Connected Consciousness

Connected Consciousness. What is it? I asked this question myself and found that there were many interpretations. What triggered this in me most recently? Well, one of the things I do, that will trigger an article is that I sometimes come up with little sayings that I like and then share with my Facebook friends and family and with other followers and friends on in the Twitter-verse. One of these sayings was inspired by an image¹ and a little verse that went with it. The image is the one you see to the left and the verse that went with it was:

“A World Enchanted has at its core a belief that everything is connected, everything is conscious, alive and wondrous and you are apart of it, not above it, not separate from it but part of it. Lazaris”

I followed that up with:

“Soul consciousness is the true reality. We create that which we see to experience the third dimension. In this we co-create with every luminous being in the Universe bringing into existence a truly Enchanted World. ~ Timberwolf 2012″

This image, the verse and my own quote brought me back to one of my early Squidoo lenses. It was about Six Degrees of Separation and covered some of the science and mystique behind the ‘small world experiments‘. I find it amazing that in some way, shape or form, we are each connected – one to the other until there is a net of connected consciousness through which we all experience reality. So, on that note, below is the story I wrote back in 2007.

Have you ever heard of the ‘small world‘ experiments? No? I’m sure that you have heard the term six degrees of separation. This term was made into a meme by John Guare², a playwright, who used the catchy phrase as the title of his 1990 play. There is also another well-known use of the term. It involves ”a trivia game based on the concept of the small world phenomenon and rests on the assumption that any individual involved in the Hollywood, California film industry can be linked through his or her film roles to actor Kevin Bacon within six steps.”³⁴

How did this all come about? An associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, Duncan J. Watts, provides the following as an explanation to what the ‘small world‘ experiments are all about:

“Back around 1929, a Hungarian writer, Frigyes Karinthy, postulated that anyone in the world could be connected to anyone else by no more than five other people forming a chain. The last person in the chain, known as the target, doesn’t count as an separator. Therefore, there are five separations between the initial person and the target. This is equivalent to six degrees of separation.”⁵

The first scientific investigation of what is now called the “small-world problem” came approximately three decades later. The work of Manfred Kochen (a mathematician) and Ithiel de Sola Pool (a political scientist) has attempted to propose a mathematical explanation for the problem.⁶

It also has implications in social psychology through the work of Stanley Milgram. He designed a very clever experiment in the late 1960s to test the ‘small world’ theory. Milgram and his research assistant, Jeffrey Travers, handed out 300 letters to various people in the cities of Boston and Omaha. They were instructed to hand them to a single individual, a stockbroker in Sharon, Masschetsus.⁷

To do this the people recruited to act as test subjects had to send the letter by mail to a friend who they thought was closer to the target individual than they were. This friend was given the exact same instructions and so Milgram set up a chain of go-betweens. To his surprise, Milgram found that the average length of the chains created in this way was approximately six. This was the average for the 64 completed chains out of the initial 300 that were initially established.

Since Milgram’s time, the ‘small world‘ conundrum has become something of a phenomenon within society. It is more commonly known by the meme I mentioned earlier through John Guare’s play, Six Degrees of Separation.

Other sociological experiments have been conducted since Milgram first conducted his test of the six degrees of separation. Milgram’s experiment was fairly small leading to its results being questioned by some sociologists. Peter Sheridan Dodds⁸ and his colleagues at Columbia University conducted a modern version of the Milgram study via the Internet. They recruited some 60,000 people from around 166 different countries to participate in the experiment.

The study volunteers were given the identity of an end user participant, one of 18 located around the world. They were then instructed to send an e-mail to someone they thought would be able to get the message nearer to the end user. Their results produced a small number of successes from the high participant numbers. The experiment was conducted on the world stage with only 384 e-mail chains being completed. That is just three percent of the original emails actually finding their way to the end users email inbox.⁹

The average length of a completed chain comprised four people. This was described as an artificially low figure because the longer the chain, the less likely it was for the original e-mail to find its intended destination. By factoring in the rate of dropouts, researchers were able to calculate a median chain length of between five and seven people. What’s that I hear you say, “Six falls between five and seven.” Coincidence? Maybe not.

The Columbia University study strengthened the six degrees of separation theory, as it found that successful message transmission did not rely on HUB individuals with unusually high numbers of acquaintances as was previously thought to be the case.¹⁰

I hear you say, “So where is this all leading?” “To a question,” I respond. That question is, “Do I know you?” (Meaning you my readers) My answer is, “Maybe not personally, however, I might know someone who knows someone who…”, you get my meaning.¹¹

As a way of demonstrating this theory, I can relate my own real-world experience with it. One day, many years ago now, I was told by a colleague at work told that he knew the Governor-General of Australia. I didn’t really believe him. However, as we worked in a five-star Hotel it was remotely possible that he had met him. I admitted as much to my colleague and promptly forgot about it until a week later when I find out the Governor-General is coming to town and was staying at the hotel. I thought this was my chance to prove the theory wrong.

I hung around the reception area waiting for our distinguished visitor to arrive and check in. When the Governor-General walks in and sees my colleague in reception he called to him by name. If that didn’t prove me wrong the next thing that happened certainly did. The Governor-General asked after my colleague’s mother and wished his family well.¹²

I’d like to know you’re stories in relation to the six degrees of separation or connected consciousness. Leave them in the comments section below for all Timberwolf HQ readers to share and discuss.

By the way, I’ve included a picture of Linda Evangelista, Kyle McLaughlan and former President Bill Clinton throughout this article because, even though I’m Australian, I’ve made their passing acquaintance through my various employment over the years.¹³

I know that this may seem a long way from something a Spiritual Warrior and Seeker of the Way might write about, however, it proves that we are all connected through consciousness in the physical world. That connection is more metaphysical than physically real.

That connection can and must be extended to all beings manifest in this our third dimension.

Namaste to you all.

Image source: Connected, Enchanted World, Divided into Degrees, Connections, Internet Connections, Linda Evangelista, Kyle MacLachlan, President William J. Clinton