Integral Cinema Studio: The Energetic Lens III

Star Wars (1977), "The Force," and the Tetra-Enmeshment of the Cinema With Individual and Collective Consciousness and Energies

In part one and part two of the Energetic Lens I introduced a preliminary taxonomy of the cinematic energy spectrum and potential energy transfer modalities, along with an initial exploration of the possible tetra-enmeshment of individual and collective consciousness and energy bodies and systems. Having mostly focused on the cinematic energies as they relate to the cinematic work and the individual cinematic artist, here I will attempt to expand our exploration into the even more ephemeral realm of the potential enmeshment of collective consciousness and energies within and beyond the cinematic experience.

Picking up where we left off on the influence of the cinematic creator or creators on the embedding and transmitting of energies in and through a cinematic work, and considering the collective creation team nature of the making of a cinematic work, the question arises just how can the energetically-charged vision of a single creator be translated clearly through the greater field of consciousness and energy at work in the collective creative experience? One possible answer to this question may be found in the commonly known social contagion effect found in the cinematic creation process, from the capacity of a great actor to uplift the performances of other actors in a cinematic work, to the well-known effects that the director’s state of mind can have on the entire cast, crew and environment on the set.²³

On the surface, these effects can be partially explained by the fact that the cast and crew tend to focus most of their attention on both the people making the major decisions (directors, producers, etc.) and on the actor’s performances. Yet, having witnessed both of these effects personally, many times, I can attest to a deeper power and influence going on in these situations, in which I have felt an almost palpable shift in the energy between creative team members and on the collective atmosphere of the set itself. In these moments, it felt to me as if a powerful force was radiating from the actor or director or producer, etc. out to the rest of the creative team and out into the greater environment.

I have also experienced powerful energetic influences in the opposite direction, from the energetic field of the creative team into the individual team members. For example, I was directing a dramatic video I wrote for a class at the American Film Institute (Write This Down, 1982),²⁵ and we were way behind schedule and only had the location we needed for a few more hours. Added to that, we had already been shooting all day and those few remaining hours would mean we would have to work through the night as well. I gathered the entire cast and crew and explained our situation.

Since everyone was working for free I surrendered it to the group, and within a matter of minutes the group decided that we needed to finish and came up with a way to shoot all our shots in the allotted time. An excited and charged energy radiated from the group and seemed to permeate the set and miraculously give us all added stamina and energy to make it through the night. In addition, cast and crew members seemed to be profoundly in sync with each other and with the environment, finishing each other’s sentences, fulfilling needs without them being spoken, and strangely pre-sensing material events, including my uncanny ability to know when the video recorder would go into standby mode. It became a running gag throughout the night that I would tell the video recorder to go to sleep and every time, like magic, it instantly went into standby.

Later, when I got the material we shot into the editing room, I noticed a marked difference between the material shot during that charged energy period and the material shot before it. The performances seemed more deep and powerful, and the camera work appeared to be more in synch with both the performances and with the visual metaphors I had been attempting to capture. I also perceived a more general subtle and causal energetic charge to the material itself. It seemed to have an almost hypnotic quality to it, and when I edited it together and screened it for others it appeared that I was not alone in having this experience of the material.²⁶

Going beyond the collective consciousness and energies of the creative environment itself, can we also say that there are energetic influences between a cinematic work, the creative team, and the greater dimension of collective consciousness, culture, and society? How do we explain those films that seem to profoundly resonant with greater cultural and social movements and events, like the simultaneous release of The Godfather (1972), a film about power and corruption, and the breaking news of the Watergate scandal; or The China Syndrome (1977), a film about a nuclear reactor accident, opening just twelve days before the occurrence of the hauntingly similar real-life accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor.

On a more subtle level, some films also appear to subtly resonant with the zeitgeist or the spirit or energy of the times. Take for example, the year 1939, a year considered by many film historians to be one of the greatest years of film history.²⁷ That year, as America and the world edged toward a world war, movie goers watched some of the greatest films of all times exploring the end of innocence and the triumph of the human spirit in powerful screen classics, including Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, Ninotchka, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, to name only a few. When viewed collectively, these films appear to be the perfect emotional prescription for the times. Were these cinematic-to-collective-reality connections merely accidents, random coincidences, or are they indicators of some kind of subtle/causal energetic/informational tetra-enmeshment between the individual consciousness of cinematic creators, the cinematic creation process, the cinematic work, and the greater collective?

