LIVING THE FIEL

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Contents e of
The
Lesson 1 The Zero Point Field Lesson 2 5 Field
We are beings of light Lesson 3 How 7
molecules ‘talk’ through energy Lesson 9
4 On the world’s wavelength Lesson 5 11
The real art of seeing Lesson 6 13
Signaling along the light pipes Lesson 7 15
The power of intention Lesson 8 The 19
electric power of our intention Lesson 9 21
Mind over machine Lesson 10 Sending 23
intention to living systems Lesson 11 25
Beyond time and space Lesson 12 27
Feeling the way to our own future 29
Lesson 13 A brief story of time Lesson 31
14 Healing through The Field Lesson 15 33
The intensity of the shared moment 35
Lesson 16 The sacred and the profane 37
Lesson 17 Sharing the dream Lesson 18 39
Psychic spying through The Field Lesson 41
19 The knowingness of plants Lesson 43
20 Tomorrow never comes Lesson 21 45
Tuned in to enlightenment Lesson 22 47
Scribbling with Time’s pencil Lesson 23 49
The holographic double-helix Lesson 24 51
Memory waves Lesson 25 A little light 53
music Lesson 26 Peering into The Field 55
Lesson 27 The power of touch Lesson 57
28 Bad news comes early Lesson 29 59
The right-brain stuff Lesson 30 The 61
plastic brain Lesson 31 A snapshot of 63
the life force Lesson 32 Asking the 65
universe for help Lesson 33 67
Biofeedback brainstorming Lesson 34 69
Einstein’s other brainstorm Lesson 35 71
The thinnest of boundaries Lesson 36 73
Till death do subatomic particles part 75
77
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The Zero Point Field e of
Lesson
The 1
Field

he Field is the Zero Point Field, a subatomic field of unimaginably large quantum energy in
so-called empty space. A field is a matrix or medium which connects two or more points in
space, usually via a force, like gravity or electromagnetism. It is considered that area of space
where this change and its effects can be detected. Simply put, a field is a region of influence.
 motion of subatomic matter ever
gets to zero.
In physics equations, most
physicists subtract zero-point
energy away because they believe
that, as it is ever-present, it
doesn’t affect anything. However,
a few frontier scientists, like Texas
astrophysicist Hal Puthoff, have
rediscovered the importance of
In the quantum world, quantum the Zero Point Field as a final
fields are not mediated by forces, puzzle piece to answer many of
but by exchanges of energy which the large questions in science—
are constantly redistributed in a like gravity— that have perplexed
dynamic pattern. This constant scientists for many years. Arthur
exchange is an intrinsic property C. Clarke believed their dis-
of particles. Even ‘real’ particles One
coveriesof about
the most Zero Pointimportant
Field
are not set little billiard balls, as aspects
energy wereof subatomic
so significant waves
that he is
they are sometimes depicted, but that
called theytheirare papersencoderson and it
nothing more than a little knot of carriers of
‘landmark’. information. When two
energy which briefly emerges and waves are in phase, and bump
A constant ping-pong
disappears back game the
into of into each other—technically called
energy
underlyingoccurs
field. at the subatomic ‘interference’ —the combined
level. Quantum particles—those amplitude of the waves is greater
pulsating knots of energy— than each individual amplitude, so
constantly interact with each the signal is stronger. This
other by exchanging energy amounts to an imprinting or
through other quantum particles. exchange of information called
These ‘virtual particles’ appear ‘constructive interference’. Once
out of nowhere, combining and they’ve collided, each wave
disappearing in less than an contains information, in the form
instant, causing random of energy coding, about the other;
fluctuations of energy without any this includes all of the other
If you addcause.
apparent up all the movement
They of
differ from information it contains.
all
realthe particles
particles of all varieties
because they onlyin C o n s e patterns
Interference q u e namount t l y, to thea
the
existuniverse, youexchange.
during that come up with a existence
constant of the Zero Point Field
accumulation of
vast inexhaustible energy source has a greater,
information, and waves metaphysical
have a
—a field of fields —sitting there implication. It implies
virtually infinite capacitythat for all
unobtrusively in the background matter
storage. in the universe is
of the empty space around us. To interconnected by waves, which
give you some idea of the are spread out through time and
magnitude of that power, the space, and can carry on to infinity,
energy in a single cubic yard of tying one part of the universe to
Also referred
‘empty’ spacetoisby physicists
enough as all
to boil every other part. The idea of The
‘the vacuum’,
the oceans the world.
of the Zero Point Field Field might just offer a scientific
is called ‘zero’ because this tango explanation for many
even occurs at temperatures of metaphysical notions, such as the
absolute zero, the lowest possible It meansbelief
Chinese thatin wethe and all the
life force, or
energy state, where all matter has matter of the universe
ch’i, described in ancient are texts
literally
as
been removed and nothing is connected
something akinto the to furthest
an energy reaches
field.
supposedly left to make any of the cosmos through
motion—the closest that
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e of the largest Zero Point Field waves Einstein himself understood that
Lesson
The of1the grandest dimensions. In this the only fundamental reality was
Field view, The Field connects
everything in the universe to
the underlying entity—the field
itself. The Field might be the
everything else, like some vast closest we have to what in Star
invisible web. It is as though a Wars was called ‘TheLynne McTaggart
Force’.
memory of the universe for all
time is contained in empty space
that each of us is always in touch
with.

The missing link?

