A pandemic paradox: We are closer than it looks

— by Matthew Gilbert & Minor Lile, Orcas Issues reporters —

If the pandemic has revealed anything about this world of ours, it’s the reality of our interconnectedness – for better and for worse. This has certainly been true politically and economically, while the internet has put an exclamation point on our social and communal entanglements. But what if the pandemic has revealed something else, something at the level of human consciousness? Do all of these interconnecting forces also hold true for the human mind and heart in more subtle but equally compelling ways?

This deeper level of connection is far more difficult to prove, but there are those who are making the effort.

Exploring the science of collective consciousness is the mission of the Global Consciousness Project (GCP) based at Princeton University in New Jersey. The GCP is privately funded and composed of an international collaboration of more than 100 research scientists and engineers. It was founded in 1997 by Roger Nelson, PhD. Nelson’s training was in experimental cognitive psychology with significant background studies in physics and statistical methods. Before devoting his time to the GCP, he was the coordinator of experimental work at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab in the School of Engineering/Applied Science.

Earlier this week, we interviewed Dr. Nelson about the project and his recent analysis of events related to the unfolding story of the pandemic.

(The interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Matthew Gilbert: Roger, refresh our understanding of the original hypothesis for putting this project together and what has been learned or what you can safely say about it.

Roger Nelson: Okay. This project developed out of laboratory research using random number generators as a target for wishes and intentions. We found that people’s intentions could change the output or data from a random number generator. I moved that technology out for what we called “field work” which was intended as a sort of double entendre, the idea being that we might be looking at a consciousness field, and that it would also work in places like churches and concert halls, in the woods where people were doing rituals.  

That led to more questions about, for example, what happens if you have two of these devices, or more than two? And what happens if they are far away rather than right in the vicinity of the activity you are trying to monitor? That ultimately led to a plan that went through some prototyping, and in 1997 I gathered a group and some resources, put a few months of work into software development, and started building a permanent network of random number generators all around the world.

The hypothesis we wanted to test was pretty straightforward but general: If there is a really powerful event in the world that draws people together and synchronizes their thoughts and especially their emotions – it could be a positive or a negative event – we would see changes in our data during the time of this acute emotional-mental activity.

We then proceeded with formal tests of that. Every time there was a good test opportunity [event] for specifying a beginning and an end, we would pull the data from the archive and find out if there was any “structure” in the data that should otherwise be purely random. The events of Sept. 11 were an especially significant example.

Over the years, we accumulated 500 formal experiments like that in a giant database with a bottom-line probability of 10 to the 13^th, far more than most people in the sciences need to say, “Yeah, there’s something there.” And this is all in rigorous, publicly available databases. In other words, there’s no possibility of any kind of accident or fraudulent conclusions because it is utterly and completely public. You can download the data from any particular period of time and do your own analysis.

MG: And what conclusion can you draw from this impressive body of data?

RN: Well, there are multiple levels of conclusion. One that is unquestionable is that there are distortions and deviations in data that should be random. Secondly, those deviations are correlated with very particular types of human activity that bring really large numbers of people into a kind of synchronized emotional state.

And then, getting a little further from the robust conclusions, I draw the conclusion personally – and I think it’s supportable in the data – that there is some kind of interconnection among us that we don’t actually know about. It’s deeply unconscious but profoundly important. If such an unconscious connection exists, what would it be like if we somehow managed to bring it up into actual consciousness.

Minor Lile: I’d like to bring us to the present moment; from the general premises we’ve been exploring to your most recent report. One of the things you point out is that there’s a distinct difference between a specific focused event and something that is a bit more diffuse like this pandemic. It’s a unique event in the sense that much of the planet is deeply affected, but it has happened over a period of weeks and months rather than at a particular moment in time. What are the distinctions between these types of events?

RN: Right. When I started building this system, I understood that we are dealing with an extraordinarily complex world, and that if there was some major event that captured my attention, there probably would be another one an hour later, or the next day. In other words, in this complicated world, there is a huge amount of activity that might generate the kind of mass attention or mass emotion that we think we are measuring.

So there can be a problem trying to isolate or understand any particular thing. The solution is to carefully and sharply define what you want to know about or assess and to know that other major events might compete for the attention of my random number generator network. That allows us to isolate one event, do it again and again and again, then do a composite average across all those stacked-up events. Going back to the current turmoil, which has lasted for months, you can see that there could be any number of other things such as bombs, crashes, hurricanes, and tornadoes that could confuse us if we try to measure this ongoing turmoil in world consciousness.

I opted to take a sample of when the turmoil hit a peak, starting on March 11 when there was the WHO announcement declaring that the Coronavirus outbreak had reached pandemic levels as well as a cataclysmic change in the stock market. And then I arbitrarily took similar samples for the next five days the stock market was open. That data represents the turmoil just as any sample will represent the whole matrix of things you are sampling from. And the upshot is that four out of five samples I took showed strong deviations.

ML: It’s interesting that this pandemic is having a global impact, but it is also extremely local in how people are responding to it. Our response here in the San Juan Islands has its own distinct qualities compared to where you are in New Jersey. Can you comment on this global/local dynamic?

RN: It’s an interesting question. I know my own perspective is very much like you say. I also know that the local interest I have is conditioned a lot by the global perspective I get from the internet and news programs. I find myself communicating more with people who are my friends and relatives. They may be in Germany, or India, or maybe next door, but I’m feeling a kind of bond with both individual people and with the world as a whole. I will look at tragic news coming from one place or another and feel tears come to my eyes. It’s just so sad. I don’t know them, but I know something about the pain of losing a loved one. I’m three-quarters convinced that this has the potential for a lot of us to become more aware of other people.

ML: Yes, let’s hope that proves to be the case.

RN: I’ve written a book called Connected: The Emergence of Global Consciousness. I wanted to describe the GCP project, the data, all that stuff, but mostly I wanted to persuade people to believe we are all connected at a kind of undercurrent level and to become more conscious of that. And I believe that is what the Global Consciousness Project points to. Which is to say, there’s a normal interpenetration in day-to-day life that doesn’t interact at a deep level. But when we are synchronized, when we begin to do things together and to feel the same emotion, we develop fields that are resonant with each other. Those become a larger, integrated field built across many people, maybe millions. My instrument is assigned the task of responding to any kind of large-scale structure in the global consciousness field.

MG: What about interest in the project over time? And looking ahead, are there any funding challenges and what will be the strategy when you decide to step down?

RN: Interest has increased over time, though it’s still an unknown project in most of the world as far as I can tell. I’m now collaborating with Rollin McCraty and the HeartMath Institute to build what we’re calling GCP 2.0. I’m looking forward to turning it over to them because I’m not running it as a formal experiment anymore but I think there are a lot of questions it still can answer.

ML: And that about brings us to the end of our time. Thank you very much, Roger.

RN: And thank you. Remember to be safe and wash your hands!