Notions about what can make a difference: What do we mean by "Consciousness Resonance"?

The evidence that human consciousness and intention can affect physical systems in a subtle way is persuasive, though still not convincing to everyone who looks into the matter. For many scientists it is good enough to warrant thoughts about "how it works" and efforts to connect the research findings to standard scientific models, especially in physics. Some of the connections are formal, and others metaphoric, but all seek to improve our ability to explain and predict.

Among the metaphors that seem most powerful and relevant is the notion of resonance. This term has a clear technical meaning in physics, but it also is widely used in the English language (and many others) in descriptions of personal and interpersonal interactions that are unusually effective, easy, and complete. We say that we "resonate" with an idea or another person when we share an unusually rich set of perceptions that implies to us that we are "on the same wavelength" -- another form of the metaphoric link to physical models. It is a common experience that often is striking in the strength and complexity of shared understanding, and it is associated with successful interactions in pairs and groups of people, and with universally recognized shared experiences. Productivity and creativity are evidently enhanced, and cooperative responses to emergencies and catastrophies seem to be facilitated.

These interactive links can be explained by ordinary communications for the most part, but the experience for many people has another component which has anomalous characteristics. The resonant interactions occur, experientially, without regard to distance or time separations, and without any physical communication. In recent years, laboratory and field experiments have provided confirmatory evidence that these experiences are not illusory or imaginary, but may indicate an interconnected world about which we have much to learn, scientifically, although it has been described again and again in very similar terms for millennia by cultures around the world.

Resonance is but one of several terms that we suggest as descriptive of the state that might make a difference for the Global Consciousness Network. Other words are also used to describe a quality of deep engagement in a shared state of consciousness. One that appeals to many of us involved in the research is "coherence." Again there is a precise usage in physics, which must be relaxed for our purposes, but again we believe that examining this concept in the context of the evidence for interactions of consciousness with the physical world may provide some useful insight into the functional relationships of apparently separated minds and hearts. Our experimental evidence shows data anomalies correlated with such "resonant" or "coherent" psychological and social states. It suggests that these states, albeit defined metaphorically and hence imprecisely, represent the conditions that can lead to anomalous effects on the REG detectors.

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