May the Force Be With You
By Sulana Stone and Keith Varnum
The Dream.com

Does global consciousness exist? If so, can people with a common focus use a force within themselves to affect worldly events? Can the effects of human consciousness be measured?

Studies point to “Yes!” And growing scientific evidence documents the power of human consciousness to influence and change the world.

In one project, highly sensitive electronic equipment indicates that certain events—such as New Year’s Eve celebrations, Princess Diana’s funeral and the World Trade Center attacks—stimulate enough collective human consciousness that the level of combined consciousness can be measured.

Other experiments show how people using group meditations can impact social conditions such as war deaths, violent crimes, traffic accident fatalities, cigarette consumption, and stock market fluctuations.

Is There Proof of Global Consciousness?
Since 1998, electronic equipment has been recording “disturbances in the force,” as the Star Wars movie character, Obi-Wan Kenobi might say. Obi-Wan was the Jedi knight who tutored our hero, Luke Skywalker, in the “ways of the force.” Throughout this epic science fiction movie, Luke learned how the force could be used for constructive or destructive purposes.

Now, modern science experiments indicate that large numbers of people who have a common focus do, in fact, radiate an energy force that influences physical reality.

In over 50 centers around the world, variations in this common focus, or shared consciousness, are being recorded as part of the Global Consciousness Project (GCP). The GCP wants to know if the thoughts and feelings of huge numbers of people whose attention is on the same event have a global presence.

To find the answer, the GCP created a network of devices located on every continent that are sensitive to human mental and emotional frequencies. Similar in approach to medical EEG’s where electrodes measure activity in the human brain, the GCP “electrodes” measure activity in the “global brain.”

Research scientists in physics and psychology at such institutions as Princeton University in the U.S. and other major universities in Britain, Germany and the rest of the world have been gathering data about this fluctuating force for five years.

Variations in this energy force occur when people are triggered by certain disasters, celebrations or events that stir human thoughts and feelings to a large degree. The equipment measures responses that correlate to peaceful gatherings, global meditations, dramatic events and disasters.

Some examples are the Papal visit to Israel, the funerals of Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy, Jr., the O.J. Simpson trial, the first hour of NATO bombing in Yugoslavia, and major earthquakes.

Wisdom of the Jedi Knight
What is this force?

In Star Wars -- Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke that “The Force is what gives the Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”

Dr. Roger Nelson, the director of the Global Consciousness Project at Princeton University, seems to agree. “In my global opinion, humans don’t just stop at their skin,” says Nelson. “Consciousness is bigger than the physical body and ... we have good evidence that there’s an interaction of consciousness with physical systems.”

A Disturbance of the Force
“Our purpose,” states the Global Consciousness Project website, “is to gather evidence and study indications of the subtle reach of human consciousness in the physical world on a global scale.

Usually, because we are busy with individual lives, there is little to produce structure in the field (of consciousness), so it is random and not detectable. But occasionally there are global-scale events that bring great numbers of us to a common focus and an unusual coherence of thought and feeling.”

And, “This,” as Obi-Wan Kenobi might say, “creates a disturbance in the force.” The greatest measured disruptions by far were the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September 11th.

The overall statistics for the GCP indicate a probability of less than one in a million that the correlation of data with global events is merely a chance fluctuation. Plus there are a growing number of additional experiments indicating that consciousness and focus influence the physical world.

Using the Force Intentionally
In 20 years of controlled experiments at Princeton University, scientists found that people can influence random events by using their intention.

Researchers experimented with coin-flipping machines that normally produce random results of 50/50. After several million trials, the machines produced slightly less-random results when study participants focused their intention on influencing the machines

The effect was small. And, the deviations from random patterns are statistically significant and repeatable.

“Somehow, in these experiments, the results of these interactions — whatever is going on — are having a very slight but definite impact on the way the physical world is working,” says Brenda Dunne, manager of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory.

The Impact of Group Meditations
Other research demonstrates that group meditation can be used to effect the number of war deaths, violent deaths, cigarette consumption, the stock market, traffic accidents and crime rates.

One study of a special assembly in Israel, which tracked the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for two months, showed that on days when the number of group meditators was the highest, war deaths in Lebanon fell by 76%.

Canada has also reaped the benefits of unified meditation. During the period studied, violent deaths (traffic fatalities, homicides, suicides) fell by 4%, and cigarette consumption fell by 10%.

When a meditation group focused on the stock market of Great Britain, the stock market index rose at 8 times the ordinary rate.

Over a ten-year span in Holland, the number of traffic accidents and crime rate went down significantly each time the number of meditators went up.

Huge Crime Reduction From Experiment
One of the most dramatic experiments in using “the force” happened in the summer of 1993 in Washington, D.C. Four thousand experts in Transcendental Meditation participated in large group meditations that focused on reducing social stress and violent crime.

After months of rapid increase, HRA (homicide, rape, and assault) violent crime declined during the demonstration. (Violent crime usually increases in June and July.)

Data analysis from the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police revealed that there was a highly significant decrease in HRA crimes that was associated with increases in the size of the meditation group during the demonstration project.

The maximum decrease in HRA crimes was 23.3%, which occurred when the size of the meditation group was the largest. The statistical probability that this result could reflect chance variation in crime levels was less than two in a billion.

This $6 million scientific demonstration was the largest and most rigorously designed sociological experiment in history. The project review board was comprised of leading research scientists, sociologists and criminologists from universities throughout the U.S., leaders from the community and local government, and members of the DC Metropolitan Police Department.

The ways of the force are still being defined in scientific terms. And the evidence is mounting that humans can use this force to change the world. Perhaps, the time is ripe for people to notice the effects their own personal force has on the world and begin their own personal experiments in “ways of the force.” How? Obi-Wan Kenobi offers our hero a clue. “Be one with the force, Luke.”

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