“Concept I: Final responsibility and ultimate authority for A.A. world services should always reside in the collective conscience of our whole Fellowship.”
What is the collective conscience?
Refer to Tradition II:
“For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience.”
And refer to Step 11:
“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
God is the source of all knowledge and power.
That power is delegated to the individual through Step
Eleven, which is where it resides.
It is not passed to the individual: rather like endlessly
extending elastic, knowledge and power remain permanently anchored in God but
are extended via delegation to an individual, the intelligent agent, who
employs the knowledge and power on God’s behalf.
So, the individual has their conscience, but the individual
joins a group, and becomes part of that spiritual entity, as in Tradition V:
“Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose—that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.”
So the conscience is then pooled in the groups, and then
pooled in the fellowship, which is composed of the groups.
Imagine a source of water on a hill; numerous rivulets run
down the hill in different directions, each picking up something different
along the way. Eventually the rivulets meet and combine, until there is a
single river running down the hill.
That is the collective conscience: all elements are from God
but are collected together via different channels, each of which adds its
individuality.
This mirrors Tradition I, with its combination of common welfare (first) and personal welfare (second), and Tradition XII, with its combination of principles (first) and personalities (second).