World Peace Meditators Synchronized by Global Chimes

Toronto 12-Mar-2005

Introduction

Proposal for an experiment to synchronize the EEG and Auditory Evoked Potentials of TM-Sidhi practitioners during World Peace Meditations using an electronic chime sounding once per second and phase-locked to Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) provided by the Global Positioning System (GPS).

The aim of the experiment is to dramatically increase the efficiency of the TM-Sidhi meditators in achieving the Super Radiance Effect, thus requiring fewer participants.

Overview

Robert Keith Wallace, Ph.D., writes in "The Maharishi Technology of The Unified Field: The Neurophysiology of Enlightenment", that the Super Radiance Effect produced by over 7000 people collectively practicing the TM-Sidhi program during the "Taste of Utopia" demonstration in 1983 was so widespread that the entire phenomenon was called the Global Maharishi Effect.

Furthermore, he writes that the field effects of consciousness stimulated by a group participating in the TM-Sidhi program could affect the EEG coherence between subjects at large distances, and provides results of 2500 practitioners influencing three EEG subjects 1000 miles away.

His conclusion is that, ultimately, the collective level of consciousness of any society becomes more coherent when stimulated by a coherent subpopulation numbering only the square root of one percent of the total population.

Observations

Currently, though each of the TM-Sidhi participants can achieve the requisite level of consciousness, and temporal or spectral coherence within his/her own brain, there is no guarantee that he/she is in phase with the person next to them.
Also, there is no guarantee that the "hops" during "flying sidhi" are synchronized.

No participant has any feedback of another person's state (EEG) nor is there a signal available akin to a conductor in a choir to keep members in sync and to prevent the total sound (signal) from degenerating into a cacophony -- though each has a lovely voice, they must sing together.

Noting that, for maximum amplitude of any signal at a distance, the phases of all elements in a radiating broadside array must be identical, and that, for the constructive reinforcement of any signal over time, its phase must be locked to a clock -- a global chime sounding every second can provide phase-locking over distance and time for the purpose of this experiment. DEMO of Global Chimes Sound.

The Auditory Evoked Potentials elicited by the chime contain late EEG components called the "rhythmic afterdischarge", "rhythmic afterpotentials", "induced rhythms" or the "K complex" (Loomis 1938 and Bremer 1949) which are damped oscillations, or ringing, at a 4-11 Hz resonant frequency (Basar 1994) and are phase-locked to the chime in all participants.

The repetitive nature of the chime guarantees that one habituates to it rapidly and thus it becomes unobtrusive to the meditative state.

Additionally, each meditator can adjust his/her breathing to feel his/her heartbeat on the chime, the "hops" can be timed to the chime and a personal mantra, "AUM" or a phrase such as "I love you" can be whispered or thought on the chime.

Technical Details

The UTC second tick (by definition) is guaranteed to be in phase (within one microsecond) everywhere and always (for all time to come) maximizing the spatial and temporal coherence of all signals in phase with it.

The tick is a "one pulse per second" (1PPS) digital signal provided by inexpensive GPS receivers such as the Garmin GPS18LVC (production 2004) or Axiom Sandpiper SIRF GPS (surplus -- search for "nmea gps" on EBAY).

The signal is connected to an input pin of a personal computer parallel port (pin 13 or 15) and a simple program plays a digitized chime wave file through multimedia speakers or headphones (one participant), at a low unobtrusive volume, upon detecting the leading edge of the signal.

For group sessions, the sound is fed to a PA amplifier and distributed via wires to many floor-mounted six-inch speakers facing up and spaced fifteen to twenty feet apart with practitioners forming a circle around each speaker, about five feet away from it, introducing a uniform sound delay of about 4.6 milliseconds at floor level (5/1.087467 feet per millisecond) and about 5.1 milliseconds at ear level (5.6' from speaker) for each participant.

Once a standard participant-to-speaker spacing and an initial delay (100 milliseconds in the prototype) are agreed upon, then all similarly configured sessions anywhere and anytime in the world will always be in phase and coherent, regardless of when a participant joins or leaves any ongoing session, which could be scheduled every three or four hours (UTC time) or could even run continuously.

