The Science of Interconnectedness: PART IV — COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
This is part of a series on the Science of Interconnectedness. See: Part I, Part II, and Part III.
So far in this series we have established that human beings, and the world we live in, are an interconnected whole. But maybe this isn’t a surprise. After all, in the “flat” world of globalized economies, technology, and social media, the notion of connectedness is about as controversial as whether the world travels around the sun.
So now I will step-up the level of “woo-woo” science. In the next few sections I will present data on “collective consciousness.” Given our interconnected world, it follows to wonder whether we are united beyond the boundaries of our skin. Is there a field that connects us? Can this field carry information? Are our hearts and minds connected beyond the limits of our skin? While these topics remain contested in science, they demonstrate mass appeal and acceptance in mainstream culture: books, movies, art, and other cultural mediums commonly portray psychic and mystical phenomena. There is a hunger to consume such ideas. But is there any scientific evidence to support them?
Collective Consciousness
Let’s return to the 9/11 attacks, presented at the beginning of this series. Is this data, alone, enough to justify the existence of a collective consciousness? This experiment has rightly attracted scientific skepticism (e.g., Scargle, 2002). However, scientists with the GCP have tested a number of other significant global events, as well. Major tsunamis, earthquakes, protests, elections, celebrity events (e.g., the O.J. Simpson verdict, Princess Diana’s funeral ceremony), sporting events (e.g., the World Cup), and even uplifting moments such mass meditations, have been analyzed based on a priori hypotheses that they elicit mass, synchronized attention. The cumulative results from over 500 events shows a statistical deviation from randomness, where the numbers become more orderly. The size of the effect is small, but “real” nonetheless, where the cumulative odds of this effect being due to chance is more than one in a trillion (Global Consciousness Project, 2015; Nelson & Bancel, 2011).
The fact that numbers become more orderly with collective attention reinforces an important dictum: paying attention produces order out of chaos. Who knows what sort of order we could produce out of the panoply of chaotic symptoms in the world, simply by attending to them. Before creating lasting change in our own life, we have to patiently hold our symptoms in awareness. The same is true at the collective level.
You may be wondering how on earth — even if our minds are interconnected — do they influence the behavior of machines? This is a great question, and certainly beyond the scope of my own comprehension. However, the phenomenon does appear consistent with our current knowledge of quantum physics and mind-matter interactions. Many readers might be familiar with the double slit experiment: a laser beam is directed through a plate with two parallel slits. Depending on whether the light is observed or not, it will behave as either a particle or a wave. Some physicists propose this is due to “entanglement” between the observer (you) and the object (light) (Kim, Yu, Kulik, Shih, & Scully, 2000). This effect is an example of a mind-matter interaction.
Mind-matter interactions can occur “non-locally,” meaning they occur at a distance and (somehow) simultaneously — as if two objects are not separated by space and time. Einstein referred to this as “spooky action at a distance.” A growing number of studies have corroborated “nonlocal” entanglement between particles (Fuwa, Takeda, Zwierz, Wiseman, & Furusawa, 2015; Kwiat, Barraza-Lopez, Stefanov, & Gisin, 2001). To further test the limits of the mind-matter interactions, consciousness researcher Dean Radin and colleagues gathered participants and asked them to focus their attention on the double slit in their mind’s eye. Participants sat in an electromagnetically-shielded chamber two meters away from the device. They were asked to focus on the beam for 30 seconds, then relax for 30 seconds. Radin and colleagues found that participants were still able to influence the behavior of the light during the focus periods. Interestingly, meditators performed better than non-meditators. The research team was encouraged by these findings, but still skeptical: they wondered whether the participants’ proximity to the device influenced the light, rather than the “non-local” effects of their consciousness, as hypothesized. So they decided to run the same experiment online with participants across the world. After 2,089 sessions with 689 people across the world, they found a similar outcome. Participants were able to influence light patterns regardless of distance: those in California (where the double slit was located) had the same influence on the light as those 10,000 miles away in South Africa (Radin, Michel, Johnston, & Delorme, 2013).
Mind-to-Mind & Heart-to-Heart Connections
I have often pondered non-local entanglement myself. This began in middle school, but not in any sophisticated way — in the crudest way possible, a manner only in which a 13-year-old boy could ponder such mysteries. Let me set the stage: it’s the year 2002, and a young, girl-crazy, socially anxious Matt Goodman is doing his best to act cool at a bar mitzvah party. He and the other socially anxious kids are sitting on the floor watching a video montage (we will assume Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” playing in the background. If you’ve been to these parties, you understand there is a 90% chance of this being accurate). Young Matt spots a romantic interest out of the corner of his eye. She is pretty far away and slightly in front of him. He gazes over, innocently trying to catch a glance, only to find this prompts the turning of her head at just about the same time. They lock eyes. Oh no! Caught in the act. Did she somehow know I was about to stare at her? Just a coincidence… right? After a few seconds of rumination, he decides to try again. Caught again! Can she really feel me staring? Are our minds somehow connected? Perhaps I should have been paying attention to Zach Rosenstein’s video montage, but these were the thoughts percolating in my mind.
You have probably had a similar experience at some point. Many people describe pulling up to another vehicle and making eye contact with the other driver at the exact same time. Some people report “telephone telepathy,” where you know who is calling before you look at the phone (or you were just thinking of that person a moment ago). Are these effects real?
