2. Paranormal News | IT HAS been argued that in animals psi seems to be a function of the "form and behaviour design" of each species, interacting with that group mind which builds "itself up from the unconsciously shared experience of all"[1] its members and is operative in each of them. It appears as inherited instinct, impelling the spider to make its web, the bee its octagonal cell, in accordance with a given, unchanging norm. It appears as telepathy, synchronizing and co-ordinating the specialized activities of the different workers in the termitary. It appears as precognition in certain migrants making their way unerringly through the sea currents or the winds from where they were hatched to place they have never seen, known only to generations dead before they came into being. In producing an overriding impulse to follow out the appropriate behaviour pattern, it subserves the reproduction, the survival and the perfection of each kind of creature.
[1] Hardy, Sir Alister, Biology and Psychical Research, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 50, London, 1953. See also, The Living Stream, Gifford Lectures Vol. 1, London, 1965.
As species develop the ability to form conditioned reflexes, and then habits, and then learnt judgements, the part played by the group mind becomes increasingly important. It may modify, by its reaction to changing exterior circumstance, the workings of the original "form and behaviour design". This reaction may be expressed either as a more and more elaborate self-defence or as a flexible adaptation to the new conditions. It has been suggested, indeed, that the degeneration and extinction of species such as those prehistoric monsters whose armoured bony carapaces became so cumbrous that they could hardly move, may be attributable to the psycho-somatic influence of a group mind preoccupied with self-protection against all change.
In man, individual reasoning and separate personal choice became possible. As a result of one conscious and profound choice - to cut himself off from spontaneous dependence on God, live separate in unalterable pride - his group mind did not merely degenerate, with something analogous to sloth, from the form and behaviour design of his species. It split away. Both survive in him, the latter maintaining his ineradicable sense that, like it or not, some behaviour patterns should be followed and others rejected; that, in human parlance, some actions are right and some are wrong. Different cultures, different modes of upbringing, different creeds may modify his judgements as to which are which; but nothing will alter his conviction that the two sorts exist. As has already been noted, brain washing itself can do no more than reorientate conscience; it cannot destroy it.
The group mind, the collective unconscious, tainted by the ancient and continuing experience of evil, seeps into the being of every individual self, a self which is simultaneously drawn towards the original design for its species. The constant tension between the two is eased by the formulation of legal codes; the law of nature for the species is projected and rationalized in natural law, external, rigid, easy to recognize, hard to follow.
The Incarnation fulfilled and transcended with joy this projected, external law, showing it to be not a series of arbitrary decrees but a means to an end, and bringing into being a group mind renewed, spontaneous, free, in which the individual reborn could ultimately achieve that end, carry out the purpose for which he and his species were made; to know, love and serve God and to enjoy His Presence for ever. Psi would still link each human being with his contemporaries and his forebears, with the collective unconscious of mankind, whose impulses, good, bad, and neutral, would flow into him as before. But it could also link him with the new group, with the springs of grace welling up through those who were members of one another in the Mystical Body of Christ. Through that individual, moreover, the impulses of the new group could flow back (without his necessarily knowing it), into the old, changing its colouring, revitalizing it deep below the level of consciousness. Hence the overwhelming importance for all mankind of those dedicated to contemplative prayer. Hence the stress and exhaustion and glory of their calling.
It has been argued that in animal species the psi-factor is to be found at work in instinctive processes subserving reproduction. Ancient tradition and modern observation can both be adduced to support the hypothesis that in man too there is a close connexion between psychical and sexual activity.
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