(CL Note: This is a draft of my CE4 Corner article for March/April of 2012)
In recent weeks, now that I am day-job-free, I have continued to delve deeper into activities such as UFO/CE4 research and hypnosis/hypnotherapy. I have found myself attending a quite a few meetings of spiritual-oriented organizations as well as studying meditation in more depth. Perhaps corresponding to our progression toward the end of the calendar year 2012, I have found a common theme among many of these activities, the idea that we are approaching a threshold.
There is a deepening sense of change, accelerating as it reaches a critical mass. The idea is that the more people deepen their psychic and spiritual growth, the more they affect the overall environment around them. At some point in the process, a critical point is reached and the effect becomes self-perpetuating within society as a whole. In systems theory, this is known as the tipping point.
Last month, I began studying Transcendental Meditation. I had flirted with this movement for many years, reading about it, attending a few workshops, etc. Ultimately, I found that other methods were just as effective and their instruction much more affordable. Yet now, I have found that TM has again become quite attractive so I am again studying that tradition, methodology, etc.
One of the teachings in TM is that the effect of meditation on humanity is additive. The more people meditate, the more positive effect it has on the world. Just as I had heard in other schools of new age thought, TM teaches that there is a threshold, a tipping point at which a level of emergence will begin to occur. In the TM teachings, they claim that if one percent of the population meditates regularly, the effect will reach that tipping point.
The study of non-linear mathematics and chaos theory deals with complex, chaotic systems such as chemical reactions, societies, economies, political cultures, world climate, etc. It describes how a system behaves in response to a stress or influence. In politics, a new movement may occur, such as the Occupy movement. In economics, interest rates vary. In the world climate, there is the ominous and ever present greenhouse effect, now reaching (or surpassing) critical levels.
In each case, there often appears to be a key point in the system. When an influence or stress on the system is less than that point, the system's response is limited. It absorbs, resists or responds in a very limited way. A glass of water gets only slightly warmer when heated. The ocean absorbs moderate amounts of carbon dioxide, small changes in interest rates have only limited effect on the economy. Even within a chemical or nuclear reaction, a small adjustment to the inputs has only limited effect on the results.
At some point, however, as the stress or change factor increases, the system begins to reach a critical point. Some element within the system reaches a point of no return. The same glass of water suddenly begins to boil. Climate change reaches a level where greenhouse gas concentrations shoot upward uncontrollably. Interest or default rates drive an economy to collapse (as occurred in 1980 with interest rates and 2008 with defaults). A chemical reaction suddenly takes off and a fire or explosion occurs. These are all examples of the the phenomenon in non-linear systems theory known as the tipping point.
Several recent studies in social theory have found that once a threshold of about ten percent of the population strongly adopts a belief, the belief will take on a life of its own and become a majority view. A recent article in Discovery News describes several studies in which about ten percent of the population strongly hold a particular view sway the majority to their viewpoint. A paper in Physical Review Letters (Phys Rev E), one of the premier journals in physics, describes the mathematics behind this ten-percent tipping point.
Going even further, according to the TM organization, one percent of the population practicing meditation (presumably TM) will produce an aggregate effect on the population overall, decreased crime, etc. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of TM, claimed that if one percent of the people on Earth were to do so, there would be an end to war. They call this (of course) the Maharishi Effect. More recently, they have claimed that, if the square root of that number practices an advanced form of TM, the TM Sidhi program, there will be a deep calming effect on society. Thus, if about 8400 (the square root of 1 percent of 7 billion) people worldwide, practiced advanced TM, this effect would occur.
Whether or not you believe this claim, it offers some very interesting parallels with numbers emerging from close encounter research. In Chapter 9 of The Cosmic Bridge, I explore the idea of psychic and spiritual emergence as one of the side effects of close encounters, where the experiencer finds him/herself becoming more psychics, more deeply spiritual, and more connected with others having similar abilities. Barbara Marx Hubbard describes this idea in detail in her book, Conscious Evolution, where she develops the idea of a social tipping point or state change. When enough people develop an interconnected psychic awareness, the emergence will reach a critical mass and the awakening phenomenon will take on a life of its own, manifesting in overall humanity.
The article, Close Encounters, There May be More than You Think on www.craigrlang.com, discusses the estimate that roughly one percent of the population has had close encounter experiences. In the 1991 Roper Poll (unfortunately, the original poll is no longer posted on-line.) one percent (some analysts say two percent or more) of the population met four of the five criteria to be considered an experiencer. Most of these criteria involve psychic or paranormal events in the life of the experiencer.
Could the two effects be related? Could the Maharishi effect and the emergence effect of close encounters be related phenomena? If genuine, could they stem from the same mathematics, as described by Barbara Marx Hubbard? If so, then why would only one percent be required in the Maharishi effect, whereas in social theory, a critical mass of ten percent of the population is required? Furthermore, how can only a miniscule percent of the population, about eight thousand out of 7 Billion, force a critical change? Perhaps the effect is compounded, a small percentage of a distinct sub-population eventually tipping that segment, which in turn causes the overall population to reach the critical point.
In recent conversations comparing notes with other close encounter researchers, many of us have noted that the phenomenon seems to be steadily expanding in scope. David Jacobs claims that it is expanding geometrically through family lines. My own gut feel is that the expansion is much slower, but definitely present - perhaps expanding to between two and five percent of the population. If this psychic emergence effect is genuine, then is there a critical point in which a sufficient number being affected will bring about a tipping point within humanity at large?
Could the phenomenon actually be attempting to affect ten percent of the population? When I ask sighting witnesses whether they have had any additional sightings or experiences - UFO sightings, psychic events or other unusual occurrences in their lives, a majority state that they have had at least some psychic experience ability. If the percentage of people having had UFO sightings is representative of the population as a whole, then perhaps a growing percentage of the population is indeed being affected by this emergence phenomenon (an admittedly seat-of-the-pants observation).
Much remains to be validated about these claims. Yet if true, they suggest that the close encounter phenomenon might have a very definite goal - bringing some form of psychic or spiritual awakening to a critical mass of the population. An intriguing experiment would be to organize a new survey of experiences, equivalent to the 1991 Roper poll, to see if the numbers of experiencers has changed in the last twenty years. This could be an interesting test of the hypothesis that the UFO/CE4 phenomenon is somehow involved with this emergence effect.
Is the phenomenon, and its apparent corresponding emergence effects, growing in a deliberate way toward a critical point in society? And is this similar to the so-called Maharishi effect? These questions can only be answered with further research and investigation. Meanwhile, we find the number of experiencers growing, perhaps reaching and exceeding that all-important point in our society called the tipping point.
