We Are One: The Reality of Collective Consciousness, Unconscious, and Unity

‍By Steve Elfrink | Psycholytic Somatic Integration Therapist at OmTerra | Webdelics Subject Matter Expert

Introduction

Is there such a thing as a collective mind? Do we tap into a shared field of awareness that transcends the individual self? As a psychedelic therapist and lifelong explorer of consciousness, I believe the answer is yes—and not just metaphorically. The collective consciousness, collective unconscious, and unity consciousness are not separate ideas but three ways of pointing to the same underlying reality: that consciousness is not confined to the skull, and we are, quite literally, interconnected.

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What follows is a multidimensional inquiry—part science, part soul, part lived testimony—that builds a strong case for the existence of a unified consciousness field, woven through biology, ancient wisdom, and direct experience.

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An Ancient Truth Hidden in Plain Sight

Humanity’s oldest wisdom traditions have always known what modern science is just beginning to remember: we are not separate.

• In Advaita Vedānta, the Hindu philosophical tradition teaches Tat Tvam Asi (“That Thou Art”)—the individual self (ātman) is identical with Brahman, the universal consciousness.
• In Lakota spirituality, the phrase Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ means “all my relations”—a sacred affirmation that everything, from the eagle to the stone, is kin.
• In mystical Christianity, Sufism, and Buddhism, the self dissolves into the One, whether called God, Love, or Emptiness.
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These are not poetic metaphors. They are testimonies from seekers who returned from the edge of ego with a singular insight: everything is connected.

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Carl Jung and the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious

Carl Jung described the collective unconscious as a shared psychic inheritance—deep mental structures (archetypes) common to all people. Symbols like the Hero, Mother, Shadow, and Trickster arise independently across cultures. Jung proposed that these weren’t learned—they were born into us.

This wasn’t just theory for Jung. He experienced “meaningful coincidences” (synchronicities) that seemed to emerge from a deeper, shared psyche. In collaboration with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, he even theorized a “psychophysically neutral” order behind matter and mind. The symbols that move us are not private dreams. They are the echo of a soul we all share.

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Unity in the Psychedelic Experience

Those who’ve worked with psychedelics—ayahuasca, psilocybin, LSD, DMT—often report a dissolution of the ego and a sense of merging with the universe. It’s not a hallucination in the typical sense. It’s more like a revelation: the felt-sense that you are not separate from the tree, the cosmos, or even other people.

Terence McKenna called this “being pulled toward a complex attractor of infinite interconnectedness.” Ram Dass famously described his own breakthrough as becoming “loving awareness”—no longer a person with preferences and problems, but a field of presence that embraces everything.

In my work with clients, I've witnessed this too. After ego-softening doses, people consistently describe the same thing: "I felt like I became everything... and it was love."

This kind of collective, all-inclusive awareness isn’t just psychedelic hype. It’s corroborated by neurobiology. Psychedelics don’t distort reality—they peel back the scaffolding of the separate self to reveal what’s always been there: unity.

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Neuroscience Is Catching Up

Psychedelics temporarily disrupt the default mode network (DMN)—the brain region most responsible for creating our sense of a separate self. fMRI studies show that under psilocybin or LSD, the brain becomes less modular and more globally interconnected. This correlates directly with the experience of ego-dissolution and mystical unity.

A 2024 study in Nature found that high-dose psilocybin “massively disrupted functional connectivity” across the brain, especially in regions tied to time, space, and identity. The greater this neural entropy, the stronger the subject’s experience of unity and transcendence.

In plain language: when the illusion of a separate self breaks down in the brain, we don’t become less conscious—we become more. More connected. More open. More alive. When the self lets go, the brain opens up. We don’t become less—we become everyone.

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Quantum Clues and Cosmic Possibilities

Even physics gives us permission to imagine a shared mind. Quantum entanglement—where two particles affect each other instantaneously across vast distances—hints at a deeper, nonlocal reality.

A 2025 study reported that quantum entanglement can enhance conscious experience and accelerate learning, suggesting that consciousness might itself be influenced by quantum information flow. Visionaries like David Bohm and Teilhard de Chardin went further, proposing an “implicate order” or “noosphere” where mind and matter arise from the same unified field.

Science hasn’t proven collective consciousness. But it no longer rules it out, either. In quantum reality, there’s no such thing as apart. Consciousness may be the field in which the whole dance happens.

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Skeptics, We Hear You

It’s true: we can’t plug a multimeter into the Akashic Field and get a readout. And we should be wary of turning metaphysical beliefs into dogma. Critics argue that mystical experiences are nothing more than neural fireworks.

But here's the rub: across time, culture, and chemistry, humans keep returning with the same message. From Buddhist monks to Amazonian shamans, from Sufi poets to Silicon Valley seekers, they say: “You are not just you. You are part of something vast.”

At what point does the consistency of the message—across decades and disciplines—become a kind of proof? Science wants measurements. Spirit offers mirrors. What if the collective mind isn’t something we prove, but something we experience?

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The Unified Hypothesis

I propose this: Collective consciousness, collective unconscious, and unity consciousness are not three different things. They are one reality, seen from different altitudes.

• The collective unconscious is the mythic root system.
• The collective consciousness is the cultural canopy—the shared thoughts, beliefs, and dreams of a society.
• Unity consciousness is the sky—boundless awareness that reveals itself when ego falls away.

Together, they point to the same truth: we are more connected than we’ve been led to believe.

In an age of hyper-individualism and global fragmentation, this isn’t just a spiritual idea—it’s a survival strategy. We are not separate minds walking parallel paths. We are one mind, dreaming in infinite directions.

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References

1. Jung, C. G. (1969). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton University Press.
2. Durkheim, É. (1912). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
3. Ram Dass. (1971). Be Here Now.
4. McKenna, T. (1992). Food of the Gods.
5. Carhart-Harris, R. et al. (2024). Neural correlates of ego dissolution and psilocybin therapy. Nature.
6. Roseman, L. et al. (2018). The default mode network and the psychedelic state. Frontiers in Psychology.
7. Palhano-Fontes, F. et al. (2015). Ayahuasca alters DMN connectivity. PLOS ONE.
8. Teilhard de Chardin, P. (1955). The Phenomenon of Man.
9. Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
10. Kaul, S. et al. (2025). Quantum entanglement enhances conscious experience. Nature Physics.

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