Stanley Krippner suggests that, at a subconscious level, we are all subject to the influence of myths operating in our lives. Some of these are irrational and destructive. Others are positive and rational. Through the use of ritual, dreams, and mental imagery, we can bring these powerful dynamics into the light of consciousness. Krippner describes some of the important influences on his approach to personal mythology – including Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Albert Ellis, and Philip Zimbardo. 

Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Saybrook University, is a Fellow in five APA divisions, and past-president of two divisions (30 and 32). Formerly, he was director of the Maimonides Medical Center Dream Research Laboratory, in Brooklyn NY. He is co-author of Dream Telepathy, Extraordinary Dreams and How to Work with Them, The Mythic Path, and Haunted by Combat: Understanding PTSD in War Veterans, and co-editor of Debating Psychic Experience: Human Potential or Human Illusion, Healing Tales, Healing Stories, Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence, Advances in Parapsychological Research and many other books. He is a Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and has published cross-cultural studies on spiritual content in dreams.

Mais qu'y a-t-il dans l'inconscient collectif ? Dans la mesure où l'inconscient collectif contient les structures fondamentales de l'esprit humain, il est moins constitué de matériaux que de structures.

Ce point est délicat. Une "structure", c'est une configuration logique, un système de relations, un ensemble de rapports. Par exemple, si nous disons d'un objet qu'il a une structure ternaire, c'est qu'il est constitué par un rapport entre trois éléments (quels que soient ces éléments). La configuration chrétienne Père / Fils / Saint-Esprit possède une structure ternaire particulière (le troisième élément permettant la relation des deux autres), que l'on appelle la "trinité". L'espace géométrique que nous projetons sur le monde a une structure tridimensionnelle, dans la mesure où la place d'un objet est déterminé par un triple rapport à l'origine (0), mesuré par les "coordonnées" de l'objet (x, y et z). Une structure n'a donc pas de "contenu" : elle est un pur système de rapports. Elle obtient un contenu lorsque nous projetons cette structure sur un matériau donné, ou que nous l'utilisons pour "mettre en forme" ce matériau.

Les structures déposées dans l'inconscient collectif sont les structures fondamentales que l'esprit humain mobilise pour penser le monde (intérieur et extérieur), le comprendre, le représenter. Ces structures déposées dans l'inconscient collectif, Jung les nomme : "archétypes". Attention : un archétype, ce n'est donc pas une image (une image a toujours un contenu) : c'est, pourrait-on dire, la structure d'une image, le système de rapports entre les éléments qui la composent.

Pour comprendre cette idée (qui n'est pas facile) de Jung, on peut prendre son terrain d'application favori : l'ethnologie. Pour Jung, on retrouve dans les productions culturelles de groupes humains qui n'ont jamais été en rapport des analogies, c'est-à-dire des ressemblances de structure. Ainsi, on peut remarquer que des masques africains, des masques sud-asiatiques font apparaître des analogies flagrantes : les couleurs changent, ils ne renvoient pas aux mêmes dieux, ils n'ont pas le même sens, etc. mais ils possèdent une structure commune (le rapport entre les différentes parties du visage, leur taille relative, etc.)

Voici par exemple deux masques : le premier est indonésien, le second est africain.

Ca ne ressemble pas à l'analyse littéraire que vous connaissez ? C'est parce que vous ne faites pas d'analyse structurale !] 

Lévi-Strauss a donc montré que des mythes de cultures différentes pouvaient être analogues, c'est-à-dire avoir la même structure ; cette structure peut donc être considérée comme "trans-culturelle". Ces structures transculturelles, Jung les appellerait : des archétypes. Et, pour lui, elles proviennent de l'inconscient collectif.

