever thought at any time whatsoever.

Who supplied your intention?

I am not sure if I am getting this one?

What was your intention, specifically?

My intention was, and is, to be free and create the future. I have all kinds of other wishes and desires of course, but this intention takes priority over the others. What I mean by creating the future is following that mysterious call in each of us to go deeper, higher, further, wider, more free, more unknown, not having the end destination clearly in view but following the grain of the cosmos as Wilber calls it, into an unknown future that gets created as we give it form by our own expression of potentials that were unrealized until we manifested them…

Arjan

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Andrew seems to think it's a monad.

http://www.andrewcohen.org/teachings/new-being.asp

The language may seem a little far out, but I would just ask that you keep an open mind to it. It's what it seems like to me, though again, I don't pretend to have a lot of experience with it.

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Thanks for this, David.  That's very interesting.  I recall that Wilber talked about this, in what seemed like a speculative way, at a meet-up at his house that I attended.  He didn't mention Cohen at the time; he was simply talking about the nature of holons, and saying that we may all become coordinated parts of something much bigger.  However, he didn't say how this would happen, and appeared to be referring to a distant time in our future evolution.

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

This is from an interview with Dr. Beatrice Bruteau in What Is Enlightenment? magazine September-December 2006 (originally published in WIE Spring-Summer 2002).
 

WIE: In your view of the next evolutionary step, you emphasize the importance of the collective or human community. Why is the nature and formation of this collective so significant?

BB: Because the collective is an integrative operation. You see, the collective is the medium by which the oneness both is made out of the diversity and protects the diversity and transcends the particular diversity that composes it. This is a kind of leapfrog by which evolution always moves. So a molecule is a kind of community. A cell is a kind of community. Molecules are communities of atoms, cells are communities of molecules, and so on. Now, we're following this same pattern that evolution seems to have followed, which is unite in order to create. The new human community will be some kind of an entity, some kind of a Being. Just as the organism is a collective of molecules and the molecule is a collective of atoms. So if you can get human beings to share their characteristic human energy-which is agape, knowledge, concern, creativity, inventiveness, and all the other kinds of strictly human energies that we have-all that interchange of energies binds us together into a community. And when the whole community experiences and practices this kind of love, the crisscrossing energies form a net, and the net is the New Being that can do what the individuals that it is composed of could not do.

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

David, if you can get your hands on it, I recommend reading Beatrice Bruteau's very interesting essay, “The Many and the One: Nondual Communitarianism.”  It can be found in the book entitled, The Other Half of My Soul.  A worthwhile read, in my opinion – and quite relevant to this discussion.

Re: Dominant Social Monads?

Thanks, Bruce, I just bought it! Bede Griffiths! I've always found him really interesting. Andrew Harvey used to write about him. So did another teacher I saw once, Nigel Taylor.