Concerning the World Mind

By George A. Boyd ©2017

Q: What is the world mind?

A: There are several constructions of the world mind, which are described below:

  1. A purported neuro-electric network connecting the brains of human beings – this allows us to understand other people’s communication.
  2. The Internet – the collected assembly of human knowledge on a series of storage devices throughout the world, allowing dynamic intercommunication of this knowledge. This is humanity’s concretization of the information Aether.
  3. The international forum for resolution of world problems – this includes international organizations like the United Nations and the World Court, which however ineffectually, attempt to work with the needs and concerns of disparate nations at different stages of economic and social development. This brings a global perspective on human affairs, and reminds us that we are one world—and humanity, however diverse, is one family.
  4. The mind of Nature – In the Gaia hypothesis, the world itself is a conscious being. It operates to nurture, care for, and sustain the different kingdoms under its aegis—the deva-angelic, human, animal, plant, monera (e.g., bacteria, protozoa, fungi, and viruses), and mineral.
  5. The collective mind that absorbs humanity in materialism – This vision of the collective world mind appears to conflate the maelstrom of evil that the Lower Astral Plane embodies with the combined progress of humanity in science, technologies, and humanistic social advancement outside the circle of the Planetary Initiations.

Aspirants and disciples need to be aware of the content that arises from the Lower Astral, and keep themselves free from its influences. They also need to be aware of the advances of science and humanism, and utilize these advances to enhance their career and carry out their life’s work.

  1. The “mind” outside the spiritual Path – Viewed from spiritual traditions embedded in the Cosmic, Supracosmic, and Transcendental levels of the Continuum of Consciousness, it appears that the Subtle, Planetary, and Transplanetary bands constitute an outer darkness, a matrix of nescience, or a cloak over the “higher truths” revealed upon their Path. What these traditions fail to grasp is that the darkness they see is their own unawakened potentials in these realms—what they have done is skipped ahead to Higher Octave spiritual work and failed to complete their spiritual development in these realms.

Even though it takes longer, in Mudrashram®, we complete your spiritual development in these lower bands first, before working in these higher octaves.

The Subtle, Planetary, and Transplanetary Realms have been construed as a series of lower chakras in the feet and legs below the spine, as a series of “lower worlds,” or a collective matrix of illusion (Maya). Some groups consider the personal integration centers of the human personality—the ego and the Self—are embedded in this “outer darkness” and must be transcended. Spiritual work, in their view, is that spiritual work is contingent upon restraining the personality and detaching from it, living instead in union with a higher spiritual essence.

  1. The Great Continuum of Consciousness – This vision of the world mind construes a continuum of consciousness reaching from centers below the waking state of consciousness in the Conscious mind to the highest levels of the Transcendental Sphere in the Superconscious mind. We have mapped this Continuum and explicated its many levels in the Mudrashram® Correspondence Course. In this perspective, spiritual groups colonize discrete levels upon this Continuum and open tracks through it—these are the different spiritual Paths. This view of the collective mind does not create splits between an outer mind and an inner Path—it instead describes and delineates the content at each level, noting where it dwells upon this Continuum.

We are concerned when spiritual traditions embrace world mind conceptions five and six that demonize and deprecate the material progress of the world, or write off entire bands of the Continuum as an illusion or as outer darkness. This can lead to paranoid belief systems that see evil everywhere; and produce protective “lighthouse” mindsets, where they confine themselves to the safety of the Light of the Path they have opened—and split themselves off from their personality and the rich content of the bands of the Continuum they have rejected.

We recommend that aspirants and disciples contemplate these seven types of world mind conceptions and familiarize themselves with them. They should pay special attention to see if they are creating inner splits between the “Path” and their personality, or between their Path and an “outer darkness.”