Has someone been making a monkey out of us?

Newsletter - 31 October 2010

(This is an old newsletter which I am posting so that I can remove it from my website.)

It is intriguing to me how many metaphysical and esoteric books make reference to “The Hundredth Monkey Syndrome”. It is even more intriguing how different some of those stories are from the original reports, as later authors continue to quote secondary and even tertiary sources of the original story.

I first read about this supposed phenomenon in Lyall Watson’s book “Lifetide” in the mid 1980s. Then in the early 90s I picked up "The Hundredth Monkey" by Ken Keyes, jr. which was already its 13^th printing and had sold over 1 million copies. The focus of Ken’s publication was on the possibly devastating effects of a nuclear war on earth, and he used the hundredth monkey story as a parable of hope, in order to inspire positive change in our society. He claims to have first heard about the phenomenon in talks by Carl Rogers and Marilyn Ferguson, and his book has in turn inspired many other self help authors, including Dr Wayne Dyer.

Over the decades the story has become generally accepted as being factual and true, but is it? The scientific backup for this phenomenon is, at best, rather shaky. But before we look into it, here is the story for those of you who might not have come across it yet. It is lifted directly from Ken Keyes book, which is not copyrighted and so the material may be reproduced.

Taken from the Hundredth Monkey by Ken Keyes, jr.

There is a legend I’d like to tell you about. In its message may lie our only hope of a future for our species! Here is the story of the Hundredth Monkey:

The Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant. An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists.

Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes. Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes -- the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose

one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.

THEN IT HAPPENED!

By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough! But notice. A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea. Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes. Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.

Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people. But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!

And so it was that the “hundredth monkey phenomenon” came to refer to a sudden, spontaneous and even mysterious leap in consciousness which is achieved when a certain critical mass threshold is reached. But as early as the mid-1980s researchers like Elaine Myers, Michael Shermer and Ron Amundson began questioning Lyall Watson’s research and discrediting some of his claims. Especially his claim that the practice of sweet potato washing spread suddenly to other isolated populations of monkeys.

Watson apparently stated that the Japanese scientists were reluctant to publish their complete findings for fear of ridicule, and admitted that he had "to gather the rest of the story from personal anecdotes and bits of folklore among primate researchers, because most of them are still not quite sure what happened."

And in response to an article by Ron Amundson, highly critical the hundredth monkey claim, Watson wrote: "I accept Amundson's analysis of the origin and evolution of the Hundredth Monkey without reservation. It is a metaphor of my own making, based - as he rightly suggests - on very slim evidence and a great deal of hearsay. I have never pretended otherwise. . . ."

However seductive the “hundredth monkey” myth might be, the idea that there are unseen highways along which informational patterns are transmitted is not a new one. Native Americans and other tribes referred to the “web of life” or the “basket weave”, while the Vedic tradition espouses the idea of the Akashic Records - a library of all the experiences and memories of humans through their physical lifetimes.

Renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung’s version is the theory of the Collective Unconscious, while biochemist Dr Rupert Sheldrake contributed to the debate with the theory of Morphic Fields and his view that memory-traces are “non-local” and are not located in the brain. Rupert Sheldrake has claimed that his theory of Morphic Resonance explains "the increasing ease with which new skills are learned as greater quantities of a population acquire them.” The concept of the Morphic Field is believed by many to fall into the realm of “pseudoscience” and Sheldrake’s concepts have little support in the mainstream scientific world.

But anyone who has witnessed what happens in the “Field” during a Family Constellations workshop will be far less skeptical. How can a total stranger take on the mannerisms, the speech patterns and even spontaneously express the feelings of someone whom they have never met, with such uncanny accuracy? How can someone on the other side of the planet experience the exact same symptoms, at the exact same time, as someone representing him in a constellation? Why does someone whom a client has not spoken to for months or even years because of a fall-out suddenly call within days – and sometimes hours - of featuring them in a constellation?

When you have represented in countless roles and facilitated hundreds of constellations, you can have no doubt that we are connected to each other in far more subtle ways than we have ever though possible.

When you have stood in the queues with millions of fellow South Africans of good will in 1994 and felt that combined energy that transformed the country, it is impossible to doubt the power of the collective intention.

When you have witnessed a Nation’s combined enthusiasm overcome global skepticism to stage the most magnificent Football World Cup ever, you know there is more out there in the Matrix than we can even imagine.

So whether the Hundredth Monkey” story is accurate or not, I don’t really care. It is a myth which is far more useful than Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy - which may be why Lyall Watson remained largely unrepentant about his “hundredth monkey” claims until his death in 2008. He wrote: “I still think it’s a good idea!”

I must say that I tend to agree!