For centuries, philosophers from Plato forward have used the term noetic to refer to experiences that pioneering psychologist William James (1902) described as:
…states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority.
“The Sound Of Silence”
Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
“Fools,” said I, “You do not know.
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you.”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence.”
Isaiah 25:7
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow death up forever.
“If only I hadn’t seen ‘it’. That terrible ‘it’.”
The above sentence struck me as so so profound … seems it helps to explain the past 20 or so years of my life.
Out of context the sentence is meaningless … even in context the sentence is meaningless for most readers … I find Tolstoy to be a very deep thinker.
The sentence stands alone as an allegory … let me share a few of my thoughts.
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The verb “see” is symbolic … nothing is seen with the eyes or any other human sense receptor. Yet a “knowing” is communicated and indelibly stamped onto our consciousness.
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The pronoun ‘it’ is also symbolic … but what it symbolizes can’t be described or explained in words or images etc. Yet … a “knowing” of what this ‘it’ represents is referred to above as the something that is indelibly stamped onto our consciousness.
Robert Kenny defines the notion as: “Collective consciousness is a mode of awareness that emerges at the first transpersonal stage of consciousness, when our identities expand beyond our egos. A crucial capacity that accompanies this awareness is the ability to intuitively sense and work with the interactions between our and others energy fields, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. For example, just as Gene Rodenberry imagined a future where Star Trek’s Spock could mind meld with others, more of us are now becoming aware of our capacity not only to intuit each other’s thoughts and emotions, but also to consciously think and create together without communicating through our five senses.
While poking around I came across the ‘Global Consciousness Project’ … a significant and contemporary investigation of the capabilities of the individual and collective human mind. In an article written by Roger Nelson I found the question “Is there a sense in which mind is present in the world beyond the brain?”
Seems to me Rogers is posing the same question St Augustine posed 1,600 years ago … “Surely that cannot be external to itself, it must be within the mind. How than can it fail to grasp it?” … Hmmm!
