Reporting from the Science & Consciousness Summit at Broughton Sanctuary, Skipton
I just got back from a mind-blowing week at Broughton Sanctuary, Yorkshire. It was a unique opportunity to discuss what some might call weird woo-woo, with scientists. Yep, it was an incredible week looking at the intersections of magic and science. What’s not to love about that!
Sceptical? As much as I love magic and woo-woo there is still a tiny part of me that sometimes needs reminding with proof…. it must be the grounded, practical Yorkshire woman within! And what better proof can you get than by sitting in front of a machine, sending a thought towards it …. and having it respond?! Unbelievably cool. There is so much we can potentially believe in, in the way of synchronicities and other everyday phenomena, yet …. when you see a machine give you direct feedback from an intention you send it from your mind, not your fingers, that’s pretty earth-shaking .. or life-affirming, depending on where you stand with believing in the unseen world.
The event was the Science & Consciousness Summit, organised by Ubiquity University, and attended by over 40 interested professionals from many walks of life and scientists from Europe and all over the USA. It was held at Broughton Hall and Avalon Centre for Wellbeing & Transformation and being five minutes down the road from my Skipton home, the call was strong for me to attend, even though at the time of signing up, I did not quite know what I was letting myself in for.
Award-winning journalist and author Lynne McTaggart has written extensively about the work of a Research lab at Princeton University, and other academic establishments, who sought to bridge the worlds of science and spirit, in her best-selling books ‘The Field’ and ‘The Intention Experiment’. That particular Lab, the leader in this field of research, was called PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) and headed up by Brenda Dunne, from its creation in 1979, together with the late Prof Robert Jahn, until it closed in 2007.
Ubiquity University’s Peter Merry who convened this Summit had the brilliant idea to re-enliven this important research and arranged to bring all the Lab’s equipment and Library out of storage, and install it in a new facility at Broughton Hall. It was Brenda Dunne who had stored everything and she came along to the Summit, from the USA, to share stories about how the experiments were down. It’s one thing to read about the weird machines used, Random Event Generators (REGs), it’s quite another to hear first hand, the narrative on how they were used and developed … and not only that … to witness them being used during our Summit.
If you are not familiar with an REG, it’s basically a piece of kit that does the equivalent of tossing a coin, giving you a 50/50 chance of two results. Statistically this is normally even stevens ….. with the linked software registering half heads and half tails. You can see a line in the middle of a graph with the heads and tails line bobbing along in the middle. Now this is the interesting bit .. when something happens that changes the emotional atmosphere of a space, the machines take note departing from their 50/50 norm by highlighting a statistically significant increase in heads or tails. In other words, the machines respond to an imperceptible, invisible shift and acknowledge that something is happening by changing their behaviour. Decades of research and hundreds of trials have been done with these machines (and you can read more about this in Lynne’s book or on her blog from this event that she also attended) so I am not talking about a one-off event.
This fascinating possibility came to life for me when we saw the graph that the machine charted during the first morning of the Summit, and none of us realised that it was running in the background. The chart showed a rise in difference once we had had our opening ritual and then spent 90 minutes listening to Brenda recount amusing tales from the PEAR lab bringing decades of what could have been boring scientific lab talk to vibrant life. When she finished, Peter Merry surprised all by awarding Brenda with a PhD doctorate, complete with black academic hat, in honour of her decades of pioneering research work. A much belated recognition and one which she valued even more highly coming from Ubiquity. After this was over, the REG screen was shared and we could clearly see a departure from the norm as our group united in thought and appreciation of Brenda’s work culminating in a significant peak on the machine when Brenda was awarded her PhD. It was as much a peak experience for the whole group as it was for Brenda, and the machine gave us feedback that an emotional charge was present in the group and could be seen on the graph.
During the course of our five days, we had the opportunity to take part in Remote Viewing exercises, something which Brenda had pioneered, where one of a duo was sent off into the woodland with the instruction to send back a mental picture to the other person to receive then recount. The idea is to tune in to an ‘information channel’ which you can share .. like sending a mental fax through the ether. We also sat with an REG machine and sent an intention to it to move a line in a certain direction and to a certain place … and bingo … there it went. Quite incredible.
What’s interesting in all of this is:
- You don’t need to be a psychic, all Brenda’s experiments into parapsychology were done with ordinary folk with no special skills. Of particular note is that children seem do well! (no hang-ups or judgements to get in the way?)
- Results are amplified and bigger effects achieved with more people. Two are better than one, two genders working together are even better and can double a result but a bonded couple (know each other very well) can shift results by a factor of seven.
- Strong deviations are registered by the REG machines when a group of people come into coherence and this change of frequency in the field of energy in the room, through aligned thought or a common goal, can actually be picked up.
- Powerful intentions have more impact than an idle thought.
So .. what does all this mean? Well Broughton are now housing this REG equipment from PEAR in what they call the ‘Wyrd Experience’ …. Wyrd being an old Englishe name for magic and the exploration into interconnectedness. The feeling among the group was that it is time to reclaim our weird and magical past and make it normal …. and not the other way round. Much research is happening in this field of altered states and the transference of information by non-technical means. The Galileo Commission is a fascinating initiative now involving nearly 1,000 scientists who are keen to expand the scope of science as it currently is. As David Lorimer of the Scientific & Medical Network puts it on their website, it’s time to apply the same level of research and rigour into Inner Space that we have applied to Outer Space.
Basically, what’s needed is a Hogwart’s for adults!
We need our own school to help foster our imaginations and develop further the skills we so clearly have. I am looking forward to seeing how Broughton’s Wyrd Experience develops and hopefully taking part myself!
Conscious Cafe at Broughton
Since 2018 I have been hosting regular Conscious Cafe gatherings at Broughton’s Avalon, attracting folk from all over the north who are interested in gathering in community for conversations about things that matter. The Conscious Cafe movement, started in London by ex-publisher Judy Piatkus, is all about raising consciousness, literally one conversation at a time. It’s a wonderful opportunity to sit with friends or strangers and have heartfelt conversations about life, listening deeply to others and feeling heard yourself. These events are precious and life-enhancing. Of course our live gatherings have had an 18 month hiatus where we moved online but as the live gathering schedule comes back, I look forward to bringing our group to the Wryd Experience and having the opportunity to demonstrate with the help of the REG machine set up, that the kind of conversations our group meetings focus on actually creates coherence which can be registered. There is power and magic in that, particularly when intentions are set as Lynne McTaggart clearly demonstrates in her global work.
I have already been working with a group on the Intention Experiment protocol which Lynne refers to as The Power of Eight ….. it’s been magical and it is fantastic to witness the feedback on what we all feel is powerful energy creating miracles in people’s lives. Check it out … create your own magic.
Feminine Leadership Today 