I made a promise to Rhea A. White that I would implement her crucially important EHE Study Group concept in some way as integral to my work, and this is a bare beginning toward that purpose.  In fact it is possibly the most exciting aspect to all of this web project [wHeretwoworldsTouch.com] and will translate into a 'presence' on all the subwebs except the Physical Death and Dying Resource Portal / PDD.  The DTCII [Death-Transcendent Cooperative Inquiry Initiative] can be said to be a sublimated, deeper and broader form of this conception that will include not only individuals but also already defined groups and organizations, that will generate its own funding and research development projects.

  

          Re:  EHE local and online study groups:  I'm still deliberating about the details of how this will unfold in the sense that Rhea White and I first discussed this idea.  One article that gives insight into her visioning of this is the EHEN Mission Statement, which emphasizes a comfortable ideological neutrality, at once welcoming and safe, that speaks volumes about the possible look and feel of these EHE Study Groups.    

          The following conception [in green] of how the EHE Network worked with others [now defunct] will be exactly the tenor of how EHE Study Groups will operate.  This is quoted from the "EHEN Mission Statement:

We are collating and looking for patterns and connections in these aftereffects.  Rather than demanding independent proof to substantiate these experiences, rationalizing them to fit some preconceived ideology, or sensationalizing them for vapid media consumption, we create an accepting and confidential environment in which EHEers may submit personal written accounts, share insights, and gain information.  In this endeavor, we have learned that what our culture considers to be "anomalous" experiences ... can develop and mature into Exceptional Human Experiences (EHEs), which have the capacity to shift perspectives, which benefits not only the individual but also society and the environment.           We trust that by providing a safe, accepting, and nonideological venue for experiencers to share their accounts; by offering quality information across a rich variety of resources, scholarship, and research; and by looking at the overall pattern of what these many types of experience may be showing us as a whole, we can assist experiencers, and they can assist us, in revealing the meaning of their experiences and of the new worldview that is the Experiential Paradigm.  Thus we: value the individual experiencer and his/her unique experience emphasize personal meaning rather than evidence or proof keep confidentialities when requested do not sensationalize the experiences emphasize the potentiating results and aftereffects of the experience we work with people to understand the meaning of their experience create an accepting and nonideological haven for experiencers draw on a wide network of people, experiencers, and study seek to discover and share overall patterns of these experiences value inductive research methods as well as analysis are not locked into pre-existing paradigms, methods or categories provide quality documentation covering a wide range of scholarship appreciate the benefits of applying what we have learned to the "real world"

          The EHE Network, by the way, never got to establish EHE Study Groups, although it did offer other avenues of open discussion and exploration for similar purposes, and certainly to encourage people to share, to write, to process, to learn about and to understand the inestimable value of their exceptional and exceptional human experiences.

 

EHE Study Group -- How Might This Develop?

          Here is my plan thus far.  It is not elaborate yet, but I put this here to bring attention to its essential importance to the goals and mission of wHeretwoworldsTouch.com [/.org].  It is possible that we may consider setting this up so the actual individual groups are relatively small, as suggested by David Bohm [see near bottom of this page], to be 30-40 people, max.  Or at the very least this will be highly recommended.  When a group gets larger than this, it would break into two groups, and so on.  The idea is to cultivate a group communication field of mutual familiarity and concern / interest / support so they ideally, over time, have the best chances for cultivating very naturally a kind of group mind that experiences a sense of FLOW within their collective being.  The individual notes begin more and more to be rendered and experienced as symphonic, so to speak.

          As local groups, this could be implemented through MeetUps.com or something similar.   

          Online, we will use the technologies that are available to the most people and in all countries.  There will be three avenues of implementation of this activity:

 

1	.	Some rendition of EHE study groups will be encouraged on the LLR/LAL, emphasizing the sharing of personal experiences, reading, discussion, and personal development, including everything about EHE autobiographies and their committing to doing that and sharing them with each other. Some of the more committed groups here would naturally find ways to support personal developmental efforts through other group activities as well.  Many avenues, co-creative exploration and experimentation encouraged; not out-of-the-box, though with a generous mission statement and tools for support and guidance.  One thing that will be particularly encouraged is finding ways to act out people's EHEs, not just tell their stories.  They would be particularly encouraged to study and discuss Rhea White's work, but also within a broader context of, for example, what she herself worked with as "fellow finders."
2	.	On the LAL, and even more so on the ESC, this activity will be ideal for providing mutual support in many ways, including the sharing of personal EHE stories, journalizing EHE autobiographies, helping each other with the various challenges that frequently come with these experiences, also finding ways to bring their incredible, EHE-sourced gifts into play in their local communities and together [online, as the umbrella group, internationally] within the global community.  They will form their own international group.   The fundamental purpose of its members will be, through their consciousness, actions and practices, to cultivate a collective "crossing of the threshold [in order to] have a common experience of the spiritual world" [according to Marjorie Spock].   This is as Rudolf Steiner envisioned our task of social spiritualization of global dimensions that would allow us to re-member and accomplish the freely chosen task we had set ourselves, to strive to recognize, reclaim, honor and celebrate our essential nature as temporarily embodied spirit beings, suffering the obscuration created by the physical "bushel" under which the light of spirit in every human being and in all of life is hidden.  Like the magical event for young children finding Easter eggs in the meadow or the idea of God/dess playing with us a cosmic rendition of "hide-and-go-seek," we each can Waken, which is the ultimate gift of Free Will -- to choose it, to enjoy the wonder of our true nature, innate to each and every one of us as spirit.  It is for each of us to rediscover this genuine Surprise! and JOY beyond imagining, sourced in our physical forgetfulness.
3	.	A rendition of the EHE study group will be essential to DTCII activities and objectives.  DTCII members will continue to hone their group philosophy and to give definition and form to the collaborative research fostered in this subweb, using a number of avenues such as John Heron's co-operative inquiry approach.   This could in fact become the vehicle for pulling people with their multiplicity of experiential interests into actually sitting down at the same table with one another in order to iron out a map of collaborative exploration.  Their focus will naturally evolve as the group/s settle into a workable harmony with direction and goals.   A few objectives to be encouraged:

