Progress on the "current metaphysical problem" relating to Consciousness of Beings - personal, individual, groupish?

I think the answer to my current metaphysical problem how to picture a consciousness that is group-originating and personal - but neither individual nor abstract - may lie in the individual consciousness "receiving" consciousness.

Suppose that the situation is one in which each being has a permeable consciousness; there is some level of awareness of other Beings' consciousnesses. 

So we begin as aware of other consciousness's (approximately, "other minds"), which are included in our stream of thinking without much capacity to distinguish what we are thinking from what they are thinking. 

And conversely, our minds are "leaky" and other Beings are aware of what we are thinking. 

To start with; we don't have much ability to distinguish any individuals around us; but experience something like a mass effect, of many consciousnesses. 

We experience a group-effect, rather than relationships with individuals. 

This experienced group-effect will operate rather like taking an average; because if we are aware of several or many other Beings with much the same relational-attitude to us, then this will be more powerfully experienced. 

 

This situation is approximated by a very young child; who does not much distinguish self from other consciousnesses, and is initially hardly aware of differences between others. 

With development, specific individuals emerge from the mass-affect - usually the mother at first, then father and any other family members who are concentrated on the child - who have relationships with the child. 

Presumably this continues with development; but there is always a background and implicit - perhaps unconscious - receptivity to the group consciousnesses that impinge upon us.  

In brief, therefore, our experience of direct awareness of the consciousness of other Beings is some mixture of individual consciousnesses; and a remnant of the primordial and undifferentiated awareness of the combined-effects of more than one (perhaps many) other persons. 

So direct mind-to-mind contact is always of Beings, of persons; but these are not always experienced individually - they may be (often are) experienced as groups.

What makes us have these experiences is our own consciousness, its degree of development - and the moment-by-moment variations we experience due to variable factors such as the direction of our attention, mood, health, and alertness/ sleepiness. 

So far this fells about right - but will require further thought and evaluation.