Who are the collective creatures?

I think I first started to notice this long time ago, when I was early in my teens.

I was forced to spend a lot of time with a person, with whom I didn´t get along well. For most of the time it was an unpleasant experience and I often felt drained and uneasy.

On some occasions we would be joined by a third person, one, with whom I got along very well and all of the sudden everything would change. In an instant, the atmosphere would become quite different and so would my feelings. I didn´t feel drained anymore, the feeling of uneasiness was much weaker, too, the overall mood had lifted and it was a totally different experience. The heavy and awkward feel, which always hang in the air around the two of us, immediately gave place to something much lighter and much less uncomfortable. The three of us could even joke and laugh together, it was easier to breathe.

I thought it was strange. Each one of us was still her usual self, there was no change there. And yet, something else changed dramatically in an instant, when that third person joined in. It was something in the air around us, something invisible, yet with a distinct personality, which made itself felt intensely right away. And it seemed - it had a life of its own.

When I came together with that first person, apparently, a third, non-material entity came into being. It was quarrelsome, moody, depressed, gloomy and unhappy. It felt awful to be surrounded by it, to be a part of it. What´s more, even though it seemingly consisted of the two of us, it looked like it was much bigger and significantly different, than the sum of its parts. It was neither her nor me. It appeared to have its own personality, which was different than both of ours and it lived its own life. It seemed to be totally independent of us in every way.

It was like mixing two different colours together. What you get then is third colour, which is quite different than any of those two colours it consists of. It has its own colour identity.

It seemed there was nothing I could do or say, that would change that third being`s basic nature.

When that third person joined the two of us, the gloomy, invisible creature instantly went dormant and gave place to another. That one came into being by the three of us coming together and had a different personality. It was much lighter, brighter, less angry and more fun to be around. It had a great sense of humor. Just like with the first, gloomy one, this one, too, seemed to be quite independent of us, it was neither of us. Its personality was different from ours and it lived its own life, busy with its own agenda.

This one, too, would immediately give place to yet another collective creature if another person joined the three of us and there would be yet another feel to it. For every person, who joined in, a new, collective being appeared, a being, which appeared to have as much of its own identity as each one of the people involved.

It felt as if each of us was like a music note and for every new person, who joined in, a different melody was being played. The melody created in this way could be anything, from something, which sounded false and awful, to something truly wonderful.

What´s more, the phenomenon didn´t seem to be confined to just people - a pet could come along and the collective creature would again become somebody else in an instant. And even stranger - it wasn´t even confined to just lifeforms. The same, strange thing appeared to be going on between f.e. a person and a place. In fact, something similar seemed to be taking place between everybody and everything.

Others didn´t seem to notice it, so I didn´t mention it. With time, my awareness of it only grew stronger, until, one day, I noticed the ultimate collective creature, the one, which consisted of everybody and everything in existence. As I observed it and studied it, fascinated by its surprising nature, I realized, that it was, what some people called god. But it was so different from what most of worlds religions had claimed, that it´s best to leave it here.

The collective creatures would come forth even stronger, when I was watching them from aside, myself not being a part of the group I was studying, f.e. while watching others on tv or from a distance. I could see them very well in ice-dance or pair skating in figure skating and observing them there revealed even more surprising things about their strange nature.

Not only were they different from any of the two people involved, they also appeared to be totally independent of the kind of relationship these two people were having with each other. The pair could f.e have all kinds of problems off the ice and fight like cat and dog privately, while the collective creature displayed some very attractive and sparkling personality, some of them could be quite magical. Equally, the collective one could appear awkward and uneasy, dull or angry, even if the pair were actually married to each other. The skaters´beaming smiles and public displays of affection didn´t seem to affect it in any way. The personality of the collective one was always the same, no matter what they did.

Sometimes things could get even stranger. On some special occasions I could notice the collective creature, even if there was only one person there.

Once I was watching a new, Russian male skater. He was a young boy of about 15 or 16 years old and it was the first time I saw him. His beautiful skating had caught my attention and I was asking myself, who he was.

His name was Ilia Kulik and even though he moved to the music like few others can, there was something even more intriguing about him, or should I say - around him.

I was staring at him surprised, scratching my head and asking myself, what it was, that I was witnessing. Even though he was a single skater and was alone on the ice, there was a collective creature there in the air around him, a creature with a quite magnetic and sparkling personality. It consisted of him and of another person, who wasn´t there - a person, whom I had seen somewhere before.

As I was studying the invisible, collective creature, fascinated by its charismatic personality, trying to figure out where I had seen its another half, I suddenly recognised her. She was a Russian pair skater, whom I had seen a few years earlier. Her name was Ekaterina (Katia) Gordeeva, she was married to another man and she and Ilia had never even met. As I was staring intrigued at the air around him, I saw, that these two were like two pieces of the puzzle, which fitted perfectly together (no pun intended), because together they became a bigger picture - a picture, which already existed, years before they would meet. They were supposed to be together, side by side in the puzzle, because that was where they belonged.

Several years later, Ilia and Katia finally met. She was a widow by then, the two of them fell in love and became a couple. They have a daughter Lisa together and they are still a happy family.

Katia and Ilia. But who is the third one?

Picture fro ifsmagazine.com

But many years before their paths crossed, their collective creature was very much alive and shooting sparkles in all the apparently empty space between them. It was busy doing its best to reduce that space to zero, so that they would come together and make it possible for it to live and express itself more directly, more fully and more obviously.

How long has it been there? Since I first noticed it? Since the time they were born? Or could it be even longer?

