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The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World

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The preface to "The Intention Experiment" is pivotal to understanding this book's purpose. In it, Lynne McTaggart explains that, in previously writing "The Field," she aimed to make sense of all the ideas from ongoing research into quantum physics and, ultimately the implications of the Zero Point Field for human life and consciousness. The response to "The Field" was more than gratifying, yet McTaggart felt that her own journey of discovery had just begun. The scientific evidence she had amassed suggested something remarkable about our potential to affect reality, but left her with many unanswered questions. Hence her current book, "The Intention Experiment."

McTaggart still does not claim to have all the answers. In fact, the earlier part of the book describes her renewed search for answers. Anyone who has read "The Field," is an experienced meditator, a healer, practiced in qigong and/or has had unexplained experiences themselves will need no further persuasion that intention is a real force: targeting your thoughts actually works. However, the early chapters are replete with ongoing research into consciousness and human intention that will challenge the hardest sceptic. Not light reading, with all the protocol details and statistics, but there are some staggering revelations. We are certainly far more than we think we are.

The author's description of the intention experiment she negotiated with eminent German scientist, Franz Albert Popp is highly significant (especially his courage in agreeing to it in the first place.) McTaggart admits beguilingly that she was deflated after they had discussed the likely target. "For our experiment, I had wanted to help heal burn victims, to save the world from global warming. Single celled organisms weren't exactly my idea of heroics and high drama." However, when she began to research algae, she quickly changed her mind. Algae could be critical to our survival. Why? Well, you'll need to read the book.

The "Intention Exercises" in the last three chapters include suggestions for personal as well as group work, and are mostly a summary of meditation, visualisation and affirmation techniques already known. However, the focus is more specific. (There is a caveat, given earlier in the book, to remember that there is a significant difference between intention and attention.)

The book ends with an invitation to join a global intention experiment. Whether you do this or not, is optional. However, this book is not made for mere armchair philosophy. It is an interactive book that challenges each of us to do something at one level or another. I would defy any reader to walk away from "The Intention Experiment" and not change a thing in their life, or the way in which they live it.

"We can no longer view ourselves as isolated from our environment and our thoughts the private, self-contained workings of an individual brain. Dozens of scientists have produced thousands of papers in the scientific literature offering sound evidence that thoughts are capable of profoundly affecting all aspects of our lives. As observers and creators, we are constantly remaking our world at every instant. Every thought we have, every judgment we hold, however, unconscious, is having an effect. With every moment that it notices, the conscious mind is sending an intention." - From the book

What if eggs registered a cry of alarm, then resignation, when one of their number was dropped in boiling water? What if you could change the shape of your bicep muscle simply by sitting on a couch and using your brain? What if plants could learn to differentiate between true and artificial human intent--a plant "learning curve"--such as a researcher *thinking* about lighting a match under one of its leaves, but not intending to actually do it? What if directed thoughts produce demonstrable physical energy, even over a remote distance--perhaps altering the very molecular structure of the object of intention? Can praying for 4,000 patients with hospital-acquired infections affect their healing and recovery--when prayed for *4-10 years after their hospitalization*?

Do these questions sound like plots out of a sci-fi novel to you--or perhaps ridiculous notions from New Age space cadets? What if these concepts were actually the quantifiable results of rigorous scientific studies?

Like her previous book The Field, author Lynne McTaggart explores the edges of frontier science, boldly going where ingrained Newtonian paradigms have never gone before: the realm of pioneering consciousness experiments. In her newest book The Intention Experiment, McTaggart not only recounts dozens of extraordinary scientific studies on the power of human intention on machines, plants, animals and other humans, but also explains how to harness this power individually and collectively for specific results.

In fact, McTaggart, in conjunction with Dr. Gary Schwartz of Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science at the University of Arizona, now endeavors to undertake the world's largest scientific mind-over-matter experiment in history, inviting readers to participate in online research on massive group intention. In addition, McTaggart encourages participants to use her blueprint of exercises and recommendations for "powering up"--based on the results of extensive research--to formulate their own personal goals, especially unlikely ones, and report the results to her website.

