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From: Esalen Center for Theory and Research
Date: 1/21/2001
Time: 2:40:38 PM
Remote Name: 204.116.134.62
Source: Esalen Center for Theory and Research "Subtle Energies and Uncharted Realms of the Mind": an Esalen Invitational Conference, July 2nd to 7th, 2000
The Global Consciousness Project Roger Nelson
The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) was launched in 1998 by Roger Nelson (Princeton) in order to look at how human consciousness can influence the physical world.
Nelson started his presentation by reviewing two decades of experiments from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR) which show repeatedly that random event generators (REG's) can be intentionally influenced to bring about a less random sequence of data - in other words, human intentionality can reduce natural entropy and create greater coherence within a random series of events.
Starting from these results, Nelson hypothesized that perhaps this degree of coherence is imposed by human consciousness on a global scale, but without us being aware of it. He then created a network of REG's across the globe, which collect data and report it to a central server over the internet.
Over the past two years, Nelson's team has looked at about 50 global events as reflected in the data from the network's REGs. Some of the events have been correlated with large spikes in the random data (i.e. the August 5th, 1998 bombing of the American embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania; New Year's Eve 1998-1999 and 1999-2000, etc); while others show little or no effect.
One of the interesting patterns that has emerged from studying the data is the local influence of the events - in other words, "the field created by human minds seems to show its strongest effect in its local region, even though it can be measured all across the globe in a somewhat diminished capacity". For example, during the August 1999 solar eclipse over Europe, the European REGs registered a strong deviation from normal behavior, while the others did not. Also, during the New Year's Eve celebrations in 1998, much more significant deviations were found in ares of high population density than in "mini-celebration" time zones (oceans or low-population areas).
Another interesting observation has been that the REGs tend to display a slightly correlated data at any given moment, "suggesting a faint but general coherence". Since this data is publicly available, it can be used by scientists across the globe in many unexpected ways: one example given was that of a Russian team led by Simon Schnoll who has found that many natural phenomena show small periodic fluctuations, which seem to be linked to earth and sun cycles as well as showing a strong correlation with the GCP data.
Since the overall effect observed over the past two years has been shown to have a 1:10,000 likelihood of happening by accident, the evidence accumulated by Nelson and his team seems to clearly prove that major global events have a measurable influence on REGs, and hence on the overall coherence of the physical world. As this data continues to accumulate and more experimental correlations are observed, the hope is that we will understand more and more about what global consciousness is and how it may manifest - proving, perhaps, "that the earth itself is a living and conscious being, and that we are an important aspect of that being".
(Synopsis by L. Sidorov. For more details on this presentation, see original write-up at www.esalenctr.org)