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 Global Peace Meditation and Prayer Day 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