Collective Consciousness:Prototyping the Future

A dialogue between Ron Friedman MD and Victoria Friedman, founders of Vistar Foundation and Voicepoint theatrical company, with Chris Parish, Director of EnlightenNext

Across the globe we face an almost catastrophic breakdown in human communication at many levels from the interpersonal sphere to the international arena. Humanity faces problems of such complexity and immense magnitude that there is a growing recognition that existing methods of group communication, will no longer provide the solutions we seek.

In response to this, innovative group facilitators have been experimenting and exploring a newly emerging phenomenon termed Collective Consciousness. From Juanita Brown’s World Cafes, to Peter Senge’s and Otto Scharmer’s ‘Presencing’, from M Scott Peck’s Community Building to Harrison Owens’s Open Space Technology, it is being realized by a growing number of people that the whole is indeed far more than the sum of the parts. That is when individuals come together with a shared intention, in a conducive environment; something mysterious can come into being, with capacities and intelligences that far transcend those of the individuals involved.

Ron and Victoria Friedman are the founders and creative impetus behind the Vistar method of communication, based in Connecticut, USA, which they describe as ‘an evolutionary meeting structure for accessing the unlimited potential of the creative source’. The Friedmans describe their overwhelming desire to share with the public ‘the timeless, powerful and practical Truth about human Identity and essential Self, as well as the individual growth and the outpouring of creativity that has been their shared experience’ in evolving the Vistar method and founding the Voicepoint theatrical company.

Chris Parish is recognized as a leading exponent of the radical transformative group practice of Enlightened Communication. Based on the Evolutionary Enlightenment philosophy of Andrew Cohen, Chris explains, that this form of communication offers the direct experience of a higher order of relationship between human beings—in which there is both a free expression of one's deepest authentic self while at the same time, a meeting in a profound communion with others. Dissolving all barriers of separation, this remarkable consciousness, he suggests, holds the potential for solving the enormous problems caused by human conflict and division.

In this dialogue these pioneering facilitators and advanced practitioners of this emerging consciousness will explore the wide ranging and profound implications of these remarkable group experiences which Ron Friedman describes as a ‘new organ of interrelatedness’. In examining the power and potential of Collective Consciousness, Chris Parish and Ron and Victoria Friedman will describe why they feel this emergence is one of the next evolutionary steps for humanity.

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