One Luminous Earth

Why we meditate together

Meditation is usually something we do alone. One Luminous Earth asks a simple question: what happens when we do it together, at the same moment, with the same intention, wherever we are?

The idea of a shared field

In The Field, the writer Lynne McTaggart gathered the work of scientists who see everything, us included, as part of one connected field of energy and information. If that is so, then our thoughts are not sealed inside our heads. A clear, focused thought, an intention, might reach a little further than we assume.

Connected through the field

Many who explore this, McTaggart among them, look to physics for a picture of how it could work. At the smallest scale, physics describes a world that is deeply connected. Particles that have once interacted can stay linked across any distance, so that what happens to one is reflected in the other; physicists call this entanglement. And beneath everything, they describe a restless sea of energy, sometimes called the zero-point field, that touches every particle in the universe.

McTaggart and the scientists she writes about suggest that living beings are connected through this field too: that we are not separate, and a focused intention can reach beyond the person who holds it. Physics is still exploring whether and how such connections work between people. For us, it is a beautiful way to understand what many feel when they meditate together: that we are already one, and a shared intention is a way of remembering it.

Testing it

McTaggart set out to test the idea. For The Intention Experiment she invited readers around the world to join experiments online, run with university researchers. At a set time, thousands of people held one intention together: that a batch of seeds would grow more strongly, that a sample of water would change, that peace would come to a community living with violence. In several of these experiments she reported measurable effects in the direction people intended, larger than chance alone would suggest.

The power of a small group

The experiments kept surprising her. In The Power of Eight she describes small groups, often about eight people, who met to send a shared intention to one person in the group facing an illness or a hard time. Many of those people reported feeling better. The greater surprise was what happened to everyone else in the circle. Again and again, the people sending the intention described their own lives changing: old hurts healing, relationships mending, a sense of belonging and purpose they hadn't felt before. It seemed that holding a good intention for someone else, together with others, gave something back to the people who held it.

How many of us does it take?

People have long asked whether there is a threshold, a number of people meditating together at which the world around them measurably changes. Studies of large Transcendental Meditation groups proposed one: about the square root of one percent of a population. In a two-month project in Washington, D.C., in 1993, around 4,000 people meditated together, and the researchers reported that violent crime fell well below the level they had predicted. For the whole world, the square root of one percent is about 9,000 people. These studies are debated, but it is a moving picture of what a gathering could be: 9,000 lights on one Earth, at the same moment.

McTaggart's own circles point to something just as hopeful from the other direction. She found that a group didn't need to be large: around eight people holding one intention together was enough for real changes, above all in the people taking part. So every gathering counts, from a handful of friends to thousands across the Earth.

Intention and what we bring into the world

Manifesting is often described as getting what we want. The group experiments point somewhere gentler and stronger. An intention held for others, with others, seems to change the person holding it: what they notice, how they act, who they become. That is how the world around us changes first, through us. And when many people do it at once, it is easier to believe that more is possible.

How to hold an intention in a gathering

Keep it clear and simple. One sentence. "May everyone in this circle feel safe and loved." "Peace for the people of …" "Healing for Maria."
Say it as if it is already so. Picture it, and let yourself feel it, not only think it.
Hold it for others. Intentions for someone else, or for the world, are what the group experiments found most powerful.
Rest in it together. As the bowl rings, look at the lights. Each one is someone holding the same intention, right now.
Let it go at the end. The closing bowl is a good moment to release it with thanks.

Hosts can write the gathering's intention when they create it, so everyone holds the same words.

Science is still exploring what intention can do, and we make no promises about health or outcomes. Come with an open heart, and notice for yourself what changes.