The Global Consciousness Project uses a world-wide network of random number generators (like computers they are binary, and produce streams of truly random “ones” and “zeros”) to test the idea that events which arouse great interest will tend to affect the random processes and cause them to become coherent. The simplest way to think of this is to say that the random machines, which of course produce outputs that have no relationship to one another, change and produce outputs that correlate with each other for awhile. If a machine is producing more “ones” than “zeros”, others will tend to also, and vice versa. It is as if a galvanized global consciousness is something real in itself, something very basic although normally invisible to us. Real enough to alter the behavior of randomness itself.

This is a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, but the research began with some extrapolation from more ordinary research on psychokinesis, in which research participants tried consciously to influence such random machines, and often demonstrated that they could. Researchers took the creative step of placing such machines in real-life situations to see if they might be influenced even when no one in the situation was consciously trying to do this. These scientists found some fascinating patterns. When they placed the devices in settings like empty parks and boring meetings, their output stayed random (as it always should). However, in settings with a lot of emotional arousal and coherence, such as moving spiritual events, the machines tended to show results that were not random, producing more results of one kind than the other. Then these researchers (notably Roger Nelson) developed a network of such devices around the world to see if globally significant events have a global effect upon this kind of randomness. One of their first and most dramatic findings was a big response to the attacks of 9/11. Many other events have been found to have similar effects since.

Roger Nelson writes: “Not surprisingly, many people suggested Mandela’s passing should be on our list of global events. The GCP event was set for 24 hours, beginning almost an hour before his death, with a time period modeled on Ted Kennedy, Michael Jackson, and similar to Pope John. The result is Chisquare 87332.851 on 86400 df, for p = 0.013 and Z = 2.238.”

We don’t really understand by what physical mechanisms our shared meanings and feelings can interact with the physical processes of random number generators — although some very bright physicists, including a winner of the Nobel Prize, are working on the problem. But first sight theory may shed some light on the psychological processes by which this effect happens. This theory says that the strength of any psi effect is determined by the consistency of unconscious intention involving it. If unconscious intention is weak or mixed, then no discernible psi effect should emerge, since negative and positive directions of expression are mixed and cancel one another out. However, if unconscious intention is strong and consistent in direction, then an obvious psi effect is likely. Nelson Mandela was a man who aroused strong and widely-shared sentiments of admiration, gratitude and love. The unconscious intentions within people and among them that are associated with such sentiments (to honor him, to share grief, to realize his importance), are likewise strong and largely unequivocal. This is the sort of situation that the theory predicts should release a clear psi expression.

The death of the remarkable Nelson Mandela has moved us. The effect is conscious but unconscious as well. The expressions of our feelings are explicit, in our conversations and ceremonies and feelings. But they are implicit as well, in the mysterious and fascinating realm of our commerce with reality that we refer to as psi.