But first, we need to talk about parallel universes...
A preface from an authorial perspective: I think of the idea of the collective unconscious a lot. As a metaphor for the weight of the culture, the archetypes within that culture, etcetera, it makes a lot of sense. I have met a few people who believed it to be more than that, though: they believed it to be a higher degree of consciousness (or a lower degree, depending on what kind of bunk pseudoscience they believe in).
Obviously, the collective unconscious is not a real thing. But what if it was?
This is the bulk of where this mystical system comes from. A lot of the inspiration came from a Practical Guide to Evil, which I am unashamed of admitting. It's a fantastic piece of work, and at some point I'll write a recommendation for it.
Given that, below is one of the mystical systems that are present in the world of Runic.
The Collective Unconscious
The collective unconscious is a realm underlying base consciousness. It is present in every human's mind, a layer beneath the superego, the ego, and the id. No personalities find purchase within it.
This space is normally walled off during much of a person's life: this is due to the amount of pressure and density present overwhelming most. A mental wall was evolved to block it out.
On the death of an individual, this wall is destroyed and part of their consciousness is funneled into the collective unconscious. This is not knowledge, but the unconscious infrastructure of skill that allows work to be done. The hidden scaffolding of intuition, pattern recognition, muscle economy, and impulse shaping is drawn and swallowed by the collective unconscious.
Tapping into the Collective Unconscious
A human may tap into the collective unconscious' depths to draw on the lifetimes of skills accumulated there. The mechanism for it is as follows:
- A human must be able to perform a task or work without conscious thought.
- This human must be able to meditate effectively.
- During the work, the human must meditate and let their body act purely on their unconscious thoughts and impulses to guide their way through the work.
- During the meditation, the human must identify the wall between the collective unconscious and their mind.
- They must break the wall.
Once this is done, the process of merging the collected skills and instincts of humanity takes anywhere from a few minutes to over a day. The human is fully in their mental realm during this time, though their body may twitch and make aborted motions while they're under.
Once they awake, the memory of breaking through the wall and their trials while merging with the collective unconscious is nearly incomprehensible. What is remembered is the feeling of struggle, alongside minimal scattered thought.
What do I get for it?
Only part of the collective unconscious is accessible after a merge. Primary instincts and motor skills are tied directly to the task used to enter the meditative state. These surface constantly, interfering with thought and action unless actively suppressed.
Secondary instincts and motor skills are either loosely related to the original task or drawn from activities the person performs regularly. These include things like walking, listening, observing, or writing. They remain in the background and do not take over thoughts as primary instincts do.
Tertiary instincts and motor skills fall outside both categories. They are difficult to access and require significant effort to call upon. Doing so risks triggering another uncontrolled merge.
Breaking the wall is inherently dangerous. The barrier exists to protect the mind. Allowing the full flood of humanity’s accumulated instinctive behavior to pour in can obliterate a person’s sense of self, leaving behind only hollow reflex and ruin.
If someone is ill-prepared, this will result in them becoming effectively brain dead. Those are who both lucky and half-assing it may survive with a degraded personality, but no-one who does this exits unscathed.
Preparing for the motor skills and instincts of humanity's collective unconscious to merge with your mind!
There is exactly one always-successful method to surviving this with personality intact.
During the meditation, a human must prepare and fortify a mental environment that is filled with anchors and reminders of who they are. Common things are animated depictions of family members, amalgamations of living spaces or positive events in their life, and/or heavy emotional ties to objects or people.
Once the wall is broken and the collective unconscious irreversibly begins to fuse into the human's mind, they must flee to their mental environment and hold there in full focus. This must be done throughout the entire event; falling out of it will cause the human to fall fully unconscious.
Using this strategy mitigates and sometimes outright prevents any personality loss during the breaking of the wall. If any personality loss occurs with this method, it relates to things that weren't in the room or held in the mind during the event.
The Societal View
The societies in the world of Runic does not understand how exactly the collective unconscious works, nor the breaking of the wall.
The general perception across the societies is the following:
For all those who perform work, those who throughout their lives aim to accomplish something with each action they perform, there is a status that is attainable beyond what is normally possible. The sustained efforts of a lifetime of practice leads one to become more than themselves, using the efforts and practice built up over others' lifetimes for the same work.
Those who become further than is achievable by oneself are irrevocably changed, never quite the same person they were before. They lose particulates of the self, but gain much outside the self in return. What triggers it is unknown, but there are a few things known:
One must know their work as one would know the back of their hand or the face of a loved one; One must be highly skilled in the art of meditation.
There is approximately one Titled individual per hundred thousand working professionals.
However, some cultures and individuals know much more.
The Sankhurst View
Sankhurst views those who break the wall as more-than-human: they hold those who achieve this in reverence, and they are gifted many luxuries in return for working diligently in Sankhurst. To reflect their high placement and notable status, they are called Titled. The act of becoming Titled (breaking the wall) is referred to as Titling.
To act as a perpetrator against a Titled individual carries greater weight than to act as one against a normal citizen. Titled individuals are known by name, if not by face by almost all citizens in Sankhurst.
However, as the secret of maintaining personality cohesion during the breaking of the wall is fragmented and poorly known, the city places much less emphasis on becoming Titled than one would expect. However, if one were to become Titled, they're not gonna raise any alarms.