Researchers have empirically tested “the feeling of being stared at.”. In multiple studies, controlled environments are set up where one person is the “starer” (doing the staring) and the other the “staree” (being stared at). The starer is located out of sight behind the staree, or in another room altogether (using a video camera to view the staree). In some instances, the staree is asked to detect when they experience the “being stared at.” In other experiments, researchers measure the physiological activity of the staree (e.g, skin conductance) to determine if this could be unconsciously detected. The results of several meta-analyses (study of studies) suggest that in both types of experiments, there is a small but significant effect, above and beyond chance, of detecting remote staring from others (Radin, 2005; Schmidt, Schneider, Utts, & Walach, 2004). As some studies failed to replicate these effects, one group of researchers proposes that the experimenter’s own beliefs may influence study outcomes (Schlitz, Wiseman, Watt, & Radin, 2006).
Researchers have also tested mind-to-mind connections in the context of healing. For example, one study recruited experienced healers, such as shamans and Reiki practitioners, and then placed someone whom they felt a strong connection with inside of an fMRI scanner. They asked the healers to remotely send energy, prayer, or positive intentions to their fMRI counterpart at random 2-minute intervals unknown to the subject. The authors found a significant difference in brain activity between periods of sending versus non-sending energy (Achterberg et al., 2005). Other studies, including several randomized-controlled trials (RCT’s; the “gold standard” research method), have tested whether remote prayer can affect health outcomes in hospital patients. While some studies have shown that prayer can positively impact clinical outcomes, length of stay, and mortality rates (e.g., Byrd, 1988), others have not, and a review of 10 RCT’s with 7646 patients suggested no overall effect of prayer on clinical outcomes, mortality rates, or readmission to the hospital (Roberts, Ahmed, Hall, & Davison, 2009).
Whether mind-to-mind connections and distant healing is a real phenomenon is up for debate, according to the current state of the science. More research is needed to help clarify this. At this point in time, you may have to rely on my experience at Zach Rosenstein’s bar mitzvah — and others like it you may have experienced — to arrive at your own conclusions.
Yet the mind is not the only organ that “feels” the presence of others. Researchers have also studied the connections between hearts. Just as our brain emits an electromagnetic field — detected by devices such as electroencephalogram (EEG) — so too does the heart. In fact, the heart’s electrical field is around 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain and can be detected from several feet away from the body (Russek & Schwartz, 1996). This field of energy might help explain why we can sometimes “feel someone else’s energy” or “sense the energy of a room” upon entering it. Sometimes this information is processed consciously, but other times it is not. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that we should be able to quickly process danger or safety, threat or warmth, without making elaborate cognitive appraisals. This type of communication happens viscerally.
Some healers propose that one’s energy field actually contains memories and repressed emotions; thus, illness is viewed as existing not only in the body, but around it as well (McKusick, 2014). If this is true, then we might imagine each of our energy fields uplifting, or afflicting, the people around us as we move about our interconnected world. If there is high stress in a home, community, city, and so on, it has ripple effects across one’s immediate, and more distant, systems. Stress, local or distant, belongs to the whole. Like the body, symptoms belong to the larger complex system of our interconnected world.
The Bigger Picture
The individual and the world are mirrors of one another. The biological principles governing cells also apply to larger systems — cities, countries, economies, social systems, and the earth itself. If we adopt this view of interconnectedness, it has the potential to shift our understanding of everything, from cell to society. As with the body, no longer do symptoms belong to one community or system; they impact, and are impacted by, every other community and system.
We can use the individual organism — its health and illness — as a blueprint for understanding the collective, and vice versa. This can open new doors to creatively solving some of society’s most pressing problems. Science is helping us better understand the nature of interconnectivity in the world. But human culture already harbors this wisdom. Spiritual traditions have been teaching about it for thousands of years.
*This post was excerpted from my upcoming book, “Symptoms of the World: Interconnectedness and the Re-Imagination of Illness, From Cell to Society.”
Matthew S. Goodman, Ph.D. is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist (PSY32423) and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. He hosts “The Middle Way” podcast. Learn more here: http://matthewgoodmanphd.com
References
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Byrd, R. C. (1988). Positive therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care unit population. Southern medical journal, 81(7), 826–829.
Fuwa M, Takeda S, Zwierz M, Wiseman HM, Furusawa A (2015). Experimental proof of nonlocal wavefunction collapse for a single particle using homodyne measurements. Nat Commun, 6:6665
Global Consciousness Project (2015). The Global Consciousness Project: Meaningful Correlations in Random Data. Retrieved March 29, 2017, from: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/index.html.
Kim, Y. H., Yu, R., Kulik, S. P., Shih, Y., & Scully, M. O. (2000). Delayed “choice” quantum eraser. Physical Review Letters, 84(1), 1.
Kwiat PG, Barraza-Lopez S, Stefanov A, Gisin N. (2001). Experimental entanglement distillation and ‘hidden’ non-locality. Nature, 409(6823):1014–7
McKusick, E. D. (2014). Tuning the human biofield: Healing with vibrational sound therapy. Simon and Schuster.
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Roberts L, Ahmed I, Hall S, Davison A. (2009). Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health. Cochrane Database Syst Rev, Apr 15;(2):CD000368
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Schlitz, M., Wiseman, R., Watt, C., & Radin, D. (2006). Of two minds: Sceptic proponent collaboration within parapsychology. British Journal of Psychology, 97(3), 313–322.