Pour synthétiser, on peut donc établir trois ressemblances assez remarquables entre la pensée de Jung et celle de Lévi-Strauss :

 a) Pour Jung et Lévi-Strauss, la base fondamentale de la psyché humaine est universelle, ce qui repose sur le fait que le cerveau de tous les hommes, dans ses structures fondamentales (la "différenciation cérébrale"), est identique. C'est ce qui explique que des structures identiques puissent se retrouver dans des productions appartenant à des groupes culturels séparés (dans l'espace et dans le temps). Vous trouverez un texte support pour ce point ici.

b) Pour Jung et Lévi-Strauss, cette base fondamentale de l'esprit humain est constituée, non de contenus, mais de structures, qui se trouvent mobilisées pour construire nos représentations du monde et nos productions culturelles  (masques, mythes, etc.)

c) Pour Jung et Lévi-Strauss, ces structures fondamentales sont déposées dans un espace inconscient. Pour Jung, il s'agit de l'inconscient collectif ; pour Lévi-Strauss, il s'agit tout simplement de "l'inconscient" (Lévi-Strauss n'est pas psychanalyste).

Arrêtons-nous un instant sur ce dernier point. Si l'inconscient contient des structures fondamentales qui sont universelles, alors on peut admettre avec Lévi-Strauss que l'inconscient soit "transculturel" : et l'on peut donc considérer que l'inconscient est ce qui fonde la possibilité d'une communication des cultures. Au-delà des différences culturelles, il existe un socle fondamental commun à l'esprit de tous les hommes (= universel) : les structures de l'inconscient ; et si les systèmes culturels reposent ainsi sur un socle universel commun, on peut admettre qu'ils peuvent communiquer.  

Truth be told, it does not look good for Jung. Unlike Nietzsche, whose work was deliberately bastardized by Nazis, beginning with his own sister, Jung need not be taken out of context to be read as anti-Semitic. There is no irony at work in his 1934 paper The State of Psychotherapy Today, in which he marvels at National Socialism as a “formidable phenomenon,” and writes, “the ‘Aryan’ unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish.” This is only one of the least objectionable of such statements, as historian Andrew Samuels demonstrates.

One Jungian defender admits in an essay collection called Lingering Shadows that Jung had been “unconsciously infected by Nazi ideas.” In response, psychologist John Conger asks, “Why not then say that he was unconsciously infected by anti-Semitic ideas as well?”—well before the Nazis came to power. He had expressed such thoughts as far back as 1918. Like the philosopher Martin Heidegger, Jung was accused of trading on his professional associations during the 30s to maintain his status, and turning on his Jewish colleagues while they were purged.

Yet his biographer Deirdre Bair claims Jung’s name was used to endorse persecution without his consent. Jung was incensed, “not least,” Mark Vernon writes at The Guardian, “because he was actually fighting to keep German psychotherapy open to Jewish individuals.” Bair also reveals that Jung was “involved in two plots to oust Hitler, essentially by having a leading physician declare the Führer mad. Both came to nothing.” And unlike Heidegger, Jung strongly denounced anti-Semitic views during the war. He “protected Jewish analysts,” writes Conger, “and helped refugees.” He also worked for the OSS, precursor to the CIA, during the war.

His recruiter Allen Dulles wrote of Jung’s “deep antipathy to what Nazism and Fascism stood for.” Dulles also cryptically remarked, “Nobody will probably ever know how much Prof. Jung contributed to the allied cause during the war.” These contradictions in Jung’s words, character, and actions are puzzling, to say the least. I would not presume to draw any hard and fast conclusions from them. They do, however, serve as the necessary context for Jung’s observations of Adolph Hitler. Nazis of today who praise Jung most often do so for his supposed characterization of Hitler as “Wotan,” or Odin, a comparison that thrills neo-pagans who, like the Germans did, use ancient European belief systems as clothes hangers for modern racist nationalism.

In his 1936 essay, “Wotan,” Jung describes the old god as a force all its own, a “personification of psychic forces” that moved through the German people “towards the end of the Weimar Republic”—through the “thousands of unemployed,” who by 1933 “marched in their hundreds of thousands.” Wotan, Jung writes, “is the god of storm and frenzy, the unleasher of passions and the lust of battle; moreover he is a superlative magician and artist in illusion who is versed in all secrets of an occult nature.” In personifying the “German psyche” as a furious god, Jung goes so far as to write, “We who stand outside judge the Germans far too much as if they were responsible agents, but perhaps it would be nearer the truth to regard them also as victims.”

