From the first day of the 9/11 Peace Intention Experiment, the participants had made an extraordinary connection with one another, even more powerful than during the 2008 Sri Lankan Experiment—in most cases the most extraordinary connection they’d ever experienced.
“Like I was a piece of metal being drawn to a magnet not of this world from my elbows to the tip of my fingers,” wrote Logan from Switzerland.
“Like I had a white glow around my body, with a white cylinder connecting my body (and everyone else’s) to the target area,” wrote Cathy.
“Like being in the total vortex of prayer energy of all who were focusing, like an out-of-body experience,” wrote Linda from the United States.
“Like swimming in an ocean of goodwill, love, hope,” wrote Simona from Romania.
Their bodies felt “electrified,” and many were shaking “like when you’re really cold and you get ‘the chills,’ ” with “waves and waves of shivers all over” their bodies. They became cognizant of internal sounds, as though “there were people whispering” in their minds. Many were openly sobbing during and after the experiment, as though they’d “tapped into a global pain body” intensifying their own feelings. “I wasn’t a body at that very (long) moment,” wrote Saad. After reading aloud the intention, Michel’s throat was so sore that he had to stop speaking. “It’s the closest,” wrote one, that “I have ever felt to ‘God.’ ”
Just before the experiment started, Logan had texted his sister to ask if she could get to a computer and sent her the link, even though she is not a practicing meditator and had never tried to do intention. After the experiment, she called to tell him she’d gotten so emotional during the experiment that her partner even wondered whether she’d been looking at an upsetting photograph because she’d been crying so much. “I told her that is exactly what I felt,” he said.
They’d hallucinated strange, highly specific utopian visions from their own perspective, feeling as though they were “IN their bodies, but also right OVER THERE in the target area” in Afghanistan:
“A white energy of peace shooting from all of us, mingling into a wide beam of light and hope!” wrote Amal.
“People working together to rebuild schools, hospitals, and lives and a country of love and peace!!!” wrote Debbie.
“Afghanistan as the very source for the new Global Peace in the world,” wrote Cornelia.
“The kids running beside the rivers . . . heard the birds singing and saw schools and universities in Kandahar and Helmand . . . then I saw the West and the East normally mingling together, no difference at all,” Fatima wrote.
“The white birds of peace getting out of Ground Zero covering the world,” Tarik wrote.
“All the rancor in Washington DC and US politics dissolving like chocolate,” wrote Maridee.
“George Bush with Condoleezza Rice and [Donald] Rumsfeld living and sitting between all Afghanistan people having a drink with each other, like friends,” wrote Marjorie.
“Arabs and Americans . . . all throwing their arms down into a huge crater, all working to cover it all with earth and then placing a sign upon it that reads, ‘Here lies War, gone forever,’ ” wrote Linda.
As the week carried on, thousands continued to tune into the web TV station I’d teamed up with to do a daily live stream update on the event. During the daily broadcasts, which had an instant messenger chat room, many of our Western participants began to instant message and befriend people from the Arab countries who could write in English—and vice versa. The resentment and suspicion about Arabs was beginning to transform into love and acceptance. The Westerners began wishing the Arabs well—“Ante diemen fee kalbi” (“You are always in my Heart”)—and as they began to feel connected to the Arabs, “like a support from the right side one can virtually lean on, like feeling brothers from far away,” their attitudes toward the Middle East began to shift: “forever will Afghanistan be synonymous with Peace for me.” The pain of 9/11 and lingering rancor was healing.
“The experience of IM’ing with people from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and many other Middle Eastern countries—during the IM messages, we wished each other peace and expressed love—made me cry,” wrote John from Tucson. “It was very therapeutic for me—a citizen of the USA.”
As word of our experiment got around, it began to create some positive effects, even among those who had not participated. May Lynn attended her book club during the week of the 9/11 Peace Intention Experiment. Her friends were commenting about how overloaded they felt with negative 9/11 emotions. “I was able to tell them that there is a large group of people working to use this anniversary to improve peace in Afghanistan,” she wrote, “and they were really glad to know that this experiment is happening!”