Many scientists are beginning to regard the Zero Point Field as vital for providing
an answer to what has remained missing in physics. Peter Milonni at Los Alamos’
NASA facilities has speculated that quantum theory will be replaced by a modified
theory of classical physics which takes into account the limitless energy of the
Other scientists,
Zero Point Field. from top-ranking institutions such as Princeton and Stanford
University in the US and many prestigious institutions in Europe, have realized
that the Zero Point Field could hold the key to areas that have bedeviled scientists
for Indeed, the existence of the Zero Point Field could explain:
centuries.
• why atoms are stable. Electrons refuel energy by tapping into these
quantum fluctuations of empty space
• gravity, a concept that has stumped the greatest geniuses of science. The
Zero Point Field is partially shielded by two objects and this causes an attraction
between them
• Newton’s law of inertia
• F = Ma, one of the most fundamental axioms in the world, can be proved
by factoring in the Zero Point Field
• how the solid, stable stuff we call matter, which has a certain mass, is an
illusion and simply subatomic particles being held together by the grip of a
background sea of energy
• why everything in our world, no matter how heavy or large, boils down to a
collection of electrical charges interacting with the Zero Point Field
• many of the through-the-looking-glass properties of subatomic matter that
have been described by quantum physics.
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We are beings of light e of
Lesson
The 2
Field
of the great mysteries of biology is how cells communicate with each other. The modern scientific view
is that DNA, the coiled double-helix of genetic coding that is a blueprint of the body’s proteins and
amino acids, somehow manages to spearhead all the body’s dynamic activities just by selectively
turning off and on certain segments of DNA, or genes, whose nucleotides, or genetic instructions, in
turn select from a large alphabet of amino acids the genetic ‘words’ which create specific proteins.
These proteins are then supposedly able to both build the body, and switch on and off all the chemical
processes inside the cell which ultimately control the running of the body.
 made the remarkable discovery
that humans emit highly coherent
photons— the tiniest particles of
light.1 Light is present in plants
and is used during pho-
tosynthesis. When we eat plant
foods, it must be, Popp theorizes,
that we take up the photons and
store them. When a plant is
digested, it is metabolized into
carbon dioxide (CO2) and water
plus sunlight from the
photosynthesis. We extract the
CO2 and eliminate the water, but the
At different
light is stored infrequencies,
the form of thephotons
entire
perform
spec trum different functions. wave
of electromagnetic Popp
and his from
frequencies, organization,
the lowest to the
International
the highest. Institute of
Where scientists fall short is in Biophysics in Neuss, Germany,
explaining how DNA knows when found that molecules in cells
to orchestrate this and how these respond to certain frequencies
chemicals, all blindly bumping into and that a range of vibrations
each other, can operate more or from photons causes a variety of
less simultaneously. Each cell responses in other molecules of
undergoes, on average, some the body. These ‘biophoton
100,000 chemical reactions per emissions’, as he calls them,
second—a process that repeats His research
provide shows communication
a perfect that one of the
If DNAsimultaneously
itself is the control room,
acrosswhat
everyis most
system essential forstores of light and
transferring
the
cell feedback
in the body. mechanism enabling sources
information of biophoton
to many emissions
cells across is
individual gene and cell activities DNA,
the wholewhich is capable of sending
organism.
to act in unison? And if all these out a vast range of frequencies.
actions are due to simple chemical Furthermore, specific frequencies
collisions between molecules, how seem to be linked to certain func-
can it work rapidly enough to tions. DNA may be like a master
account for the coherent tuning fork—it strikes a particular
behaviors that all living beings Popp’s
frequency experiments
and certain showed that
molecules
If theseevery
exhibit occurrences
minute ofare
theirdue to
lives? these
follow. weak light emissions are
chance, there’s little statistical sufficient to orchestrate the body,
hope of their happening within the and that all living things—from the
universe of the cell. The average most basic organisms to complex
cell contains one molecule of humans—emit a permanent cur-
protein for every 10,000 rent of photons, from only a few to
molecules of water, so molecules Rudimentary animals or plants
hundreds.
jostle around the cell like a tend to emit 100 photons/cm2/sec
handfulof ofthe
Many tennis
frontier
ballsscientists
floating at a wavelength of 200–800
about in a in
described swimming
The Fieldpool.
believe that nanometers, corresponding to a
the heart of cell communication is very-high-frequency elec-
not a haphazard chemical tromagnetic wave well within the
reaction, but an energetic visible range, whereas humans
Germanon
frequency physicist Fritz-Albert
the quantum level. emitIf each
only 10molecule
photons/cmhas its own signature
2/sec.
Popp
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e of creating a ‘cascade’ of
Lessonf 2
The
r e q u e n c y, its
electromagnetic impulses
receptor or molecular traveling at the speed of light.
Field ‘match’ can tune into This, rather than accidental
collision, would be a better
this frequency much as explanation of how a virtually
you can tune your radio instantaneous chain reaction
Lynne McTaggart
occurs in biochemistry.
to a specific station,
1 Z Naturforsch, 1972; 27b : 731
even over vast
distances. Each
vibration is reinforced
by the vibration of
another body at or near
its frequency. This
resonance on the same
wavelength would then
begin to resonate with
the next molecules in the
biochemical reaction, thus
A subatomic network
In quantum physics, quantum coherence means that subatomic particles are able
to cooperate. These subatomic waves or particles not only know about each
other, but are also highly interlinked by bands of common electromagnetic fields
so that they can communicate with each other.
They are like a multitude of tuning forks that all begin resonating together. As the
waves enter into phase or synch, they begin acting like one giant wave and one
giant subatomic particle. It becomes difficult to tell them apart.
Many of the weird quantum effects seen in a single wave apply to the whole.
Something done to one of them will affect the others. Coherence establishes
communication. It’s like a subatomic telephone network. The better the
coherence and finer the telephone network, the more refined wave patterns will
The
haveend result is a bit like a large orchestra. All the photons are playing together,
a telephone.
but they are still individual instruments that are able to carry on playing individual
parts. Nevertheless, when you are listening, it’s difficult to pick out any one
In his experiments, Popp found that the human body had the highest level of
instrument.
quantum order, or coherence, possible in nature. Usually, this coherence—called a
Bose–Einstein condensate—is only observed in materials such as superfluids or
superconductors that are generally studied and observed in the laboratory in very
cold places, just a few degrees above absolute zero—not in the hot and messy
environment of a living thing.
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How molecules ‘talk’ through energy e of
Lesson
The 3
Field
aspects of life, molecules must speak to each other. If you are excited, your adrenals pump out more
adrenaline, which tells specific receptors to make your heart beat faster. The usual theory—the
Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR)—is that two molecules that match each other
structurally exchange specific (chemical) information as well as energy when they bump into each
other. It’s like a key finding its own keyhole (which is why this theory is also called the key–keyhole or
lock-and-key interaction model).
 homoeopathy experiments, has
carried out countless studies
decisively demonstrating that
cells don’t rely on the hap-
penstance of collision, but on
electromagnetic wave signaling at
low frequency (less than 20 kHz).
The electromagnetic frequencies
that Benveniste has studied
correspond with the audio range
even though they don’t emit any
noise that we can detect. All
sounds on our planet—the sound
of water rippling in a stream, a
crack of thunder, a shot fired, a
Biologists still adhere to the
bird chirp-ing—are low frequency,
mechanistic notions of Descartes According to Benveniste’s theory,
between 20 Hz and 20 kHz, the
that there can only be reaction two molecules are then tuned into
range in which the human ear
through contact, some sort of each
hears.other, even at long distance,
impulsive force. The central prob- and resonate at the same
lem with the current theory is that frequency. These two resonating
it is too dependent upon chance molecules then create another
and also requires a good deal of frequency, which, in turn,
time. It can’t begin to account for resonates with the next molecule
But if eachofmolecule
the speed biologicalhas its own
processes or group of molecules in the next
signature
like anger, frequency,
joy, sadnessits or receptor
fear. stage of the biological reaction.
or molecule with the matching This would explain, in
features would tune into this Benveniste’s view, why tiny
frequency, much as your radio changes in a molecule—the
tunes into a specific station or one This is ofnot
switching so
a peptide, farfetched,
say—can
tuning fork causes another tuning considering
have a radicalwhat we already
e ffect on whatknowthat
fork to oscillate at the same about howactually
molecule molecules does.vibrate. Both
frequency, even over vast specific molecules and
distances. They will be in intermolecular bonds emit specific
resonance—the vibration of one frequencies, which can be
As
bodythese
will two
be molecules
reinforced resonate
by the detected billions of light-years
vibration
on the sameof another
wavelength,
body atthey or away by the most sensitive of
would
near itsthen begin to resonate with
frequency. modern telescopes. These fre-
the next molecules in the quencies have long been accepted
biochemical reaction, thus by physicists, but few have
creating a ‘cascade’ of paused to consider whether they
electromagnetic impulses actually have some purpose.
traveling at the speed of light. Although other scientists have
This, rather than accidental conducted extensive
collision, would better explain how experimentation on
you initiate a virtually electromagnetic frequency in
instantaneous chain reaction in living things, Benveniste’s
biochemistry. It is also a logical contribution was to show that
extension of the work of Fritz- From
molecules and1991,atoms Benveniste
have their
French biologist
Albert Popp. Jacquesin the body
If photons demonstrated that heby could
own unique frequencies using
Benveniste, better itknown
excite molecules, for his
is logical that transfer
modern specific molecular
technology to signals
record
‘memory
they haveoftheirwater’
own signature fre- simply by using an amplifier
these frequencies and using and the
quency. recording itself for cellular
communication.
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e of electromagnetic coils. Four years ing magnetic field, work they
Lesson
The 3 he was able to record and
later, performed in collaboration with
replay these signals through the Center National de la Recherche
Field use of a multimedia computer. Scientifique in Medudon, France.
Over thousands of experiments, The inescapable conclusion: mole-
Benveniste recorded the activity cules speak to each other in
of the molecule on a computer oscillating frequencies. It appears
and replayed it to a biological that the Zero Point Field creates a
system ordinarily sensitive to that medium enabling the molecules to
substance. In every instance, the speak to each other non-locally
biological system has been fooled Lynne McTaggart
and virtually instantaneously.
into thinking that it has been E-mail: info@livingthefield.com
interacting with the substance
itself and acted accordingly, 1 FASEB J, 1996; 10: A1479;
Other studies have
initiating a shown that
biological chain FASEB J, 1995; 9: A227, A683; J
Benveniste’s
reaction just team
as can erase these
it would have in
signals and stop cellular activity with an Immunol,
150: 146A
1993;
the
alternatpresence of the actual
molecule.1

