Thoughts on the possibilities of shared conciousness?

Well... This past weekend I had a really rather profound experience that I'm still struggling to process... Despite my predeliction for quantum physics, I never truly believed in something like shared conciousness, yet I swear I experienced it & so did my friend.

We seemingly shared our two consciousnesses in one "mind" between our two bodies, our bodies mirrored each other for a short period... Only noticed because it was pointed out by our third friend and then we felt the break from each other.

Really interesting feeling / experience... I could feel him looking through my eyes!

What are your thoughts on the possibility of shared conciousness?

 

Really interesting topic I am a solo tripper so i can't say much about sharing the consciousness. But in some my DMT rituals and some trips if you are on the same level you perceive everything similar, and project same thoughts. Be greatful for having such a great friend that incident doesn't occur much often. I always believed in shared consciousness ITS REAL and IT DOES HAPPEN there are lots and lots of reports similar to yours check them out

 

I see it as a deeper view of communication. The internets helped a load with this "collective consciousness" thing, cos we can now share personal experiences, discoveries and delusions more than ever.

Whether or not it can get any deeper and more involved than that, I don't know, but it's pretty handy anyway.

 

I've had this happen while stoned. It just happened on saturday night with a friend.
I've also experienced the fusion of two bodies. Amazing!!

 

This happens every day while sober. It's a matter of degree, and on psychedelics this degree maybe is increased, however so is your dopamine levels and the 'significance' of all events, so have to filter out what's "really" going on and what is going on because you are high on LSD and perceiving it that way.

the first step of sharing consciousness is listening

 

Me and my girlfriend one night took some new acid, and not knowing the power of it we took three I think or four, I can't remember fully. But all I remember is the first hour seemed like about twelve, and at one point when she was on the other side of the room coming out of the bathroom, we didn't talk but it's like we knew what each other was thinking by just looking at each other...

we talked about it the next day how she just knew what i was thinking and i knew what she was. We were so fucked from those hits that we couldn't even talk, I couldn't form words, but yet we could communicate fully. It was amazing.

I was laying on her lap and unable to speak, we were communicating.

It seems unbelievable right now even talking about it, but it happened. 100%.

 

Could you elaborate on the dopamine/significance thing? VERY interested in what you mean by that.

That last sentence is golden. :sunny:

 

Yeah..I think a person becomes increasingly telepathic when their third eye is open.

 

I haven't experienced anything as profound as what some of you guys are describing, however, at a recent gig my friend and I were on 3 hits each and although having an amazing experience, we both felt slightly uncomfortable standing in the crowd.

During the intermission we agreed to sit for the second half of the show and as we were walking towards the side of the concert hall we were absolutely convinced that there was a mirror in front of us, so much so that I refused to go forward so as not to bump into it. After a few seconds of deliberation, we both said "fuck it" and walked forward simultaneously. The feeling we both felt was unbelievable. It was as if we had left the anxious atmosphere behind and entered the "safe zone". We sat with our backs against the wall next to some folks including an old couple and it felt so calming.

There was definitely a shared physical sensation of passing through something.

 

yeah i remember before i ever tried acid, i did alot of other things and thought, there's no way these things are possible. no way. the things people describe are not real and just exaggerations...

..but after i did it the first few times and experienced some of the things i did, it opened my mind up. I realized that the things i heard about weren't just made up but were experienced.

It's quite mind boggling and one of the most exciting things in the world wondering what great things are going to come from this trip.

 

Amazing Dope Tales by Stephen Gaskin has several accounts of shared consciousness and other things that happen when people get really high. It's a high book.

 

Just how we could say that Serotonin is responsible for feelings like "happiness", Dopamine is responsible for subjective feelings of "reward" and "importance". It's really more complicated than this and I honestly don't have the medical training to go in depth, but I do know what I'm about to say directly from a doctor, who is also one of my best friends and oldest tripping partners. When someone does cocaine, it releases dopamine and results in feelings of great reward; pleasure, and the profound desire to do more (everyone loves being rewarded!). When you're high on something like cocaine, music sounds GREAT, you feel AMAZING, you feel POWERFUL, STRONG, all these emotions/sensations are running through you because of increased dopamine levels. Now, fast forward to day 4 of this cocaine binge, and what is happening? Well, same thing that happens with people who do too much meth for example (or Parkinsons, a geriatric condition of dopamine overdose) ; paranoia, shakiness, irritability, "shadow-people" type hallucinations, peeking through blindfolds to make sure cops are not outside, etc.

Now, a lot of this is due to sleep deprivation in the case of coke/meth binges, but the main cause of these side effects is too much dopamine.

