Collective Consciousness Experiment Sept. 1 & 2. Please Participate!

Even if you are not a Burner or (ex-Burner), if you are part of WorldShift this experiment is likely to be of interest!

P.S. WorldShift member Claudia Welss is just back from Alberta, Canada where we installed the latest Global Coherence Initiative magnetometer. Each installation includes a Global Consciousness Project RNG. For more about these kinds of Earth monitoring systems please visit http://www.glcoherence.org/monitoring-system/about-system.html

The Experiment: Collective Consciousness From the collective enthusiasm of a World Cup Soccer Tournament to the haunting feeling that lingers at the 911 memorial, most people have experienced an ineffable feeling that seems to reach beyond their five senses when they've been at special events or places. Provocative evidence collected to date shows significant departures from chance expectation in “random number generators” (electronic devices that produce a truly random string of zeros and ones) during times of collective upheaval, global crises and major celebrations. Sept 1 - Sept 2, 2012: Measuring the Impact of MIND on MATTER in Black Rock City (BRC) in the Nevada desert at BURNING MAN. This year, IONS and its partners are using Black Rock City as a living laboratory to investigate whether Burning Man—a week-long celebratory event that is unique in its concentrated intensity, isolation, and collective intention, culminating with the burn of the man—will be correlated with shifts in the output of a random number generator (RNG) placed on the playa. We’ll also add a fun/experiential component in real time by linking the RNG output to a colored laser. Data generated by the random number generator before, during and after the burning of the man will be statistically analyzed to assess if the output of the device deviates from randomness during these periods of collective attention. You Can Participate Even If You're Not At Burning Man! If you'd like to lend your attention and intention to the experiment, you can attend virtually! Please view the live streaming video of the "burning of the man" via the Burning Man Webcast at about 9pm (PST) Saturday night, (or time to be determined by weather and other factors).

Link: www.ustream.tv/burningman If you watch the live stream of the burning of the man, you'll join with thousands of other people who are directing their attention toward the same place, at the same time, and we will be measuring the possible effects of this collective attention on the output of a random number generator (RNG) near the location. The next night, on Sunday, September 2, we'll also be using the RNG to measure potential effects of a second event: the burning of the temple. This is a much more contemplative, silent event that honors people who have passed away, and things you want to let go of. This will happen at about the same time, after 9pm (PST). Go to the same Burning Man Webcast to view, and lend your attention and intention to the experiment. If you'd like to hear a talk on the experiment being conducted at Burning Man, you can go to this link at about 2 - 4pm (PST) Thursday afternoon, when the lead experimenter, Institute of Noetic Sciences Director of Research, Cassandra Vieten, will be speaking at TedX Black Rock City.

This experiment studies possible correlations between mind and matter by exploring what happens to a purely random system when it located in an environment where 50,000 minds are all focusing on the same ritual (the burning man). If collective mind and matter are related, then physical randomness may be reduced. In previous studies of this celebration, conducted from a distance, significant departures from chance expectation were observed in random systems. This study will see whether a similar effect, or possibly a stronger one, will be observed when a random generator is located within the Burning Man enclave itself. A powerful multicolor laser beam will be controlled by a hardware random number generator (RNG). A computer will monitor the output of the RNG and cause the laser beam focus to become more stable and coherent when the RNG output departs from randomness. Random data produced before, during and after the burning of the man will be statistically analyzed to assess if the RNG output deviated from randomness during the period of high collective coherence. The underlying hypothesis in studies of this type is that mind and matter are complementary aspects of a more fundamental holistic reality. As such, when minds experience periods of unusually high coherence, such as during the burning of the man, then matter also reflects a period of unusually high coherence. That coherence is detected in the RNG output as a well defined statistical deviation from chance expectation. The hypothesis and the method of analysis are straightforward and set in advance of the test, and about 100 previous experiments provide repeatable evidence in favor of the hypothesis.

We see Burning Man as the perfect living laboratory to investigate collective intention, or field effects of consciousness. This is in part because Burning Man is unique in its level of concentrated scale and intensity, and is a creation of the voluntary and dedicated intention of tens of thousands of people, culminating in a couple of predictable (in time and space) surges in collective attention - the burning of the man, and the temple burn. Its unique in that it's also got an almost tribal, ancient feel - where people are coming together with a lot of high energy, love, and conscious intention to create beauty and awe. We'll be looking at these moments, comparing the activity of Random Number Generators (RNGs) to other "control" times (e.g. when Burning Man isn't happening) and predicting that the behavior of the BRC-dedicated RNG as well as correlations between it and other RNGs will change during the burn and during these specific times. It's also a great opportunity because of its isolation in time and in space - in other words, other large events often happen in or near cities and may have a huge amount of interference or noise, whereas the intention for Black Rock City seems to be to emerge in a field of potential and then disappear without a trace, far from anything else.

The Global Consciousness Project, led by Roger Nelson with Dean Radin as a collaborator, (they are both advising on this project) has already shown changes in RNGs around the world that are correlated with the time of Burning Man, so we've got some reason to believe there could be an effect we can measure. It's hypothesized that this effect is nonlocal, so it's not just the people attending this year's burning man, but everyone paying attention to it from a distance that might help to create a field of collective intention. We will look at the behavior of these worldwide random number generators around the world, as well as our RNG at Black Rock City.

People involved with this project: Cassandra Vieten, Director of Research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences; Tam Hunt, renewable energy consultant, lawyer, and visiting lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Dean Radin, Senior Scientist at IONS and author of Entangled Minds and The Conscious Universe; Arnaud DeLorme, neuroscientist at UC San Diego and visiting scholar at IONS; Roger Nelson, head of the Global Consciousness Project; Claudia Welss of the Center for Causal Coherence and the Global Coherence Initiative; David Shearer, PhD, Board President of Black Rock Solar; Chetan Nandakumar of Resonate Creative Labs; the Science and Nonduality Conference, and others.

The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) The Global Consciousness Project is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists and engineers. They collect data continuously from a global network of physical random number generators located in 70 host sites around the world. The data are transmitted to a central archive which now contains more than 12 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second. See http://noetic.org/mindatlarge for a Summary of the GCP by Brendan Keefe of CBS2.