Some of the fascinating studies and research findings detailed in The Intention Experiment include:

* "...although the activity of the REGs was normal in the days leading up to 9/11, the machines became increasingly correlated a few hours *before* the first tower was hit, as though there had been a mass premonition... The world had felt a collective shudder several hours before the first plane crash, and every REG machine had heard and duly recorded it."

* "Volunteers between 20 and 35 years old imagined flexing one of their biceps as hard as they could during daily training sessions carried out five times a week. After ensuring that the participants were not doing any actual exercise, including tensing their muscles, the researches discovered an astonishing 13.5 percent increase in muscle size and strength after just a few weeks, an advantage that remained for three months after the mental training stopped."

* Clearly, during an altered state, roughly corresponding to the hyperalert state of intense meditation, conscious thoughts can convince the body to endure pain, cure many serious diseases, and change virtually any condition.

* Water treated by healers underwent a fundamental change in its molecular makeup.

* "...Helmut Schmidt successfully employed a similar study design to change his own prerecorded breathing rate, demonstrating that it is possible to retroactively change your own physical state as well...intention is capable of reaching back down the time line to influence past events, or emotional or physical responses, at the point when they originally occurred. Physicists no longer consider retrocausation inconsistent with the laws of the universe. More than one hundred articles in the scientific literature propose ways in which laws of physics can account for time displacement."

A recent article in Rolling Stone magazine mentioned that well-intentioned, heartfelt prayer might inadvertently harm or kill patients--an article that no doubt deflated the beliefs and hopes of some people...not to mention seeming to contradict the many studies showing the efficacy of prayer. With uncanny prescience, McTaggart addresses this study in depth, concluding, "When we are consciously attempting to affect someone else with our thoughts, we may want to search our hearts about our true feelings to ensure that we are not sending tainted love."

The Intention Experiment also explores why Reiki, energy healing and voodoo works, as well as the science behind visualization, entrainment between loving couples, psychic ability, retrocausation, biofeedback, remote viewing, and manifestation. If you're intrigued by the ideas presented in The Secret, What the Bleep Do We Know?!, Ramtha material, and the Abraham material (Law of Attraction)--but crave scientific proof and a more globally connected, compassionate paradigm--The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart abundantly delivers. Proving what mystics, shamans, and spiritual teachers have demonstrated and shared for centuries--that all is connected in the web of life--I'm thrilled that there's *finally* a book that integrates volumes of hard scientific data with idea that thoughts are "things" that solidify, and influence, matter itself.

Instead of merely offering up an incredible amount of detailed research findings (the notes/citations and Bibliography are well over 30 pages)--which is a feat in itself--The Intention Experiment does what many books do not: translates the implications of these findings for everyday folks, and provides a simple model to follow for personal experimentation and manifestation. Bravo to Ms. McTaggart for this book, and for providing the opportunity for readers to participate in the largest, grandest experiment on group intention in human history. (http://www.theintentionexperiment.com/)

Janet Boyer, author of The Back in Time Tarot Book: Picture the Past, Experience the Cards, Understand the Present (coming Fall 2008 from Hampton Roads Publishing)

The long-running paradigm of good intentions paving the road to hell has been brilliantly overturned by investigative journalist Lynne McTaggart's new book, THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT. McTaggart provides dazzling evidence of the spectacular power of intentions from a wide variety of peer-reviewed, statistically significant research reports as she takes us on a tour of cutting-edge research currently underway in the relatively new field of consciousness. One of the challenges of studying the mind's effect on matter is that intention demonstrates variable effects depending on the state of the host and the time, place, and manner by which it is initiated, which McTaggart addresses by presenting a number of ways that various types of intentions produce different effects, as well as ways to help ensure better outcomes.

THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT takes us on a journey to discover what, exactly, is meant by 'intention,' and how we can produce results we'll most appreciate. Whereas seasoned meditators can demonstrate remarkable command over their physical processes and remotely influence others, McTaggart describes how anyone can learn to achieve noticeable results. The key to achieving an effective state of intentionality lies in powering up, reaching a state of peak intensity, developing mindfulness, merging with what is to be influenced, being compassionate, and specifically stating an intention. When we follow these instructions after reading a thorough overview of relevant research, we can find it a lot easier to believe that it may be possible for us to send our intentions to far-off places and times.

Some of the more startling facts in THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT are research findings about how our intentions can influence the past, and that athletes who do not physically exercise but only imagine their workouts can increase their muscle strength between 13 and 16 percent. The world's top athletes depend on mental rehearsal to help guarantee their competitive edge, and everyone can see tremendous improvements in our lives by rehearsing specific activities before actually doing them.

High points in THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT include a description of the way: atoms can become entangled and behave as one single giant atom, a heated fullerene molecule can exhibit wavelike behavior in which it interferes with itself, human bodies can act as transmitting and receiving antennas, living things demonstrate awareness of the well-being of other living things around them, biofields change when receiving and sending healing intentions, physical health improves when others send focused healing intentions, different forms of meditation produce strikingly different brain waves, brain waves can be manipulated to initiate transcendent and terrifying experiences, sun and geomagnetic activity influences telepathic and telekinetic abilities, and places and things can become harmoniously aligned with healing intent.

THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT becomes an interactive experience for readers interested in participating in an on-going series of philanthropic and scientific intentionality experiments at: [...]

Having only gone the audio book route for books of this nature in the past I wasn't sure how well I'd go with reading this even though I love reading.
Pleasantly suprised is the first accolade I can give this book! Lynne creates here a book that takes much of the mysticisim out of the Law of Attraction and gives it a real science to hold on to. After you read this you'll find yourself giving it to everyone to read - everyone should! You'll also find yourself quoting it in casual conversation - something that you can't really do with the Hicks' work or with the Secret. Lynne's research seems very complete though it does still take an incredibly open mind to wrap your head around the concepts here. However, if you have been trying to impliment intention setting in your life and want another approach, this gives you more than a helping hand - it builds you a nice sturdy stairway with a great bannister!
If you're already open to these ideas and looking for another point of view that has more of a footing in 'reality' then this is most definetly the book for you - it's incredibly well written, easy to follow and practical.

As a biologist who believes in the existence of some psi effects and some intention effects, let me tell you: this book is horrible. The number of pages during which I was thinking "Oh my God, are you kidding?" were innumerable, not due to new groundbreaking ideas, but due to extreme sloppiness.

The author seems to have no science background and yet as endeavored to explain some of the most complicated aspects of quantum mechanics, parapsychological methodology and good experimental design. Are you kidding? Maybe I should write about art history and never visit a museum?

For example, she says that an experiment showed that algae can tell the past conditions of a cup of water. They can tell when it as been violently shaken beforehand, and thus they glow more as a stress response. OH MY GOD, did you have any editors? Reviewers in the sciences? It's called dissolved oxygen (DO). That's what happens when water is shaken, the DO increases, the microbes thrive, they "like" it, and the luciferase enzyme system system activates and emits photons. I have studied this and shown it to many students.

In another preposterous episode, she mentions how a lab become permanently harmonized by a mediation recorded onto a crystal device with a memory chip that "was wired "unconventionally"; temperatures fluctuate perfectly in rhythm, and the pH of water nearby goes up and down like a pendulum for months. She then tries to explain it was do to a new kind of physical reality related to superstring theory. The the punch line, as she next admits in the last page of it: no one believes the guy, no has replicated it, and even parapsychologists have a hard time accepting it. Well, then why did you mention all of it? Filler?

The writing style is disjointed, often meandering far far from the point. She, in the footnotes, often references herself, or second hand sources. For example, she mentions results from metal bending research, but does not cite the research; she cites a book that mentioned another book, which discusses the research.

