ONE MIND

Regular readers of this Review may recall that, over the last two years, I have reviewed a number of books from the late 19th century New Thought movement, including the 1890 landmark publication by Thomas Jay Hudson entitled The Law of Psychic Phenomena. Hudson influenced many subsequent thinkers, including Thomas Troward, Charles Haanel and Napoleon Hill. All of these thinkers posited an unlimited aspect of the human mind whereby the individual mind was a microcosm of the Universal or Divine Mind which was in a sense omniscient. Although Hudson mentioned this possibility, his own model is somewhat different, and is based on his reflections about hypnotism and the capacities to which this state enabled access. He distinguishes between the objective and the subjective mind. The first is the recognisably analytical and linear mind, which he supposes is dependent on the brain. The subjective mind, by contrast, has unlimited powers and he equates this with the soul that survives the death of the body. Interestingly, he gives some of the same examples as in Larry's book, including miraculous mathematical calculation and clairvoyance.

Charles Haanel, in his Master Key System, also influenced by Hindu thought, takes the model further. He too upholds the distinction between the subjective and objective minds, but he further postulates that the Divine Mind is also subjective and amenable to suggestion. In his model, the subjective mind is equated with the subconscious, which also enables people to access the Divine, which some modern thinkers would equate with the Superconscious. Walter Russell also experienced omniscience through an alignment with the Divine Mind, as described in my review of his book in the last issue. All this is to say that the idea of One Mind put forward by Larry has a distinguished ancestry. Indeed, his own first intellectual encounter in this sense was with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who influenced the thinkers already cited - especially his extraordinary essay on the Oversoul, which Larry read as a 16-year-old before being subjected to the intellectual straitjacket of reductionist medical training. The fact that he is an identical twin adds a very personal understanding to his treatment of the One Mind.

As one might infer from the title, Larry brings together a wide range of phenomena to consider in the light of his thesis. At the beginning of the book, he makes a number of predictions about what would be possible in the light of One Mind at different levels. He describes many and varied experiences that are hard or indeed impossible to explain within the conventional scientific model. This will be familiar territory to many readers, including research on the sense of being stared at, coordinated animal and bird movements, animal telepathy, creativity, telesomatic experiences, NDEs, survival of consciousness and healing. Other parts of the book, like the urge to save others, are less familiar territory and postulate an immediate empathy as an aspect of One Mind.

He describes as neuromythology the assumption that consciousness is entirely dependent on brain processes, and the evidence that he adduces makes this proposition impossible to sustain. However, scientists would regard much of as anecdotal and therefore unconvincing. This argument misses the point since it postulates that only one way of knowing and methodology is valid and fails to recognise that anomalous human experiences still need to be explained within some kind of framework. It is not enough simply to dismiss them and say that life experiences cannot be reproduced in the laboratory so they don't count. The important point is that Larry tips the balance towards oneness, when so much of our thinking is predicated on separation and individualism. For this reason, he feels that the hypothesis of One Mind is important for the future of humanity. The key quality is that all these experiences involve unbounded or nonlocal extended awareness, what Rupert Sheldrake calls the extended mind. Larry also quotes Jeremy Rifkin on the differences between old and new science. While old science views nature in terms of objects and manipulation, the new science sees nature as relationships and partnership. These are important trends that are also being reinforced by other disciplines, especially environmental and our technological connectedness. There is also a host of new metaphors including the hologram and the implicate order as well as non-locality and entanglement already mentioned.

Having traversed with his vivid and engaging narrative an extraordinary and diverse landscape of ideas and experiences in the light of the One Mind, where does Larry see the future? As with so many books reviewed on these pages, he calls for the expansion of science beyond its existing philosophical assumptions, especially the hypothesis that the brain gives rise to the mind and consciousness. Larry feels that consciousness is the elephant in the living room of science and that the integrity of science and scientists will ultimately lead to a transformation. His final chapter is devoted to transcendence and the spiritual implications of One Mind experiences characterised by a 'hyperreal level of awareness, connection, intimacy, and communion with the greater whole' also imbued with love.

Even the most hard-headed reader, if he reached the end of the book, would be obliged to admit that Larry is onto something important. However, he might wish for the thesis to be further developed philosophically and applied rigorously at a number of different levels, which Larry begins to do in his chart on the universal spectrum of love where he discusses various types of interacting systems along with the evidence and expression of interaction. This pioneering book is a brilliant synthesis mapping a vast territory of One Mind experiences, but I there is surely still further work to do on elaborating the detail of how One Mind as a unitary domain of intelligence operates in different contexts.