The Intention Experiment: Use Your Thoughts to Change the World

Once finished, the results of the experiments will be analysed and data-crunched by our scientific team, examined by a neutral statistician, and then published on the website and in subsequent printings of this book. The website will thus become the living sequel to the book you are holding in your hands. You simply need to consult the website periodically for announcements of the date of every experiment.

Hundreds of well-designed studies of group intention and remote mental influence have demonstrated significant results. Nevertheless, it might be the case that our experiments will not produce demon-strable, measurable effects, at first or indeed ever. As reputable scientists and objective researchers, we are duty-bound to report the data we have. As with all science, failure is instructive, helping us to refine the design of the experiments and the premises that they are based upon.

As you read this book, keep in mind that this is a work of frontier science. Science is a relentless process of self-correction. Assumptions originally considered as fact must often ultimately be discarded. Many – indeed, most – of the conclusions drawn in this book are bound to be amended or refined at a later date.

By reading this book and participating in its experiments you may well contribute to the world’s knowledge, and possibly further a paradigm shift in our understanding of how the world works. Indeed, the power of mass intention may ultimately be the force that shifts the tide towards repair and renewal of the planet. When combined with hundreds of thousands of others, your solitary voice, now one barely audible note, could transmute into a thunderous symphony.

My own motive for writing The Intention Experiment was to make a statement about the extraordinary nature and power of consciousness. It may prove true that a single collective, directed thought is all it takes to change the world.

Notes - Introduction

1 (#ulink_09991f7f-2f04-5bec-a9bb-411390b3aaf5). For a complete description of these scientists and their findings, consult L. McTaggart, The Field: the Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, London: HarperCollins, 2001.

2 (#ulink_b6c272d4-ec38-59fb-83d9-d6809489cc7e). The full title of Newton’s major treatise is Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a name that offers a nod to its philosophical implications, although it is always referred to reverentially as the Principia.

3 (#ulink_b2527f72-22bb-5300-a8f0-d08885c57e32). R. P. Feynman, Six Easy Pieces: The Fundamentals of Physics Explained, London: Penguin, 1995: 24.

4 (#ulink_b28c9ac8-ad01-570d-9e9d-e3eeb5fa89d8). McTaggart, The Field, op. cit.

5 (#ulink_12d68c13-f4c1-5e3a-b491-ad3d8d9a9519). Eugene Wigner, the Hungarian-born American physicist who received a Nobel Prize for his contribution to the theory of quantum physics, is one of the early pioneers of the central role of consciousness in determining reality and argued, through a thought experiment called ‘Wigner’s friend’, that the observer, ‘the friend’, might collapse Schrödinger’s famous cat into a single state or, like the cat itself, remain in a state of superposition until another ‘friend’ comes into the lab. Other proponents of ‘the observer effect’ include John Eccles and Evan Harris Walker. John Wheeler is credited with espousing the theory that the universe is participatory: it only exists because we happen to be looking at it.

6 (#ulink_54b6d147-7de1-51a8-849a-caee84010a2f). McTaggart, The Field, op. cit.

7 (#ulink_6c8279d6-7c03-5acb-a63b-ebd22b0bdf39). E. J. Squires, ‘Many views of one world – an interpretation of quantum theory’, European Journal of Physics, 1987; 8: 173.

8 (#ulink_87472338-513e-5fc3-8651-829b55e54205). B. F. Malle et al., Intentions and Intentionality: Foundations of Social Cognition, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.

9 (#ulink_87472338-513e-5fc3-8651-829b55e54205). M. Schlitz, ‘Intentionality in healing: mapping the integration of body, mind, and spirit’, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 1995; 1 (5): 119–20.

10 (#ulink_17f54f12-93ec-51f6-9c0a-498f3fecd173). R. G. Jahn et al., ‘Correlations of random binary sequences with prestated operator intention: a review of a 12-year program’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1997; 11: 345–67.

11 (#ulink_17f54f12-93ec-51f6-9c0a-498f3fecd173). R. G. Jahn et al., ‘Correlations of random binary sequences’, op. cit.; Dean Radin and Roger Nelson, ‘Evidence for consciousness-related anomalies in random physical systems’, Foundations of Physics, 1989; 19 (12): 1499–514; McTaggart, The Field, op. cit.: 116–17.

12 (#ulink_5452bb2a-84f5-51ec-a370-4bbc5b0fd457). These studies are itemized in great detail in D. Benor, Spiritual Healing, Volume 1, Southfield, Mich.: Vision Publications, 1992.

