There are species that are organized exclusively via collectives or superorganisms, to the point that the individual apparently matters only slightly or not at all, given that it is only a resource for the group. In this way, the needs of the community and its objectives are placed above any individual impulse. Somehow, these super-organisms would function by means of a "collective mind" formed by the sum of all their members, which would be given cohesion by the exchange of information among integrants, through chemical markers or other means. Interdependence and group collaboration would favour the emergence of very complex survival, adaptation and learning mechanisms as compared to individual cognitive abilities. In this way, the individual mind itself would be one more component of the collective mind. Any activity to be performed by an individual would be induced from the group, so that the ability of the former to move through life on its own would be almost impossible, depending entirely on the colective for its own survival. In the case of bees or ants, this form of organization reaches its highest extreme, although in reality we can observe different levels of consolidation of this type of scheme in any species, including our own.
In one way or another, each individual must be accountable to and supportive of the group to which they belong. A species, like any system (in this case, suprasystem), must seek its own homeostasis, balance, development and perpetuation within the environment in which it lives. Individuals are the necessary pawns to achieve this and evolution is the visible result of individual and collective adaptive processes. In a given world, the different species must be interrelated, creating, on the one hand, the shared biosphere, and, on the other, the collective consensus through which they interact. The Earth is also a superorganism, which probably seeks its evolution and homeostasis through the beings that live on it.
As a result of the group, we human beings achieve advances that would be impossible to acquire on our own. Society is the depository and transmitter of language, writing, culture and technology. At the same time, however, as humans we have a strong sense of self and a highly developed individual psyche, which often conflicts with our appearance as social beings. We live inside a contradiction, in which arises the following question: do I have the right to my individual evolution, or do I simply and primarily serve the (social) objectives of the collective and (biological) species, thus renouncing, or at least relegating my own progress as an individual (luminous) being to the background?
Let us remember that every living being is an individual system or matrix formed by the physical body, the mind-psyche and the energetic body. From the point of view of Emoenergetica, the human mind is considered to be dual or double, comprising of the egoic mind and the original mind. In turn, the ego has an individual and a collectivized part; it is closely linked to our existence as biological and social organisms. The ego is part of the automaton. On the other hand, the original mind is intrinsically connected to our nature as self-aware bubbles of energy; it is the manifestation of selfhood, the expression of the nagual within us. The collectivized mind serves the group. It is the loan that first the species and then society makes, imposes and then demands that we repay with interest. Both the collective and the individual portions of the ego develop, consolidate and take root throughout childhood and adolescence. The ego creates the person and the person creates the reflection of themselves with which they identify. However, as individuals and luminous beings, it is also within our possibilities to transcend this and thereby get rid of what is the greatest source of human contradiction; the ego is full of ignorance, pain and misery, while at the same time is offering us an experience of countless wonders and earthly pleasures.
In Nagualism they taught this crazy idea that the ego has its origin in an inorganic parasite that implants a foreign mind within our original mind at birth. Its purpose would be simply to obtain energy for its own sustenance (is anyone thinking about The Matrix?). These inorganic beings, which they called the flyers, would be situated on a higher level of consciousness unimaginable to us. They would feel the same compassion towards their food as we would towards a lettuce. Attacks of personal importance, anger, grief, attachment, worry, love, desire and that emotionality that we consider to be so "human" would be the result of the programming to which we are subjected, since the ensuing emotional flare-ups would be their nourishment. Obviously and seen in this light, this story seems completely far-fetched. However, if you stop to think about it, in recent years, within scientific and technological circles there has been a recurring question: are we living in a computer simulation? Mathematicians, physicists, philosophers... All consider in a perfectly normal way (regardless of whether they agree or not) the fact that it is technically possible for the known universe to be a virtual reality, created and managed by entities with an obviously superior technology. These beings would necessarily be pursuing some personal purpose for creating these virtualizations, whether it be scientific curiosity, entertainment or whatever. When the general public hears about these theories, they are met with fascination. However, if we speak of entities that supplant our true minds and control our universe, it seems like madness.
At the end of the day, it makes no difference whether one adheres to an extravagant idea about the origin of the ego or considers it an evolutionary failure or an inevitable psychological development... In the Emoenergetica model, the human being has a biological, a psychological and a transpersonal dimension. This human life, on this planet and in this way, would only be an intermediate step towards something greater. The transpersonal dimension is an ungerminated seed in most humans. Developing and ripening the fruit from that seed would take us beyond the egoic personality that is holding back our true potential. If humankind does not take this step towards vertical evolution, it will surely perish in the next centuries or millennia. Horizontal evolution, and the consequent technological developments, significantly increases the possibilities of self-destruction, not to mention other events that could happen in a cosmos without compassion like this. As long as we live life through the egoic mind, the problems of yesteryear, which manifest themselves in the struggle of man against man, will remain unresolved, with periods of stability and destruction alternating cyclically. Why do the world's problems remain fundamentally the same? Maybe because this is the world in which things cannot be fixed. Should we repair the cavern or forever leave it? We are more than persons, we are travellers of infinity who forgot that this world was just a stop, a cross on the map, a place full of treasures. Once these are dug up, we should leave here and continue our journey.
However, the foreign mind monopolizes our life and tries to subject the original individual mind to an existence in the shadows of the cave. Often, when the original part of the mind awakes from its lethargy for a moment and ventures outwards, the collectivized fraction of the mind reacts aggressively, taking this movement of the original mind as a threat to its status, filling the individual ego with doubts. This is the origin of humanity's age-old terror of knowing itself. It is the war of the human being against its ghosts, inspired by the epic myths of battles in search of El Dorado, which is in fact the search for our own true inner essence, in a literal way.
One of the main functions of the mind in general and of the human mind in particular is its volitional activity, which manifests itself through the selection of objectives and the decision-making process. Only one of the two minds can take the helm. And thus, the collectivized mind develops and makes its decisions based on interests that it believes to be its own. Meanwhile, the original mind remains in the shadows without too many possibilities open to it except to learn and to model itself through what the egoic mind lives and experiences, still producing internal impulses and movements that often generate discomfort and confusion in the psyche as a whole. But I will tell you a secret, remember that the ego is part of the automaton and not of the selfhood; and the latter is the only one that can make decisions, because only the nagual disposes of real freedom. So many times it seems that you decide, but it is your automatic part that marks the inertia, and the selfhood that passively nods.
The collectivized egoic mind gives strength from the outside to the first ring of power, which is the sum of the biological pattern of the species, plus socialization, plus personality. This is a natural condition and its result in the human being is the elaboration and emergence of a virtual figure, a reflection that we call "I" or “myself”. This, with the objective of benefiting the species, developed a strategy of group cohesion that is based on the psychological mechanism of emotional dependence. The consequence, from the point of view of the luminous being that we are, is a life without sufficient splendour or awareness to realize the deception. A life of individual ignorance in pursuit of collective continuity. A vicious cycle that repeats itself generation after generation and that is maintained in the close environment of the individual, often supported by the family model, in order to expand from there through the different social organizations via the model of dominator-dominated. I am sure that this is, or was, part of our natural and evolutionary process. I propose that it is perhaps time to dispense with it.
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The Two Minds by Chema Sanz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.