There was a Granny who had a brace of flying ducks. They spent most of their time sitting and resting on a nearby shed watching the neighbourhood. Every now and then Granny would catch a duck for a dinner. She  threw duck food on the ground then waited for them to come closer until  she was able to catch one after a short chase.

Years passed and Granny no longer had the strength to chase ducks. But she had an idea. She pulled a few feathers from each duck tail to stop them flying away from her. It solved the problem, but what happened next was totally unexpected.

The new generation of ducks born from non flying parents did not even try to fly. They had all the  feathers needed to be able to fly but no one to show them that they could. The best they could do with their wings was merely correct their balance or fly just above the ground, which felt more like fast running. They led their lives in a flat world never being aware of the true potential of their wings.

When you think of the current state of the world, you may have negative thoughts about how our future will turn out. It’s not your fault that what you usually read or hear is, for the most part, pretty dismal. Reporters and journalists seem to love covering the scrumptious scandals, the devastating wars, and the natural disasters. Tragedy is the product, and apparently, we’re still buying. And so they’ll tell you about the trees that burn down, not about the trees that grow.

But I want to tell you something different. We are in much better shape than we think. Despite what you have been told, global poverty, illiteracy, and disease rates have all dropped in recent years. Yet not many people know or think about these encouraging statistics. For example, when asked what percentage of the world’s population is living in extreme poverty and how that number had changed over the past 20 years, Americans were way off the mark. Two-thirds thought the percentage had doubled, while 29% thought it had remained more or less the same. According to the World Bank, however, the number has actually halved. How can 95% of the population be so wrong? Maybe it’s the way issues are covered (or not covered) in the media.

The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) is one of the most fascinating, revolutionary, and useful research initiatives being carried out in the world today. Its potential to improve the quality of our life is infinite, with the scientific method being its only hindrance – to prove beyond reasonable doubt that we are all one.

GCP is the brainchild of Dr. Roger D. Nelson, a professor at Princeton University who holds a PhD in Experimental Cognitive Psychology. He has the distinction of being the first scientist to find a way of measuring with mathematical models what ancient spiritual traditions have always claimed: we are all one. Nelson has devised a way to measure the field of global consciousness, a field that unites us, and in doing so has revealed that we are the cells of a single body. That body is humanity.

The scientific name given to this phenomenon is Electrogaiagram (EGG). It is measured through a network of one hundred computers in many different parts of the world that operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, emitting ones and zeros in a predefined random pattern.