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In his lecture, Green reported that he had built a room, of which the four walls and ceiling were entirely made of copper, and attached to microvolt electroencephalography (EEG) amplifiers—the kind used to measure electrical activity in the brain. Ordinarily, an EEG amplifier is attached to a cap embedded with a network of electrodes, each of which records a separate electrical discharge from different areas of the brain. The cap is fitted onto a person’s head, and the electrical activity that is picked up through the various channels is displayed on the amplifier. EEG amplifiers are extraordinarily sensitive, capable of picking up the most minute of effects—even as tiny as one-millionth of a volt of electricity.
In remote healing, Green explained, he suspected that the signal produced is electrical and emanates from the healer’s hands. The copper wall acts like a giant antenna, magnifying the capacity to detect the electricity from the healers, enabling him to capture it from five directions. Green discovered that, whenever a healer sent healing, the EEG amplifier recorded it as a huge surge of electrostatic charge, the same kind of build-up and discharge of electrons that occurs after you shuffle your feet along a new carpet and then touch a metal doorknob.
He told the class that in the early days of the copper-walls experiment, he had been faced with an enormous problem. Whenever a healer so much as wriggled a finger, patterns were recorded on an EEG amplifier. Green had to work out a means of separating out the true effects of healing from this electrostatic ‘noise’.
Schwartz listened to the talk with growing fascination. Does movement, even the physiology of breathing, create an electromagnetic signal big enough to be picked up on a copper wall? Could it be that human beings were not only receivers of signals, but also transmitters?
After the conference, Schwartz rushed out to buy aluminium shielding, which could also serve as a rudimentary antenna. He purchased some two by fours, placed them on glass bricks to isolate them from the ground and used them to assemble a ‘wall’. After he had attached the wall to an EEG amplifier, he began playing around with the effects of his hand, waving it back and forth above the amplifier. As he suspected, the amplifier tracked the movements. His hand movements were generating signals.
Schwartz began demonstrating these effects in front of his students in his faculty office, using a bust of Einstein for dramatic effect. With these experiments, he made use of an EEG cap, with its dozens of electrodes. When not picking up brain signals, the cap would register only noise on the amplifier. During his experiments, Schwartz placed the EEG cap on the bust of Einstein and turned on just a single electrode channel on the top of the cap. He then moved his hand over Einstein’s head. As though the great man had suddenly experienced a moment of enlightenment, the amplifier suddenly came alive producing evidence of an electromagnetic wave. But the signal, Schwartz explained to his students, was not a sudden brainwave being emitted from the lifeless statue—it was the tracking of the electromagnetic field produced by his arm’s movement. The evidence seemed indisputable: his body must be sending out a signal with every single flutter of his hand.
Schwartz realized he had hit upon the most important point of his research. Simple movements generated electrical charges but, more important, created a relationship. Every movement we make appears to be felt by the people around us.
The implications were staggering. What if he were admonishing a student while shouting, “Don’t do that?” The student might feel as if he were getting shot with a wave of energy. In addition, Schwartz soon realized, some people might even have more powerful positive or negative charges than others. In Elmer Green’s copper-wall experiment for example, all sorts of equipment malfunctioned in the presence of Roslyn Bruyere, a famous healer.
Schwartz was on to something fundamental about the actual energy that human beings emit. Could the energy of thought have the same effect as the energy of movement outside the thinker’s own body? Do thoughts also create a relationship with the people around us? Every intention towards someone else might have its own physical counter-part, which would be registered by its recipient as a physical effect.
Schwartz became even more creative with his experiments. When he tried the same gesture from three feet away, the signal diminished. When he placed the bust of Einstein in a Faraday cage—an enclosure of tightly knit copper mesh that screens out electromagnetic fields—all effect disappeared. This strange energy had all the hallmarks of electricity: it decreased with distance, and was blocked by an electromagnetic shield.
At one point, Schwartz asked one of the students to stand with his left hand over Einstein’s head while extending his right arm towards Schwartz, who was sitting in a chair three feet away. Schwartz moved his arm up and down. To the amazement of the other students, Schwartz’s movement was picked up by the amplifier. The signal had passed through Schwartz’s body and travelled through the student. Schwartz was still generating the signal but, this time, the student had become the antenna, receiving the signal and transmitting it to the amplifier, which acted as another antenna.
Sources: Green EE. ‘Copper wall research psychology and psychophysics: subtle energies and energy medicine: emerging theory and practice’. Proceedings of the First Annual Conference, International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM), Boulder , Colorado , 21–25 June 1991. And “Subtle Energies,” 1996; 7 (2): 149–84
Lynne McTaggart is a journalist and the award-winning author of the bestselling book The Field