Samuel from New York, who teaches a large population of Middle Eastern students, told them about our experiment. “They were quite surprised and now want to continue,” he wrote.
Many of the Arab participants reached out in friendship to the West: “We are brothers, we will always be here for you. Although I don’t know you, I feel a connection with your pure souls.”
“This day is the day that we all felt the loss and no one felt the gain,” wrote Bahareh. “Your God is my God. My God is your God.”
Following Salah’s lead, the Arabs started apologizing to the Americans, a point of view that “millions of Arabs and Muslims are sharing with him.”
“In six minutes,” said Kholood, “he said what I’m trying to say in years.”
They began bringing the apology to their own lives. One of my respondents, feeling challenged by some people who didn’t agree with him, apologized for not sharing their point of view. “It’s suddenly okay with them,” he wrote. “Was it the apology?”
Both sides began discussing ideas on Facebook about how to create peace between East and West: “Stop using the words ‘East’ or ‘West,’ ” “change it from East and West to World,” “call it WEast.”
As with the 2008 Peace Experiment, participating in this experiment had brought peace into their lives, particularly their relationships. Three-quarters of my participants spoke of how their newfound sense of peace had improved relationships in every regard:
“Family relationships.”
“My neighbors.”
“My sisters.”
“My twin brother.”
“My dogs.”
They were getting along better with clients, ex-husbands, siblings, neighbors, those they normally argued with, even employers. “My husband came to me midweek, and said that I was more approachable and open. The little stuff did not bother me.” Many made a pact with themselves to resolve lingering conflicts with others and heal rifts, even with those who’d caused them pain. Saad let go of the “negative energy” he had toward a friend and forgave him. “On the first day, I was holding hands with a friend I just made peace with, after a long time of not talking to one another,” said Susan from Spokane. “We held hands throughout the experiment, and when we were done, we hugged.”
A third of the participants were getting along better with people they normally dislike or argue with. An ongoing conflict with a husband was brought to “full confrontation, but then moved quickly into resolution and solutions.” Arguments over an accident, landlords, sisters-in-law that had carried on for years suddenly got resolved. One found it difficult to agree with the commercial attitudes of his coworkers or to go along with directions from the managers he disagreed with, but found it “easier to love them.” Others were able to tolerate people they didn’t usually get along with: “I felt compassion for my not-so-nice boss.”
“I kept flipping between the target area images and the ‘warlike’ energies emanating from my next-door neighbor,” wrote Stephen from New Orleans. “I felt that the Peace Intention Experiment would heal BOTH situations.”
Those from both East and West had experienced a powerful opening of the heart, and once again, a majority were falling in love with everyone they came in contact with. They experienced a “more peaceful feeling toward everyone,” “an openheartedness that continued between the intention meditations.” They’d become “more open and comfortable and at ease around people” and “less concerned about what they think,” “experienced more clarity and kindness toward personal issues,” feeling “compassion and empathy toward others increasing.” They felt a “ ‘gentling’ of mind-set,” “more tuned-in,” their hearts “more open in general,” and more willing to “let stuff go.”
Many had completely transformed in the way they related to other people. They felt able to see “people and situations more clearly,” noticing when they were judgmental of others and themselves. They found anger “more uncomfortable than before,” were “more apt to apologize and forgive,” had “stopped reminding themselves” of what the other did to hurt them, and “now were not taking things so personally.” They felt a certain “urgency to let go of the past hurts,” were “feeling feelings more,” were “listening more without judgment,” and were more desirous of sharing their personal truth.
“I see myself in everyone I meet, experiencing their feelings, finding compassion.”
“Recognized my need to extend my Love to ALL Humanity.”
“More connected to strangers and the world community.”
“More compassion for all people.”
“More open to make contact with strangers.”
And once more, these positive effects seemed to spill over to other areas of their lives. Many claimed to have had “personal miracles” happen in their life, experienced “the most creative periods in the last five years,” had a “spiritual quantum leap,” enabling them to be more intuitive and more sensitive to others, and seen a “big improvement in healing skills,” in the case of one therapist. “My life,” wrote Abdul, “has changed for the most beautiful.”
