[This post draws on exchanges with Mike Oswald, Wyrd’s Chief Technology Officer, who has done deep research into the Model of Pragmatic Information.]

There’s a growing wave of interest in consciousness: where it comes from, how it connects us, and whether it might even shape the world around us. As more people encounter strange and meaningful experiences—a shared moment of intuition, a surprising synchronicity, or an unexplained signal in a Wyrd device—they begin to ask: Is something deeper going on here?

One of the most common ways people try to explain these experiences is through the idea of a field: a kind of invisible energy or information zone that connects minds and emotions across space. It’s an intuitive image, and in many traditions it holds symbolic power.

But what if there’s a more scientifically accurate and useful way to describe how consciousness connects and creates effects in the moment?

At Wyrd, we believe there is. We talk about consciousness systems.

Fields vs Systems: What’s the Difference?

In everyday language, a field sounds like something you can walk into. It surrounds you, affects you, and maybe even transmits things to you. It suggests a kind of flowing force.

A system forms when different parts—people, intentions, environments, even technologies—start interacting in meaningful, coherent ways. A family is a system. A ritual is a system. A conversation that changes your life is a system. So too is a person in relationship with their home. The environment, whether physical, biological, or social, is not passive. It actively participates in shaping and expressing the coherence of the system—sometimes even disrupting it when there’s a mismatch. In fact, many anomalous phenomena (like poltergeists) can be interpreted as signs of what Walter van Lucadou describes as “embodiment disorders“—where the person and their environment are out of sync.

The difference matters. Especially when you’re trying to understand why strange and beautiful things sometimes happen—and why they can be so hard to repeat.

Enter the Model of Pragmatic Information (MPI)

The Model of Pragmatic Information (MPI) is a scientific theory developed by physicist and psychologist Walter von Lucadou. It offers a framework for explaining why psi-like effects—telepathy, synchronicity, subtle influence—tend to emerge in meaningful situations, but vanish when we try to control or measure them like regular signals.

According to MPI, these effects arise within organisationally closed systems: systems that are held together by shared meaning, intention, or emotional coherence. They don’t rely on energy transfer or wave-like fields. They depend on the structure and coherence of the system’s internal relationships—not whether they are pleasant or desirable. Even disturbing experiences, such as trauma or emotional conflict, can generate strong pragmatic information if they bring novelty and resonance within the system.

This is where the difference becomes profound. If consciousness works through systems, not fields, then:

  • Effects don’t spread uniformly across space.
  • They appear where meaning is alive.
  • And they vanish when you try to extract them like a signal.

What This Explains

Imagine two Wyrd Lights in the same room. One glows brightly, responding to a meditation. The other stays dim. If consciousness were a field, both should react the same. But if it’s a system, then each Light is participating in a different set of relationships. One might be actively included in a ritual; the other, passively ignored.

The same goes for psi experiments. They often show effects at first, then fade when repeated. MPI explains this using a simple equation:

Effect Size × Measurement ≤ Meaningful Coherence (Pragmatic Information)

If you try to measure or document too much without expanding the system of meaning, the effect size drops. But here’s the twist: as more people become part of the system—through open-mindedness, curiosity, or shared experience—the system grows, and it can support more visible effects.

That’s why popular media like The Telepathy Tapes podcast or Dan Brown’s new book The Secret of Secrets can actually make a difference. As more people entertain the idea of non-local consciousness, the system of coherence expands. With a larger coherent system you can safely observe, document or communicate more from the outside without collapsing the effect.

Culture‑wide openness (for instance, the “Geller era” or current awareness of psi phenomena) may make the exceptional ordinary, make wyrd the norm. As more people start to get interested in it and are more open to it, we could find we are able to experience more non-local consciousness effects, as the overall system of coherence expands. This doesn’t eliminate the effect-collapsing impact of external measurement—but it does reduce the need for 100% objective proof within the system, which has now expanded. In large, culturally integrated systems, phenomena may unfold more freely because they are less scrutinised. The pressure to ‘prove’ is softened by shared context. What we will need to watch for is that if the communication about it all increases significantly, then the effects may diminish, to balance out the equation. It’s a continual dance between the effects, the communication and the amount of people open to the idea.

Consciousness Emerges Through Relationship

Calling it a field makes it sound like consciousness is beaming through space, like a radio wave. But the science of MPI suggests something subtler and more relational.

Consciousness creates coherence through participation. It doesn’t need to send signals. It forms systems.

And in those systems, when the relationships are alive, the ritual is meaningful, and the intention is clear—reality can shimmer a little. The random becomes ordered. The impossible becomes felt. And devices like the Wyrd Light can gently mirror what the system is ready to show.

So next time you have an experience that feels meaningful, connected, or inexplicably charged, ask what system you were part of. That might be the key to understanding not just the moment—but the future of consciousness science.

So What About Fields?

It’s tempting to imagine consciousness as a field—an invisible force radiating outward, connecting everything. And indeed, many traditions and thinkers, including Rupert Sheldrake with his concept of morphogenetic fields, have offered field-based models to describe memory, form, and connection in nature.

But when viewed through the lens of the Model of Pragmatic Information (MPI), these so-called “field effects” often resolve into something more grounded: non-local correlations within organizationally closed systems.

Rather than a field broadcasting influence across space, MPI shows that coherence emerges where meaning is structurally entangled. Most phenomena attributed to fields—like simultaneous discoveries, inherited patterns, or even strange synchronicities—can be more precisely explained as entanglement effects stabilized by causal structures—ordinary physical or procedural elements (like touch, ritual, timing, or space) that help hold the system together by creating the conditions for but not causing the effect directly.

So while the field metaphor remains compelling, current research suggests that what we perceive as fields may actually be distributed systems of meaning and coherence—not continuous forces, but networks of correlation that arise when the conditions are right. Until we observe an effect that cannot be explained by MPI, there’s no empirical need to invoke a separate field model.

That said, if fields exist, they likely don’t replace systems—they emerge from them.

The Shift That Changes Everything

When we stop imagining consciousness as a passive field we float in—and instead recognise it as a living system we participate in—something shifts. Systems arise through relationships, intention, and meaning. They generate coherence in the moment, allowing for the emergence of non-local effects. What we’ve often called “fields” may in fact be echoes of such systems—entanglement patterns stabilised by causal structures like ritual, attention, and environment. These aren’t energy fields broadcasting through space, but resonances of meaning that can reappear when the conditions are right. In this view, consciousness is not a force we passively absorb, but a system we help shape—alive in the present, and responsive to the coherence we create together.

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consciousness consciousness field consciousness system Dan Brown mind–matter model of pragmatic information psi quantum theory The Secret of Secrets wyrd