Readable, speaker-attributed text with links back to the original recording.
Chris Bache: I think that we have, for several thousand years, been on a journey which has been potentiating individuality. All the patriarchal religions and the whole masculine focus have, as it were, decided upon potentiating the individual, even to the point of asserting the survival of the soul for its reward. The notion that the soul lives forever in heaven or hell based upon the choices the individual makes is an enormous potentiation of individuals, but it comes at a great cost—tearing the individual free from the matrix of life. Now we seem to be moving in a new direction, where we're recontextualizing the stupendous accomplishment of the fully empowered individual. We're recontextualizing that individual within the subtler matrix of what Buddhism sometimes calls the Buddha womb, or the matrix consciousness, the Source consciousness, so that what was previously an unconscious relationship of embeddedness is now becoming a conscious relationship of embeddedness.
The ego can get frightened because the ego thinks its individuality requires separation and an unchanging self—these are usually the two concepts that come with self. Yet, neither of those are really true. There is a higher form of individuality that emerges and is compatible with the condition of interpenetration, not separability, and the condition of perpetual change, not an unchanging state. I think that's what Buddhism wanted to convey with the concept of anatta, or no self. It was fundamentally denying separability and an unchanging self, opting instead for a concept of self which is dynamic and interpenetrating. I think this is where we are moving evolutionarily. We have an individuality of a true self, reflective consciousness, potentiated over hundreds and thousands of incarnations—an increasingly potentiated self, directive self, emergent self, learning self, creating self—but contextualized within a matrix that supports and is nourished by that process. It truly does support it. It is the mother matrix that births this individual genius and is nourished by the learning of the individual genius. That's a long way from the world we've known, and that's the larger issue behind the fundamental challenge of the 21st century. I think we're pushing towards a global consciousness, a global citizenship, mediating between all the various divisions, nationalisms, factions, and religious divisions of history into a much more complex condition. It's not boundaryless entirely, but to some degree, it is boundaryless, which doesn't suffocate individuality but definitely recontextualizes it in a different way.
Interviewer: Yeah, absolutely. What do you see as sort of the ultimate applicability of this group wisdom or collective wisdom potential that's emerging? So, what do you see that as?
Chris Bache: I have a lot of energy around that question because it has very far-reaching implications. It touches everything from the dynamics of think tanks for augmenting creativity to our understanding of social, cultural, and psycho-spiritual evolution. For example, I think of an individual from a reincarnational perspective as a living, walking group. The more lifetimes a person has experienced, the more likely it is they will have more intelligence, more empathy, more understanding, more skills. In a sense, they are a living community of themselves. When you have a group of people come together—whether for spiritual purposes, social discussion, research, or think tank purposes—if you can harmonize yourselves psychologically, socially, and even physiologically, you can stimulate and augment your own functioning by augmenting a group consciousness, a group mind. This can have an uplifting, animating, and creativity-enhancing effect on the individual minds present.
This has significant implications for how we learn and create new knowledge collectively. It also profoundly affects our understanding of social dynamics. In a divisive classroom or cultural context, we miss out on this intelligence-enhancing and empathy-enhancing effect of a unified field that draws us into a higher state of sensitivity and knowing. However, if we have a congealed group with a good social process for coming together, we actually stimulate a more potent form of knowing and discovery. The group mind acts like a more powerful transceiver that connects individuals to the divine mind. We are clearly at an evolutionary impasse, needing breakthroughs to solve major technological questions and intellectual barriers—particularly in physics and sciences crucial for environmental purposes, like cold fusion and unified field theory.
If the planet remains fragmented—politically, racially, gender-wise, even speciesism-wise—this collective fragmentation prevents the potentiation of our individual genius. Conversely, if we move towards greater integration, social cohesion, and inclusiveness—including medical care and political democracy—this could literally potentiate the performance of our individual minds, simplifying breakthroughs with profound implications for technology, the humanities, and the arts. Particularly, this applies to sciences where we're facing real barriers that need solving to address environmental issues. Understanding the non-local quality of mind has profound social implications. When we grasp how our mind functions, not only in terms of comfort with itself but also its creativity and imagination, it's not just a result of individual health. It involves the health of our collective mind, giving us a vested interest in fostering a healthy society, culture, and globe. Such efforts would directly enhance individual well-being through morphic resonance and the mind's nature, not just indirectly through virtue.
Editorial note. All published transcripts in the Chris Bache Archive are lightly edited for readability. Disfluencies and partial phrases have been removed where they do not affect meaning. Verbatim diarized transcripts are preserved separately for research and verification.