On the Initiative of The Club of Budapest, a Million People Meditated and Prayer for Peace on the Five Continents

On Sunday, the 20th of May an estimated one million people participated in the first Global Peace Meditation-Prayer Day in 64 countries on the five continents. This was a historic first.  Never before have so many people in so many countries and from so many faiths and cultures come together to direct the power of their meditation and prayer to peace on Earth: the first truly common cause of all of humanity.

Objectives and Implementation

The Global Day was created to reduce the level of conflict and violence in the world, and to help create deeper understanding, tolerance, and readiness to live in peace with our neighbors both near and far, as well as with nature. 

Numerous tests and experiments have shown that deep prayer and meditation can heal people, heal other species, and create peace and harmony in human communities.  Now for the first time the power of prayer and meditation has been directed at the entire community of humans on the planet, with over a million entering a deeper state of consciousness and giving expression to their heartfelt wish that “peace may prevail on Earth.”

The organized meditations of May 20th followed the same procedure wherever they took place and regardless of the culture, faith, and religion of the participants. The events began with initial speeches, music and dance, and were followed by meditation or prayer guided by a spiritual master. They ended with five-minutes of silence when the participants stood and held hands, and then silently repeated a phrase such as “may peace prevail on Earth.”

The one-hour meditations/prayers were carefully synchronized to reinforce each other and produce the maximum effect.  The first group of events took place at the same time in Eastern and Western Australia and in Japan.  The second group brought together people in India, Central and South Africa, Israel, Greece, Hungary, Germany, Italy, and England.  The third cluster embraced Canada, the United States, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, as well as Hawaii and Samoa.

The network of some seventy organized groups that registered for the Global Day emerged rapidly, as the website globalpeacemeditationprayerday.org announced the event, listed the participating groups, and invited others to join. 

The project grew out of the “Symphony of Peace Prayers” planned for May 20th at the spiritual retreat at the foot of Mount Fuji by the Japanese spiritual group Byakko Shinko Kai in collaboration with the Goi Peace Foundation.  Seeking to make such prayers and meditations into a worldwide event, The Club of Budapest assembled a group of dedicated spiritually motivated groups and organizations, including the Oneness University of India, where on May 20th 50,000 meditated led by Club of Budapest Honorary Member Sri Bhagavan. Within a surprisingly short time many such groups joined: within a matter of months a global network of volunteer meditation and prayer organizers had come into being.

The Experiences

Reports from participants the world over indicate that they had a gripping, intense, and hope-filled experience.  “A diffuse light outside and within us enveloped the meeting…some had feelings of joy others of commotion, some of suffering that was changed into serenity…” (from Italy) “There was a great shift when over 10,000 peopled connected at the same time, praying for world peace…” (from Japan) “The energy we have created was deep, graceful, peaceful, full of love and serenity… I still feel the amazing power entering me.” (from Slovenia) The undersigned himself experienced an unprecedented intensity and sense of communion at the final hand-holding phase of the meditation at the “Open Temple” in Damanhur, Italy.

The Experiments

The reality of the feeling of connectedness and communion was confirmed by a scientific experiment carried out by Dr. Nitamo Montecucco, head of the Club di Budapest Italia. The experiment was timed to coincide with the meditation/prayer events in Europe and Africa.  Two groups of meditators were equipped with electrodes on their heads, connected to an electroencephalograph that measured the electrical activity (EEG waves) of their brain. Eight of the meditators were in Bagni di Lucca, headquarters of the Italian branch of the Club of Budapest, and eight in the city of Milan, 200 km away. The measurements were synchronized to the hundredth of a second through the Global Position System and examined for correlation between the two groups. Since the meditators in Bagni di Lucca and in Milan were not in any ordinary form of contact with each other, the “normal” expectation was that the value of the correlation would be zero.  Yet the average level of synchronization between the two groups proved to be 0.64% with the peak values rising to 5.4% -- findings that exclude mere chance and coincidence.

Further scientifically controlled tests have been carried out, testing among others the effect of the meditations on random-number generators in various parts of the world. (The tests involve deviation from randomness in the string of zeros and ones generated by the devices: such deviations have been noted in connection with meditations, as well as major events that affect the consciousness of many people, including terrorist attacks, wars, and even sports events.) “The results are interesting,” wrote Dr. Roger Nelson head of the Global Consciousness Project in charge of this experiment in Princeton, “with the cumulative deviation of the scores from their chance expectation showing a strong and persistent slope over the concatenation of nine hours of large-scale organized meditation. (Expectation for a cumulative deviation is a level, horizontal trend). The composite result is significant, with odds against chance greater than 20 to 1.”

Conclusions

The subjective experience, as well as the objective results of the Global Peace Meditation/Prayer Day give us warrant to affirm that human consciousness has a real effect on people and the world. The Club of Budapest is dedicated to the proposition that when many people join together to focus their consciousness on peace in the world, the outcome is likely to be highly significant: the combined power of their consciousness will help heal our war- and violence-torn world and overcome the sense of helplessness and separateness that is the root cause of people’s frustration and the conflict and violence that results from it.

Building on the promise of the 2007 Global Peace Meditation/Prayer Day, The Club of Budapest, in partnership with the Goi Peace Foundation, plans to continue creating Global Peace Meditation/Prayer Days in the year 2008 and beyond. Future Global Days are to bring together not just one million but many millions of dedicated people, who will focus the power of their consciousness on peace in the world.  Such a “critical mass” of humans will, we believe, make a major and possibly crucial contribution toward achieving a world that is truly peaceful, humane, and sustainable.

Ervin Laszlo
June 2, 2007