The Hundredth Monkey

You all know the story, and if you don't, it's time you heard about it.

The Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years.

In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.

An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists.

Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable.

Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes -- the exact number is not known.

Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes.

Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.

Then it happened!

By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them.

The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

But notice.

A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea --

Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.

Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.

Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people.

But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!

The moral? Monkey's are telepathic? Maybe. Or perhaps it a validation of Jung's idea of the collective unconscious - a species-wide inherited set of fundamental subconscious beliefs that define the limits of our reality and our understanding of ourselves and our place within it. Of course, it is not the existence of such a collective pool of awareness that is truly interesting but the idea that it contains possibly unlimited untapped awareness/knolwedge, just waiting for something or someone to tap into it. That, it takes perhaps only one person, or a group of people to tap into it for a quantum leap to a new state of knowledge and awareness to be shared by many others.

For the monkeys on Koshima Island, the idea of washing the potatoes simply did not form a part of their reality, yet the reality of a washed potatoe existed.

We can hypothesise that humanity is in the same situation. What untapped awareness of new realities await us, if one, or a group, were to push the boundaries of what is and dare to explore what might yet be.

A whole new reality?