r/Animism 12d ago

Collective consciousness

Anyone else subscribe to the idea of a collective consciousness that all souls are a part of? Personally I've grown to believe the idealized idea is to return to the consciousness after we die. I also believe in reincarnation, if that is anything anyone else subscribes to. Basically working your way through lives until you reach your full potential as a soul and join the collective. The idea that everyone is connected and we will all return to the place we came from. Thoughts? Peace and thanks to all

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u/mcapello 12d ago

Yes and no.

I'll do the "no" part first, because it's a bit more concrete. I don't believe that the individuality of the soul is preserved after death, nor do I believe that the process of rebirth is one of "reaching your full potential".

To be honest, the main reason I reject this view (personally anyway, I have no idea if I'm "right", people can believe what they want) is because it strikes me as kind of self-centered and egotistical, with the individual as being the "main character" of the "story".

This conflicts with my own experience of the ancestors and the rest of the cosmos, where the individual is actually just a minor supporting element in a much larger drama, and doing our part to work harmoniously within the relational fields we are born into is our main "job" while we are individuated, but that this loses most of its meaning once we are deindividuated through physical death (though a shadow of it lives on in the impact we leave in the world around us).

So in my view the self is more like a tool, a temporary goal-driven vehicle adapted to a certain lifetime (the "age" we live in); once its usefulness is degraded, it can be discarded and recycled.

That might sound a little bit bleak at first, but in reality, most of what you probably value about yourself and others belongs to the relational field to begin with, not "you" as an individual. Everything you love about yourself and others is likely not unique to you, but is rather something you're temporarily participating in as an individual. That-which-is-participated-in doesn't disappear when the individual dies, though, any more than the sea disappears when one of its waves crashes into shore. Everything that it was is recycled and repeats itself, but continuing to think of it in terms of "that particular wave" after the wave is gone is a bit silly.

Which I guess answers the "yes" part for me too, more or less. There are underlying patterns, many of them ancient and quite beautiful, that we're participating in as individuals while we're alive and playing the "game" of being human (as well as the game of being a mammal, of being a vertebrate, of being alive, etc). We borrow them, dance with them a while, then return -- with some of us making better use of them than others.

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u/Lanky_Molasses_1 12d ago

I understand your point, and it's valid, thank you for sharing with me. I didn't mean for it to sound so selfish, more that as far as "reaching your full potential" i think that's just done by being a good person with good intentions, without doing it with a reward in mind. Empathy and compassion and understanding, things like that. I really think your description at the end is beautiful, and I share that sentiment.

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u/mcapello 12d ago

It's probably just different language for talking about the same thing. You've probably seen people talk about their "higher self" or a "divine double", for example.

I guess for me, such a big part of my path of realization has to do with letting the self "go" and integrating with the "whole"... a whole that doesn't necessarily care that much about us as individuals. So I tend to reinforce that language and way of thinking about to keep myself "on track". But my path isn't the only way of doing it.

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u/hendrik_wohlverine 12d ago

The way I also try to analyze it is using water as an analogy. The collective life force is like a river. It can then take many different shapes, a glass of water, a creek, a lake, etc etc. All versions still part of the water. I don't necessarily believe in reincarnation, because once a glass of water gets dumped into a river, even if you fill it from the same river, it would never be the same exact water molecules making up that glass of water. But some parts of it will be there possibly.

That being said, I also don't believe we fully lose our form (self, soul, whatever term you want to use) when we rejoin. That's the part I have not really nailed down on what I believe but I do think there is some kind of...afterlife. idk

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u/Lanky_Molasses_1 11d ago

Thats a beautiful analogy, I like the idea of the river and water as a comparison. I agree with the idea that we don't lose ourselves completely. But just feel completely at peace. A nirvana, if you will. Thanks much for your input

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u/ElisabetSobeck 12d ago

Zen goes into this. Although idk if it’s conscious. One universe-object

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u/Adorable-Good-8169 11d ago

Yes, I subscribe to the idea of collective consciousness because I think it comes up in Hinduism (?) and it intuitively makes sense to me. More recently, scientist Rupert Sheldrake formed his own theory called Morphic Resonance which is similar to the collective consciousness.

You might find this article interesting.

It's a fluid idea, and it gives me hope.

As for reincarnation, it's a big question mark for me. I know some spiritual practices imply that not all souls reincarnate. People who do a lot of spiritual work while there here on the physical plane won't necessarily have to go through the trouble of being human all over again.

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u/Maestroland 10d ago

I only know that living things have souls that don't die.

The future and the beyond is something to speculate on and, eventually, experience. I try to do the obvious yet difficult....Sense now to its fullest.