Yet how much of that unconscious mind is just ourselves, our neurons cycling around each other, or is there some larger, collective conscious?

Our mind, clinically speaking, is this electric field of our nervous system, but we all tend to have these little flat electronic devices in our pockets, the technology of which only goes back decades, maybe a century or so, if we think landlines, which are all interconnected, via radio waves. Frequencies and amplitudes.

So given that our biology has been evolving for a billion+ years, doesn't it seem possible that buried down in that subconscious substrate is some networking going on, that doesn't present itself with the levels of clarity and distinction our sciences demand?

Try walking down the street and and totally ignore every potential sense you feel of others presence. Then you might realize it's pretty difficult.

We certainly have a culture where we are assumed to each be in our own physical and mental cocoons, but instead of cluttering the walls of your world with self referential images, ie, what is pleasing, think of it as a bubble and you want to polish the surface, to let as much information in as possible. Not to be a blank slate, so much as letting all the input find niches in the larger sense of being. Balance the positives against the negatives, the centrifugal elements against the centripetal ones, etc.

After while you might begin to realize it is all in your head about as much as the internet is all in your phone. It is just that you are your own point of reference. A node in the network.

The more you can tune into this larger subconscious, the more you can negotiate with it and not just be a cog in the wheel.