group of baby chicks soon after birth. The robot was placed outside the chicks’ cage, where it moved around freely, as its path was tracked and recorded. Eventually, it was clear that the robot was moving towards the chicks two and a half times more often than it would ordinarily; the ‘inferred intention’ of the chicks – their desire to be close to their mother – appeared to affect the robot, drawing it closer to the cage. In over 80 similar studies, in which a lighted candle was placed on a movable REG, baby chicks kept in the dark, finding the light comforting, managed to influence the robot to spend more time than normal in the vicinity of their cage.13
The largest and most persuasive body of research has been amassed by William Braud, a psychologist and the research director of the Mind Science Foundation in San Antonio, Texas, and, later, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Braud and his colleagues demonstrated that human thoughts can affect the direction in which fish swim, the movement of other animals such as gerbils, and the breakdown of cells in the laboratory.14
Braud also designed some of the earliest well-controlled studies of mental influence on human beings. In one group of studies, Braud demonstrated that one person could affect the autonomic nervous system (or fight-or-flight mechanisms) of another.15 Electrodermal activity (EDA) is a measure of skin resistance and shows an individual’s state of stress; a change of EDA usually occurs if someone is stressed or made uncomfortable in some way.16 Braud’s signature study tested the effect on EDA of being stared at, one of the simplest means of isolating the effect of remote influence on a human being. He repeatedly demonstrated that people were subconsciously aroused while they were being stared at.17
Perhaps the most frequently studied area of remote influence concerns remote healing. Some 150 studies, of variable scientific rigour, have been carried out,18 and one of the best designed was conducted by the late Dr Elisabeth Targ. During the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, she devised an ingenious, highly controlled pair of studies, in which some 40 remote healers across America were shown to improve the health of terminal AIDS patients, even though the healers had never met or been in contact with their patients.19
Even some of the most rudimentary mind-over-matter experiments have had tantalizing results. One of the first such studies involved attempts to influence a throw of the dice. To date, some 73 studies have examined the efforts of 2500 people to influence more than two and a half million throws of the dice, with extraordinary success. When all the studies were analysed together, and allowances made for quality or selective reporting, the odds of the results occurring by chance alone were 1076 (1 followed by 76 zeros) to one.20
There was also some provocative material about spoon bending, that perennial party trick made popular by psychic Uri Geller. John Hasted, a professor at Birkbeck College at the University of London, had tested this with an ingenious experiment involving children. Hasted suspended latch keys from the ceiling and placed the children 3 to 10 feet away from their target key, so that they could have no physical contact. Attached to each key was a strain gauge, which would detect and register on a strip chart recorder any change in the key. Hasted then asked the children to try to bend the suspended metal. During the sessions, he observed not only the keys swaying and sometimes fracturing, but also abrupt and enormous spikes of voltage pulses up to 10 volts – the very limits of the chart recorder. Even more compelling, when children had been asked to send their intention to several keys hung separately, the individual strain recorders noted simultaneous signals, as though the keys were being affected in concert.21
Most intriguing, in much of the research on psychokinesis, mental influence of any variety had produced measurable effects, no matter how far the distance between the sender or what point in time he generated his intention. According to the experimental evidence, the power of thought transcended time and space.
By the time these revisionists were finished, they had torn up the rule book and scattered it to the four winds. Mind in some way appeared to be inextricably connected to matter and, indeed, was capable of altering it. Physical matter could be influenced, even irrevocably altered, not simply by force, but through the simple act of formulating a thought.
Nevertheless, the evidence from these frontier scientists left three fundamental questions unanswered. Through what physical mechanisms do thoughts affect reality? At the time of this writing, some highly publicized studies of mass prayer showed no effect. Were certain conditions and preparatory states of mind more conducive to success than others? How much power did a thought have, for good or ill? How much of our lives could a thought actually change?
Most of the initial discoveries about consciousness occurred more than 30 years ago. More recent discoveries in frontier quantum physics and in laboratories around the globe offer answers to some of those questions. They provide evidence that our world is highly malleable, open to constant subtle influence. Recent research demonstrates that living things are constant transmitters and receivers of measurable energy. New models of consciousness portray it as an entity capable of trespassing physical boundaries of every description.
Intention appears to be something akin to a tuning fork, causing the tuning forks of other things in the universe to resonate at the same frequency.
The latest studies of the effect of mind on matter suggest that intention has variable effects that depend on the state of the host, and the time and the place where it originates. Intention has already been employed in many quarters to cure illness, alter physical processes and influence events. It is not a special gift but a learned skill, readily taught. Indeed, we already use intention in many aspects of our daily lives.
A body of research also suggests that the power of an intention multiplies, depending upon how many people are thinking the same thought at the same time.22
The Intention Experiment consists of three aspects. The main body of the book (chapters 1–12) attempts to synthesize all the experimental evidence that exists on intention into a coherent scientific theory of how intention works, how it can be used in your life and which conditions optimize its effect.
The second portion of the book (chapter 13) offers a blueprint for using intention effectively in your own life through a series of exercises and recommendations for how best to ‘power up’. This portion is also an exercise in frontier science. I am not an expert in human potential, so this is not a self-help manual, but a journey of discovery for me as well as you. I have extrapolated this programme from scientific evidence describing those circumstances that created the most positive results in psychokinetic laboratory experiences. We know for certain that these techniques have generated success under controlled experimental laboratory conditions, but I cannot guarantee they will work in your life. By making use of them, you will, in effect, engage in an ongoing personal experiment.
The final section of the book (chapters 14 and 15) consists of a series of personal and group experiments. Chapter 14 outlines a series of informal experiments on the use of intention in your own life for you to carry out individually. These mini ‘experiments’ are also intended to be pieces of research. You will have the opportunity to post your results on our website and share them with other readers.
Besides these individual experiments, I have also designed a series of large group experiments to be carried out by the readers of this book
