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Subtle Energies and the Uncharted Realms of Mind Field Effects of Consciousness
For some time now research has shown that certain subjects appear to be able to create a small-scale psychokinesis effect which leads REGs to be temporarily less random. Helmut Schmidt has done extensive tests with individuals, usually involving flashing lights that subjects are instructed to alter in a specific way (e.g. moving them in a circle or across a horizontal display). He has shown significant effects, especially with his high-performing individuals, although his initially powerful results have diminished somewhat over the years. Dean Radin echoed this point, stating that his initial effects have tapered off in significant ways after the first few years, perhaps relating to his own habituation as the researcher. A key difference between Schmidt's work and Roger Nelson's is that Schmidt always includes conscious intention in his protocols, whereas Roger is more concerned with the field effects of collectively focused intention, whether the subjects are aware of the REG or not.[1] Thus, Roger's group at PEAR has been examining collective events in which many people are focused simultaneously on one thing (e.g. the Super Bowl, Academy Awards, O. J. Simpson verdict, New Year's celebration, Lady Diana's funeral) and local group events in which attention coheres in a certain way (e.g. church services, ritual circles, meditation groups, our conference itself). Perhaps the most exciting part of his work is the Global Consciousness Project, which hypothesizes, based upon positive data from earlier work, that dozens of these REGs hooked together via the Internet might constitute something like a global EEG, reflecting disturbances and deviations in collective attention. The EEG analogy is meant to be more evocative than descriptive, for there is no indication as yet that patterns anything like brain waves exist. However, a lot of questions will only be answered after a central database is built over time. The remote REGs are somewhat facetiously called "Eggs" while the server in Princeton is called the "Basket." Anyone interested in hosting an Egg is welcome to contact Roger at Princeton. They are especially interested in establishing Eggs in remote locations. To do so requires a machine that runs UNIX or Linux OS with a dial-up connection to the Internet. Ideally, they will have 25 or 30 so as to use the data analysis tools developed for a typical EEG array. A host of issues present themselves to Roger's group in trying to analyze field effects for global events. First, what collective events make the most sense to consider? In a typical study, they hypothesize as to which events might produce an effect and then parse this event into specific epochs which might reveal deviations from random behavior. For example, during Diana's funeral, there were twelve REGs running around the world. Averaging all of them revealed a significant deviation, especially in the middle of the ceremony. Roger also did a more fine-tuned analysis, charting specific events such as moments of silence or Elton John singing, that again manifested changes away from randomness. More recently, the beginning of bombing in Kosovo produced a significant deflection, though it was not spread evenly over all the generators. One generator in particular had a dramatic change, but they have no hypothesis to explain this uneven distribution. There was a slightly larger deflection in Europe than in the U.S. He uses periods before and after the targeted event as controls to assure that the randomicity of the machine has not been altered due to some mechanical glitch. George questioned whether it is important that he plan ahead of time and intend to look at the data. Roger doesn't think so, giving the example of the assassination of Rabin in Israel. He heard about this while traveling in Germany and didn't get back to analyze the data for some time, but sure enough there was a spike at the time of the assassination. Another participant asked whether or not there is a significant effect for both the time when a large news item happens (Diana's death, for example) and the time it is discovered and reported to the world. This really asks whether there is a larger consciousness which registers ripples and changes immediately (disturbance in the Force?) or whether deviations only reflect what is consciously known by the masses. Roger doesn't have enough data yet to tell. This raises interesting questions of relevance. How can we link these REGs with specific world or local events against a backdrop of millions of other events? Roger is not sure that space issues make any difference. For example, in the studies of individuals attempting to influence REGs, it does not matter whether the agent is in the same room or on the other side of the country: the effect size is the same. If, then, the important element in creating relevance is experimenter intention, it is possible that a remote researcher in California, through intention alone, could link a generator in Princeton to a revolution in Rwanda. A researcher's intent to causally link a generator to a certain set of events might actually do so; in other words, the researcher's intention might be a variable in the equation. Why then have 30 generators around the world versus 200 in one room? Roger is unsure whether it will make any difference; they eventually will do both, have geographically distributed generators and another set in a room, each labeled with specific locations like Lhasa, Tibet. The Global Consciousness Project will allow us to ask these questions of spatial relations and psi effects much more specifically and perhaps isolate important elements. Do Super Bowl effects register in Fiji or only locally, where people care? Some preliminary results for last New Year's celebrations, taken from all global locations at midnight in different timezones, ranging from high celebration (U.S. and Europe) to low (Pacific Ocean) indicate that relevance and interest matter but geographical distance does not. Also, even the notion of concurrent time linkage might be misleading, though Roger sees no alternative strategy now but to assume it. For most of the events they have studied, there does seem to be a close correlation with time. With the O. J. Simpson