The Group Mind with Adam Crabtree

Adam Crabtree, RP, is a trainer of psychotherapists and has a private therapy practice in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, He is author of From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing, Multiple Man: Explorations in Possession and Multiple Personality, Trance Zero: Breaking the Spell of Conformity, and Evolutionary Love and the Ravages of Greed. He is also coauthor of Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, and he is coeditor of Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality.

Here he suggests that group trance states create a self-conscious group mind. Generally, the group self-consciousness is less evolved than individual self-consciousness. He points to discussions of the group mind in psychology, sociology, Theosophy, and in religious studies. He suggests that the group mind can be either positive or negative in terms of its impact upon individuals. He maintains that trance-maintainers and trance-breakers are both necessary.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in "parapsychology" ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980).

(Recorded on December 9, 2017)

[markangelagirard]

I have been a Canadian high school Math teacher for 20 years and I can see the notion of a "Group Mind" in my own classrooms. Although I teach each individual student, the industrial nature of the school system in western culture creates incentives for me to teach to the "Group Mind" of the class. In September, I start my "conversations" with the group mind and these conversations end in June. I judge my own personal progress by how intelligent these group mind conversations are by the end of the year.

[Chicken_Little_Syndrome]

Excellent discussion. Very relevant and informative.

[danielduarte]

This concept reminds me of the concept of the egregore. Maybe individual minds when partaking of a common idea create a group mind that, in turn, affects the group which originally created it. Thank you, Jeffrey and Adam Crabtree.

[AnthrYrslf]

Always grateful for the eternal observer within

[Chicken_Little_Syndrome]

Gustave Le Bon 's 1895 "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind" might make for a relevant read.

[skyblue-lbkr]

now you're speaking the language of all my

[DarkMoonDroid]

12:21 That's *RIGHT!*
The Human scale of time and space is extremely small!
Everything he's saying can be checked by this idea.
We put things which are perceived from the human scale into totally different categories, when they may actually be the same thing just at different scales.
Our perceptions are trained.
They can be re-trained!

Great conversation!

[anothenymously]

It's more likely the group mind is born from strictly our mental wiring to be in social groups and need for identity establishment. The more "supernatural" examples are because our social capability is very well developed, on an evolutionary standpoint, to out compete pure survival fitness. In other words we are very empathetic and perceptive on that level.
So the group mind functions on the collected principle biological values of neurology

[Flanalb]

It seems that you are discussing what in Ken Wilber's AQAL model would be the plural subjective (lower left quadrant). At the same time, a description of the mechanisms (projection, trance, etc.) would be a plural objective discussion (lower right). The real trick (which I am not convinced the Integral camp has really sussed completely) is to understand the subjective experience of the group mind in sufficient detail to be able to express it across the subjective/objective boundary. (I think that is what you were saying about Group Mind's being variably self-conscious.)
Socio-mathematical joke: Trance-keepers vs Trance-breakers = trance-mogrification.

[chiccorealo]

We are one unless we want independent thought which may be an illusion too?Why is the need for independent thought valuable as well as group mind? Is there a switch and was that switch developed for self-survival? Are some more group mind versus independent thinkers, the latter being without the proclivity to bond, perhaps?

[stephenambrosich]

…OK…for his authorship and arm chaired presentation, Crabtree never even mentioned the word `egregore’ as a categorical phenomena across cultures and historical contexts. Google, on a simple look-up, has over 148 K referred links. The presentation is premised about para-psychological and socio-political dynamics.

[mikesoussan]

Dr Mishlove, it is not that God is childish in the bible, but the fact is that the bible does not speak of God at all. God as the transcendental, spiritual, omnipotent, omniscient, moral, creator divinity that we imagine is not in the scriptures at all. The Elohim (wrongly translated as God) do in fact exhibit childish and immature characteristics because they are flesh and blood beings that are pretty much like the humans they made ...