In becoming planetized humanity is
acquiring new physical powers that
will enable it to super-organize matter.
Even more important, is it not possible
that by the direct converging of its
members it will be able, as though by
resonance, to release psychic powers
whose existence is still unsuspected?
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man
Interconnections
Of Mind and Matter
Glimpses of Global Mind
Presentation for the Sedona Creative Life Center
Sedona, AZ, November 30 2007
Roger Nelson
Global Consciousness Project
http://noosphere.princeton.edu
Teilhard de Chardin
Proposed a Noosphere
A Shell of Intelligence
For the Earth
What Would that Mean?
We are Interconnected
We are Interdependent
We are One
What Evidence Do We Have?
Stepwise development of the
Global Consciousness Project

PEAR Laboratory
REG and PK Experiments, Intention

Field REG Studies
Group Consciousness, Resonance

Global Scope
Major Events, Shared Engagement
INTENTION
Mind Matter and Machines
Tools for Anomalies Research
PEAR Laboratory, Princeton University
We have used many machines
All based on Random Sources
Random Drumbeat
Dual Thermistor
Electronic REG/RNG
Chaotic Fountain
Linear Pendulum
Random Mechanical
Cascade (RMC)
The Pinball Machine
Murphy
9000 ¾ inch balls
19 collecting bins
10’ high 6’ wide
RMC (Pinball Machine):
Intention to Shift Distribution
To Left or to Right is Successful
Level trend is expected
A Linear Pendulum
Swinging in Air
Increase or
Decrease Damping
Knife Edge Breaks
An LED Beam
Timing by a 50
Nanosecond Clock
Pendulum: Intention to
Increase or Decrease
Damping Rate is Successful
Level trend expected
An Onboard REG Controls the Path
of a Robot (With a Frog Passenger)
Poisson Distributed Rotation and Distance
We experimented with many different
Random physical systems over 3 decades
Fabry Perot Interferometer
Crookes Tube
Dual Thermistor
Degraded Shift Register
Random Mechanical Cascade
Linear Pendulum
Linear to Turbulent Flow (Fountain)
…
But we will concentrate on one -A physical REG: the basics
A high quality experiment
Requires good design &
Careful implementation
PEAR’s
Benchmark
REG
Feedback Mode can be simple numbers
Or plots of cumulative deviations
Is one of these better?
The Technology Has Been Developing
Over the Last Four Decades
Reliable, calibrated REG/RNG devices
Increasing sophistication of design
Computer recording and analysis
Controlled explorations
Theoretical questions
Robust analyses
How it works: Here’s 1000 trials from
A physical random source
Each trial is the sum of 200 bits
120
100
80
The binomial distribution of 1000
200-bit trials, compared with
Theoretical normal distribution
100 is expected
What happens in such data over time?
Plot cumulative deviation from expectation
Should be a random walk (a “drunkard’s walk”)
Chance expectation is
Level, horizontal trend
Expected value = zero
Cumdev is sequential sum of
Differences from the expected
Value, in this case, zero deviation
But when human consciousness is present in
The form of intention or engaged attention,
The cumulative deviation may show a trend
expected
Laboratory experiments, PEAR:
Intention to change the REG behavior
High and Low both depart from expectation
HI
BL
LO
Intention results not a “flash in the pan”
The data are not random, but show slope or trend
Deviations are correlated with participants’ intentions
Expectation is level trend
12 Years, 522 Series, 91 Operators
Million to one odds against chance
522 REG Experiments:
The difference between High and Low
Intention is small, but is a significant shift
New Generations of Random Sources
PEAR B-box: Thermal Johnson Noise
Mindsong: Field Effect Transistor
Palmtop Portability
Broader Applications
Replications and Extensions
In the lab, a continuous running REG
Custom software to mark events
Moving out of the laboratory
Field REG Experiments
Take REG technology into the Field
Look for evidence of a Consciousness Field
Concerts, Operas
Churches, Cathedrals
Rituals, Ceremonies
Sacred Spaces, …
Situations with Resonance or Coherence
And Mundane situations, for comparison
Physical Random Event Generators
REG or RNG -- Miniaturized for field use
Mindsong REG
Orion RNG
A continuous running REG in the lab, beginning 1993
FieldREG extended to global dimensions
A prototype global event, November 1995
Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
Murder
FieldREG: Charismatic Presentation
The Presence of Mind
In the Physical World
Robert Jahn Talk
FieldREG Experiments: Deep engagement,
Coherent group consciousness and emotion
Expectation for the data is a level trend,
But the real data show striking slopes
Numinous event: Shamanic
Healing ritual for Devils Tower
Group chanting: Sacred space
Great Pyramid, inner chambers
Departures From Expectation Correlate With
Coherent or Resonant Group Consciousness
Deeply Engaging Ideas and Emotions
The next step: Multi-REG data recording
Colleagues in Europe and the US
Collected 12 independent data streams
Expectation is level trend
Now, if the cooperation of some
thousands of millions of cells in our
brain can produce our consciousness,
a true singularity, the idea becomes
vastly more plausible that the
cooperation of humanity, or some
sections of it, may determine what
Comte calls a Great Being.