13 (#ulink_b3851bae-63a8-518f-8d7f-810aa023a2a5). Rene Peoc’h, ‘Psychokinetic action of young chicks on the path of a “illuminated source”’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1995; 9 (2): 223; R. Peoc’h, ‘Chicken imprinting and the tychoscope: An Anpsi experiment’, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 1988; 55: 1; R. Peoc’h, ‘Psychokinesis experiments with human and animal subjects upon a robot moving at random’, The Journal of Parapsychology, September 1, 2002.

14 (#ulink_949af020-04df-59da-b576-99df8aa1cd15). William G. Braud and Marilyn J. Schlitz, ‘Consciousness interactions with remote biological systems: anomalous intentionality effects’, Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine, 1991; 2 (1): 1–27; McTaggart, The Field, op. cit.: 128–9.

15 (#ulink_b27c2163-b638-59a5-a827-314d541e60ac). Marilyn Schlitz and William Braud, ‘Distant intentionality and healing: assessing the evidence’, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 1997; 3 (6): 62–73.

16 (#ulink_b27c2163-b638-59a5-a827-314d541e60ac). William Braud and Marilyn Schlitz, ‘A methodology for the objective study of transpersonal imagery’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1989; 3 (1): 43–63.

17 (#ulink_b27c2163-b638-59a5-a827-314d541e60ac). W. Braud et al., ‘Further studies of autonomic detection of remote staring: replication, new control procedures and personality correlates’, Journal of Parapsychology, 1993; 57: 391–409; M. Schlitz and S. LaBerge, ‘Autonomic detection of remote observation; two conceptual replications’, in D. Bierman (ed.), Proceedings of Presented Papers: 37 Annual Parapsychological Association Convention, Amsterdam, Fairhaven, Mass.: Parapsychological Association, 1994: 465–78.

18 (#ulink_41286938-5518-5342-8e2a-70a3d9ff1176). D. Benor, Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution, Southfield, Mich.: Vision Publications, 2001.

19 (#ulink_41286938-5518-5342-8e2a-70a3d9ff1176). F. Sicher, E. Targ et al., ‘A randomized double-blind study of the effect of distant healing in a population with advanced AIDS: report of a small scale study’, Western Journal of Medicine, 1998; 168 (6): 356–63. For a full description of the studies, see McTaggart, The Field, op. cit.: 181–96.

20 (#ulink_7fb51ae3-15b9-57dd-b8ad-885968b01b45). Psychologist Dean Radin conducted a meta-analysis in 1989 at Princeton University of all known dice experiments (73) published between 1930 and 1989. They are recounted in his book Entangled Minds, New York: Paraview, 2006: 148–51.

21 (#ulink_96f0e864-57fe-56c0-aefc-f1088c9d8de2). J. Hasted, The Metal Benders, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, as cited in W. Tiller, Science and Human Transformation; Subtle Energies, Intentionality and Consciousness, Walnut Creek, Calif.: Pavior Publications, 1997: 13.

22 (#ulink_008e693f-209e-51a5-bd77-8baaec1e53c1). McTaggart, The Field, op. cit.: 199.

23 (#ulink_a13dc7e7-a354-5405-a1b7-412284ef689a). W. W. Monafo and M. A. West, ‘Current recommendations for topical burn therapy’, Drugs, 1990; 40: 364–73.

PART ONE (#u236ffb7a-627f-551d-9cad-bdd789027bf5)

The Science of Intention (#u236ffb7a-627f-551d-9cad-bdd789027bf5)

A human being is part of the whole, called by us

‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. He

experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as

something separated from the rest – a kind of

optical delusion of his consciousness.

Albert Einstein

CHAPTER ONE (#u236ffb7a-627f-551d-9cad-bdd789027bf5)

Mutable Matter (#u236ffb7a-627f-551d-9cad-bdd789027bf5)

FEW PLACES IN THE GALAXY are as cold as the helium-dilution refrigerator in Tom Rosenbaum’s lab. Temperatures in the refrigerator – a boiler-sized circular apparatus with a number of cylinders – can descend to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, almost 273°C below freezing – three thousand times colder than the farthest reaches of outer space. For two days, liquid nitrogen and helium circulate around the refrigerator, and then three pumps constantly blasting out gaseous helium take the temperature down to the final rung. Without heat of any description, the atoms in matter slow to a crawl. At this scale of coldness, the universe would grind to a halt. It is the scientific equivalent of hell freezing over.

Absolute zero is the preferred temperature of a physicist like Tom Rosenbaum. At 47, as a distinguished professor of physics at the University of Chicago and former head of the James Franck Institute, Rosenbaum was in the vanguard of experimental physicists who liked exploring the limits of disorder in condensed-matter physics, the study of the inner workings of liquids and solids when their underlying order was disturbed.1 (#ulink_482c722f-559e-5382-8f15-aa832741ce94) In physics, if you want to find out how something behaves, the best way is simply to make it uncomfortable and then see what happens. Creating disorder usually involves adding heat or applying a magnetic field to determine how it will react when disturbed and also to determine which spin position – or magnetic orientation – the atoms will choose.