verdict, for example, the most dramatic spike occurred right before the reading of the verdict, when approximately 500 million people's attention was highly focused, expecting the verdict. Time linkage thus seems to be a reasonable assumption for now. Stephen LaBerge pointed out that in order to measure effects on a global level accurately, it would take hundreds of REGs. If one is sampling some unknown, complex wave form with a small number of nodes, it will only tell you if there are wave forms that are on the order of the size of the distance between electrodes. For the brain, to get good maps the electrodes need to be 1 cm apart, although researchers can get away with about 30 total. Substantially fewer means missing large chunks of wave forms. Even to pick up spatial frequencies on the planet as a whole, it would be necessary to take these factors into account. A few other points: Roger noted that the field effect size for groups is only about three times larger than the deviations we can achieve with individual intention. At times, they also see a suppressive effect, an unusually perfect flatness in the random generation which is, in itself, significant. This was true for Mother Teresa's funeral and the Littleton murders, both of which manifested very flat displays. Also, for the four or five minutes following the O. J. Simpson verdict, the generators became too random, though they are still unsure how to interpret this. He has about 200 pages of detailed information and charts on his web site: http://noosphere.princeton.edu Wayne Jonas asked if anything had been done trying to suppress the coherence effect; Roger commented that individual operators joke that they know how to turn it off, and that is by getting their egos involved. Marilyn commented that she and William Braud tried a few variations in her distant mental influence studies, using variations on white light or shielding visualizations. Though there isn't enough data yet, some shielding does seem to be possible. Beverly Rubik wondered about the potential to use biological systems instead of mechanical systems to build an REG. From an evolutionary perspective, one might expect that consciousness has been more finely tuned to interact with biological systems than with inert matter. Some of the work with spiritual healing also supports the idea that the link between consciousness and biology is easier to bridge. Living systems are also more sensitive to small perturbations; effect sizes are three or four times greater. Marilyn concurred, for in the Distant Mental Influence on Living Systems work group studies, they got a much larger effect size than those relating to REGs. Wayne Jonas, however, doubted whether a biological system would be any more sensitive in experimental events. An interesting side point is that the over the course of the week, Roger took field REG readings, with the prediction of deviation during meeting sessions, which would be segregated into segments treating a primary topic or a particular person's work. In a preliminary analysis, no overall anomalous deviation was apparent although there are several notable trends. Perhaps most interesting (especially at the level of "story") is that the largest deviation came from the staring experiment (described below), and the next largest from the session with George allowing participants to experience subtle energies. Other relatively large deviations came from the brainstorming session, Jeff's forgiveness presentation, and the sessions with Marilyn and Beverly. Remote staring experiment Dean Radin set up a pilot remote staring experiment for us on the first day and analyzed the results on the second day. Marilyn served as the subject, while the rest of the group followed a randomized alternation of instructions on Dean's computer to stare or not to stare, with the intent to arouse Marilyn physiologically. Steve Dinan proposed that it would be interesting to do two versions, one in which we simply stared at Marilyn and a second in which we tried to send chi energy to Marilyn through upraised palms while centered in our hara (energy center in the belly), as led by George Leonard, an aikido instructor. The idea was to begin to distinguish between pure consciousness effects (intentionality alone) and subtle energy effects (intentionality plus something else). The results were measured with both conscious reporting and unconscious measures of autonomic nervous system activity. During each of the test intervals, Marilyn was asked in her headphones to press one of two buttons indicating whether or not she felt she was being stared at. Her conscious guesses were at the chance level. However, the unconscious measures, based upon two tests of autonomic nervous activity (a photoplethysmograph and a galvanic skin response meter) both indicated increased arousal in the staring/transmission epochs. The most dramatic effect was observed a few seconds after the transition to staring mode, which indicated an upsurge in arousal level. A habituation effect was evident, as if her body/unconscious mind mostly registered the change in energy and/or intention and then returned to normal. Several participants commented that subjectively they felt a rush of energy when the sending epoch first began and then a drop-off. Dean pointed out that the actual deviations in physiological measures are quite small, only .5%, whereas with a presented stimulus one would expect a 5-10% deviation. However, even this small deviation provides interesting evidence when it shows up consistently across many subjects and epochs. A potentially interesting observation was that the second trial -- which involved the attempt to send subtle energy -- produced stronger results than the first. Overall, the two trials combined had a p=.046 in the direction that during the staring periods there was movement of blood flow out of Marilyn's finger into the core, as expected if she were becoming aroused. Of course, when something is done for the first time in a group, the interest level is high, so the effect size is usually larger.
[1] Nelson, R.D. (1997a). FieldREG measurements in Egypt: Resonant consciousness at sacred sites. Technical note PEAR 97002, Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, Princeton University, School of Engineering/Applied Science.
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