Science's Search for a Universal Mind

On Sept. 11, 2001, between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. (EST)—four hours before the
terrorist attack on the World Trade Center occurred—several computers
dedicated to a project aimed at measuring emotional fluctuations on a global
level began to transmit frenzied patterns.

Events such as large traffic jams or the simultaneous ignition of millions of radio
and television sets seeking news channels were just some of the examples
collected from computers measuring behavior that shifted from a relatively
random pattern to suggesting a collective consciousness that seemed to
anticipate the tragedy.

This collective anticipation before an event of global proportion possibly points

toward a direct relation between hard facts and a hypothetical global
consciousness. In other words, if the interpretation of the data obtained by the
computers in the "Global Consciousness Project" is correct, there exists the
latent possibility that events impossible to perceive consciously in humans as
individuals can surprisingly be perceived in mankind as a whole.

A network of computers spanning 65 countries feed into the Global

Consciousness Project (GCP) as the entire system checks for variations every
second. Its goal is to obtain a unique pattern of world behavior, which, for the
majority of the time, remains stable. These computers act as a "random number
generator" that each second process 200 bits of information and send it to the
center in Princeton for analysis.

Given the quantity of information, and the measured parameters of human

conduct produced at random, these statistics tend to stabilize at a certain value.
This is to say that the individual action of a person passes imperceptibly before
the sea of individual actions measured every second, and the corresponding
pattern recorded by the GCP can only have its value altered when a considerable
number of individuals (on a global scale) alter their conduct in any measured
way.

For example, if a traffic jam is forming on one side of the world, perhaps
another is resolving itself on the other; if an individual turns on a radio, certainly
another somewhere else turns one off. The outcome is that the pattern reflecting
social conduct remains fairly constant. But when a significant social event
occurs—and even before it occurs—the world graph makes a spectacular jump,
which is difficult to explain according to the usual laws predicting randomness.
This "jump" in patterns that occurred during the attack on the World Trade
Center is not the only instance registered by the center at Princeton. Identical
anomalies were registered 24 hours before the tsunami in December 2004 that
ruined the coasts of Southeast Asia, killing 250 000 people. It happened just
before attacks on embassies, in the taking of hostages, the funeral of Princess
Diana, the global meditation organized in January 1997 for the "Gaia Mind
Project," the NATO bombing in Yugoslavia, and in the Kursk submarine
accident.

Critics of the project say that while a peak in data measured at a global level
may seem significant, relating this data to socially relevant events is foolish,
given that events of world magnitude are continually occurring making it
difficult to tell which event influenced the measured changes. Furthermore,
these same values do not seem to register with similar world events, like the
funeral of Mother Teresa, or the second organized Gaia Mind meditation.

Yet these critiques have failed to stop people from pondering the provocative
peaks in global social patterns that point to a phenomenon that escapes our
current range of comprehension. "The results of the analysis are unequivocal,"
say the scientists behind the GCP. "When we ask why the September 11 disaster
should appear to be responsible for a strong signal in our world-wide network of
instruments designed to generate random noise, there is no obvious answer.
When we look carefully and discover that the EGGs [random number generating
devices] might reflect our shock and dismay even before our minds and hearts
express it, we confront a still deeper mystery."

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us a universe, a part limited in

time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something
separated from the rest ... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This
delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to
affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from
this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature in its beauty."
—Albert Einstein