How Peace Activists Can Be More Effective

                                                        Buryl Payne Ph.D.

Peace activities are all too often reactive rather than proactive. Only after an international battle or war has occurred, attempts are made to ameliorate situations by constructing treaties, agreements, or curtailment of nuclear weapons, cluster bombs, poison gas, biological weapons, etc.  This is political symptom treatment. Historical analysis shows this approach is only partially successful.  When wars start up again, peace treaties go out the window!

Effective peace treatments for warring behavior may be aided by more modern understanding of the nature of war.

 Section I.  Wars come and go in cycles.

Warring behavior can be considered as a kind of mass psychosis. It is insane behavior. Individuals who behave that way are locked up and treated by psychiatrists.  

The most important finding of scientists, based on observations, not theories, is that wars come and go in cycles.  These cycles were discovered by the late Professor Raymond Wheeler, a psychologist and historian at the University of Kansas. He found that as part of his larger historical analysis, international battles happen in approximately 11 year cycles and have done so for 2,500 years. Later on, his work was statistically validated by Edward Dewey, Director of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles. Dewey considered the analysis of war cycles as the most important work of his life.  A portion of Wheeler’s data on war cycles is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Some of Wheeler^’s Data on International Battles.  The 11 1/5-year cycle in International Battles, 1760-1947.

Dewey and Wheeler suspected that warring behavior was connected with sunspot cycles, but their work took place before space probes were created. It has been discovered that solar wind, or streams of particles emitted from the Sun, affect the Earth’s magnetic field.  This field is most active a year or two before or after the sunspot peak; never right on the sunspot peak, and it influences all biological life on Earth.

The battles start mostly during the ascent, or descent, of sunspot activity, when geomagnetic activity is highest. The small arrow at the bottom of Figure 2. indicates our position on the graph of time vs. sunspot activity, as of Fall 2009.  The sunspot activity is still zero.  Once wars start, the length of them depends on other factors.  Only the start of battles or wars is triggered by solar activity.  Many other human ailments or behaviors are also highly correlated with solar activity cycles via the geomagnetic field activity, such as heart trouble, flu, accidents, and psychotic behavior.  There is a large body of literature on these effects. Sunspot and other kinds of solar activity is in turn related to, and predicted by, the positions of the planets.

When Earth is close to Mercury, Venus, and Mars at the same time and the Moon lines up with one of them, this is a common likely time for international battles to start. Warring Behavior usually occurs twice every eleven year solar cycle as illustrated in Figure 3.

Laboratory studies have shown that geomagnetic activity affects human brain rhythms and endocrine balance in some individuals. There is a change of context for the explanation of human warring behavior from that of individual responsibility (and irresponsibility) to that of a kind of mass psychosis triggered by processes off the planet. This is not a theory, it is observations.  Of course, other factors are involved such as greed, territoriality, religious doctrines, and race differences, all primitive, short sighted, animalistic factors no longer relevant for 21st century Earth. However, the cycles of war take precedence over those factors. Most importantly, outbreaks of wars are predictable.  The primitive, tribal factors do not usually support making predictions.   

This approach provides peace activists with important information. Peace actions can be more clearly directed to be preventative methods, rather than a reaction.

 Section II.  The Power of Thought

Scientists found proof that the power of thought can affect physical events and the behavior of others. While some people with classical scientific education rigidly hold on to older mechanical views of how the Universe works, others, forging ahead, accept, and are demonstrating in and out of the laboratory, that thought power is a real force. During 1983 to 1988, the Academy for Peace Research and an organization, called Peace the 21^st, organized global peace meditations six times a year. The results clearly showed that solar activity decreased 24 hours after each meditation. Figure 3. shows some of the data.

More is, on my website:

Buryl.com under ‘Academy for Peace Research’ > ‘past projects’ > ‘The Power of Thought’ (http://www.buryl.com/apr_power_of_thought.htm ) and linked at the end of that is further information.  At that time the power of thought was not a common paradigm, except to a few quantum physicists and new age thinkers, so no editor was found who would print the report.

Now things have changed. This time period ( 2010 – 2020 ) is a good one for peace thought power projects, and the majority of political leaders remain unconsciously within the framework of the older scientific paradigms or have even more pre-scientific beliefs coming from the feudal middle ages and their own tribal religions. “I’m right because I’m bigger, stronger, more ruthless, command more men, etc.”, or “My god says our tribe is the best”, or “my skin color is better than yours”. With such prevailing paradigms, peace activists can work using thought power without any resistance.

Predictive knowledge of likely times of mass psychosis can suggest good times to take preventative physical and mental actions. Even though a large proportion of the people may not understand the full scientific background or principles involved, they can be involved in a simple way with positive visions.  Peace thought power (meditations or visualizations) can be simple, easy, and celebratory, designed when possible to fit in with festive times and holidays.

At the same time, plans for physical disruptions can, and must be, made, for there are too many pre psychotic or insane political leaders who control and direct uneducated or mechanically thinking people.

In longer term views, peace activists can plan ahead to educate children in modem scientific findings, taking care of mother earth as a whole And the use of thought power and stepping out of the older paradigms such as ‘might makes right’ or ‘the use of force is a last resort.’  Perhaps many armies can be slowly replaced by international peace corps.  If children can be educated everywhere, peace will probably manifest in one or two generations.

Dewey, E. R., Evidence of cyclic patterns in an index of International War Battles. 600 B.C.-A.D. 1957, Cycles, 21(6), pp 121-158, 1970.

 Dilbeck, M. et al The Transcendental Meditation Program and Crime Rate changes in a Sample of Forty Eight cities.                      Crime and Justice, Vol. IV, 1981.

 Friedman, H. and Becker, R.O., Geomagnetic parameters and Psychiatric Hospital Admissions, Nature, V. 200, pp 626-                628, 1963.

 Hundhausen, A.J. 1979. Solar Activity and The Solar Wind. Review of Solar Physics and Space Physics. pp. 2034-       2048.

 Payne, B. The Global Meditation Project, National Council for Geocosmic Research, Winter 1987.

  How to Predict Solar and Geomagnetic Activity. (inpublished as of Jan., 2004)

  Planetary Positions and Sunspots, 1992. National Council on Geocosmic Research. Spring. 1359 Sargent Ave. St. Paul, MN 55105.

  Global Peace Meditation Research Project - Interim Report. NCGR Journal. Winter-Spring, 1987. Available at www.buryl.com.

  Power of thought to Influence the Sun. Journal of Borderland Research (no longer in print). Available at www.buryl.com.

(Payne articles available in e-book format in the book on ‘Spin’ by Buryl Payne, http://www.buryl.com/spin_book.htm)

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