Power Of ONE

Science must provide a mechanism for the universe to come into being.
- John Wheeler

Most of us have heard the possibly apocryphal story of the hundredth monkey. What is seldom remembered is what followed. In 1952 a number of tribes of monkeys in Japan, all of one species but on different islands, were provided with sweet potatoes dipped in sand. They liked the potatoes, but not the grit on them. After some months one monkey on the island of Koshima discovered she could wash off the sand in the stream. Over the next six years a few friends and siblings learned the skill. The other adults kept eating the dirty potatoes. Then there came a moment when a certain critical number was reached, and suddenly every monkey in the group was washing their potatoes.

However, this was only a small part of the story. As soon as the monkey on Koshima took up washing, the monkeys on the other islands, which were physically out of contact with the first group, began to spontaneously wash their own potatoes. They monkey field had been augmented to the level where it was able to move into a larger group consciousness that could be spread to the whole species, no matter where they were. When a certain critical number achieved awareness, this awareness was, without any direct contact, communicated by some means other than speech or example, and was done precisely and instantaneously.

Without a verifiable connection between one tribe and another there was no scientific way to explain the phenomenon, and as no scientifically acceptable theory was available, the observations were ignored. The tantalizing questions opened by the Koshima monkeys have been dismissed as “mere correlations” or even “passion at a distance”- whatever that might mean- but no attempt has been made until recently to go further than that. Many scientists and doctors remain uncomfortable with the unanswered issues the experiment raised.

It was about the same time that Carl Jung proposed the concept of synchronicity to explain how connections could be made without direct contact, so that “coincidences” which lacked any true relational cause could sit within some theoretical framework. Almost forty years later, Rupert Sheldrake expanded this hypothesis to provide a universal medium of communication that he called morphic fields. These include the simplest on-off signals, as in protein receptors, as well as the more complex fields of information in emotions and reproductions.

The argument that follows sets out to establish that events may be connected even when there is no apparent causal connection. It is the holistic premise that all organisms partake in a universe of information, the molecules carry signals that may include feelings and thoughts, that genes are part of the same global empire of signals as cells and proteins, and that every living thing is capable of adapting to every other. Together these ideas show that all things, especially demonstrated in the human body, is not fully explicable through the conventional notions of biology. It is my purpose to offer another approach.

HeavenScent took this excerpt from the book The Great Field by John James, PhD.

“The Great Field brings together fascinating and accurate scientific evidence on the power of our souls - - - in a way that is refreshing, new, and vital. A very uplifting book, it gets to the very heart of health and healing." Highly recommended reading.

The Hundredth Monkey

Last modified: 11/16/08