Another interesting case is that of the first Star Wars film (1977). Many film historians and theorists have explored the seemingly powerful influence this cinematic work has had on both film history and on culture itself, including its rebirthing of mythology and the hero archetype when both the cinema and the greater culture were starving for both, and the pervasive penetration of its newly born myths and archetypes into the greater culture, including the universal spirituality concept of “the Force” and its archetypal transcendence of the duality between science and religion.²⁸

Films like Star Wars, and those mentioned above, appear to answer a need of the collective. Such instances, seen from the energetic lens perspective, might be an indication that the collective is somehow communicating with the cinematic creation process on multiple levels, and that one of these potential levels of communication could very well be some form of subtle and/or causal energetic/information exchange between the individual and the collective. Preliminary research into the collective dimensions of consciousness and energies does suggest that there is indeed a potential collective dimension of both consciousness and energy; that consciousness may be local and non-local in its influence and effect; that consciousness and the material realm somehow do appear to interact in certain instances; and that energy does appear to be part of the communication link between these two realms.²⁹

Based on this research and on my own experience and preliminary research in this area, I would venture to say that there appears to be gross, subtle, and/or causal connections to varying degrees between a cinematic work and the consciousness and energies of individual creators, the creative team, the creative environment, and the greater field of consciousness, culture, society, and environment (see diagram below).

As a filmmaker that has had direct and numerous experiences of what appears to be subtle and causal energetic/informational communication exchanges between myself, the cinematic creative team, the cinematic work, and the greater relational, cultural, social and systemic environment, I must admit that I am a true believer in the energetic dimensions of the cinematic arts. In addition to experiencing all of the above mentioned potential individual and collective energetic/informational connections, I also have experienced numerous other powerful and subtle communications between myself, the material, the creative team, the creative environment, and beyond.

In these communication exchanges, I have received answers to my creative musings and been given gifts of inspiration and gentle nudging in the right direction from the external world; I have wondered if a character I had envisioned would be believable and then met someone who personified and confirmed my vision; I have seen actors moved into just the right emotional spaces by events simultaneously occurring in their outside lives; I have been moved by external forces and circumstances to change a location or the direction of a scene that turned out to be just what was needed; and I have felt a haunting mirroring of the themes and perceptual constructs of the cinematic work in my own life, in the lives of those around me, and in the greater culture and world.³⁰

Indeed, on a personal level, exploring the energetic lens has offered me a wonderful way to understand these elusive dimensions of the cinematic experience, and given me the tools to potentially harness these forces more consciously and fully. Like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, I have grown to trust the Force…

NOTES

²³ For more on the social contagion effect see: Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J.T., & Rapson, R.L. (1993). Emotional contagion: Studies in emotion and social interaction. West Nyack, NY: Cambridge University Press; Bostock, W.W. (2002). Collective mental states and individual agency: Qualitative factors in social science explanation. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 3(3). Retrieved July 15, 2010, from http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs020317; Barsade, S.G. (2002). The ripple effect: Emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47, 644-675.

²⁴ François Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973) is a classic film about filmmaking, and in it one can find some subtle examples of the potential tetra-enmeshment of individual and collective consciousness and energies within the cinematic creation process.

²⁵ Write This Down (1982) is a dramatic video I wrote, directed and edited during my fellowship period at the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies. Learn more about Write This Down at: http://www.markallankaplan.com/cine/wtd.htm.

²⁶ While the above mentioned “inside” felt-sense experiences of shifts in individual and collective consciousness and energies in the cinematic creation process do not necessarily bring with them an “outside” look of the state or stage waves of creativity, confirmation of shared “inside” experiences like those cited here, suggest that there may be additional “objective” ways of confirming this inside feel and partial outside look, as in the cinematic artifact itself. This is an area for further research.

²⁷ For more on the films of 1939 and their place in the history of the cinema and the world, see Wikipedia’s 1939 in Film and the Los Angeles Times article, 1939: The Greatest Year in Hollywood History (1989).

²⁸ For more on the influence Star Wars (1977) has had on both film history and on culture itself, see Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films (Silvio & Vinci, 2007) and Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars (Brode & Deyneka, 2012).

²⁹  William Tiller’s research suggests that both individual and collective dimensions of consciousness can be embedded in material objects through a communication path consisting of consciousness-to-information-to-energy-to-matter and he postulates that the information dimension of the equation could potentially be some form of magnetic/informational field that connects the realm of consciousness to the dimension of energy (1997; 2001; 2005; 2007). Research which strongly supports the collective and non-local nature of consciousness and its potential interaction with material reality also includes the work of Dean Radin (2006; 2009), William Braud (2003), and Princeton University’s Global Consciousness Project.

³⁰ My preliminary research, along with the above mentioned anecdotal and empirical evidence, does suggest the potential for the embedding of deep cultural and societal perceptual constructs and structures upon a cinematic work either through direct or indirect subtle and causal energetic transference mechanisms.