Molecules by e-mail
In perhaps the most dramatic of his experiments, Benveniste showed that the
signal could be sent across the world by e-mail or by ordinary mail on a floppy
Colleagues
disk. at North western University in Chicago recorded signals from
ovalbumin (Ova), acetylcholine (Ach), dextran and ordinary water on a purpose-
designed transducer attached to a computer equipped with a sound card. The
signals were then copied onto a floppy disk and posted to Benveniste’s laboratory
in Clamart, a suburb of Paris. In later experiments, the signals were also sent by
The Clamart
e-mail team then
as attached exposed ordinary water to the signals of this digital Ova,
documents.
Ach, dextran and water, and infused either the exposed water or plain water
(control) into isolated guinea-pig hearts.
The digitized water produced highly significant changes in coronary flow
compared with the control water. Effects from the digitized water were identical to
those produced on the heart by the actual substances themselves. 1
J Allergy Clin Immunol, 1997; 99: S175
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On the world’s wavelength e of
Lesson
The 4
Field
hen we look at the world, we do so on a much deeper level than we realize. Our brain talks to itself and
to the rest of the body not with images or chemical impulses, but in the language of waves and
frequency. We perceive an object by ‘resonating’ with it, getting ‘in synch’ with it. To know the world is
literally to be on its wavelength.
 accumulated during an average
lifespan. It’s been said that, with
wave-interference patterns, the
entire US Library of Congress,
containing every book ever
published in English, would fit into
a large
In sugarRussell
1979, cube. and Karen
DeValois, a husband-and-wife
team of neurophysiologists at the
University of California at B e r k e
Think of your brain as a piano. l e y, converted simple tartan and
When we observe something ‘out checkerboard patterns into
there’, certain portions of the quantum-wave information, and
brain resonate at specific found that the brain cells of cats
frequencies. At any point of and monkeys responded not to
attention, the brain strikes certain the patterns themselves, but to
‘strings’ of a specific length and their component quantum-wave
frequency. This information is then information. Countless studies,
picked up by the ordinary electro- recounted in the DeValois’ book
chemical circuits of the brain, just Spatial Vision,1 show that
When
as theyou first lookofat the
vibrations something,
strings numerous cells in the visual
certain
eventuallyfrequencies resonate the
resonate through in system are tuned to certain
the brain’s
entire piano. neurons. These frequencies. Other studies by
neurons send information about Fergus Campbell at Cambridge
these frequencies to another set American neurosurgeon
University, England, and a numberKarl
of neurons. This second set of Pribram has also found that
of other labs have also shown that the
neurons translates these brain is a highly
the cerebral cortexdiscriminating
of humans
resonance’s from wave inter- frequency
may be analyzer.
tuned He
to showed
specific
ference information (see box, that the brain has an ‘envelope’
frequencies. 2, 3
page 32) and sends the resulting that limits the otherwise infinite
information to a third set of wave information available to it,
neurons, which then begins to so that we are not bombarded by
construct a pattern of molecules the his
In limitless
ownwave studies,
information
Pribram in
that eventually forms the image confirmed thatField.
the Zero Point 4
the visual cortex of
you see in front of you. This cats and monkeys respond to a
threefold process makes it far limited range of frequencies.5
easier for the brain to correlate DeValois and his colleagues also
After seeing
separate this image, the
images—easily brain
achieved showed that cortical neurons are
processes
using the information in a
wave-interference tuned to a limited frequency
wave-frequency
shorthand, shorthand
but and
extremely range. In studies of both cats and
scatters
awkwardthesewith throughout
an actual thereal-life humans, Campbell has shown that
brain,
image.rather like a local area In
thePribram’s studies respond
brain’s neurons with cats to ina
network copying major which he recorded frequencies
limited band of frequencies.
instructions for many employees from the motor cortex of cats
in the office. Storing memory as while moving their right forepaw
wave-interference patterns is up and down, he discovered that,
remarkably efficient, hence the like the visual cortex, cells in the
vastness of our memory. Waves motor cortex responded to only a
can hold unimaginable quantities Pribram
limited numberand of others
frequencieshaveof
of data—far more than the 280 movement.
demonstrated that perception
quintillion (280 followed by 18
occurs at a much more
zeros) bits of information that
supposedly constitute the average
human memory
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Th
e
Fi
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d fundamental 1
level of matter
Le —the nether- D e Valois R,
DeValois K.
ss world of the Spatial Vision.
on quantum
particle. We
Oxford: Oxford
University
4 don’t Press, 1988
see objects per 2 Pr K. a Pe

