Larry Dossey
Physician · Advocate
What would it mean if there was only one mind that we were all connected to?
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Larry Dossey in conversation with Great Mystery
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Do We All Share One Mind?
Where our mind is concerned, we’ve been more concerned with disunity than unity. During the 20th century, we took the mind apart—the conscious, the unconscious, the pre- and sub-conscious, the collective unconscious, the superego, ego, id, and so on. When we look through the other end of the telescope, however, we can see a different pattern. We can make out what I call the One Mind—not a subdivision of consciousness, but the overarching, inclusive dimension to which all the mental components of all individual minds—past, present, and future—belong.
Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. —David Bohm
This is not a philosophical gambit but is based on human experience and actual scientific experiments.
The emerging image of mind is that it cannot be put in a box (or brain) and walled off from all other minds. If minds are boundless and boundaryless, as evidence suggests, in some sense all minds connect.
Throughout history many eminent scientists have glimpsed this fact. This includes Nobel physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who proclaimed, “The overall number of minds is just one…In truth there is only one mind.” And the distinguished physicist David Bohm asserted, “Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one.”
The concept of a collective One Mind with which each individual is connected suggests a pool of intelligence that might be tapped by creative individuals.
Our unity and connectedness as humans have taken a back seat to our obsession with individuality. Individuality should be honored; generally speaking, a species without a strong sense of individuality does not long survive on this planet. But individuality is only one side of the human coin.
The ethical implications of our fundamental connectedness are profound. Because of our intrinsic oneness, health can never be merely personal, and neither can illness, poverty, or hunger. The unity we share requires a recalibration of the Golden Rule from, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” to “Be kind to others because in some sense they are you.”
On this realization, our future on Earth may depend.
ABOUT
Larry Dossey, M.D., is a pioneering physician and thinker whose work has helped transform the conversation around mind, consciousness, spirituality, and health.
His work has helped bring the role of mind in health and spirituality in healthcare into medical education; following the publication of Healing Words in 1993, the number of U.S. medical schools offering courses exploring spirituality and health grew from just three to nearly 80, many of which drew upon his books as textbooks.
Through his books and writings, including Recovering the Soul and Healing Words, Dossey has explored the possibility that mind is not confined to the brain and body. In Recovering the Soul, he introduced the concept of “nonlocal mind”—mind unconfined by the usual boundaries of space and time.
His work has contributed to a growing conversation about spirituality and consciousness in medicine, and has helped bring questions once considered outside the boundaries of medical science into serious consideration.
At the heart of his work is a radical possibility: that our minds may be far more interconnected than we imagine, and that recognizing this connectedness could transform not only our understanding of health and healing, but how we understand ourselves and one another.