 

	What is most important to their philosophical approach?  Some of this will be offered through a charter for this [DTCII] EHE study group [by whatever name we give it] or for EHE study groups as a whole.  But they will have a lot of space in which to formulate their group goals and activities.
	What do they together have most in common in terms of [EHE] experience and interest?  The more types of such interests and experience they can bring into the equation, the better!
	What are their most exciting questions?  What do they as a group most want to explore, to study, to cultivate, to do?  This will vary over time, but will include basic study, sharing of experiences and techniques that have helped them cultivate.
	They are, probably through the charter itself, strongly encouraged to plan their time together around these kinds of activities:

 

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Just to put this somewhere for the moment, so it doesn't get lost:  Here are a few more notes that will become essential to the development of EHE Study Groups":

 

1.  Proactive influences within the world community

          This is how EHE Study Groups could actually generate a pervasive and mutual field of influence, sourced in the experiential understanding of 'all things EHE'.  One major objective would be how each EHE Study Group would proactively carry their work and understanding into the world community, e.g., through overt activism, through creating and holding forth manifesting visions, through various forms of healing work together [for each other and for others or for troubled places in the world, such as Lynne McTaggart's "Peace Intention Experiments"].  They might take on specific tasks within the larger community / the world, such as working with troubled youths or using their collective investment funds toward a purpose that is proactive [environmental, social justice, etc.].

 

2.  The dialogue work of David Bohm, and later, William Isaacs [also other social pioneers like Rudolf Steiner, mentioned above, and Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, David Spangler, Peter Senge and cohorts, authors of Presence:  Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, and working with Scenarios! like Joseph Jaworski and others have done with the Shell global conglomerate [see his book, Synchronicity].  Below is a note specifically about Prof. Bohm's ideas.

          Integrate into this collaborative equation the ideas of David Bohm and William Isaacs [see pp. 286.. and relatedly 281, in: David F. Peat's Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm]:  

 

Thoughts/feelings are like weather, generated by our conditioning and memory. We don't have a proprioceptive correlate for our thought processes so that we can truly understand thoughts, desires, feelings 'visit' us and we may or may not let them in. We do not generate them, according to Sri Aurobindo. Krishnamurti says the thinker is the thought.            Put in context of the need of recognition of a superimplicate order, beyond the implicate and explicate orders, says Bohm [p. 279-80], re: video game analogy: a player shooting down space ships. The very real looking space ships are only a light display on a screen -- the explicate order, generated by a program from within the computer -- the implicate order. The game player responding to the explicate / space ships is the superimplicate order. In reality they are all one; there is no 'I' that is separate from the game, from the out-here interaction.           In proprioception, we can be aware of our limbs / body anywhere in space at all times. But we lack this seeming objectivity with our thoughts and feelings. Sounds like we are lacking an explicate order of awareness with our thoughts / feelings that we have with our bodies.           This means the "weather displays" of anger, desire, etc. are not recognized as an "electrochemical process generated by memory and previous conditioning." Bohm thought of this as the classic human trap. He asks, "How can the mind develop its own proprioception?"           The answer that came to him was gathering in dialog groups of no more than 40 people, which slows down the thinking process and displaying it in a public context. This is especially effective when the same group acquires a sense of familiarity and community. When two or more come into conflict, there will be enough others in a group of 30-40 people who have the perspective and detachment to be able to defuse or reframe extremes. "If the group meets sufficiently often, Bohm believed, and if its members are truly serious, then something akin to a group mind will develop. [This is not about negating the individual or its value, but seeing the "individual rising out of the collective and the collective as enfolded within the individual ... individual 'electrons' as responding to a collective pool of information."] Also, thinking of nonlocal metaphor of physics, not only would the group and members respond to a collective pool of information, but "its effects would extend beyond the boundaries of the group itself, inducing subtle but significant effects within human society."

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          If this project interests you, be sure to see this material by Rhea White where, with other objectives, she defined and even actively engaged much of her own thoughts about the creation of such an association.  You might also wish to read "The Inward Olympics:  On Finding Ways to Deepen Consciousness and Touch the Self We All Are," another approach implicit in her study-group concept.  Because her whole thrust was toward engaging people actively in conversation and in ever more empowering potentialization of their exceptional experiences, you can see inferences through much of her works in which the actual words "EHE Study Group" never make an appearance.

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See also:  a Rhea-White paper that bears on EHE Study Groups

Here's a recommended book list specifically for group study.