They’d been loath to leave the pure love of the circle and end the experiment, but once they had, many felt hope for their country and the rest of the world and a greater urgency to be an instrument of change, “an overwhelming need to continue to concentrate efforts in Helmand and Kandahar” or “to make a tangible contribution to other areas of the world like Rwanda, Congo, and other places on the African continent.”
“I must find other people here who want to do this on an ongoing basis,” wrote Martin.
“I felt,” wrote Rose, “that I am a part of the solution.”
In a way, the 9/11 Peace Intention Experiment had been a giant exercise in multicultural prayer. Mohandas Gandhi, who believed that all religions “were as dear as one’s close relatives,” advocated the power of different faiths praying together:
. . . religion does not mean sectarianism. It means a belief in ordered moral government of the universe. . . .This religion transcends Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc. . . . It harmonizes them and gives them reality.
A two-year national study published in 2014 by researchers at the American Sociological Association found that community groups across America that embrace multi-faith members, such as Christians, Jews, and Muslims, find praying together a “bridging cultural practice.”
“We aren’t talking about superficial team-building exercises,” said University of Connecticut professor of sociology Ruth Braunstein, who studied the phenomenon. “These are practices that are central to groups’ cultures and emerge over time as participants reflect on the qualities that unite everyone in the group and develop shared rituals that are meaningful to everyone.”
On May 3, 2015, NewGround, an interfaith organization that focuses on strengthening the bonds between Muslims and Jews, organized an event they called Two Faiths One Prayer, to gather Muslims and Jews in common prayer. They started with some twenty people of the two faiths praying together on a Los Angeles beach, gathering up more and more of the faithful from both religions throughout the day as they traveled together on public transportation and moved to five other locations. The group was a hundred strong by the time they’d reached a rooftop in downtown LA for their evening dinner, with Muslims reciting their nighttime Isha, and Jews reciting liturgical poetry, or piyyutim, at Los Angeles City Hall.
“It was kind of like an aha moment,” said participant Maryam Saleemi. “We’re praying to the same God, why aren’t we doing this all the time together?”
But even with these “bridging” efforts, no one had examined the rebound power of collective praying, its ability to heal the personal wounds of the healers themselves.
Ellen, one of our participants, found the exercise could heal her lingering grief over the loss of two friends. During the experiment, she wrote, she could not stop weeping. A good friend of hers, Lee Shapiro, and his soundman, Jim Lindelof, had been killed in Afghanistan in 1987 while making a documentary. Their bodies were never recovered. “I kept seeing an image of them. The energy seemed so huge,” she wrote. “This was a profound experience for me.”
Toni’s life had been torn apart when her sister and children had been murdered by the children’s father just a few weeks before 9/11. In her eyes, the Peace Experiment saved her life. “Change happened that for a second destroyed all my faith until the love of the community and signs from the universe restored it and made me more grateful than ever,” she wrote. “I poured a more intense Love than anyone else out into the universe that day as my heart shattered and soared simultaneously. The world remembered while we mourned. And many lives were changed forever.”
I had no idea if my experiment could take the credit for the improved peace in those two southern provinces of Afghanistan. But if the feedback from participants were anything to go by, the act of sending intention had created peace in their hearts that seemed to be transforming their lives and views of East and West. For many on either side, the experience had been extraordinarily healing, a simple means of breaching ideological divides.
The outcome of the actual experiment again was almost irrelevant; the real healing was happening with the participants. Joint prayer had itself brought the East and West together, had proved to be profoundly uplifting, and had given hope to many on both sides.
“Thank you, world,” Yasser wrote. “You’re still a good place, with all these peaceful people.”
I didn’t know if God had answered our prayer for peace, but certainly our prayers had given us a glimpse of God—and even a fleeting glimpse of heaven on earth. “I had the sense that although we had a specific ‘target,’ ” said Aimee, “we were healing everyone everywhere at once.”