Here's where it gets cool! Turns out people with Schizophrenia have too much dopamine too. They naturally have too much of the chemical that makes everything seem BIG and GRANDIOSE, whether good or bad (good example: the song you're listening to is so amazing that you start rocking out so hard you break a sweat) (bad example: you heard a noise through the wall and conclude your neighbour is a swat team listening to your house).

Some schizophrenics have dopamine so high, that every event and sensation is so wildly amplified in their mind, that they are really not functional at all; the homeless guy yelling at grass in a park. Well, to him, that grass somehow means a whole lot, because of all this dopamine pumping him full of this "Significance". This is why marijuana use and cigarette use is correlated to Schizophrenia and discouraged in those patients; both these drugs temporarily increase dopamine levels (resulting in pleasure from smoking both, and paranoia in pot)

Now imagine all these effects related to "reward", "significance", "pleasure", "epicness", and make a human being feel them while under the effects of something like, say, LSD. Crazy right? Well LSD does release dopamine, it's not purely serotonergic like mushrooms. So on LSD, you actually experience (depending on dose/set/setting/person), low level schizoid-spectrum effects (or cocaine/meth binge effects, or Parkinsons!) while being psychedelically opened up, and having all this craziness happen.

So something that happens every day, like two close friends finishing each others sentence, on LSD is suddenly "HOLY SHIT OUR CONSCIOUSNESS IS SHARED". Because of increased dopamine, increasing the significance of everything.

Now, I happen to believe that "shared consciousness" is almost redundant, and that every quark in the universe is "shared" (there's even a view in physics that states that every single electron in the universe is just one electron, vibrating in different modes of existence so fast that it can occupy all those myriad space-time coordinates nearly simultaneously). So to me, I just think "yeah, consciousness is shared, but back then when you two finished each others sentences? That wasn't LSD magically making your consciousness be shared, that was something that happens every single day, that is overlooked or taken for granted, and now you are on a psychedelic that is opening your mind up to alternate modes of thinking by binding to serotonin receptors, and increasing sensations of significance by releasing dopamine, so now you suddenly notice this everyday miracle occurence and it's extremely SIGNIFICANT because you're tripping".

hope that makes sense

 

Great response Mr. Writer.
Yes, if you really want to put your shared consciousness to the test, try it without being able to see one another so you receive no visual clues. I'm gonna bet you get very different results.

Voyage, the part in bold also accounts for the "AHA! and EUREKA!" moments of LSD.

LSD in effect increases the "bandwidth" of your nervous system while simultaneously "relaxing" or expanding the criteria by which the input as well as output of our nervous systems is organized and routed for processing.

1) It decreases the filtering and censoring of information being relayed to your cognitive mind. That results in more sensory stimuli reaching your awareness, both external and internal stimuli.
2) It causes information to be "leaked" or "broadcast" across the entire cortex, That is what accounts for synthesia, but can also happen with emotions and physical sensations as well.
3) It causes the locus coeruleus to increase its rate of fire. That is the part of the brain that is responsible for alerting us to anything new or novel in our environment. It accounts for the feeling of "seeing everything for the first time" with psychedelics.

http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=404634&f=117

 

Thanks for the replies guys, interesting read!

On phone now so can't reply in full.

Following on from the last posts I just wanted to clarify what we experienced. It wasn't "just" finishing of sentences or similar. I was guiding our third friend through an app on my iPhone and the friend I shared conciousness with was on the other side of the room sitting in exactly the same way doing exactly the same thing with his phone.

It was so perfectly in sync, our 3rd friend thought we were messing with him.

It was especially unusual as the shared conciousness friend has an android device and I was playing with an app that doesn't exist on android!

He was quite surprised that he was playing with his phone, with nothing on the screen and then we had the realisation.

Sounds really simple, but felt so profound.

Of course with being so logical, it's hard for me to wrap my rational brain around this. Being an astrophysicist, I have a good understanding of quantum physics, particle duality and the way absolutely everything in the universe is connected on some basic level. So I can't rule it out, in fact I can even logically explain it... It's just believing that it actually happened the other night, especially with how LSD amplifies your reward/significance perception.

Very very interesting subject thought and its definitely something I want to explore further with him and meditation.




It feels logical to explain it away in other things, but part of me really wants to believe what I experienced/felt is true.