Quantum shorthand
Waves are described through a series of calculus equations called ‘Fourier
transforms’, named after the French mathematician Jean Fourier, who’d
developed these equations early in the 19th century to help Napoleon Bonaparte
determine the optimum interval between shots of a cannon so that the barrel
Fourier’s method was eventually found to break down and precisely describe
wouldn’t overheat.
patterns of any complexity into a mathematical language that was a kind of
timeless, spaceless shorthand for the relationship between waves, measured as
energy. Any optical image could be converted into the mathematical equivalent of
interference patterns, when waves superimpose each other.
These equations can also be used in reverse—you can take these components
representing the interactions of waves and their frequency, and reconstruct any
Russian researcher Nicolai Bernstein filmed human subjects dressed entirely in
image.
black costumes on which white tapes and dots marked the position of the limbs—
not unlike a Halloween skeleton costume. The participants were asked to dance
against a black background while being filmed. When the film was processed, all
that could be seen was a series of white dots moving in a continuous pattern or
When Bernstein analyzed the waves, he discovered that all of the rhythmic
wave form.
movements could be represented in Fourier trigonometric sums to such an extent
that he could predict the next movements of his dancers “to an accuracy of within
The
a fewfact that movement can be represented formally in terms of Fourier equations
millimeters”.
means that the brain’s conversations with the body might also be occurring in the
form of waves and patterns rather than as images. The brain somehow can
analyze movement, break it down into wave frequencies and transmit this wave-
pattern shorthand to the rest of the body.
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The real art of seeing e of
Lesson
The 5
Field
alter Schempp, mathematics professor at the University of Siegen in Germany, specializes in the
mathematics of harmonic analysis, or the frequency and phase of sound waves. In the 1980s, he
decided to explore whether it is possible to extract three-dimensional images from sound waves and, by
1986, he’d published a book which mathematically proved how you could get such a 3-D image, or
hologram, from the echoes of radio waves received in radar.
 But he began to wonder whether
the mathematics and theory of
how this machine worked could be
applied to biological systems. He
had called his theory ‘quantum
holography’ because what he’d
really discovered was that all sorts
of information about objects,
including their 3-D shape, is
carried in the quantum fluc-
tuations of the Zero Point Field,
and that this information could be
recovered and reassembled into a
Schempp thought that the same 3-D image. Schempp had proved,
principles might apply to as physicist Hal Puthoff had first
functional magnetic resonance predicted, that the Zero Point Field
imaging (MRI), a tool used to was a vast memory store. T h r o u
Taking
examinepictures of tissues
the soft the brainof and
the But
g h the real transformation,
Fourier question posed MRI by
soft
body.tissues of the body with MRI is Schempp
machines could wenttakefarinformation
beyond
ordinarily a matter of getting to whether
encoded he in could createPoint
the Zero a sharper
Field
the nuclei of water molecules image
and turnin itMRI.
into What he was really
images.
scattered throughout the brain. trying to find out was whether his
Because protons spin like little mathematical equations unlocked
magnets, locating them is often thehis
In keyquest
to thetohuman
apply brain.
his theories
most simply accomplished by to this larger question, Walter
applying a magnetic field. This came across the work of Peter
causes the spin to accelerate to Marcer, a British physicist who’d
the point where the nuclei behave worked at CERN in Switzerland.
like microscopic gyroscopes Marcer himself had been doing
spinning out of control. This work on a computation based on
makes them that much more wave theory in sound, and was
What Schemppenabling
conspicuous, discoveredtheis that
MRI sitting there with a theory which
this radiation
machine contained
to locate them.encoded
As the he intuitively sensed could be
wave information
molecules aboutthey
slow down, the give
part applied to the human brain. In
of the body being examined,
off radiation. Marcer’s mind, Wa l t e r’s
which the machine can capture machine worked on the same
and eventually use to reconstruct principle that Karl Pribram had
a 3-D image. With the use of worked out for the human brain:
Fourier transforms (see Living The by reading natural radiation and
Field Lesson Four) and many emissions from the Zero Point
slices of the body, all of this infor- Field. Not only did Walter have a
Schempp
mation went
is on to revolutionize
combined and mathematical map of how
the construction
eventually turnedofinto
MRI an
machines
optical information processing in the
and wrote a textbook on the
picture. brain may work, which amounted
subject. He showed that imaging Like
to a Pribram’s
mathematical model of the brain,
demonstration
worked as holography did, and Schempp’s
of the theories ofMRI machine
Karl Pribram, but
soon became the world authority underwent
he also had,a asstaged Peter sawprocess,
it, a
on the machine and on functional combining
machine which worked wave-interference
according
MRI, a special form of the information
to this process.taken from diff e r e n
technology that allows you to t views of the body and eventually
observe brain activity in response transforming it into a virtual
to sensory stimuli.1 image.
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Th
e
Fi
el
d
Although information
Le Walter had and out of
ss written some them
on general papers
about how his
constructed
our image of
5 work could the world.
be applied to Perceiving the
biological world was a
systems, it was matter of
only in tuning into

