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

Lynne McTaggart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2007

The book you hold in your hands is revolutionary, a groundbreaking exploration of the science of intention. It is also the first book to invite you, the reader, to take an active part in its original research. Drawing on the findings of leading scientists on human consciousness from around the world, The Intention Experiment demonstrates that thought is a thing that affects other things. Thought generates its own palpable energy that you can use to improve your life, to help others around you, and to change the world.

In The Intention Experiment, internationally bestselling author Lynne McTaggart, an award-winning science journalist and leading figure in the human consciousness studies community, presents a gripping scientific detective story and takes you on a mind-blowing journey to the farthest reaches of consciousness. She profiles the colorful pioneers in intention science and works with a team of renowned scientists from around the world, including physicist Fritz-Albert Popp of the International Institute of Biophysics and Dr. Gary Schwartz, professor of psychology, medicine, and neurology at the University of Arizona, to determine the effects of focused group intention on scientifically quantifiable targets -- animal, plant, and human.

The Intention Experiment builds on the discoveries of McTaggart's first book, international bestseller The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, which documented discoveries that point to the existence of a quantum energy field. The Field created a picture of an interconnected universe and a scientific explanation for many of the most profound human mysteries, from alternative medicine and spiritual healing to extrasensory perception and the collective unconscious. The Intention Experiment shows you myriad ways that all this information can be incorporated into your life.

After narrating the exciting developments in the science of intention, McTaggart offers a practical program to get in touch with your own thoughts, to increase the activity and strength of your intentions, and to begin achieving real change in your life. After you've begun to realize the amazing potential of focused intention, and the times when it is most powerful, McTaggart invites you to participate in an unprecedented experiment: Using The Intention Experiment website to coordinate your involvement and track results, you and other participants around the world will focus your power of intention on specific targets, giving you the opportunity to become a part of scientific history.

The Intention Experiment redefines what a book does. It is the first "living" book in three dimensions. The book's text and website are inextricably linked, forming the hub of an entirely self-funded research program, the ultimate aim of which is philanthropic. An original piece of scientific investigation that involves the reader in its quest, The Intention Experiment explores human thought and intention as a tangible energy -- an inexhaustible but simple resource with an awesome potential to focus our lives, heal our illnesses, clean up our communities, and improve the planet.

The Intention Experiment also forces you to rethink what it is to be human. As it proves, we're connected to everyone and everything, and that discovery demands that we pay better attention to our thoughts, intentions, and actions. Here's how you can.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"If you want to explore the latest science behind The Secret, look no further. Science and wisdom collide and make friends in this real-world adventure that is ultimately a guidebook for living." -- Drew Heriot, director of "The Secret"

"Lynne McTaggart has zeroed in on a wonderful collection of experiments and events that shatters our normal materialistic assumptions of time, space, and everything in between (if there is an in-between). It's as mind-bending as it's meant to be." -- William Arntz, producer, writer, and director of "What the BLEEP Do We Know!?" and author of What the BLEEP Do We Know!? - Discovering the Endless Possibilities For Altering Your Everyday Reality

"Very few books are able to transform information into inspiration--concepts into action--word into deed. The Intention Experiment does exactly that. In a style that is highly entertaining and accessible, McTaggart reminds us of an eternal truth too often overlooked: Each of us possesses the power of the Universe WITHIN. Now that is a transformational read!" -- Ward M. Powers, Filmmaker and Director, "ONE: The Movie"

"The Intention Experiment is an extraordinary advance in our understanding of consciousness as a field of all possibilities where intention orchestrates it own fulfillment. If you want to empower yourself and use the laws of intention to manifest your material reality, read this book." -- Deepak Chopra, author of Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment

"In The Intention Experiment, McTaggart has accomplished the remarkable task of explaining the science of intention with clarity and precision. This book is a must for everyone interested in advancing the creative abilities of their own consciousness." -- Caroline Myss, author of Entering the Castle and Invisible Acts of Power

"The Intention Experiment contains the leading evidence for really understanding the true potential that lies with each one of us. If you are truly interested in manifesting abundance and learning the true power you possess, read it now." -- John Assaraf, Entrepreneur and Author of The Street Kid's Guide to Having It All

"A remarkable synthesis of science and spirituality melded into a powerful new view of the universe! Thanks to her impeccable journalistic skills, and driven by a relentless search for the truth, Lynne McTaggart has shed new light on the true meaning of life's connectedness. Her work has had an unprecedented impact on the way everyday people think of themselves in the world. In doing so, the divide between our timeless spiritual traditions and leading-edge science has given way to a powerful new wisdom based in unity." -- Gregg Braden, author of The Divine Matrix

"Lynne is my twin soul...We are strongly connected on some resonance field." -- Masaru Emoto, author of Messages from Water

"Civilization is on the verge of a massive transformation in consciousness, one so profound that it will change life on this planet. Though we are currently bound by habit and tradition to an outmoded view of the universe and life, Lynne McTaggart's eminently readable synthesis is pregnant with new, exciting and optimistic insights that can assist us in realizing our rebirth." -- Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and author of The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles

"I absolutely agree with Lynne McTaggart that your thoughts radiate out like a shining star, affecting everyone in your path. Become a positive, beautiful, glimmering, blissful being of light. Read this book. You'll be gratefully happy." -- Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D., Associate Fellow, The Center For Spirituality and The Mind, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, www.drdharma.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Lynne McTaggart is an internationally recognized spokesperson on the science of spirituality and the award-winning author of five books, including The Field, which has been published in fourteen languages. She is also co-executive director of Conatus, which publishes some of the world's most respected health and spiritual newsletters, including What Doctors Don't Tell You and Living the Field. She lives in London.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition (January 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743276957
• ISBN-13: 978-0743276955
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #147,025 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lynne McTaggart is an internationally recognized spokesperson on the science of spirituality and the award-winning author of five books, including The Field, which has been published in fourteen languages. She is also co-executive director of Conatus, which publishes some of the world's most respected health and spiritual newsletters, including What Doctors Don't Tell You and Living the Field. She lives in London.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

353 of 365 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Reasons to act January 26, 2007

By S. J. Bockett

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

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. Read more ›

580 of 611 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Scientifc Evidence for the Power of Intention January 8, 2007

By Janet Boyer HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

"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. ([...])

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) Read more ›

152 of 160 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Dazzling Scientific & Interactive Evidence of the Power of Intentions January 7, 2007

By Cynthia Sue Larson TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

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: [...] Read more ›