Pam
02-24-2007, 03:41 PM
[excerpted from the newsletter of Lynne McTaggert, www.theintentionexperiment.com (http://www.theintentionexperiment.com) ]
I’ve just come back from New York, where America was in the grip of Secret-mania.
Unless you’ve been in a time warp or a coma, you know that The movie The Secret and the book of the same name have become an international phenomenon that has captured the imagination of millions of viewers around the world.
Nevertheless, other than Larry King and Oprah Winfrey, much of the orthodox press has pooh-poohed The Secret because it rests on a seemingly preposterous premise: that thoughts affect physical reality.
This central idea — that our minds are somehow able to affect matter — seems to violates the most fundamental laws of the universe — the science of the big, visible world as first described to us in the 17th century by Sir Isaac Newton.
According to science’s grand ‘rules of the game’, matter is supposed to be inviolate and self-contained, with its own fixed boundaries. Influence of any sort is supposed to require something physical to be done to something else – a force or collision. Making something change basically entails heating it, burning it, freezing it, dropping it or giving it a good swift kick.
How can big objects or even future events in the physical world be affected and ultimately altered by something so ephemeral as a thought?
The latest discoveries from the laboratories of frontier quantum physicists suggest that this is not as outlandish as it seems. Recent experiments by physicists around the globe have demonstrated that all matter in the universe exists in a web of dynamic interrelationship and constant influence.
For instance, physicists at the University of Chicago have discovered that even the ‘large’ building blocks of matter like atoms have a ‘non-local’ instantaneous connection,which is often so strong that it can override classical methods of influence, such as heat.
Other studies at the University of Vienna demonstrate that molecules — the largest components of physical matter and living things — appear to remain in a state of potential, or ‘superposition’ — suggesting that they are open to influence from the outside.
Scientists have also discovered that living things engage in a constant two-way flow of quantum information with their environment.
German physicist Fritz-Albert Popp and a consortium of some 40 scientists around the world have demonstrated that all living things, from the most basic of single-celled plants to sophisticated organisms like human beings, emit a constant tiny current of photons – tiny particles of light.
Living things are both receivers and transmitters of quantum signals with their surroundings. In experiments with Daphnia, a common water flea, Popp discovered that female water fleas were absorbing the light emitted from each other and sending back wave interference patterns.
What’s more, Popp and other scientists have documented that bacteria absorbs light from their nutritional media. Even the white and yolk of an egg appear to communicate with the shell.
As astonishing as it seems, directed thought — what scientists call ‘intention’ — has a direct effect on this tiny current of light. In one study, healers sending intention to leaf samples have been able to alter the light emitted by leaf samples.
Highly sensitive charged couple device (CCD) camera imaging of healers’ hands while they are sending healing has revealed a stream of light flowing out of the healers’ dominant hands.
Scientific theory tells us the stories we live by. We build our concept of the universe from the scientific stories we’re told, and from there we construct our societies, our corporate rules, our family structures, our educational systems.
The latest stories from science suggest that the story we’ve been told — of a world of isolated objects operating according to the Newtonian rule book — is wrong.
Our definition of the physical universe as a collection of isolated objects, our definition of ourselves as just another of those objects, even our most basic understanding of time and space, may have to be recast.
Dozens of scientists in academic centres of research around the world have produced thousands of papers in the scientific literature offering sound evidence that an information transfer constantly carries on between living things, and that thought forms are simply another aspect of transmitted energy, capable of profoundly affecting all aspects of our lives.
Every thought we have, every judgement we hold, however unconscious, may be having an effect. With every moment that it notices, the conscious mind is sending an intention.
I thought The Secret was incredibly inspiring and very well done. My only caveat concerns the nature of effective intention.
Although it’s tempting to think that good thoughts alone produce a happy life, effective intention appears to be a bit more complex than simply sending out a prayer to the universe.
A vast body of research exploring the effect of consciousness on matter suggests that intention has variable effects that depend on certain conditions, particularly your mental and emotional state — even the time and place. Nevertheless, intention is not a special gift only available to intention ‘masters’ like Buddhist monks, but a learned skill, readily taught.