- - J.B.S. Haldane
GCP Inception
Parapsychologists meet Psychophysiologists
19-channel EEG measures in psi experiments
12-channel FieldREG Princess Diana’s funeral
The two concepts coalesced as a World EEG*
The EGG project** began collecting data Aug 1998
*Dean Radin’s creative formulation ** Greg Nelson’s acronym for ElectroGaiaGram
Global Consciousness Project
(aka the EGG Project)
International collaboration
100 Scientists, Artists, Friends, …
Network of host sites world wide
The tools: REG technology, Field application
A world EEG – an ElectroGaiaGram or EGG
We identify deeply engaging global events
The question: Can we capture a
Glimmering of Global Consciousness?
When you put a thing in order,
and give it a name,
and you are all in accord,
it becomes.
- - From the Navajo, Masked Gods, Waters, 1950
A World Spanning Network
Yellow dots are host sites for Eggs
http://noosphere.princeton.edu
A World Spanning Network
(Google map of host sites by Fernando Lucas Rodríguez)
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/egghosts/
Realtime Display of Data
Internet transfer of data to Princeton
It looks random: Combined data
For a whole day, from 48 eggs
We can see better what’s happening by
Plotting cumulative deviations (c2 - df)
Correlation tilts … variance spreads
Average
cumulative
deviation
shown by
the black
dotted line
If we average across REGs we can see trends
Sometimes they are clearly not random
Cumulative deviation is a
Graphical tool to detect change
(From process control engineering)
Expected picture is
Level random walk
Maybe a trend in the
cumulative deviation is meaningful?
Remember,
this is
chance
expectation
With this global network we can
look for effects of engaging events
Natural disasters
Terrible accidents
Beginnings of war
Grand celebrations
Political excitement
Religious pilgrimage
Astrological hot spots
World-wide meditations
Major disasters that engage us powerfully
Often correlate with big deviations
This is the first GCP Event
Why? ... It
shredded
the social
contract of
diplomacy
The Concorde crash July 25 2000:
We feel surprise and a sense of loss
Blacksburg, VA: Shock and tragedy
close to home feels deeply meaningful.
Does the EGG network respond? Perhaps.
Most Recent Global Event
Hurricane and Flooding in Bangledesh
Persistent, Nonrandom Trends
The World
Trade Center
Fall, 2001
Carol M. Highsmith
Al Dove
The World
Trade Center
September 11
2001
Tamara Beckwith
September 11 2001
Destruction of the World Trade Towers
A 50-hour trend followed the attacks
Two days
Other Views of September 11 2001
These are pictures of the variability among the eggs
They should look like a “random walk” on 9/11, but …
Variance began changing at 04:00
9/11 was unique
in 3 years of data
The autocorrelation says
this event was extraordinary
Our task must be to free ourselves from
this prison [of separation] by widening
our circle of compassion to embrace all
living creatures and the whole of nature
in its beauty.
- - Albert Einstein
"The Age of Nations is past. The task
before us now, if we would not perish,
is to build the Earth."
- - Père Teilhard de Chardin
Major organized gatherings
For Meditation and Prayer
Four million people
bathe in Ganges
A million or more
via the Internet
Consciousness Fields?
Compassion may
be a primary
source
The Buddhas of Bamiyan
Before March 12 2001
After
The Destruction of a World Treasure
Approximate Time, Noon in Afghanistan
noon
Compassion seems inherent
in efforts to build or restore
the social fabric
Meditations
Prayer Vigils
Ceremonies
Holidays
Compassion implies
Interaction, interdependence, respect, love
It is the substrate of shared consciousness
Through technology and sheer numbers,
people have become a geological force,
shaping the planet's future just as rivers
and earthquakes shaped its past.
Eventually, global society, guided by
science, may soften the human
environmental impact, and earth will
become a "noosphere," a planet of the
mind.
- - Vladimir I. Vernadsky, 1926
A substantial agreement on getting
our ecological act together
The Pope’s 6-day pilgrimage to the middle east
An occasion of hope for resolution of differences
Focused Siddhi Meditations
September 23 to 27, 2001
The most impressive result is in
sustained practice over months.
500 to 1 odds against chance, and
correlation with N of meditators.
Peak Day, Maximum Numbers
After terrorist bombings in Madrid
all of Spain came out in commiseration
Positive intent and compassion
An organizing field of consciousness?
