The Knowing

In a world where many of us are still apt to think that there is nothing genuinely new or undiscovered in the world. We find ourselves emerged in researching mixedblood American ancestors. Something seems to be emerging on our collective frontier. Around the country and across the globe, from social change to think tanks, people are responding to an impulse to come together in shared exploration. And in their midst, something miraculous is being born.  It is, as if, something has shifted? People stop fighting for airspace and there is a kind of group intuition that develops. It's almost like the group as a whole becomes a tuning fork for the inflow of new facts and further wisdoms.
Call it collective consciousness, team synergy, co-intelligence, or group mind, a growing number of people are discovering through their own experience that whole's are indeed far more than the sum of their parts; that when individuals come together with a shared intention, in a conducive environment, something mysterious can come into being, with capacities and intelligence's that far transcend those of the individuals involved.
In these group experiences, people have access to a kind of knowing that's bigger than what we normally experience with each other.  You feel the presence of our mysterious and illusive ancestor, and you sense that everybody else in the group is also feeling them. There's a sense of openness and awareness of something larger than ones self. Your ability to communicate seems broader. What is astounding to people is how much creativity comes forth in a setting like that? You have a sense that the whole group is creating together, and you don't quite exactly know how.
A growing cadre of other researchers in this new field are finding, it seems that in the spaces between us, unexpected higher-order collective potentials can emerge that make even our greatest individual capacities look insignificant by comparison. And the implications for the way we understand ourselves and the way we work together are as startling as they are profound.  What's happening in these settings is that you're actually bringing up the new? That's what makes it so exciting for people to be a part of. You're bringing up the next level—whether it's deeper or higher or broader—and people sense that there's something there of immense value. Sometimes it shows up in the inner experience, either individually or collectively, as an 'Aha!~ Other times, everybody will go silent, because they are all reflecting on what has just been revealed. It's almost like a revelation of some sort makes itself visible.
If you've never read a book about this “collective intelligence,” you're not alone. Despite its widespread emergence, it's a phenomenon that until recently has almost escaped the lens of the social sciences. For the past decade or so, this nascent social dynamic has been quietly simmering on the cultural back burners, slowly building up steam for the moment when it would burst forth into full boil—a moment that may have just arrived. Thanks to the strong voices of a few key movers and shakers, this newly recognized potential is rapidly catching the attention of a growing number of innovators intrigued by the possibility of harnessing the creative power of collectives toward the resolution of our most complex problems.
Google “collective consciousness” and you'll get over 64,000 results. “Collective intelligence” brings 30,000; “group mind,” 20,000. A visit to some of the sites listed reveals a host of new organizations with names like the Co-Intelligence Institute, the Collective Wisdom Initiative, and community-intelligence.com, all dedicated to chronicling and furthering our understanding of higher-order group functioning. Peppered throughout the latest literature on leading-edge organizational development are an ever-growing number of references to concepts like “developing group synergy,” “tapping the group mind,” “unleashing collective creativity,” and “developing team coordination.” In increasingly diverse fields of endeavor, it seems, the power of the collective is coming to the forefront.
The fact that coordinated teams faced with a common task can access higher levels of functioning is, of course, not a new revelation.  “group mind,” experiences of team synergy or group flow that have lifted them to undreamed-of heights of coordination and effectiveness.  However, what seems to be new about what's happening today is that this phenomenon is not only arising spontaneously in increasingly diverse groups throughout the world but in our situation we become part of a common clan, once again. 

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