Originally published October 22 2008
The World's First Global Peace Intention Experiment
by Dorien Herremans
(NaturalNews) What happens when 12 000 people send their intention for peace at the same time, eight days long, for 10 minutes a day, directed at the same region? Well, according to preliminary results of the first intention experiment directed by Lynn McTaggart, this does have a significant influence on the overall peace levels. A few weeks ago the first global peace intention experiment took place, this was part of the largest mind-over-matter experiments in history. The architect of the experiments is Lynn McTaggart, author of the bestselling books "The Intention Experiment" and "The Field". The aim of the experiment is to "test the power of group intention to lower violence in a succession of areas around the world noted for high levels of violence." Today, one month after the first experiment, the preliminary data starts rolling in...
Collective thought has the power to change the world
In 2006-2007 Lynn McTaggart has scientifically demonstrated, with a series of experiments, that a 'group mind' can:
- Make seeds grow twice as high as normal
- Change basic physical properties of leaves
- Alter the essential structure of water
- Change physical properties in a plant and a human being
McTaggart is one of the pioneers in the world today who offers scientific demonstrations that collective thoughts have the power to change the world. The studies mentioned above have been presented at the Society for Scientific Exploration annual meeting in June 2008.
Leading physicists and psychologists from the University of Arizona, Pennsylvania State University, St. Petersburg Technical University, the International Institute of Biophysics and the former PEAR lab at Princeton University, have all worked with Lynn McTaggart.
Peace Intention experiments?
The peace intention experiments where sparked by the large number of Transcendental Meditation (TM) studies that where conducted. These showed, that if a critical mass of people regularly meditated in a certain area, the crime rate goes down. One of those studies attempted to use meditation to diminish the Palestininan conflict in 1983. It showed, that fatalities in Lebanon fell by 76 per cent on days with a high number of meditators. Although the TM studies where highly successful, The Peace Intention Experiment goes one step further, by letting the group send a specific intention, instead of general meditation.
The scientific team, responsible for maintaining the strict protocal and measuring violence levels before and after, includes:
- Dr. Robert Jahn, former dean of engineering at Princeton University and former director of the PEAR Lab
- Psychologist Brenda Dunne, also formerly of the PEAR Lab
- Psychologist Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona, and director of the Laboratory for Advancement of Consciousness and Health, who has run many healing energy experiments
- Psychologist Roger Nelson, formerly of Princeton University, and director of the Global Consciousness Project
- Dr. Jessica Utts, professor of statistics at the University of California at Davis, considered the world's leading statistician of consciousness research
The pilot study: Sri Lanka
11 468 Participants
The first peace intention experiment started on September 14th and ran for eight consecutive days, on which at least 11 468 people took part. The participants came from more than 65 countries, top ranking countries were the US, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, South Africa, Germany, Australia, Belgium, Spain and Mexico.
Target: the Wanni region in Sri Lanka
The experiment focused on the Wanni region. For most people, a quit unknown part of the earth. Nevertheless, they have suffered a civil war for 25 years, with more suicide bombing then anywhere.
How to get 11 468 people together
The intention experiment set up a website, where the participants could login just before the daily experiment began. The web pages flipped over automatically and guided the participants through the experiment. The experiment schedule looked like this:
- 0:00 Power Up, prepare yourself mentally for the study.
- 0:05 Page automatically flips over. Study intention target
- 0:10 Page flips over. Experiment begins.
- 0:20 Experiment ends. Join the Intention Experiment forum.
During the experiment phase, the website played nice, relaxing music and showed images of Sri Lankans in peace. The intention was the following:
"My intention is for peace and cooperation to be restored in the Wanni region of Sri Lanka and for all war-related deaths and violence to be reduced by at least 10 per cent"
Positive results � Some preliminary statistics
Jessica Utts, professor of Statistics at University of California at Irvine, is responsible for the statistical processing of the experiment's data.
Before the intention study, the Wanni Region has averaged 102 deaths per week. Strangely enough, according to Lynn McTaggart, the intentions had the initial effect of increasing violence. Since there was a last surge of attacks by the Sri Lankan government, who wanted to quash the Tamil Tiger rebels once and for all. This brought on 461 murders in the eight days of the experiment, which is a great increase. Luckily, the data does not end here...
In the 24 days following the experiment, violence levels immediately plunged down and stayed low ever since. The weekly average death rate in the Wanni region dropped by
49 per cent!
Interestingly enough, the Eastern part of Sri Lanka, experienced the same evolution. The death rate heightened during the experiment period, and then fell by 68.4 per cent.
These statistics are given by Lynn McTaggart directly in her newsletter. However, they are preliminary, once there are more numbers available, the long term effect will become visible.
Participant responses
The experiment was followed by discussions in the specially set up web forum, where lots of people spoke about the lovely feelings of peace they experienced during the intention. One topic that came up a few times was the surprising use of low-energy words in the intention:
"My intention is for peace and cooperation to be restored in the Wanni region of Sri Lanka and for all war-related deaths and violence to be reduced by at least 10 per cent"
A lot of people found it hard to visualize a reduction of war. Whereas an increase in peace would be much easier to picture. Just try not to think about a pink elephant... In line with the philosophy of best selling author Yvonne Oswald PhD, we can say that if you think about the word "war", you will put this vibration out into the world, it doesn't matter if you think about "less war" or "less death", the vibration of this low energy word will remain present.
Lynn McTaggart did respond to this, suggesting a possible change for the future (non-pilot) studies.
Healing the earth
McTaggart's valuable research is not only useful to create global peace. She has been working with Dr. Rustum Roy, to create a mass experiment to purify polluted water, by using thoughts to mutate bacteria. Another extremely interesting project of McTaggart is conducted together with the University of Arizona, where they are constructing a miniature ecosystem and are attempting to lower the temperature inside. If this experiment has significant effect, it would mean that our collective thoughts could tackle global warming... So start thinking positive today!
Sources
thepeaceintentionexperiment.com
theintentionexperiment.com
Lynn McTaggart's Newsletter
About the author
Dorien wrote the ebook: Drupal 6: Ultimate community site guide. Now everyone can set up an online community (http://book.drupalfun.com). She is currently doing a PhD at the University of Antwerp.
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