In fact, most of my experiences with the collective ones seem to point in the same intriguing direction - they may have always been around. From what I can see, those invisible, collective beings are always in existence, even if the individuals of whom they consist haven`t met yet and don`t know anything about each other. In that case, the collective being seem to remain in some sort of a dormant state and when the individuals involved come together, it comes alive.

Whenever I see this one (and many other collectives, too), I wonder whether the people involved even had anything to say in this matter or whether it is just one of the illusions, that we, humans like to hold on to.

The collective creature made of Victoria and David Beckham is also an interesting one to study.

Whenever I see it, I am reminded of why their relationship has survived for so long, despite of persistent rumours of some serious problems between them. There are no guaranties, that a relationship will last and these two may well have some problems, but if they ever decide to split, they will have a fight on their hands. Their collective being is headstrong and determined to keep them together, even if it´s against themselves. It will furiously fight all attempts to end this relationship, it has already done it many times.

Whenever I observe this one, contemplating its nature, the words "super glue" come to my mind.

The invisible, collective beings seem to be everywhere and there is as much diversity among them as there is among us.

With time, I came to realize, that the reason I am aware of them is that, somehow I can perceive that invisible reality, which is deep below the surface of apparent reality and all the way down to the bottom layer, where the boundaries disappear and we are all literally one.

When other people aren´t aware of the presence of those collective beings and see only the single individuals in the group, they literally can´t see the forest for the trees. They can see every single tree, but they completely miss the forest as a whole.

What forest? There are 948 trees here, that´s all. I have counted them all. And they are all separated from each other. Forest, indeed. You must be hallucinating.

They are fascinating to study. I like to observe all kinds of them - between husband and wife, siblings, friends, enemies, the ones made of small groups or those made of big crowds, animals or plants. Every forest is interesting to watch. No matter what species it is made of, it looks like each individual is like a single cell in a bigger organism, an organism, which seems to have a mind of its own. And the bigger the group, the more it looks like there is some kind of a mysterious order among all the seemingly unconnected individuals.

I have watched spell bound many times how - despite each individual simply doing what feels natural to him at the moment, without giving a single thought to the others - they all become amazingly synchronised with each other in a split of a second and - quite spontaneously, without trying - start to behave like a single organism. And it looks like this organism knows what it is doing.

I was once at a bus stop, waiting for a bus, together with many other people, who were all strangers to me. Suddenly, a beggar materialized himself in front of me, asking either for money or for cigarettes (I don`t remember which one it was).

He came from behind me and I hadn´t seen him coming, so I was taken by surprise. I hadn´t had enough time to prepare any socially correct response, my automatic reaction was instinctive. I shook my head no, took a couple of steps back and turned away from him. He moved on to the others at the bus stop and I immediately felt very guilty and ashamed of myself, I couldn´t understand, why I had rejected him, I had always believed, that I was a good person.

Something caught my attention and I watched the scene at the bus stop curiously. The beggar was approaching one person after another, working his way through the crowd - with the same result each time. There were people of both genders there, young and old, of different races, different nationalities, grown up in different countries, in different cultures. One by one, they would all act in a strikingly similar way, rejecting him and trying to keep their distance from him. They shook their heads no and either walked away or turned away from him, or both.

In addition to that, some youths shouted some abuse to him, but apart from that, for some mysterious reason, all those people, who obviously had many different backgrounds - acted in an identical way. We behaved as if we all were just one being.

On that particular occasion that being felt uneasy, awkward and annoyed. Why are you bothering me? This doesn´t feel right. Why are you making me feel so uneasy by suddenly invading my personal space? Why don´t you rather sit at some distance from me with some poster or other and give me the freedom to approach you if I want? This feels like a kind of intrusion. Leave me alone.

In its symbolic language western astrology has been telling us about the existence of these collective beings for a long time, through something called composite charts. Composite charts are created of charts of two or more individuals by calculating the midpoints between their respective planets and axes. The result is a single chart, which usually is very different from both of the charts it has been calculated from.

If, for example the first person has his sun in Aries and the second person has his sun in Libra, their composite chart will likely have its sun somewhere in Cancer, which is totally different from both Aries and Libra. All the other planets and points are calculated in the same way and what you usually end up with is a chart, which has its own personality, as if it was the third person in the relationship between those two natives.

Modern sciences only now are beginning to look into this fascinating subject, starting to notice some of the amazing things reality seems to show us, things, which are very different from what we were taught in schools about how this world was supposed to be.

New sciences, new words and names are appearing, indicating that something rather remarkable may be taking place around here - complexity, spontaneous order, synchrony, emergence, swarm intelligence and of course quantum physics.

We can see that mysterious synchrony and self-organization everywhere around us and inside us, in our own brains, in our bodies, in swarms, in eco systems, in stock markets, in solar systems, in crowds, in galaxies.

In every direction we look, at every level of the cosmos, in all kind of systems where there is no leader and nobody to organize things, distinctive patterns are nevertheless emerging and some unexplained order persistently occurs where there should only be chaos.

We finally start to ask questions about some of those intriguing phenomenons, which we all can observe in our daily life, but which we still can`t explain.

How can order spontaneously emerge out of chaos?

Who is the one behind the many?

How is it that thousands of fish in a shoal can be so synchronised with each other that they look as if they all were just one being swimming around in the ocean?

How can a colony of ants be so well organized?

How can millions of fireflies flash in perfect unison?

How can dozens of birds in a flock be so much in sync with each other?

Why do many behave like one?

Is it because that`s what they in fact are?

Why is the whole bigger than the sum of its parts? Can it be that one plus one really is three?

Could it be that that forest really is there... among all those trees?

Copyright 2010 Aida Gundersen

May 2010