The Collective Soul of Human Groupings and the Expression of Collective Karma

The individual is not an island unto himself; he is part of a series of larger groupings, such as family, clubs, teams, tribes, school classes, corporate entities, community, states and nations, religion, etc. The collective energetic expression of each of these groupings develops a way of life for both the individual and the group. To the extent a group participates in any larger groupings (such as a city being part of a state, and a state being part of a nation, and nations being part of an empire, and all of them part of the collective life of humanity) they both influence and are influenced by the other groupings. The individual carries out an action. He is influenced by the customs, habits and traits of the groupings to which he belongs and to the extent he acts within that frame, he reinforces the power and solidity of that line of energy. Individuals also sometimes become ‘change agents’ whereby they insert a new energy or direction into the larger groupings to which they belong. In some cases, as more individuals adopt these changes, the entire group will eventually be impacted. Alternatively, the change may fail to garner enough energy and will potentially die out leaving very little evidence that it appeared at all in that group.

Every culture takes on its own fixed lines of energy and thus we can look at various societies and indicate that it is particularly spiritual in its outlook, or particularly materialistic, or particularly intellectual or musical or artistic, or romantic, or any number of other traits which become associated then with the respective cultural groupings.

This means that the action and the societal force is creating karma on the level of the group and it impacts all the members of that group now and in the future, regardless of whether they individually participated in a particular movement of energy or not. Thus, a warlike culture may become embroiled in wars which impact even peace-loving members of their society. Some cultural tendencies are so embedded in the individual members of the society that others around the world immediately can identify the country of origin. Americans are characteristically identifiable through the way they tend to behave when visiting other lands, for instance! While individual members may act contrary to the group norm, they are still linked with it and responded to generally according to the karmic energy that their societal grouping displays.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “The laws of being are at bottom one for all of us, because all existence is one existence; one Spirit, one self, one mind, one life, one energy of process is at work; one will and wisdom has planned or has evolved from itself the whole business of creation. And yet in this oneness there is a persistent variety, which we see first in the form of a communal variation. There is everywhere a group-energy, group-life, group-mind, and if soul is, then we have reason to believe that however elusive it may be to our seizing, there is a group-soul which is the support and foundation — some would call it the result — of this communal variety. That gives us a ground for a group-karma. For the group or collective soul renews and prolongs itself and in man at least develops its nature and experience from generation to generation. And who knows whether, when one form of it is disintegrated, community or nation, it may not wait for and assume other forms in which its will of being, its type of nature and mentality, its attempt of experience is carried forward, migrates, one might almost say, into new-born collective bodies, in other ages or cycles? Mankind itself has this separate collective soul and collective existence. And on that community the community of Karma is founded; the action and development of the whole produces consequences of Karma and experience for the individual and the totality even as the action and development of the individual produces consequences and experience for others, for the group, for the whole.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch. 1 Life Through the Eyes of the Yogin, pp.12-13