THE GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS PROJECT
In
my newsletters so far, many of the articles have been dealing with, in one way
or another, the idea that our consciousness is a powerful force. Whether we're
discussing mantra, prayer, 'magic', karma or the Law of Attraction, we are
referring to the capacity of our thoughts and feelings to affect change in the
physical, material world. Is there scientific evidence to back up this claim?
Yes there is.
There
are a variety of different projects that are addressing this idea. One of the
most compelling is something called the Global Consciousness Project.
The project grew out of the work of Professor Robert Jahn out of Princeton
University in the seventies. Now it is being spearheaded by a highly respected
researcher, Dr. Roger Nelson, who has been conducting research in this area for
three decades. He is heading up a team of 75 respected scientists from 41
different countries. That in
itself is a remarkable achievement.
This
ongoing experiment uses insignificant looking black boxes called Random Events
Generators (REGs) - computers that are the equivalent of automatic coin
flippers. According to the laws of chance, millions of coin flips should
produce equal numbers of 'heads' and 'tails'. Under normal circumstances, that is in fact what happens. When this is rendered into a graph, we get a flat line. But experiments have shown that a
large number of people can 'will' the generators to produce a larger number of
'heads', with a corresponding 'blip' on the graph. This was repeated many times with the same results. REGs were
taken in to measure groups of people meditating, with similar dramatic findings.
The
project has been gathering data from a global network of these machines at 65
sites around the world. Enormous amounts of data have been carefully gathered
and analyzed, yielding remarkable results that have raised eyebrows in the
scientific community. Global events, such as the death of Princess Diana, the
bombing of Yugoslavia, the September 11 incident and the giant tsunami have
caused unusual data 'blips' that happened hours before the events. These things
were measured in ways that eliminated the possibility that other more
explainable factors were causing these blips. These findings are astounding
scientists. Although the project is very careful not to make hasty, definitive
claims, these results imply that consciousness is a causal force and that there
is a collective consciousness that can actually sense the future.
To
read more about this phenomenal experiment, please visit their official website
- GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS PROJECT
Also, a 'google search' will reveal many well written articles that can go
into more detail than I have room for here.
In
future newsletters we'll look at other bodies of scientific evidence that seem
to back up the following quote from the Buddhist Dharmapada: "We
are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts
we make the world".
