Collective Effervescence. Plaid Blanket Man. Notes from the Road
From Mantra, Tantra, Ayahuasca: Sex, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll in Search of the Sacred
Catch Up Note with this week’s post below; also links to upcoming events.
Hello all,
In our house we often ask “what was beautiful to you today?”, and in this way point each other to the beauty that is always there if we have eyes to see. We move from the frequency of complaint to one of delight. Touching beauty is touching love. Touching beauty often brings an awareness of the illuminated ground of all being- when we share what is beautiful, we find a place of shared humanity. I’ve been walking in deep beauty awareness - from the sacred geometry of fresh picked dahlias this morning, to the sticky sweaty laughing summer faces of eleven year old boys at sunset, to the delicate artwork coming through for Radiant Farms.
There’s been a lot of beauty touring this summer. I was thrilled to join in the Festival of Consciousness in Barcelona, Spain, offering an experience of Altered States of Consciousness in Sexuality to an exuberant international crowd, who laughed and cried in our time together, and to sing and teach at the Yoga Mela in Divinya, Sweden. As a note, I was added to a WhatsApp group after the Yoga Mela. There are many newcomers to Kirtan in that thread and three weeks later, they are just honey dripping awe about what happened there. I’m reminded that this practice of singing together is a lightning port connection to oneness. So, since it’s fresh, I’m going to drop two sections on mantra from the book today.
ALSO… for Rose Woman podcast listeners….Recap of July, 2024 topics:
- Playing Forever: Lifelong Athletics and Embodied Joy with Photographer Alex Rotas and Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Kevin Stone
- The Medicine of Iboga with Tricia Eastman
- Partnered in Love and Seva with Laura Rose and Emanuel Kuntzelman of the Holomovement
- The Super Generative Life with MultiModal Storyteller Yasmeen Turayhi
Now, on to this week’s post.
Love,
Christine @christinemariemason
Collective Effervescence
Sociologist Émile Durkheim used the term “collective effervescence” to describe the state of emotional excitation felt by those who join together in a collective activity. This is often seen in religious ceremonies, concerts, dance, raves, sporting events, or any other large gatherings where the shared enthusiasm and energy of the crowd can create a heightened, euphoric state of consciousness. In certain group settings, especially in religious or spiritual contexts, this may even create a group hypnosis or trance state. This can happen intentionally, through specific rituals or practices, or sponstaneously. In either case, in collective effervescence, one might experience altered perceptions, intense focus, suggestibility- and often a feeling of being detached from the physical body. People describe it as being high, feeling light, feeling weightless or boundaryless, having the sense that they are one with everything, euphoric.
For me, collective effervescence is a lifting of the day-to-day veil of separation.
Here, the frequency field we create together overcomes individual boundaries; it is stronger then the envelope of of our skin and transcends personal energy fields. Maybe this is why, in the realm of spiritual practices, few traditions hold the transformative potential of kirtan, the ancient practice of chanting sacred mantras or divine names.
When mantra is chanted together, in a call and response fashion or together, it’s called kirtan, and it produces a distinctly altered state of consciousness, noticeably different from normal waking consciousness.
We go from singing together, to being one body singing.
If you want to reduce the practice of kirtan to neuroscience, here’s what is currently known: music, rhythm, and synchronized activity can lead to a phenomenon known as neural entrainment, where the brain's neural oscillations sync up with the rhythmic stimuli. This can create a strong sense of cohesion and unity. Neural entrainment can lead to heightened emotional experiences and even altered states of consciousness. Singing together even stimulates the release of oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the "bonding hormone." Oxytocin can increase feelings of trust, empathy, and bonding, further enhancing the sense of unity. The release of endorphins, neurotransmitters that contribute to feelings of pleasure and pain relief, adds to this. Mirror Neurons, which fire both when an individual performs an action and when they observe the same action performed by another, also contribute to feelings of empathy and shared experience in group settings. So, the physical presence of others, the synchronization of voices, and the shared emotional experience of making music together, especially prayerful music, can all contribute to an altered state of consciousness that isn’t experienced in the same way when singing alone.
I like a little more magic than that neuroscientific and endocrine explanation, personally, as we’re not just mechanical wired robot consciousness, but connected to an infinite fabric of knowing across all space and time, that is beyond the comprehension of the individual mind.
So let me tell you more about the devotional heart of this practice, and how I arrived to it, its history and modern adaptations, and where it can take a person.
A short clip of a group singing with Deva Premal and Miten at Yoga Mela in July 2024:
Plaid Blanket Man
In the before-days, when I was running a tech company and my husband was a lobbyist in Sacramento, California, working on pioneering climate protection policy (AB32, which became the model for many other initiatives worldwide), we took a short vacation to New Mexico. This “vacation” sort of had a “just this one conference call in the middle of every day” quality to it, and one morning I ended up leaving Mr. Legislation at a coffee shop and going for what I though was a rather aimless drive, but turned out to be guided.
As I drove, a string of colored prayer flags caught the corner of my eye. I turned toward them, following a wooded road to a single story building, parked and wandered toward the structure, magnetized, pulled by its tractor beam. There were no humans in sight. I walked directly into an unoccupied room, devoid of furniture, carpeted, dark, draped in velvet, with a human-sized statue of an opalescent and gold-trimmed Hanuman (the anthropomorphized Hindu Monkey God, the devoted servant of Sita and Ram) on the altar. The space had a high frequency feeling, and I plopped myself down on the floor to absorb it.
I heard someone sit down behind me, but I stayed in my meditation. A low rumbling instrument began to moan, and echoed with something in my body. A woman began singing in Sanskrit. At this point, I had of course heard Krishna Das, the godfather of American kirtan - I was in the yoga world, and not living under a rock- but I’d never experienced someone live chanting mantra as a personal devotional practice. It was so tender and poignant in its longing tone, and my tears started flowing.
As I walked out, I picked up some information postcards. They had a picture of this squinty-eyed gray-haired man wrapped in a plaid blanket, laying on his side, with the words “Love Everyone, Serve Everyone and Remember God” on the back.
Mr. Plaid Blanket was of course, Neem Karoli Baba, and the place was his Taos ashram and Hanuman temple, and the woman was singing the Hanuman Chaleesa, the epic poem about Hanuman’s life and deeds known to every Hindu school child, and Maharaji’s devotional hymn. But I didn’t know that then.
All I knew was that Plaid Blanket Man was suddenly everywhere in my life, and that whatever this woman had touched with her song felt deeply right.
We could live in the awareness of something greater, be both infinite and infinitesimal, in right relationship to wonder. I could surrender to the mystery, and lay down arms. Lay down all arms, of all kinds, inner and outer, known and unknown. Love, Serve, Remember.
(From Mantra, Tantra, Ayahuasca)