Where the brain decodes the world

After making a number of discoveries about quantum frequencies and the act of
perception, neurosurgeon Karl Pribram wondered where this intricate process of
wavefront decoding and transformation could take place. It then occurred to him
that the one area of the brain where wave-interference patterns might be created
was not in any particular cell, but in the spaces between them.
At the end of every neuron, the basic unit of a brain cell, are synapses, where
chemical charges build up, eventually triggering electrical firing to the other
neurons. In the same spaces, dendrites—tiny filaments of nerve endings wafting
back and forth, like shafts of wheat in a slow breeze—communicate with other
neurons, sending out and receiving their own electrical wave impulses. These
‘slow-wave potentials’ flow through the glia, or glue, surrounding neurons, to
At thisnudge
gently busyor even
juncture,
collidewhere a ceaseless
with other waves. scramble of electromagnetic
communications between synapses and dendrites takes place, it is most likely
that wave frequencies are picked up and analyzed, since these wave patterns are
creating thousands of wave-interference patterns at every moment.
Pribram conjectured that these wave collisions must create the pictorial images in
our brain. When we perceive something, it’s not due to the activity of neurons
themselves, but to certain patches of dendrites distributed around the brain
which, like a radio station, are set to resonate only at certain frequencies. It is like
having a vast number of strings all over your head, only some of which vibrate as
a particular note is played.
LIVING THE FIEL
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Signaling along the light pipes e of
Lesson
The 6
Field
t Hameroff, an anaesthesiologist at the University of Arizona, was fascinated by how anesthetic gases
turn off consciousness. Since gases with such disparate chemistry as nitrous oxide, ether, halothane
and isofluorane could all bring about a loss of consciousness, he figured it must have something to do
with some other property besides chemistry. Hameroff guessed that general anesthetics must interfere
with the electrical activity within every cell, and this activity could turn off consciousness. If this were
so, then the reverse would also be true: electrical activity of the cells making up the dendrites and
neurons in the brain must somehow be key to consciousness.
 It occurred to Hameroff that the
microtubules within the cells of
dendrites and neurons might be
‘light pipes’, acting as
‘waveguides’ for photons, sending
these waves from cell to cell
throughout the brain without any
loss of energy. They might even
act as tiny atracks
Eventually, numberfor ofthese light
scientists
—
wavesneuroscientist
throughout the Karl
body. 1
Pribram,
physicist Kunio Yasue, Hameroff
and Scott Hagan from the
Department of Physics at McGill
University—collaborated on a
theory for the nature of human
consciousness.2 According to their
theory, microtubules and the
membranes of dendrites repre-
Microtubules are the scaffolding of sented the Internet of the body.
the cell, maintaining its structure Every neuron of the brain could
and shape. These microscopic log on at the same time and speak
hexagonal lattices of fine Microtubules
to every help otherto marshal
neuron
filaments of protein, called discordant energy
simultaneously via the andquantum
create
tubulins, form tiny hollow global coherence
processes within. of the waves in
cylinders of indefinite length. the body—a process known as
Thirteen strands of tubules wrap ‘superradiance’—then allow these
around the hollow core in a spiral, coherent signals to pulse through
and all the microtubules in a cell the rest of the body (see Living
We
radiateknow
outward that
from these
the centerlittle
to Once coherence
The Field Lessonis achieved,
Two for the a
honeycomb
the cell structures act
membrane, like as a photons
definitioncan travel all along the
of coherence).
tracks
cartwheel.for transporting various light pipes as if they were
products from one cell to another, transparent, a phenomenon called
particularly in nerve cells, and ‘self-induced transparency’.
they are vital for pulling apart Photons can penetrate the core of
chromosomes
In his own experiments
during cell division.
with the the microtubule and communicate
brains of small mammals, with other photons throughout the
Hameroff found—as did German body, bringing about collective
physicist Fritz-Albert Popp—that cooperation of subatomic particles
living tissue transmitted photons If
in this is the case, itthroughout
microtubules would account the
and that good penetration of for
brain. unity of thought and
‘light’ occurred in certain areas of consciousness—the fact that we
the brain.1
Microtubules turn out to be don’t think of loads of disparate
exceptional conductors of pulses. Through
things at once. 2
this mechanism,
Pulses sent in one end travel coherence becomes contagious,
through pockets of protein and moving from individual cells to cell
arrive unchanged at the other. assemblies—and in the brain,
Hameroff also discovered a high from certain neuron cell
degree of coherence among assemblies to others. This could
neighboring tubules, such that a explain the instantaneous
vibration in one microtubule would operation of our brain, which
tend to resonate in unison through occurs at between one ten-
its neighbors. thousandth to one one-thousandth
of a second, requiring
LIVING THE FIEL
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Scienc
e of the information to be transmitted at 100 to long been observed—the
Lesson
The 6 1000 of
tendency meters per second—a speed that electroencephalographic (EEG)
patterns exceeds any known connections between in the brain to become
Field axons 3
or dendrites
synchronized. in neurons. H a m e r o ff observed that electrons
Superradiance along the light pipes glide easily along these light pipes
with-
also accounts for a phenomenon that has out getting entangled in their
environ-
The quantum brain
Many scientists in research centers around the globe now concur that the brain sends
messages via quantum frequencies. Kunio Yasue, a quantum physicist from Kyoto, Japan,
has carried out mathematical formulations to help understand the neural microprocess.
Like US neuroscientist Karl Pribram, his equations showed that brain processes occur at
the quantum level and that the dendritic networks in the brain are operating in tandem
through quantum
1
Yasue and his colleague Mari Jibu, of the Department of Anesthesiology, Okayama
coherence.
University, in Japan, have also theorized that the quantum messaging of the brain must
take place through vibrational fields along the microtubules of cells (see main
text). 2–5
Another of their colleagues proposes that the basis of all the brain’s functions involves
the interaction between brain physiology and the Zero Point Field.6 Italian
physicist Association, in his own experimental work
Ezio Insinna, of the Bioelectronics Research
with microtubules, discovered that these structures have a special signaling mechanism
thought to be associated with the transfer of
Emilio 7
electrons. Del Giudice and the late Giuliano Preparata, physicists at the Milan Institute for
Nuclear Physics, came up with experimental evidence of Stuart Hameroff’s theory that
light pipes contain organized energy fields inside them. Microtubules are hollow and
empty save for some water. Ordinary water from a tap or in a river is disordered—the
molecules move about randomly. But some of the water molecules in brain cells are
coherent, the Italian team discovered, and this coherence extends a tiny bit outside of
the microtubules. In this case, it is overwhelmingly likely that the water inside the micro
tubules is also ordered. This offers indirect evidence that some sort of process that
creates quantum coherence is occurring
inside. 8, 9
1 Pribram K. Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991: 283
2 Jibu M, Yasue K. ‘A physical picture of Umezawa’s quantum brain dynamics’, in Trappl R, ed.
Cybernetics and Systems Research ‘92. Singapore: World Scientific, 1992
3 Pribram KH. ‘The basics of quantum brain dynamics’, in Pribram KH, ed. Proceedings of the First
Appalachian Conference on Behavioral Neurodynamics, 1992
4 Cybern Syst Intl, 1993; 1 (24): 1–7
5 Carvallo E, ed. Nature, Cognition and System III. London: Kluwer Academic, 1993
6 J Sci Explor, 1996; 10: 375–400
7 Insinna E. ‘Ciliated cell electrodynamics: from cilia and flagella to ciliated sensory systems’, in
Malhotra A, ed. Advances in Structural Biology. Stamford, CN: JAJ Press, 1999: 5
8 Hameroff SR. Ultimate Computing. Biomolecular Consciousness and Nanotechnology. Amsterdam:
North-Holland, 1987
9 BioSystems, 1994; 32: 95–209
LIVING THE FIEL
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 Scienc
ment—that is, without settling into e of
any single state. This enables 1 Hameroff SR. Ultimate Lesson
The 6
them to remain in a quantum Computing. Biomolecular
state—which is a condition of all Consciousness and N a n o t e c h n o l
Field
possible states—thereby enabling o g y . Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1987
the brain to eventually choose one 2 BioSystems, 1994; 32: 95–209
This
among might
them. be a good explanation 3 Zohar D. The Quantum Self.
for free will. At every moment, our Flamingo, 1991: 70
brain is making quantum choices 4 Laszlo E. The Interconnected
—taking potential states and Universe: Conceptual Foundations of Tr
All of this
making themled an 4
to ones.
actual heretical a n s d i s c i p linary Unified Theory.
thought that had already occurred World Scientific, 1995: 41
to Popp. Consciousness is a global
phenomenon that occurs
everywhere in the body, not
simply in our brains.
Consciousness, at Lynne McTaggart
its most basic,
is coherent light.
LIVING THE FIEL
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e of
The
Field
LIVING THE FIEL
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 wo Scienc
The power of intention e of
Lesson
The 7
are indeterminate packets of
energy that cannot be precisely Field
quantified or understood in
themselves. Sometimes they
One of the strangest and most behave as particles—a set thing
incomprehensible aspects of confined to a small space—and
quantum physics is the so-called sometimes they act like a wave—a
Copenhagen interpretation. Niels vibrating and more diffuse thing
Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, two spread out over a large region of
of the founding fathers of space and time. Other times, they
quantum physics, noted that, act like both
Quantum a waveare
particles andalso
a particle
eerily
according to their experiments, an at the same time.
omnipresent. For instance, when
electron wasn’t a precise entity,
transiting from one energy state
but existed as a potential, a super-
to another, electrons seem to be
position, or sum, of all
trying out all possible new orbits
probabilities—that is, of all
at the same time. This means
possible wave functions—until it is
that, once you peer closer and
observed or measured. At that closer at matter, it isn’t even
point, the electron freezes into a
matter as we usually think of it—
Part of thisstate.
particular interpretation
Once weis stop the
something solid or stable that you
notion
looking of or ‘complementarity’—that
measuring, the electron
can touch or describe, or even a
you can back
dissolves neverinto
know everything
At
set this
the ether onelevel
of all of reality, anothing
‘thing’—but host of is
about a quantum entity, such as
possibilities. set or predictable;
tentative the best that
possibilities.
an electron, at the same time. The
can ever be calculated is
classic example is position and v e
probability—the likelihood, when
l o c i t y. If you discover you take a certain measurement,
information about one of these that you will obtain a certain
aspects—where it is, for instance
result a certain percentage of the
—then you will not be able to time. Rather than a universe of
Quantum
determine exactly physicists also
where it’s going
static certainty, at the most
discovered
or at what speed.a strange property in
fundamental level of matter, the
the subatomic world—‘non-
world and its relationships are
locality’. This refers to the In other
utterly words,
unpredictable, reality
a state of is
capacity of quantum entities, such
something
pure akin to unset
potential and Jell-O.
infinite
as individual electrons,
The to
Copenhagen interpretation
possibility.
influence another quantum
primarily suggests that
particle instantaneously over any
randomness is a basic feature of
distance, despite no exchange ofnature. As physicists describe it,
force or energy. Non-locality the only thing that produces order
suggests that quantum particles,out of pure randomness—the
once in contact, retain a
tendency of the universe toward
connection even when separated, One
chaosofandthe entropy—is
fundamental thelaws of
living
The Copenhagen
so that interpretation
the actions quantum
observer. physics states that an
of one will
shatters the very foundations
always influence the other,of no
event in the subatomic world
our understanding
matter how far ofthey the nature
become of
exists in all possible states until
reality.
separated.It suggests that matter at
the act of observing or measuring
its most fundamental level cannot
‘freezes’ it, or pins it down, to a
be divided into independently single state. As physicists put it,
existing units or even be fully this causes the vector, or wave
described. Subatomic particles function—the state of all
aren’t solid little objects likepossibilities—to ‘collapse’ into
billiard balls, but something fixed, or real.
aspects of quantum physics provide the theoretical explanation for how our thoughts can affect our
world.
LIVING THE FIEL
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Scienc
e of This means is that our observation
Lesson
The —7our human consciousness—is
Field central to the process through
which subatomic quantum flux
actually becomes something set,
or real. It is as though our act of
attention is the one thing that can
This suggests
catch the butterflythat the
on the most
wing.
essential ingredient of the
interconnected universe is the
living consciousness that observes
it. Quantum physicists postulate
that there is a participatory
relationship between observer and
observed. Subatomic particles can
only be considered to be ‘proba-
bly’ existing in space and time
until they are ‘perturbed’—the act
of observing and measuring them
forces them into a set state.
Our observation—our very
involve-ment—causes the Jell-O
This
to set. astounding observation
suggests that the consciousness
of the observer brings the
observed object into being.
Nothing in the universe exists as
an actual ‘thing’ independently of
our perception
Thus, of it.profound level,
on the most
quantum theory suggests that
reality is created by each of us at
the moment of attention. This
implies that every minute of every
day we are creating our world.
Most important of all, it suggests
that reality is not fixed, but fluid,
or mutable, and Lynne hence McTaggart
possibly
open to our influence.

