THE NEED FOR COLLECTIVE ECSTASY

We have become suspicious of collective consciousness - think football crowds and the Nazis and the Church. There can be an ecstatic quality to being in these situations - we put down the burden of self and lose ourselves in something larger. In the case of political collective consciousness, the loss of self involves affirming the authority of the leader. 

But what about situations where we are not elevating an authority, but where we are doing the opposite? I'm thinking specifically of dance as an aspect of tribal cultures, where people would allow Spirit to come through, and which 'fosters love, trust and equality' (1) It is not something we do very much in our shamanism - our trance dance is often blindfold, which maybe reflects the atomised nature of our culture. I do experience a measure of collective consciousness wherever Spirit is invoked in a group in eg the sweatlodge, or in say a journeying group, but maybe our wariness and our rationalism holds us back? People do not seem to hold back in this way, however, at a Rolling Stones concert That is why they were the bad boys.

From the 15th century onwards, "European travellers to every continent witnessed people coming together to dance with wild abandon around a fire, synchronised to the beat of drums, often to the point of exhaustion. In Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, Barbara Ehrenreich describes how European explorers reacted to these dances: with disgust. The masks, body paints, and guttural shrieks made the dancers seem like animals. The rhythmically undulating bodies and occasional sexual pantomimes were, to most Europeans, degrading, grotesque and thoroughly "savage". (1)

So we have a lot of cultural baggage. What drew me and still draws me to Shamanism is the reality of this abandonment to Spirit. I had just never thought of it as a collective phenomenon until I read the above passage. And I am thinking yes, we need this.

(1) The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt p199