The foundation of the Global Consciousness Project is in earlier work, and there is a natural progression from laboratory experiments like those of J. B. Rhine,to the relatively modern experimental work of Helmut Schmidt, Robert Jahn,Dean Radin and Daryl Bem. We'll look at this lineage,especially the technology of random number generator (RNG) experiments and its extension into the natural environment as "FieldREG" studies of group consciousness.

 

We'll take a conceptual leap toward the possibility that there is a burgeoning global consciousness arising from deep-lying unconscious interconnections. The evidence for this evolutionary development is found, like that from laboratory studies, in small but statistically reliable departures from expectation in well-controlled experiments; results which are outside the normal realm we know how to explain. The importance of such evidence is profound, and it is disproportionate to its apparent fragility.

 

At the PEAR lab, Roger Nelson, PhD managed the development of a variety of intention-based experiments, making good use of Princeton's extraordinary facilities. The University's school of engineering was at the center of  advances in electronic and computer technology, ensuring that the PEAR experiments were at the cutting edge. By 1993, Nelson was using random number generators (RNG) in the field to register correlations of data with special states of group consciousness even in the absence of intentions. A few years later, this work led naturally to the GCP, which exploits the same RNG technology as the lab and field experiments, but in a world-spanning instrument designed to monitor the effects of globally shared emotions or states of consciousness. Like many scientists working at the edges of what we know, Nelson is conservative, demanding high quality science that embodies both skepticism and an open mind. Based on a decade of increasingly persuasive evidence from the GCP analyses, he has shifted focus toward public presentations about the research and its implications.

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