May/June 2004 Spirituality
Collective Intelligence
An Interview with Craig Hamilton

by Miriam Knight

You are the managing editor of What Is Enlightenment? magazine. Can you tell our readers a little bit about the vision and mission of the magazine?
The magazine focuses on what it means to live a wholly spiritual life; how can a spiritual perspective be brought to bear on all aspects of our life – politics, business, culture, and the environment. The lofty spiritual vision has to mean something in this world. We are all asking the perennial questions, but maybe we need new ones. Does what it means to be human change in the context of our changing understanding of the cosmos?

You recently wrote a piece for the magazine on "Collective Intelligence" based on research you’ve done with over twenty leaders in the field, as well as your own spiritual group’s experiences. What experiences have you and your spiritual group had with it?
Many groups report that they are that they are achieving a conscious resonance. When they come together to explore something, they become aware of a higher collective mind with properties and capacities that are greater than the sum of the parts; a higher level of wisdom. They have been finding it in situations you wouldn’t expect; not just in a spiritual environment, but also in business, social change and think tank environments.

Tell me about the intentional community in which you experienced this.
My community numbers around 60. Our spiritual teacher is Andrew Cohen, who had an awakening in India in 1986. It is a non-traditional path that is part of the greater consciousness evolution.
We do intensive spiritual practice. When we were in meditation a greater consciousness seemed to descend, and all would be aware of it. It seemed to open the door to a greater intuition. This was a synergistic phenomenon that occurred when we came together in the right way. We found that many other groups were experiencing this as well, though not every time.
I believe this is the next step in human evolution We humans have been through a long period of individuation and self-awareness. I sense is that the next step has to be toward the collective. The boundaries between us have to break down. I ask what could be possible if groups could be in touch with this all the time? Aware of interactive consciousness that both embraces our personal point of view but also that of the group.

It sounds a bit like the Borg from Star Trek.
Unlike the Borg, the individual capacities of people who have this experience seem to be heightened. Teillhard de Chardin had a vision of the noosphere – the thinking envelope surrounding the earth. This atmosphere is developing a field of consciousness. The biology is moving towards the omega point – a final merger into the supreme consciousness or Godhead.

What is the way to get into it?
Personal experience. I remember the first time it really burst forward in a powerful way. Sometimes we are referencing our own visions. Other times the nature of truth. "What does it mean that there is no separation?"
It was like something tore open the fabric of our reality and the new consciousness came over.

What are the right conditions?
Listening. People don’t tend to listen. They hear, while they are concentrating on what they will say next. You have to be willing to leave behind any focus on yourself, how you are going to be perceived, whether you are going to have anything intelligent to say. It becomes a spiritual discussion where you leave the ego at the door and focus on what is happening between you and the others.
Then there emerges a heightened awareness and a willingness to be vulnerable and take a risk; a wanting to speak authentically. When a group comes together in this spirit, it almost guarantees a heightened experience.

How did this affect the usual petty rivalries that you find in most communities?
Dramatically less because it’s not that anybody’s ego has gone away, but in this context it is a way of looking at these tensions through the field of shared inquiry and trust. We bring them all out and face them in a larger context without creating the ripples that have brought a lot of communities down.

What insights emerged from all this?
Telepathic resonance certainly seems to be one dimension. It is like we are all accessing the same pool of information. We experienced a greater sense of harmony and the realization that we are one and together at the same time; that we really are part of something larger. And the next day you run into that person and the connection is still alive. There developed a real practical sense of oneness, almost a moral obligation to the larger whole.

Wow, what if this could be come the way we all work together!
I think it could be a model. We have groups in Massachusetts, London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Like Sheldrake’s morphic resonance, we have found that when a group in one location has an experience, others of our groups report the same thing. If we start to try to make something happen on a larger scale, I’m hopeful that we could have a great impact on people everywhere.

Craig Hamilton can be reached at 413-637-6000 or 800-376-3210. What Is Enlightenment? - Exploring Spiritual Transformation in the 21st Century - is an award-winning magazine that brings together perennial wisdom with cutting-edge thinking to explore the highest reaches of human potential. It is sold in bookstores or by subscription. www.wie.org.