The ordering effect of living

consciousness
According to the latest scientific evidence, in our act of participation as an
observer in the quantum world, we are also influencers. 1 In other words, we don’t
simply stop the butterfly at a certain point in its flight, but also influence the path
it will take—nudging it in a particular direction.
The most recent models of human consciousness present it as something that is
not limited by the body, but as an ethereal presence that itself is ‘non-local’, able
to trespass into other bodies and living things, and affecting them as if they were
This is not so far-fetched when you consider the latest experiments on the human
its own.
mind that demonstrate that human consciousness is also a quantum process.
Living beings therefore are, in a sense, ‘ordering’ systems—creating order where
there is chaos.
Every thought we have is a tangible energy that changes the physical properties
of other things in the world. If this is so, then intention is the most powerful
energy in the universe as it can influence and shape its world.
Eur J Physics, 1987; 8: 173
LIVING THE FIEL
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The electric power of our intention e of
Lesson
The 8
Field
most astonishing implication of the new physics concerns the role of human intention—its ability to
shape our world, its central role in the nature of reality. Quantum theory suggests that reality is not
fixed, but fluid, or mutable, and hence open to influence, and that we are central to this entire process
as influencers.
 treated by the healers had minor
shifts in molecular structure,
producing a fundamental change
in the oxygen–hydrogen bonds
and decreasing hydrogen bonding
between molecules, similar to
what happens when water is
exposed to magnets. A number of
other
In a scientists
similar study,have confirmed
experienced
Grad’s findings. 1
The latest scientific research meditators were asked to attempt
shows that our thoughts express to affect the molecular structure of
themselves as an energy that can water held in a test tube while in
actually be measured as a surge their meditative state. Again,
of electrical voltage—changing examination by infrared spec-
the molecular structure of the trophotometry showed that the
object of our intentions. Our quality of the water—particularly
thoughts—our hopes, desires, its absorption characteristics—had
wishes—have an independent A s t significantly
been o n i s h i naltered. 2
g l y. when we
energy that transforms the nature hold a focused thought, it’s likely
The
of our world.scientific
Our own research
order that we are making an alteration
demonstrates
appears to have thata our intentions
domino effect in the molecular structure of
change the of
on the object very properties of
intention. something
A number outsideof researchers
ourselves. have
physical reality around us. attempted to quantify the energy
Experiments using directed produced by human intention.
intention have recorded changes Psychologist Elmer Green (best
in temperature, in the electrical known for his extensive work on
conductivity of water and even in biofeedback) and his colleagues at
the proportion of magnetic force the Menninger Clinic, now in
seen in ordinary physical reality. Houston, wired an electrode to a
The domino effect of our own healer sitting inside a room with
coherent and quantum energy copper walls (to block all
appears to create a ‘conditioned’ interference from any other elec-
In Williamplace
space—a Tiller’s black-box
where experi-
the ambient tromagnetic source). Although
ments (see Field
Zero Point Lessons One and Two),
is somehow more participants had the expected
once an initial intention had been
‘ordered’. readings of 10–15 mV from
sent out, subsequent intentions ordinary breathing and heart-
began to work more quickly. It is beats, the healer’s body voltage
as though human thought has a would zoom up to a voltage
power that affects all of the space 100,000 larger than normal. At the
A body ofit extraordinary
around in order to research
‘send’ its On
sameinvestigating
time this the wassource of this
happening,
has been able to demonstrate
message. energy,
correspondingthe pulses ofresearchers
1–5 volts
how our intention actually discovered
appeared on thateach
the ofpulses
the were
four
changes physical reality. Bernard coming from the healer’s lower
copper walls.
Grad, PhD, now retired associate abdomen. Only a small current
professor of psychiatry at McGill had to flow for a short period of
University in Montreal, carried out time to achieve this
numerous studies on the effect of extraordinarily large voltage. The
healers holding containers of healer’s intention to heal
water that were to be used to If directed manifested
ultimately thought is itself
a tangible
as a
irrigate plants. Afterwards, he energy
huge surge thatofcan have power.3
electrical a physical
chemically analyzed the water by impact on
infrared spectroscopy and found
that the water
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d
everything in
Le your world, we J Sci Explor,
1994; 8 (3):
ss can use these
438–9 Green
intentions to
on interact with
EE.
Proceedings,
8 our pos 2 First Annual
sessions and Con Int S f
the living fer ern o o

Our thoughts ‘change the tape’

