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This article appeared in the Spring 2002 issue of Spirituality & Health.
Global Consciousness?
9/11 Sent Earth’s “Electrogaiagram” Soaring
by Barbara Stahura
9/11 Sent Earth’s “Electrogaiagram” Soaring
by Barbara Stahura
More than half a century ago, theologian Teilhard de Chardin conceived of an emerging web of global consciousness, which he dubbed the noosphere. Many people believe he foretold the Internet, but Princeton physicist Roger Nelson says Chardin was referring to something much more magnificent: a consciousness connecting all life on the planet, a Gaia mind. In 1998, Nelson and a group of colleagues from various anomalies-
The project began with placement of three random event generators (REGs) that generate random numbers at rapid and constant speed (today, there are more than 40 around the world). Typically, the lines graphed from these random numbers are essentially flat. However, times of what Nelson calls “deep meaning” produce data points that line up in sweeping curves. The nearly 90 events already in the Princeton database include the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, any New Year’s Eve, several major earthquakes, and 9/11, a curve that lasted more than two days. Think of these REGs as a global EEG, a measuring device for the planet’s brain waves. Project members call it EGG, for “Electrogaiagram.”
At this point, Nelson stresses, there is no proof of global consciousness. “We have only statistical indications.” Yet the data are showing something that might be an interaction between mind and matter. He compares it to a nonlocal field, a quantum mechanics phenomenon whereby particles once associated are forever correlated, no matter how far apart they are. For example, if you alter the spin on one of a pair of associated particles, its partner instantaneously matches the change no matter how far apart they are. No one yet knows how or why this happens, but it does.
The same goes for REG data. “Some kind of great coherence arises when people are all engaged in the same event, sharing emotions and attention,” says Nelson. “And that coherent interaction, coherent presence in the world, a kind of information field, is what causes our numbers to be different from what they should be.”