All in all, this book has so many problems, that if it were a high school term paper I would give it a B- (to let her down easy). If it were a college paper, it would be a C-- in a humanities course and a flat out fail in a science course (because it mixes philosophy and science, the grades would differ). Often descriptions and explanations are basically impossible to follow in the book. You will also hear about brine shrimp being boiled alive and plants connecting to a lie detector sensing it, even though as she states "his controls were not very good, but his work was intriguing". . . Having your wallet stolen is intriguing too, I guess.

This author is making money but has not bothered with a good editor, good advisors, or with the help of scientists who understand methodology. Doesn't your time or money deserve a little better? She has framed it as an interactive book whith experiments to be posted online. Her website has very few details about the completed experiments so far. It is a weak, unprofessional effort.

Modern physicists accept that reality is very weird and science hasn't all the answers yet, but they bristle when outsiders try to muse about it. Why? Jealousy? Territoriality? Not usually. It's because of complete amateurish works like this that put science, philosophy, and journalism in a bad light. You may want to consider books by Dean Radin. He writes well, thinks well, and knows that words have precise meaning.

Although I have long believed in the concepts of our ability to affect our reality, I am gratified to read the scientific proof of this. Can't help it, having been raised in American society, which doesn't generally accept something unless it can be measured, seen, felt, etc., I wanted some additional proof to back up my mystical beliefs. Here it is.
Although I struggled with the science in the first chapter, it got easier after that. This is part of the great paradigm shift that the world is undergoing. It'll probably be many years before these ideas are widely accepted and routinely USED but, until then, the world can change one person, one mind, at a time.

I purchased the book hoping for some insight into the process of directing intention for my personal development. After all, the title includes the very active statement of "using your thoughts to change your life and the world".

But it does not deliver on that front. It spends most of it's time literating the evidence of intention as a testable element within the realm of science. On that front, the book is well thought out and convincing and is an excellent primer for the skeptical or uninitiated.

But for those of us who are already the converted, i felt it lacked a firm direction for it's reader past the evidence and into practice. The usable portion of the book occupies the final chapter, which, in my opinion, misrepresents what the title promises.

Intention and attraction are certainly hot topics, but Lynne McTaggart demonstrates unusual thoughtfulness and respect for the subject with her even handed, scientific approach. As McTaggart demonstrated in her previous book, The Field, an unquantifiable power is at our disposal, but it is a power we presently know very little about. In the current rush to use intention to obtain material "goodies," few ask whether there is more to intention than we now understand, or whether it has a darker side. As McTaggart points out in her chapter entitled, "Voodoo Effect," all intentions have the potential to come to fruition in the material universe, including those that can be considered both negative and harmful. Studies cited in the book demonstrate that our state of mind, with our without conscious intention, still produces results. Are you angry, depressed or happy? Those emotions ripple out into the universe and have an effect. As McTaggart states, "To think is to effect." She clearly grasps the power of the mind when she recommends that we each search our thoughts, hearts and feelings when practicing intention, accepting responsibility for the results they produce.

As McTaggart points out, we can no longer view ourselves as an isolated entity engaged in private thoughts. McTaggart cites studies that demonstrate the power of intention appears to multiply when a thought or intention is shared. This is both good and bad news! McTaggart points to intention as a possible cure for the world's ills, but others are just as likely to see it as a means to harm and destroy. If the world we see is the result of our thoughts, and I certainly believe that it is, we would be forced to conclude that the preponderance of human thought has been directed toward separation rather than unity of purpose. After using intention very successfully for years, I feel that McTaggart's book should be required reading for anyone interested in embarking on an excursion into intention. At this point in our understanding of intention, we are somewhat akin to six year olds who have grabbed their parent's car keys and are headed out to drive the family van. McTaggart's approach gives us the tools we need to begin successfully using intention, and the information we need to experiment in a responsible way. Lee & Steven Hager are the co-authors of Quantum Prodigal Son: Revisiting Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son from the Perspective of Quantum Mechanics

My criteria for non-fiction books of a scientific nature is extensive referencing with numbered citations, a good index, some diagrams, photos, graphs, tables, a clear structure, and high accuracy. This book has the first two, as well as an engaging, if not very scientific, writing style. Usually the use of 100% text is a hint that all is not well technically. As good as the writing is, some intransitive verbs are abused, and "research" is mistakenly used as a verb.