Individual participants at home will also be in phase with the standard speaker placement, or the headphones program can introduce the required 5.1 millisecond audio delay for those wishing to use wired or wireless headphones (program source).

Even deaf people can participate in the meditations by using the diffuse 200 millisecond flash of the yellow 1PPS LED with an extra 5.1 millisecond delay added in the program (as if using headphones) to be in perfect sync.

Delivery or distribution of the audio chime signal via telephone, satellite, Internet or other media networks is not recommended due to unknown path delays of up to 500 milliseconds defeating the whole concept of simultaneity.

A prototype using an Axiom GPS (unit A) and a Garmin GPS (unit C) connected to a Windows98 computer is currently in use in Toronto, Canada and all details, schematics, setup instructions as well as the control program and the program source written in SwiftForth, which is free from www.forth.com, and the chime wave file will be provided free upon request and will be posted to a web site -- http://www.connection.com./~louis/globalchimes.
Download all files to a NEW folder on the C drive C:\ForthInc\SwiftForth\GlobalChimes and see the Readme.txt or the Readme.rtf file.

Note: Complete and easy install is now available with setup_globalchimes_21july05.exe -- NO other files need to be downloaded.

The prototype has been verified against a second Axiom GPS (unit B), on an HP180 oscilloscope and visually against an Oregon Scientific clock's blinking colon display and remains synchronized as long as a 3D fix is maintained by the GPS - the 4800 baud RS232 NMEA data from the GPS is displayed by the program Conductor.exe -- screenshot.

During initial signal acquisition, and only a 2D fix, the tick is sometimes out of phase by 500 milliseconds and is unusable until a full 3D fix is achieved.
If the signal is lost subsequently, the GPS internal clock takes over in holdover mode and is off (late) by 70 microseconds (0.07 milliseconds) after one hour for unit A (excellent), 4 milliseconds after one hour for unit B (poor), and 20 milliseconds for unit C (Garmin) (very poor). Resynchronization after signal reacquisition occurs in 270 seconds for unit A (good), 45 seconds for unit B (excellent) and 30 seconds for unit C (excellent).

Chime audio jitter is sometimes quite noticeable under Windows98 with the program running at normal priority.
Using BW CPU controller 1.6.1 to set FORTH SF.EXE priority to 24 (highest), and closing all unnecessary programs eliminates all jitter -- screenshot.

Image chime_four_50.jpg shows the original waveform on the left and an oscilloscope capture (at 100 milliseconds delay) of the audio from a Win 98 computer on top and a Win XP computer on the bottom -- note that the Win 98 audio phase is flipped and that it lags the Win XP audio by about half a millisecond (400 microseconds).

Program Notes

(BW CPU controller is free nagware from BinaryWork Corp.)
(Conductor.exe and the manual were free from Axiom Navigation Inc. which has now disappeared to Korea).
(Winio.dll is free from www.internals.com ).
(Snsrcfg.exe is free from Garmin) -- screenshot.
(SwiftForth is free from Forth Inc.) -- screenshot.

End Notes

Operating systems such as Linux or QNX might even be more suitable for this project.

A self-contained Atmel microcontroller-based interface to the GPS with PWM generated audio is being considered in the interest of minimizing overall system cost.

In North America, in principle, it is also possible to derive a useable UTC second tick signal (1 millisecond accuracy) by interfacing to a quality inexpensive radio controlled clock such as the Oregon Scientific projection clock model RM313PA and compensating for the radio wave delay from station WWVB in Colorado - for example: Toronto, Canada is 1349 miles, or 7,122,720 feet away from the source and the speed of light being 983,571.056 feet per millisecond, gives a delay of exactly 7.2416934 milliseconds from the UTC second tick, so the next chime would sound in 992.75831 milliseconds at zero delay or 92.75831 milliseconds in the prototype at 100 milliseconds delay.

All comments and suggestions are welcome.

73

Louis


http://home.connection.com/~louis
http://home.ican.net/~louis





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