“One hopes,” writes Per Brask, “evidently against hope, that Jung did not intend” his statements “as an argument of redemption for the Germans.” Whatever his intentions, his mystical racialization of the unconscious in “Wotan” accorded perfectly well with the theories of Alfred Rosenberg, “Hitler’s chief ideologist.” Like everything about Jung, the situation is complicated. In a 1938 interview, published by Omnibook Magazine in 1942, Jung repeated many of these disturbing ideas, comparing the German worship of Hitler to the Jewish desire for a Messiah, a “characteristic of people with an inferiority complex.” He describes Hitler’s power as a form of “magic.” But that power only exists, he says, because “Hitler listens and obeys….”

His Voice is nothing other than his own unconscious, into which the German people have projected their own selves; that is, the unconscious of seventy-eight million Germans. That is what makes him powerful. Without the German people he would be nothing.

Jung’s observations are bombastic, but they are not flattering. The people may be possessed, but it is their will, he says, that the Nazi leader enacts, not his own. “The true leader,” says Jung, “is always led.” He goes on to paint an even darker picture, having closely observed Hitler and Mussolini together in Berlin:

In comparison with Mussolini, Hitler made upon me the impression of a sort of scaffolding of wood covered with cloth, an automaton with a mask, like a robot or a mask of a robot. During the whole performance he never laughed; it was as though he were in a bad humor, sulking. He showed no human sign.

His expression was that of an inhumanly single-minded purposiveness, with no sense of humor. He seemed as if he might be a double of a real person, and that Hitler the man might perhaps be hiding inside like an appendix, and deliberately so hiding in order not to disturb the mechanism.

With Hitler you do not feel that you are with a man. You are with a medicine man, a form of spiritual vessel, a demi-deity, or even better, a myth. With Hitler you are scared. You know you would never be able to talk to that man; because there is nobody there. He is not a man, but a collective. He is not an individual, but a whole nation. I take it to be literally true that he has no personal friend. How can you talk intimately with a nation?

Read the full interview here. Jung goes on to further discuss the German resurgence of the cult of Wotan, the “parallel between the Biblical triad… and the Third Reich,” and other peculiarly Jungian formulations. Of Jung’s analysis, interviewer H.R. Knickerbocker concludes, “this psychiatric explanation of the Nazi names and symbols may sound to a layman fantastic, but can anything be as fantastic as the bare facts about the Nazi Party and its Fuehrer? Be sure there is much more to be explained in them than can be explained by merely calling them gangsters.”

Source: https://www.openculture.com/2017/11/carl-jung-psychoanalyzes-hitler.html

The Global Consciousness Project (GCP, also called the EGG Project) is a parapsychology experiment begun in 1998 as an attempt to detect possible interactions of "global consciousness" with physical systems. The project monitors a geographically distributed network of hardware random number generators in a bid to identify anomalous outputs that correlate with widespread emotional responses to sets of world events, or periods of focused attention by large numbers of people. The GCP is privately funded through the Institute of Noetic Sciences[1] and describes itself as an international collaboration of about 100 research scientists and engineers.

Skeptics such as Robert T. Carroll, Claus Larsen, and others have questioned the methodology of the Global Consciousness Project, particularly how the data are selected and interpreted,[2][3] saying the data anomalies reported by the project are the result of "pattern matching" and selection bias which ultimately fail to support a belief in psi or global consciousness.[4] Other critics have stated that the open access to the test data "is a testimony to the integrity and curiosity of those involved". But in analyzing the data for 11 September 2001, May et al. concluded that the statistically significant result given by the published GCP hypothesis was fortuitous, and found that an alternative method of analysis gave only chance deviations throughout.[5]:2

Background

Roger D. Nelson developed the project as an extrapolation of two decades of experiments from the controversial Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR).[6]

In an extension of the laboratory research utilizing hardware random number generators called FieldREG, investigators examined the outputs of REGs in the field before, during and after highly focused or coherent group events. The group events studied included psychotherapy sessions, theater presentations, religious rituals, sports competitions such as the Football World Cup, and television broadcasts such as the Academy Awards.[7]

FieldREG was extended to global dimensions in studies looking at data from 12 independent REGs in the US and Europe during a web-promoted "Gaiamind Meditation" in January 1997, and then again in September 1997 after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The project claimed the results suggested it would be worthwhile to build a permanent network of continuously-running REGs.[8] This became the EGG project or Global Consciousness Project.