In contrast, sporting events seem
Not to produce big deviations
Excitement, but
not compassion
Political events, even big ones, are not
necessarily of interest to the EGG
Clinton Impeachment Acquittal
Competition,
no coherence
New Years Celebrations
Epoch or Signal Averaging
A tool for revealing structure
In repeated low S/N ratio events
New Years Eve  37 time zones  8 years
Devvar shows predicted structure
Permutation analysis gives p=0.026
26
Current result: formal database, 9 years
239 rigorously defined global events
Odds: Million to 1 against chance
Questions outnumber answers
Great numbers contribute
Deep engagement is powerful
but
Does distance from the focus matter?
How about relevance to local people?
Is human consciousness necessary?
Are “experimenter effects” the source?
What kinds of events are “strongest”?
Is the effect repeatable and reliable?
A major part of our deeper analysis
Involves making the GCP database
Error-free, Normalized, Reliable, Flexible
For example,
this graph
shows the
long-term
stability of a
subset of the
REG devices.
Arrow identifies
a failure, where
data must be
removed from
the database.
Distribution of Event Z-scores:
Roughly normal, shifted by 0.37 std dev
z-Test: Two Sample for Means
Variable 1 Variable 2
Mean
-0.01163904 0.372648
Known Variance
1.001459 1.080784
Observations
10000
159
Hypothesized Mean Difference 0
z
-4.62710645
P(Z<=z) one-tail
1.856E-06
Grouping into reasonable categories
shows a substantial differentiation
Effects as a Function of Event Type
Statistically Significant
Effect > 1 Std Dev
Undistinguished
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Categories
Most questions are more complex than they
seem, and how you ask makes a big difference.
Here are two perspectives on Distance
Calculations, Roger Nelson
Bottom line: It looks like there is
modest evidence that closer eggs
show bigger effect. See also
– Dean Radin, Distance effects of Johrei Healing
Positive and Negative Valence Events
Have Larger Effects Than Neutral Events
(For Positive, the Difference Is Significant)
The number of people paying attention
has a substantial effect on the network
Significant but confounded with importance
Events that evoke or comprise
Compassion have larger effects
Hypothesis proposed by Jaan Suurkula
And what about the Experimenter Effect?
Is this all a result of our wishful thinking?
Overall
Error bars show the levels don’t differ significantly
The answer is no …
It is one of several sources
What happens to the score if we slide
The event away from the original time?
Netvar+Covar Dispersion statistic (Z=4.2)
Effect decreases in
proportion to shift
Detail +/- 30 hours
Earthquakes: A GCP network response
Map of quakes: Richter 6 or more
Only on land with people and eggs
Quakes in the Americas, Europe, Asia
Cumulative deviation of covariance measure
Exact time of the quake +/– 30 hours
Quakes on Land +/- 30 hours
Ocean Quakes +/- 30 hours
Signal averaged GCP data show
8 hr anticipation of big earthquakes on land
Earthquake Raw data
Magnified central portion
T=0 ± 50 hr
Same data, cumulative deviation
3-Hour Gaussian smooth
Background long-term trend
in the network variance (Zs2)
Cumulative deviation, daily values
Trend is
significant
9/11
9/11
What might explain the long-term trend?
Independent suggestive correlation
With a sociological measure?
Model Fit &
Update to 2007
GCP Data Brown
Polling Data Blue
9/11
Theory?
David Bohm, The Implicate Order
Active Information:
Virtual Field, Actualized at Need
e.g. Disease: Chaos, “need” for structure
Remote healing, prayer
e.g. GCP Eggs: Random, open for structure
Engaged attention, compassion
Bigger Picture: What is our aspiration?
Sharpen and focus our questions
Aim for theoretical understanding
Capture insight about creative mind
Calibrate evidence that we are one
Create applications, education, healing
Contribute to better future for culture
We think the world apart. What would it be like
to think the world together?
-- Parker Palmer, educator
http://noosphere.princeton.edu
GCP Homepage
http://noosphere.princeton.edu
Special Link Buttons
Status
Day Sum
Results
Extract
Presentation
Split into Two
Complementary
Perspectives
Frame-based Web Design
Rick Berger
Can the flap of a butterfly’s wings …
Actually a
Dragonfly
Consciousness is creative …
We take meaning from music, we know
our loved ones from afar, and we leap
in thought to the stars.
Sometimes we dissolve ourselves into
a group and become a larger whole.
And we always have prayed as if it
could make a difference.
- - Roger Nelson, noosphere.princeton.edu
Creative source is an effortless
state of being.
Desiring and resisting are efforts.
Accepting and appreciating are
effortless.
- - Harry Palmer, Living Deliberately
Each time a man stands up for an ideal,
or acts to improve the lot of others, or
strikes out against injustice, he sends
forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing
each other from a million different
centers of energy and daring, those
ripples build a current that can sweep
down the mightiest walls of oppression
and resistance.
- - Robert Kennedy, Capetown, 1966
Evidence for “compensation”
after the defined event is over?
Speculation: Changing state of consciousness
Event
Period