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Consciousness Tech Meets Regeneration in Northern England | Calen Rayne

Time to Go Wyrd!

Global transformational learning provider Ubiquity University is bringing its focus to two projects in the north of England. Firstly, Ubiquity is working with The School of Contemplation at Monastery Manchester on the development of certificate and degree programs in Modern Mysticism, enabling learners to get full recognition for the leading-edge programs that they follow at the Monastery.

Ubiquity is also working with Broughton Sanctuary in Yorkshire to establish an Institute for Science and Consciousness and visitor experience that immerses people in fields of interconnectedness. Prior to the pandemic, work began on the energetics of the Estate with plans for labyrinths and other interactive experiences. Broughton Sanctuary already offers programs through their Avalon Wellness Centre, including Shinrin Yoku (forest bathing) walks, sound healing and meditation classes. Roger Tempest, the Steward, and his partner Paris Ackrill are in the midst of a huge rewilding of the Estate, which includes planting one million trees. 

Both Peter Merry, Chief Innovation Officer for Ubiquity, and Calen Rayne, Director of Organizational Architecture for Ubiquity, are working with these UK partnerships. Peter describes one of the projects at Broughton as “The Wyrd Experience.”

Why “Wyrd”?

Wyrd was the Anglo-Saxon concept for the interconnected field of all things. It is comparable to the eastern concept of ch’i. Yorkshire was in fact one of the places where it was most developed. It was however buried deep in our past as we moved into the Industrial Revolution and pushed away from anything that the scientific rational mind was not able to understand. Brian Bates brought it back to our collective attention with his best-selling book The Way of Wyrd (first published in 2004). The idea behind the name “Wyrd Experience” is to use a native term and make it fub=n, particularly with the use of the rune in the branding. Imagine t-shirts with “make wyrd the norm”, or “Go Wyrd!” 

The Wyrd Experience 

Based at the Broughton Sanctuary, the Wyrd Experience will be a physical space that people can visit where they get to experience how they are interconnected with the rest of life (using for example the equipment from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research – PEAR – project to start with but expanding with other technologies and processes). Experiential and cognitive, engaging the body-mind, it would be branded and framed as exciting and transformative. 

The space will initially be available for visits by groups on retreat at Broughton or by appointment in advance. In the future it will move to a bigger space and be open to the public and schools.

What is the PEAR Equipment?

Over a period of 28 years, scientists at Princeton University’s engineering department, led by Prof Bob Jahn and Brenda Dunne, researched how human intention impacts the world around them, and other consciousness-related phenomena. It was triggered by findings that astronauts in rockets seemed to influence the readouts of the sensitive instruments on their dashboards by their inner states. They proved beyond statistical doubt that human intention does indeed affect otherwise random events around us. Furthermore, they showed how collective group experiences also influence randomness. 

For most of their research they used something called a Random Event Generator which is essentially a digital coin-toss machine that generates lots of 1s and 0s. They used graphic readouts on a computer screen to represent those 1s and 0s (e.g. a line on a screen that goes up with more 1s and down with more 0s). Test subjects had to try and influence the line without physically interacting with the computer (sometimes even from the other side of the world).

Tech Toys & Treasure

Other tools they used included a massive kind of vertical pinball machine, into which 9000 polystyrene calls were dropped; they called it “Murphy”. Normally they would distribute themselves evenly across the machine, but they found that people could influence that distribution with their intention.

They also developed lamps you could influence the colour of with your mind, as well as a robot and a drum that you could influence. 

Included in the shipment that Broughton received from Princeton are 50 boxes of books and journals that probably represents one of the best collections worldwide of parapsychology and consciousness related resources. 

Also included is the furniture and decorations that were part of the original Princeton Lab, so that we can tell the story of the original groundbreaking research in a kind of mini-museum form. 

Science and Consciousness Event

From November 14-18 we will be holding a Science and Consciousness event at Broughton where people will be able to visit the Wyrd Experience and try out the equipment. Brenda Dunne, who was one of the people to lead the work at Princeton, will be coming over to tell the story of the research and explain the equipment to people. For more information click here.

The Institute of Science and Consciousness

To support our work, we will establish an Institute of Science and Consciousness that will lead the research side of the activities. For that we are establishing relationships with existing academics in the UK and internationally who work in this area. For updates on our various programs, please visit either Ubiquity University or Broughton Hall.

More Information

• A dialogue between Peter and Brenda Dunne about the work at Princeton and its implications – 
• A talk by Peter on Wyrd 
• An interview with Bob Jahn on the PEAR work 
• The International Consciousness Research Laboratories where Brenda and her son Jeff continue to promote the Princeton work
• Broughton Sanctuary 

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