Most of the evidence to date suggests that the systems most open to change are
‘labile’—mutable or easily open to change. Living systems are dynamic, ‘open’
systems— that is, always changing. In other words, it is easier to heal someone—a
living thing constantly in flux—than to lift or change a static element like a chair.
Quantum physicists Dr Emilio Del Giudice and the late Dr Giuliano Preparata of the
University of Milan provide a glimpse as to why this might be. The two physicists
spent years studying the physics of ordinary water (see Living The Field Lesson
Four). They discovered that water molecules have 'coherent domains"1—they act
just like a laser to efficiently transfer electromagnetic frequencies by creating
resonance between water molecules.
Dr Shui-Yin Lo of the American Technologies Group has discovered that, when a
substance is dissolved in water and subjected to repeated dilutions and shakings
(as it does in homeopathy), clusters of ice crystals form in the water not because
of the temperature, but because of electromagnetic energy fields. Lo also
discovered that these ice crystals are apparently unique to the substance itself
and change every time it is diluted, as is done in homeopathy. 2 This confirms the
special properties of water as a kind of recording medium that can capture and
storethe
Like quantum
tape ininformation.
an audiotape recorder, water can pick up signals, store them and
transfer them on. When we intend something, we are changing the taped
These results have enormous repercussions when you consider that living things
message.
are largely composed of water. They accord with the experiences of healers who
often claim that any reputable healer can energize water for healing. 1 Phys Rev
Lett, 1988; 61: 1085–8 2 Modern Phys Lett B, 1996; 10: 909
LIVING THE FIEL
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Mind over machine e of
Lesson
The 9
has been designed and carried out
by former dean of engineering
Field
Robert Jahn, at the Princeton
Anomalies Engineering Research
(PEAR) laboratory at Princeton
In the 1970s, Helmut Schmidt, a University. Jahn refined and
physicist and researcher at Boeing improved Schmidt’s original
Aeronautics, produced the first equipment, determining that his
‘random number generator’, a random event generators, or
20th-century version of the flip of REGS (pronounced with a hard
a coin, the movements of which ‘G’), should be driven by an
were based on a system of electronic noise source rather
random radioactive atomic decay. than atomic decay. The random
These are machines with an movement of these machines (to
output consisting of perfectly either heads or tails) is controlled
random
If it can be
activity
shown that,
thatinparticipants
physics, is by a randomly alternating
viewed
in as a state
a study haveof altered
‘disorder’.some frequency of positive and negative
element of the machine’s output— pulses. Their output is utterly
even ever so slightly—they would random and without any inherent
have shifted the odds of The
ordermost common configuration
so, according to the laws of is
something happening or altered a computer
probability, theyscreen that is
can be expected
the tendency of a system to randomly to producealternating
either heads two orimages
tails
behave in a certain way. Some —say, cowboys50
approximately andperIndians.
cent ofOver
the
information transfer or ordering hundreds time. of thousands of studies,
mechanism would be going on— Jahn has decisively demonstrated
what physicists term ‘negative that human intention can
Ientropy’,
t ’s like persuading a person
or ‘negentropy’ at a influence these random electronic
for short
crossroads,
—the move momentarily
away from devices to produce more of one
undecided
randomness about taking a walk, to image, as specified by the
or disarray.
head down one road rather than In 1987, a combined
participant analysis of
(more Indians all
than
another. They would, in other the REG 1
experiments—more
cowboys, say). than
The have
words, most created
persuasive of these studies
order. 800— carried out by some 68
investigators
The mothers of intention
simplest way to test the power of human intention is to see if human consciousness can affect
Humans are not the only living beings with influence over the physical world.
Using a variation of Jahn’s REG machines, a French scientist named René Peo’ch
carried out an ingenious experiment with baby chicks. As soon as they were born,
a movable REG was ‘imprinted’ on them as their ‘mother’. The robot was then
placed outside the chicks’ cage and allowed to move about freely while Peo’ch
tracked its path. After a time, the evidence was clear — the robot was moving
toward the chicks more than it would do if it were wandering randomly.
The desire of the chicks to be near their mother was an ‘inferred intention’ that
appeared to be having an effect in drawing the machine nearer.
Peo’ch carried out a similar study with baby rabbits. He placed a bright light on
the movable REG that the baby rabbits found abhorrent. When the data from the
experiment were analyzed, it appeared that the rabbits were successfully willing
the machine to stay away from them.
machinery that is governed by a probabilistic system.
LIVING THE FIEL
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Scienc
e of showed that experimenters could
Lesson
The 9 the machine so that it gave
affect
the desired result 51 per cent of
Field the time instead of the expected
50 per cent. In some of Schmidt’s
experiments, certain individuals
Although
had shifted51theorodds 54 toper54 cent
per
doesn’t
cent. 2 sound like much of an
effect, statistically speaking, it’s a
giant step. If you combine all the
studies into what is called a
‘metaanalysis’, the odds of this
overall score occurring are a
trillion to one.3 The US National
Research Council also concluded
An
that‘effect size’trials
the REG is a could
figurenot
which
be
resembles the
explained by chance. actual
4 size of
change or outcome in a study. It is
arrived at by factoring in such
variables as the number of
participants and the duration time
of the test. The overall effect size
of the PEAR database was 0.2 per
hour.5 The PEAR effect sizes are
considered small, whereas the
overall REG studies are considered
small-to-medium. However, these
effect sizes are far larger than
those of many drugs deemed to
be highly successful in medicine.
For instance, the effect of aspirin
in Apreventing
simple way heart
to understand
disease is
effect
0.032—about 10 times smaller
than the PEAR effect size.
sizes is to convert it into the
number of persons surviving out
of 100 people in a medical
emergency. An effect size of 0.2
means that 20 more people than
expected
To give someout of 100 will survive.
hypothetical idea of
the magnitude of the PEAR effect
size, let’s say that, with a certain
type of heart operation, one-third
of patients usually survive. Now,
say that patients undergoing this
operation are given a new drug
with an effect size of 0.3—about
the size of the PEAR effect.
Offering the drug on top of the
operation would virtually double
the survival rate, so that two-
thirds of patients undergoing the
procedure will live. An additional
effect size of 0.3 would turn a
medical treatmentLynne McTaggart
that had been
lifesaving less than half the time
into
1 oneBrain
Behav thatSci,
worked in a600–1
1987; 10: majority
ofBroughton
2 cases. RS. Parapsychology: The
Controversial Science. NY: Ballantine
Books, 1991:177 3 Radin D. The
Conscious Universe: The
Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena.
N Y: HarperEdge, 1997: 140 4 Found
Phys, 1989; 19 (12): 1499–514 5 PEAR
Technical Note 94003, 1994;
September
LIVING THE FIEL
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Sending intention to living systems e of
Lesson
The 10
the monitor and attempt to gain
his or her attention. Meanwhile, in Field
the other room, the staree,
relaxed in a reclining chair, had
been told to think about anything
other than wondering whether he
William G. Braud, professor and or she was being stared at. The
staree’s unconscious response
research director of the Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology, has (stress if he or she were being
assembled the largest body of stared at) would
Once again, in be picked
the up by of
majority a
research on how much influence lie-detector machine.
such studies, those being stared
individual intention might have on at showed significantly greater
other living systems. These are stress during the staring sessions
difficult studies to design as most than would be expected by
living systems have so many Other chance. 2
research conducted all over
variables that it is hard to the world has shown that human
measure change. So Braud began intention can affect bacteria and
with simple animals. Initially, he yeast, plants, various animals,
showed that human thought could human cellular preparations and
control the direction in which fish enzyme activity. Studies on
swim, make gerbils run faster on humans have shown that one set
Braud then
activity wheels moved
and prevent on the to of people could successfully affect
experiments
breakdown of to see cells
human if humans
in the the eye or gross motor
could
lab. 1 influence each other. He This
movements,research inspired
breathing an
and
began with what would become important consideration.
another’s brain rhythms. 3 Was the
one of his signature studies: the effect any larger if the system
effect of being stared at. needed changing? Were the more
Researchers into the nature of organized of us—biologically
consciousness are particularly speaking—better at accessing this
fond of this phenomenon because information and drawing it to the
it is a relatively easy extrasensory In 1983, ofBraud
attention others?tested out this
experiment with which to judge theory with a series of studies in
success. With transmitted collaboration with anthropologist
thoughts, there are many Marilyn Schlitz. Braud and Schlitz
variables to consider when selected a group of highly nervous
It’s the closest you
determining can get the
whether to people, as evidenced by their high
reducing
receiver’ssubjective
response feelings
matchestothe thes sympathetic-nervous-system
simple
e n d ebinary multipleWith
r’s thoughts. choice of a activity, and another, calmer
staring,
Participants
REG
the machine. were placed in a room
receiver either feels it or group. Their results suggested
and attached to silver chloride that the mental and physical
doesn’t.
palmar electrodes, a skin- structures of the sender’s con-
resistance amplifier and a sciousness are able to exert an
computer. The only other ordering influence on those who
equipment in the room was a most need it. Calm people can
camcorder. This small video calm down highly nervous people,
camera was attached to a TV and focused people can help to
monitor in another room. This These results gave
focus distracted Braud
people. several
The same
would allow the starer to view the important large effectsclues.were
It was notapparent
shown
Whenever the script dictated,
subject peacefully without the the that
when ordinary
people werehumans
alreadyhave
calmthe
or
starer would
possibility of stare intently
any form of at the
sensory ability
focused. 4
to influence other living
subject
cueing. via things on many levels:
PEAR group (see Living The Field Lesson Nine) suggests that consciousness may be an ethereal
presence that trespasses into things beyond our bodies and affects them as if they were its own.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d muscle activity,
motor activity, needed it.
Le cellular Those who
ss changes, and required some-
on nervous
system activity.
thing—calming
down, focused
10 But atten
the influence tion—seemed
increased more receptive
depending on to influence
how
much it than others.
mattered to