All of us may learn the secret of using our thoughts well — once we practice the art and science of how to master them.
I’ve just come back from New York, where America was in the grip of Secret-mania.
Unless you’ve been in a time warp or a coma, you know that The movie The Secret and the book of the same name have become an international phenomenon that has captured the imagination of millions of viewers around the world.
Nevertheless, other than Larry King and Oprah Winfrey, much of the orthodox press has pooh-poohed The Secret because it rests on a seemingly preposterous premise: that thoughts affect physical reality.
This central idea — that our minds are somehow able to affect matter — seems to violates the most fundamental laws of the universe — the science of the big, visible world as first described to us in the 17th century by Sir Isaac Newton.
According to science’s grand ‘rules of the game’, matter is supposed to be inviolate and self-contained, with its own fixed boundaries. Influence of any sort is supposed to require something physical to be done to something else – a force or collision. Making something change basically entails heating it, burning it, freezing it, dropping it or giving it a good swift kick.
How can big objects or even future events in the physical world be affected and ultimately altered by something so ephemeral as a thought?
The latest discoveries from the laboratories of frontier quantum physicists suggest that this is not as outlandish as it seems. Recent experiments by physicists around the globe have demonstrated that all matter in the universe exists in a web of dynamic interrelationship and constant influence.
For instance, physicists at the University of Chicago have discovered that even the ‘large’ building blocks of matter like atoms have a ‘non-local’ instantaneous connection,which is often so strong that it can override classical methods of influence, such as heat.
Other studies at the University of Vienna demonstrate that molecules — the largest components of physical matter and living things — appear to remain in a state of potential, or ‘superposition’ — suggesting that they are open to influence from the outside.
Scientists have also discovered that living things engage in a constant two-way flow of quantum information with their environment.
German physicist Fritz-Albert Popp and a consortium of some 40 scientists around the world have demonstrated that all living things, from the most basic of single-celled plants to sophisticated organisms like human beings, emit a constant tiny current of photons – tiny particles of light.
Living things are both receivers and transmitters of quantum signals with their surroundings. In experiments with Daphnia, a common water flea, Popp discovered that female water fleas were absorbing the light emitted from each other and sending back wave interference patterns.
What’s more, Popp and other scientists have documented that bacteria absorbs light from their nutritional media. Even the white and yolk of an egg appear to communicate with the shell.
As astonishing as it seems, directed thought — what scientists call ‘intention’ — has a direct effect on this tiny current of light. In one study, healers sending intention to leaf samples have been able to alter the light emitted by leaf samples.
Highly sensitive charged couple device (CCD) camera imaging of healers’ hands while they are sending healing has revealed a stream of light flowing out of the healers’ dominant hands.
Scientific theory tells us the stories we live by. We build our concept of the universe from the scientific stories we’re told, and from there we construct our societies, our corporate rules, our family structures, our educational systems.
The latest stories from science suggest that the story we’ve been told — of a world of isolated objects operating according to the Newtonian rule book — is wrong.
Our definition of the physical universe as a collection of isolated objects, our definition of ourselves as just another of those objects, even our most basic understanding of time and space, may have to be recast.
Dozens of scientists in academic centres of research around the world have produced thousands of papers in the scientific literature offering sound evidence that an information transfer constantly carries on between living things, and that thought forms are simply another aspect of transmitted energy, capable of profoundly affecting all aspects of our lives.
Every thought we have, every judgement we hold, however unconscious, may be having an effect. With every moment that it notices, the conscious mind is sending an intention.
I thought The Secret was incredibly inspiring and very well done. My only caveat concerns the nature of effective intention.
Although it’s tempting to think that good thoughts alone produce a happy life, effective intention appears to be a bit more complex than simply sending out a prayer to the universe.
A vast body of research exploring the effect of consciousness on matter suggests that intention has variable effects that depend on certain conditions, particularly your mental and emotional state — even the time and place. Nevertheless, intention is not a special gift only available to intention ‘masters’ like Buddhist monks, but a learned skill, readily taught.
All of us may learn the secret of using our thoughts well — once we practice the art and science of how to master them.