Comparing the GCP to PEAR, Nelson, referring to the "field" studies with REGs done by PEAR, said the GCP used "exactly the same procedure... applied on a broader scale."[9]

Methodology

The GCP's methodology is based on the hypothesis that events which elicit widespread emotion or draw the simultaneous attention of large numbers of people may affect the output of hardware random number generators in a statistically significant way. The GCP maintains a network of hardware random number generators which are interfaced to computers at 70 locations around the world. Custom software reads the output of the random number generators and records a trial (sum of 200 bits) once every second. The data are sent to a server in Princeton, creating a database of synchronized parallel sequences of random numbers. The GCP is run as a replication experiment, essentially combining the results of many distinct tests of the hypothesis. The hypothesis is tested by calculating the extent of data fluctuations at the time of events. The procedure is specified by a three-step experimental protocol. In the first step, the event duration and the calculation algorithm are pre-specified and entered into a formal registry.[10] In the second step, the event data are extracted from the database and a Z score, which indicates the degree of deviation from the null hypothesis, is calculated from the pre-specified algorithm. In the third step, the event Z-score is combined with the Z-scores from previous events to yield an overall result for the experiment.

The remote devices have been dubbed Princeton Eggs, a reference to the coinage electrogaiagram, a portmanteau of electroencephalogram and Gaia.[11] Supporters and skeptics have referred to the aim of the GCP as being analogous to detecting "a great disturbance in The Force."[2][12][13]

Claims and criticism of effects from the September 11 terrorist attacks

The GCP has suggested changes in the level of randomness may have occurred during the September 11, 2001 attacks at the times of the plane impacts and the building collapses, and over the two days following the attacks.[14]

Independent scientists Edwin May and James Spottiswoode conducted an analysis of the data around the 11 September 2001 events and concluded there was no statistically significant change in the randomness of the GCP data during the attacks and the apparent significant deviation reported by Nelson and Radin existed only in their chosen time window.[5] Spikes and fluctuations are to be expected in any random distribution of data, and there is no set time frame for how close a spike has to be to a given event for the GCP to say they have found a correlation.[5] Wolcotte Smith said "A couple of additional statistical adjustments would have to be made to determine if there really was a spike in the numbers," referencing the data related to September 11, 2001.[15] Similarly, Jeffrey D. Scargle believes unless both Bayesian and classical p-value analysis agree and both show the same anomalous effects, the kind of result GCP proposes will not be generally accepted.[16]

In 2003, a New York Times article concluded "All things considered at this point, the stock market seems a more reliable gauge of the national—if not the global—emotional resonance."[17]

According to The Age, Nelson concedes "the data, so far, is not solid enough for global consciousness to be said to exist at all. It is not possible, for example, to look at the data and predict with any accuracy what (if anything) the eggs may be responding to."[18]

Robert Matthews said that while it was "the most sophisticated attempt yet" to prove psychokinesis existed, the unreliability of significant events to cause statistically significant spikes meant that "the only conclusion to emerge from the Global Consciousness Project so far is that data without a theory is as meaningless as words without a narrative".[19]

See also

• Random number generation

• Simulation hypothesis

  • Web Bot, a project to predict events using the 'collective unconsciousness' on the Internet.[20]

• Collective unconscious

References

1. "| Institute of Noetic Sciences". Retrieved 2016-07-23.

2. "Terry Schiavo and the Global Consciousness Project". Skeptic News. 27 April 2005. Retrieved 2008-05-05.

3. Larsen, Claus (1 January 2003). "An Evening with Dean Radin". Skeptic Report. Retrieved 2008-05-05.

4. Carroll, Robert Todd. "Global consciousness". The Skeptic's Dictionary. Retrieved 2010-01-05.

5. May, E.C.; et al. "Global Consciousness Project: An Independent Analysis of The 11 September 2001 Events" (PDF).

6. Carey, Benedict (6 February 2007). "A Princeton lab on ESP plans to close its doors". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-08-03.