A great deal of research on ESP and psychokinesis (PK) is summarized to show that these phenomena are real. Prayer is also discussed with an honest presentation of a half dozen trials that showed that prayer does not work, as well as some that showed it does. Meditation and focusing thoughts are detailed. This leads gradually to the idea of The Intention Experiment as a mass projection of mental will toward a particular goal, such as healing a cancer in a specific person, at a specific time or times to send your thoughts. This is the current example on the website. A worldwide network of like-minded researchers, for whom donations are requested on the website, is supposed to give an honest evaluation of the results. If a Big Pharma drug trial were carried out in such a non objective manner, what would we think of it?

In praising the work of the Princeton Engineering Anomalous Research (PEAR) Laboratory on ESP and PK, McTaggart did not mention that a major discovery of the lab was that their random number generators (RNGs) were found to drift off random by themselves. Or that the PK effects were small enough to be in the noise level, supposedly attaining statistical significance only after huge numbers of repetition. My personal visit to the PEAR lab with an old friend and believer resulted in 3 types of machines (ball bearings dropping on and deflected by pegs to give a bell curve distribution, an RNG normally producing numbers that sum to zero, and a pendulum with a known period) all showing a slightly opposite tendency to the previously announced intention. A local skeptical technician in the PEAR lab said (in private) that "...they have nothing...".

A major failing of McTaggart was in giving too many examples with too little detail, writing that some experiment in PK gave a positive result (with a citation), but not how positive, or what percent of tries were positive, or what was the probability of chance for the result. There were some exceptions, as on the effect of praying on p161. Mass wishing (or praying) has had plenty of opportunity to achieve a result, as then a new ruler of a country proves to be a vicious dictator whom a majority of subjects wish ousted or dead. No clear result of thought or intention has ever been proven; only assassination works.

One good way to judge the veracity of an author is to note his accuracy on topics you are certain about. If normal science and technology are treated competently, it is reasonable to give the author some slack on paranormal topics. This was not the case with this book. Example 1 on p166 on "effect size" has aspirin considered to be "...one of the most successful heart attack preventives of modern times... has an effect size of 0.032..." I have no idea from this how an effect size is calculated, and aspirin, while preventing about 30% of heart attacks in men who never had one according to the best trials, does not increase lifespan because of side effects, and thus is not worth taking. See: Joel M. Kauffman, "Should You Take Aspirin to Prevent Heart Attack?", J. Scientific Exploration 14 (4), 623-41 (2000). Example 2 on p169: The beta-blocker propranolol is said to be recognized as extremely effective. At what? The type of effect was not given. Trials showed it not to lower heart disease incidence or to increase lifespan by a statistically significant period. See: Psaty BM et al., JAMA 1997;277:739. Example 3 on p178: The German biologist "Popp has a number of extremely sensitive photocount detectors at his disposal, which can register an intensity of visible light of about 10-17 watts per square centimeter, analogous to the light coming from a candle several miles away." Well, I would hope so, because the light at the surface of a 100 watt light bulb is about 1 watt/cm2. And that was one powerful candle! A list of several dozen shaky claims may be had by e-mailing me at kauffman37@yahoo.com.

So does ESP or PK exist? Maybe, but this is not the book to rely on for an answer. A short one with opposing views and a really scientific mindset which I recommend is: Paranormal Phenomena: Opposing Viewpoints, Greenhaven Press, San Diego, CA, 1997.

Apparently, after writing "The Field" (which, by the way, was excellent), this author had a lot of research left over that she did not use in that book. So, like many authors, she took her unused research and "constructed" another book. Unfortunately, the subtitle of this book promises that it will teach the reader how to use his "thoughts to change his life and the world". In this regard, there is only one very short chapter at the end of the book that deals with this subject matter and it does so in an extremely superficial manner. Essentially, the subtitle of this book is merely a pretence. In my opinion, the only reason to read this book is if you have read "The Field" and you are a detail freak who wants every last scrap of research that was not included in that book.