 

Top notch posts guys, I'd rep you all but gotta spread more love. I feel the need for a long post... some questions and comments.
Thanks Writer. Stuff I didn't know and my first question is can you point me to a link or resource that might expand on what you said? When I can I'm going to google some. I did find this...
http://www.healthcommunities.com/schizophrenia/causes.shtml
Just one link but they took the middle ground on the dopamine/schiz issue. I found your description both making sense but reducing the experiences of connection and importance on a trip to no more than drug-induced hallucination. Hard to swallow because it shakes my paradigm. But it's good to question premise and belief.
I thought I had once read that the early theories that psychedelics and lsd in particular mimic schizophenia where eventually concluded to be inaccurate. I can't seem to find that at the moment tho, I could be wrong. I did find this about Osmond though. Thought you might find it interesting.

http://www.drdemarco.com/charge/rq010.htm

Nox, mucho thanks!

I had read that link way back, thanks for digging it up.
Much of what you said about bandwidth and filters is talked about by Moxley in The Center of the Universe, where I first got aquainted with this theory. He makes very compelling arguments for the filtering function that make complete sense in light of my experiences.
I have another theory about the "new or novel" experience. I have such a limited knowledge of the brain regions that I don't understand the locus coeruleus comment. Theory for another time.

So many fascinating ideas brought up in the last few posts. And Weat, your post especially. I bet rapping with you over a beer would be a trip in itself.

Kind of what I was saying to Writer. Logically I like his description of dopamine effects. Spiritually, I despise it.

That is the essence of quantum particle physics. I'm not capable of keeping up with Weat on the matter but the idea that a particle's position can only be predicted, until it is actually observed at which point it is actually changed as a result of that observation is still something that blows my mind.

Then add quantum entanglement to the idea of shared consciousness and my mind has a melt down.
It's eerie to see the connection between the observer effect, quantum entanglement, and the psychedelic experience.

 

I think it is a pretty awesome "feature".
The more I learn on all fronts, the more I have come around to the idea that reality is a dynamic interplay between consciousness and the energy/matter that comprise what we experience.

If that is the case, then all supernatural or "miraculous" events fall within the laws of "science".

Ideas like "The Secret" aren't that far fetched.

I will make a prediction that science and our understanding of physics will ultimately validate and vindicate a whole lot of religious/mystical beliefs.
As it is now, I personally don't see a lot of conflicts with our current understanding of stuff and numerous religious/spiritual teachings and accounts of events.

Everything is possible, but not everything is probable.

 

Totally possible and even probable.
I can barely grasp some of these concepts but the proven fact that the mere observation of a particle changes it ought to be enough of a foundation to realize that not all that meets the eye is fact. Add that with the fact that matter and energy are two forms of the same thing and it's no longer a stretch to imagine scientific explanations for shared consciousness and other religious/mystical beliefs.

I also love Writers observation that many of these things may happen regularly that go unnoticed. Awareness and perspective. Wish mine were better.

 

I believe what was discredited was the notion that serotonin neurotransmitter sites effected while on LSD and similar Hallucinogens was mainly responsible for schizophrenia. Evidence has mounted to suggest that other neurotransmitters such as dopamine like Writer mentioned and glutamate (which PCP, Ketamine effect) are largely responsible for schizophrenia. There are different variations of schizophrenia such as catatonic schizophrenics vs. Paranoid Schizophrenics and likely there is to be some discrepancy in the brain activity, causes of various types. Schizophrenia in my view based solely on a neurological perspective is likely the result of cumulative alterations to several neurotransmitters and brain regions.

So with that said, there are aspects of LSD type hallucinogens that closely resemble reported symptoms of schizophrenics and some evidence serotonin receptors are involved to a degree.

http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~paul.aron/Hallucinogens.pdf

 

It seems like it would be a natural next step in the evolution of consciousness. I feel that we are all one consciousness anyway, so something like a shared consciousness psychedelic experience seems completely plausible.

I've gone through a very similar experience on mushrooms with my really good friend. But we tend to be right on the same page all the time, so it wasn't a surprise to share some sort of "unity" consciousness with him while tripping.

At the end of the day, everything is swimming in an ocean of consciousness, so if certain egoic defenses get broken down via psychedelics, channels can open up for strange collective experiences.

It seems to be the proto-workings of what has been talked about as the Psy or Psi-Culture. It seems natural that humans could begin to develop the beginnings of psychic capacities as we continue to evolve.

I've also been really curious if multiple people were good at lucid dreaming, could you have a collective, or shared lucid dream experience? You could pre-plan the setting and details while awake with the friend or friends, and then everyone lucid dreams the same experience by accessing some sort of collective dream "field". Is that too outlandish an idea?

And then when you wake up, you could recap certain codes or something that you pre-planned, that could prove whether you guys ACTUALLY had the same experience or not. Such as asking a very specific question to the other person that they would absolutely have to know.

 

Interesting link Guer. The bits I can grasp anyway. Alot of that is beyond me.
Could you point me in a direction that would expand some of these principles, like the known effects of different receptor sites and related neurotransmitters?