7. Bierman, 1996; Blasband, 2000; Nelson, 1995, 1997; Nelson et al., 1996, 1998a, 1998b; Radin, 1997; Radin et al., 1996.

8. Nelson, Roger; Boesch, Holger; Boller, Emil; Dobyns, York; Houtkooper, Joop; Lettieri, Arnold; Radin, Dean; Russek, Linda; Schwartz, Gary; Wesch, Jerry (1998). "Global Resonance of Consciousness: Princess Diana and Mother Teresa". the electronic Journal for Anomalous Phenomena. Retrieved 24 December 2015.

9. "The EGG Story". Noosphere.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2010-01-05.

10. "GCP Event registry". Retrieved 2009-10-17.

11. "Gathering of a global mind". Retrieved 2008-03-23.

12. Williams, Bryan J. (12 August 2002). "Exploratory Block Analysis of Field Consciousness Effects on Global RNGs on September 11, 2001". Noosphere. Retrieved 2009-10-07.

13. "A disturbance in the Force...?". Boundary Institute. December 2001. Retrieved 2009-10-07.

14. "September 11, 2001: Exploratory and Contextual Analyses". Retrieved 2008-07-12.

15. Berman, A.S. (6 December 2001). "Did Sept. 11 events refocus global consciousness?". USA Today. Retrieved 2010-01-05.

16. Scargle, Jeffrey D (2002). "Was there evidence of global consciousness on September 11, 2001?" (PDF). Journal of Scientific Exploration. 16 (4): 571–577.

17. Reed, J.D. (9 March 2003). "So just what makes the Earth move?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-01-05.

18. Kizilos, Katherine (28 April 2007). "Mind over matter". The Age. Melbourne. Retrieved 2010-01-05.

19. Matthews, Robert (9 February 2009). "Does mind affect matter?". The National. Abu Dhabi. Archived from the original on 2009-03-15. Retrieved 2010-01-05.

20. Shamah, David (23 December 2008). "Digital World: I have seen the future,and it's on the Web". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2009-10-07.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_Consciousness_Project

Gamma emission (40 Hz brainwaves) are present in the frontal lobes of people of "higher consciousness." Neurofeedback was used to train non-advanced meditators to emit gamma brainwaves, resulting in similiar subjective reports of "higher consciousness."

Beverly Rubik, Ph.D., is a prolific biophysicist associated with the Institute of Frontier Science and Saybrook Graduate School in San Francisco. Dr. Rubik presently serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, Integrative Medicine Insights, and ReVision.

Vieilles de plus de 100 millions d’années, les fourmis comptent plus de 12 000 espèces différentes, réparties jusqu’aux derniers recoins de la Terre sauf là où l’altitude et le grand froid les repoussent. Professionnelles de l’agriculture, de la chasse, et du travail collectif, leur fonctionnement communautaire est réglé au bouton. Quel est donc leur secret ?

Comme l’explique le documentaire La planète des fourmis – Anatomie d’une colonie, de Rick Manley et Graham Russel, les fourmis s’organisent en sociétés selon un système de castes, dont chacune a ses propres fonctions bien établies : la reine a pour unique rôle de pondre pour assurer la continuité de la colonie, les soldates patrouillent les salles de la fourmilière pour en assurer la sécurité, et les ouvrières vaquent à leurs tâches respectives sans relâche. Pourtant, aussi incroyable que cela puisse paraître, il n’existe pas de hiérarchie chez les fourmis. Aucun centre de commandement, aucun chef pour diriger les autres, même la reine ne prend aucune décision. Alors comment ces minuscules insectes parviennent-ils à s’organiser pour vivre ensemble ?

