Harnessing Consciousness
Planetary Togetherness
At the outset, it is important to make clear that planetary togetherness doesn't refer to some 'fuzzy feel good' ideal or affirmation that's more metaphorical than actual. Through it, we're creating very real subtle energy bonds of connectivity amongst our species on a planetary scale. It's experiental - not an abstract intellectualization. The planetary togetherness we experience during the inner work is every bit as real as the subtle energy bonds between healers at a distance - and the person who's being healed. It's every bit as concrete (on the subtle energy level) as the bond between the individual praying - and the person being prayed for, who is subsequently healed, protected, or rescued.
We don't as yet have instrumentation that can quantify these subtle energies. But what researchers have already learned about them from the study of Intercessory Prayer, and Healing at a Distance, is that they do not weaken over distance. It matters not at all, if the person being prayed for, or healed, is in the next room - or halfway around the planet. Subtle energy bonds unite the person praying and the person prayed for, the distant healer and the patient, with equally demonstrable results - irrespective of the number of miles between them.
Togetherness versus Proximity
Togetherness is to proximity what presence is to location. It's the engagement of conscious awareness of place - or the lack of it - that distinguishes presence from location. It's an emotional connection/subtle energy bond - or the lack of it - that distinguishes proximity from togetherness. Ten people can be shoulder to shoulder in a crowded subway car and be totally oblivious to all others present. This is proximity. Proximity relates to physical closeness only. Togetherness, on the other hand; is an emotional/subtle energy connection. Planetary togetherness is non-local. It's a higher order of magnitude connection that transcends that which our senses are able to validate.
Feeling Our Planetary Togetherness
Togetherness is an emotion. Every emotion has a biochemical substrate, a specific concentration of certain neuropeptides associated with that particular emotion. They flood our brain and certain other organs when we experience fear, anger, love - or even the more subtle emotions such as the pleasure that resonates through our bodies when we gaze at an object of beauty…or togetherness. Researchers have also discovered that our bodies release these neuropeptides of emotion whether we're emotionally responding to a real life situation, or just an inner visualization.
Certain stress reduction techniques, for example, involve visualizing ourselves lying on a peaceful tropical beach, or floating serenely in a sunlit pool. Visualizing ourselves in such a peaceful setting evokes in us the same physiological response as if we were actually there. It's important that we actually feel our emotional connection to all the rest of humankind during the inner work as deeply and intensely as possible because this emotional connection, and the physiological responses that correspond to it, are exactly the same whether we're feeling a sense of togetherness with twenty other people in a meditation group - or experiencing the higher order Oneness of our planetary togetherness. Feeling it is important for determining if one is actually participating in the weaving together of these subtle energy bonds of emotional connectivity across our planet. It's an important biofeedback response mechanism to let us know that we're really making the connection.