Glossary

Some of the terms used throughout this site refer to leading edge concepts and ideas not found in everyday language. This section, constantly evolving, can be read on its own or used as reference to the terms linked throughout this site. If you have a term or added definition you’d like to contribute, please contact us.
 

Affinity

A natural attraction to a person, thing or idea.
 

Coherence

Common definition: a logical, orderly, and aesthetically consistent relationship of parts.

Common Passion’s definition of human coherence as it relates to collective consciousness and Common Passion events:

An orderly, highly correlated and aesthetically consistent group of people who’ve mastered their own inner dynamic, i.e., are internally coherent, and can play in the larger, planetary field where their collective actions, attention and intentions are directed toward the immediate fulfillment of a shared desire, typically in alignment with any of the areas described in our Vision.

When people participate in Common Passion’s events, we create Rhythm Entrainment and subsequent non-local social and environmental effects.
 

Collective Consciousness

Definition by: What Can Science Tell Us About Collective Consciousness? by Robert Kenny, MBA

The circular ripples that radiate out from a pebble thrown into a pond can metaphorically represent our sense of ever widening identity. In Wilber’s 10-level model of consciousness, transpersonal development spans levels six through nine. I believe collective consciousness begins to emerge at level six. I define it as:

A mode of awareness, in which we directly experience, through an intuitive felt-sense, our union with the interconnected wholeness of life, and recognize ourselves in others. Our identity extends beyond our individual boundary and embraces the collective, through a free and conscious act of identification, rather than through definition by convention or external authority.

Once this awareness develops, individuals – because they now perceive themselves as mutually interdependent parts of a larger whole — develop an authentic, abiding and primary concern and care for common good and for the well-being, health and productive functioning of the communities to which they belong (including organizations and, eventually, the global community).

Note that I am speaking about a mode of awareness that may exist in an individual, not a collective. The phrase, “group mind”, that is sometimes used to refer to collective consciousness, gives the impression that a new mind and, therefore, consciousness emerges as a collective entity, a position that is speculative at present. I am therefore simply holding for now that the reported experience of connection, of communion, and of direct apprehension of the thoughts and feelings of others is due to some form of invisible interaction between the members of a group.
 

Consciousness

Consciousness in Cognitive and Western Philosophical Terms:

Consciousness is the quality or state of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is. As Max Velmans and Susan Schneider wrote in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness: “Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives.”

Western philosophers since the time of Descartes and Locke have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness and pin down its essential properties. Issues of concern in the philosophy of consciousness include whether the concept is fundamentally coherent; whether consciousness can ever be explained mechanistically; whether non-human consciousness exists and if so how can it be recognized; how consciousness relates to language; whether consciousness can be understood in a way that does not require a dualistic distinction between mental and physical states or properties; and whether it may ever be possible for computing machines like computers or robots to be conscious, a topic studied in the field of artificial intelligence.

Read more: wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness
 

Consciousness in Quantum Physics Terms:

In searching for the fundamental basis of physical reality and the nature of the mind, Goswami (1993) has defined consciousness as:

“The agency that affects quantum objects to make their behavior sensible.”

In choosing this criterion he hopes to show how mind can effect matter non-energetically because they share the same essence.

By making the leap from a universe based on bits of matter, to one based in consciousness, he hopes to logically and coherently resolve some of the major paradoxes of physics. He suggests that instead of everything being made of atoms, everything is made of consciousness.

If quantum objects are waves that spread in existence at more than one place, as QM has shown, then consciousness may be the agency that focuses the waves so we can observe them at one place.

Goswami labels this philosophy: “monistic as opposed to dualistic, and it is idealism because ideas (not to be confused with ideals) and the consciousness of them are considered to be the basic elements of reality; matter is considered to be secondary.”

Read more: bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_psycho08.htm
 

Correlation

The relationship between two variables during a period of time, especially one that shows a close match between the variables’ movements.
 

Non-Local/Nonlocality

In physics, nonlocality or action at a distance is the direct interaction of two objects that are separated in space with no perceivable intermediate agency or mechanism.
 

Rhythm Entrainment

Entrainment in the biomusicological sense refers to the synchronization of organisms to an external rhythm, usually produced by other organisms with which they interact socially. Examples include firefly flashing, mosquito wing clapping, as well as human music and dance such as foot tapping.

Joseph Jordania recently suggested that the human ability to be entrained was developed by the forces of natural selection as an important part of achieving the specific altered state of consciousness such as, battle trance. Achieving this state, in which humans lose their individuality, do not feel fear and pain, are united in a shared collective identity, and act in the best interests of the group, was crucial for the physical survival of our ancestors against the big African predators, after hominids descended from the safer trees to the dangerous ground and became terrestrial.

In Common Passion’s collective consciousness events participants become united in a shared collective reality through shared intentions and coherent activities.  This process leads to individually and collectively expressing the participants’ best intentions and interests. It is also suggested empirically and scientifically that these coherent activities may produce non-local effects in the environment and in surrounding non-participants. “It seems that nature finds it more economical in terms of energy to have periodic events that are close enough in frequency to occur in phase with each other,” says Itzhak Bentov in Stalking the Wild Pendulum… on the Mechanics of Consciousness.
 

Shared Intention or Collective Intentionality

Shared intentions form the foundation of Common Passion coherence events. Shared intentions are generally collectively developed and represent a set of ideas, feelings, experiences and activities that we wish to express collectively and coherently with others. Theoretically, scientifically and empirically these collectively shared intentions and coherent activities produce non-local, rhythmically entrained effects consistent with the shared intentions themselves.

In the philosophy of mind, collective intentionality characterizes the intentionality that occurs when two or more individuals undertake a task together. Examples include two individuals carrying a heavy table up a flight of stairs or dancing a tango.

In Common Passion’s events our intended outcomes are typically collective consciousness based, in the form of global mediations for example; and activity based: music, dancing, acts of service, as examples.

The notion that collectives are capable of forming intentions can be found, whether implicitly or explicitly, in literature going back thousands of years. For example, ancient texts such as Plato’s Republic discuss the cooperative determination of laws and social order by the group composed of society as a whole. This theme was later expanded into Social Contract theory by Enlightenment-era philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. In the 20th century, the likes of Wilfrid Sellars and Anthony Quinton noted the existence of “We-Intentions” amid broader discussion of the concept of intentionality, and thus laid the groundwork for the focused philosophical analysis of collective intentionality that began in the late 1980s.