Le secret de la vie sociétale des fourmis réside dans leur forme particulière d’intelligence, que reflète déjà leur mode de communication collective. Grâce aux belles images et maquettes de l’exposition Mille milliards de fourmis actuellement au Palais de la découverte à Paris, l’on peut voir que la forme principale de communication entre fourmis est chimique, grâce aux phéromones libérés par leur abdomen. Cette intelligence collective coopérative est la clef du travail communautaire quotidien de ces insectes, et leur permet même d’accomplir de véritables prouesses. Imaginez un groupe de fourmis tendre une embuscade et se jeter sur leur proie prise au piège, ou encore que lorsque les fourmis « légionnaires » déplacent leur nid, des légions de soldates forment une haie d’honneur permettant aux ouvrières de porter les morceaux en convoi sécurisé. Les fourmis « de feu » vivant en Amazonie, quant à elles, ont leur corps spécifiquement adapté à la coopération : chacune de leurs pattes se termine par un coussinet adhésif et une griffe, qui leur permet de s’agripper les unes aux autres pour former un radeau en cas d’inondation du fleuve.

Ce qui est remarquable, c’est que cette intelligence comporte également une dimension altruiste spécifique avec laquelle nous pouvons difficilement rivaliser. Bernard Werber, auteur de la trilogie bestseller sur les fourmis, nous expliquait en vue de la Journée de la compassion organisée par l’INREES en avril 2013 que ces insectes « ont développé un organe de la compassion, ou un organe de l’empathie, qu’on appelle le jabot social. C’est-à-dire qu’elles mangent pour se nourrir elles-mêmes, mais elles peuvent mettre une partie de la nourriture dans un estomac secondaire, qui sert uniquement à nourrir les gens qui ont faim autour d’elle. » Ce mode de transfert de nourriture, la trophallaxie, permet à une fourmi de régurgiter dans la bouche d’une autre qui en a besoin, une nourriture prédigérée. « C’est comme si nous avions en permanence une réserve d’énergie pour les pauvres ou pour les nécessiteux, et que nous la partagions naturellement, sans se dire qu’on fait quelque chose de bien, car nous aurions réalisé que se nourrir soi-même et nourrir les autres relèvent de la même notion », imagine l’écrivain.

Mais si les performances communautaires des fourmis, et même leur « organe de la compassion », nous semblent déjà incroyables, ces capacités pâlissent devant la profondeur de la connexion qui lie tous les individus d’une même société grâce à leur émission constante de phéromones. Dans une émission de Science Inter, Bernard Werber souligne : « c’est comme si nous, lorsque nous avons un stress, ce stress ne restait pas en vase clos dans notre cerveau, mais sortait, sous forme d’odeur ou de son, et que tous les gens autour de nous soient obligés de capter ce message et de partager ce stress. » D’après l’écrivain, il s’agit là d’un lien d’empathie absolue : « on partage ce que vit l’autre parce qu’il vit ça à l’extérieur de son corps sous forme d’odeur ». Ainsi, les fourmis seraient véritablement branchées les unes aux autres grâce à un lien qui frôle la conscience collective : en réalité, la fourmilière « ressemble à un organisme dont les cellules ne sont pas réunies comme nous dans un sac qui est notre peau, elles sont éclatées mais restent soudées par la communication », précise Bernard Werber.

Finalement, ce n’est que grâce à cette intelligence naturelle, toujours dirigée vers la coopération et l’empathie, que les fourmis peuvent vivre et travailler en sociétés pouvant aller à des milliers d’individus. Mais il faut savoir que cette extraordinaire connexion, source de leur fonctionnement et de leur vie, peut avoir des implications terribles sur une de leurs cités : « si on tue la reine, tout le monde va s’arrêter de bouger, et va attendre la mort. Et d’ailleurs j’ai assisté à ça dans l’une de mes fourmilières, où la reine est morte… C’était comme si tout le monde peu à peu s’endormait, et puis le lendemain tout le monde était mort » se rappelle Bernard Werber sur Science Inter.

Ces insectes remarquables ont ainsi su évoluer, à travers les millénaires, pour développer une forme d’intelligence leur permettant de vivre ensemble dans l’harmonie et le respect d’autrui. Et nous, êtres humains, n’aurions-nous pas quelque chose à en apprendre ?