Most of his colleagues in condensed-matter physics remained interested in symmetrical systems such as crystalline solids, whose atoms are arranged in orderly array, like eggs in a carton, but Rosenbaum was drawn to strange systems that were inherently disordered – to which more conventional quantum physicists referred disparagingly as ‘dirt’. In dirt, he believed, lay exposed the unprobed secrets of the quantum universe, uncharted territory that he was happy to navigate. He loved the challenge posed by spin glasses, strange hybrids of crystals, with magnetic properties, technically considered slow-moving liquids. Unlike a crystal, whose atoms point in the same direction in perfect alignment, the tiny magnets associated with the atoms of a spin glass are wayward and frozen in disarray.

The use of extreme coldness allowed Rosenbaum to slow down the atoms of these strange compounds enough to observe them minutely, and to tease out their quantum mechanical essence. At temperatures near to absolute zero, when their atoms are nearly stationary, they begin taking on new collective properties. Rosenbaum was fascinated by the recent discovery that systems disorderly at room temperature display a conformist streak once they are cooled down. For once, these delinquent atoms begin to act in concert.

Examining how molecules behave as a group in various circumstances is highly instructive about the essential nature of matter. In my own journey of discovery, Rosenbaum’s laboratory seemed the most appropriate place to begin. There, at those lowest temperatures where everything occurs in slow motion, the true nature of the most basic constituents of the universe might be revealed. I was looking for evidence of ways in which the components of our physical universe, which we think of as fully realized, are capable of being fundamentally altered. I also wondered whether it could be shown that quantum behaviour like the observer effect occurs outside the subatomic world, in the world of the everyday. What Rosenbaum had discovered in his refrigerator might offer some vital clues as to how every object or organism in the physical world, which classical physics depicts as an irreversible fact, a finalized assemblage only changeable by the brute force of Newtonian physics, could be affected and ultimately altered by the energy of a thought.

According to the second law of thermodynamics, all physical processes in the universe can only flow from a state of greater to lesser energy. We throw a stone into a river and the ripple it makes eventually stops. A cup of hot coffee left standing can only grow cold. Things inevitably fall apart; everything travels in a single direction, from order to disorder.

But this might not always be inevitable, Rosenbaum believed. Recent discoveries about disordered systems suggested that certain materials, under certain circumstances, might counteract the laws of entropy and come together rather than fall apart. Was it possible that matter could go in the opposite direction, from disorder to greater order?

For ten years Rosenbaum and his students at the James Franck Institute had been asking that question of a small chunk of lithium holmium fluoride salt. Inside Rosenbaum’s refrigerator lay a perfect chip of rose-coloured crystal, no bigger than the head of a pencil, wrapped in two sets of copper coils. Over the years, after many experiments with spin glasses, Rosenbaum had grown very fond of these dazzling little specimens, one of the most naturally magnetic substances on earth. This characteristic presented the perfect situation in which to study disorder, but only after he had altered the crystal beyond recognition into a disordered substance.

He had first instructed the laboratory that grew the crystals to combine the holmium with fluorine and lithium, the first metal on the periodic table. The resulting lithium holmium fluoride salt was compliant and predictable – a highly ordered substance whose atoms behaved like a sea of microscopic compasses all pointing north. Rosenbaum then had wreaked havoc on the original salt compound, instructing the lab to rip out a number of the atoms of holmium, bit by bit, and replace them with yttrium, a silvery metal without such natural magnetic attraction, until he was left with a strange hybrid of a compound: a salt called lithium holmium yttrium tetrafluoride.

By virtually eliminating the magnetic properties of the compound, Rosenbaum eventually had created spin-glass anarchy – the atoms of this Frankenstein monstrosity pointing any way they liked. Being able to manipulate the essential property of elements like holmium by creating weird new compounds so cavalierly was a little like having ultimate control over matter itself. With these new spin-glass compounds, Rosenbaum could virtually change the properties of the compound at will; he could make the atoms orientate in a particular direction, or freeze them in some random pattern.

Nevertheless, his omnipotence had a limit. Rosenbaum’s holmium compounds behaved themselves in some regards, but not in others. One thing he could not do was to get them to obey the laws of temperature. No matter how cold Rosenbaum made his refrigerator, the atoms inside them resisted any sort of ordered orientation, like an army refusing to march in step. If Rosenbaum was playing God with his spin glasses, the crystal was Adam, stubbornly refusing to obey His most fundamental law.