Getting on the same wavelength

In studies carried out in Mexico, a pair of volunteers in separate rooms were asked
to ‘feel’ each other’s presence and influence the other. In fact, the brainwaves of
the participants, as measured by EEG, began to synchronize. At the same time,
electrical activity within each person’s brain also synchronized, a phenomenon
usually seen only with meditation. But it was the participant with the most
coherent brainwave patterns who tended to influence the other. The most ordered
brain
In thispattern
case, aalways prevailed.
‘coherent domain’ 1, 2
is established, just as with molecules of water
(see Living The Field Lesson Four). The brain of each member of the pair becomes
less tuned in to its own information and more receptive to that of the other. In
effect, they pick up someone else’s information from the Zero Point Field as if it
were
As theircase
in the own.of Braud’s studies, the observer with the greater degree of
coherence, or order, influenced the probabilistic processes of the less-organized
recipient. The more ordered of Braud’s pairs affected the quantum state of the
more disordered other and nudged it, too, towards a greater degree of order.
Our natural state of being is a tango—a constant state of one influencing the
other. Just as the subatomic particles that compose us cannot be separated from
the space and particles surrounding them, so living beings cannot be isolated
from each other. A living system of greater coherence could exchange information
and create or restore coherence in a disordered, random or chaotic system. The
natural state of the living world appears to be order—a drive towards greater
coherence. 1 Int J Neurosci, 1987; 36: 41–53 2 Subtle Energies, 1992; 3 (3): 25–43
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 ne Scienc
Beyond time and space e of
Lesson
The 11
Field
of the most inviolate notions in our sense of ourselves and our world is our concept of time and space.
We view life as a progression that we can measure through clocks, calendars and the major milestones
of our lives. The other inviolate notion from classical physics is the idea that the world is a geometric
place filled with solid objects with spaces in between them, and that the size of the in-between spaces
determines the kind of influence one object has on another.
 weren’t sensitive to either time or
space. Its test participants achieved the
same results in affecting the outcome of
computerized machines
psychokinetically whether they
were 3000 miles away or sitting
right in front of them.
Also, in 87,000 experiments,
volunteers were asked to address
their attention to the machine’s
operations anywhere from three
days to two weeks after the test
had been run. In every regard,
these data were identical to the
However, a number of studies more conventional data generated
suggest that, at a more when participants were
fundamental level of existence, attempting to influence the
there is no space or time—no machine at the time it was being
obvious cause and effect of run. In fact, in a certain direction,
something hitting something else A number
there wereof larger
other effects
investigators
than
Newtonian
and causingideas
an eventof an
overabsolute
time or have attempted this kind
those seen in the standard experi- of
time
space.and space or even Einstein’s ments.2 time travel to influence
backward
view of a relative space–time are the behavior of gerbils running in
now replaced by a truer picture— activity wheels or the direction of
that the universe exists in some people walking in the dark (and
vast ‘here’—where here hitting a photobeam), or even cars
represents all points of space and hitting a photobeam in a tunnel in
time at a single instant. If Vienna during rush hour. The
subatomic particles can interact number of revolutions of the
across all space and time, then so activity wheels and hits of the
might the larger matter they photo-beam were converted into
compose. In the quantum world of clicks, then taped, stored and
Emerging
The Field, a scientific
subatomic worldresearch
of played for the first time between
demonstrates
pure potential, that our thoughts
life exists as one one day and a week later to
have
enormousa power
present.that transcends observers, who were all successful
time or space. The property of Another study to
in their attempts attempted
influence theto
non-locality suggests that our determine
gerbils to runwhether
faster,a healer could
or to make
thoughts— another form of retroactively
the people or influence
cars run theinto
spread
the
quantum energy—have an effect, of blood parasites
photobeam in rats. All told,
more often.
regardless of the point in time 10 of the 19 studies showed
they are generated
Physicist Helmut or their
Schmidt, effects significantly better than
distance offrom
formerly Lockheed,
the conducted
object of a chance— enough to indicate that
intention.
series of psychokinetic Present
something or future
out of intentions
the ordinary actwas
on
experiments with random event initial
going on. 3
probabilities and influence
generators (REGs) that showed what events actually come to
decisively that people continue to pass, regardless of when we have
affect the results of these the thought.
The scientific theory and the
electronic devices days after the experimental data together
Studies
actual carried
tests out
hadby been
the Princeton
run (see suggest an outlandish idea: our
Engineering Anomalies
1 Research (PEAR) thoughts, in effect, live on forever.
box, page 96).
group also showed that results
Lynne McTaggart
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of
1 J Pa r a p s y c h o l o g y, 1985; 49: 229–44
The
Lesson 11 2 J Sci Explor, 1997; 11 (3): 345–
3 Alt Ther, 2000; 6 (1): 37–48
Field
67

Back to the future

In one series of studies, Helmut Schmidt rewired his REG machines to an audio
device to randomly set off a click that could be taped and heard, through
headphones, in either the left or right ear. He then taperecorded the outputs,
making sure that no one, including himself, was listening. A copy of the master
tape was made, again with no one listening, and locked away. Schmidt also
created tapes as controls—where no one would try to affect the left–right clicks.
As expected, when these control tapes were played, they contained left and right
Then, a day
ear clicks thatlater, Schmidt
were more hadevenly
or less a volunteer take one of the tapes home. His
distributed.
assignment was to listen to it and try to influence more of the clicks to come into
his right ear. Later, Schmidt had his computer count up the left and right clicks.
His result seemed to defy common sense: the influencer had changed the output
of the machine—just as if he’d been present when it was being recorded in the
first place. These results were as significant as his ordinary REG tests carried out
Over more
in ‘real’ than 20,000 trials in five studies carried out in 1971–1975, Schmidt
time.
showed that a highly significant number of tapes deviated from expectation
(roughly 50 per cent each of left and right clicks). His results were similar using
machines that moved a needle on a dial to either left or right. Of 832 runs where
the volunteer attempted to influence the needle to go left, nearly 55 per cent had
more left-hand needle moves than right. Since a copy of the original results had
been made and locked away, there was absolutely no possibility of fraud.
Schmidt also found that it was important for the influencer to be the first
observer. If anyone else heard the tape first and listened to it with focused
attention, the tape seemed to become unsusceptible to a later influence. Any
form of focused attention seemed to freeze the system into final being.
Schmidt didn’t think that his participants had actually changed the past or
modified the tape. Their intentions had reached ‘backward’ down the timeline to
affect what would have happened in the first place.
Although these types of studies have been thin on the ground, they accord with
what we know about the observer effect in quantum theory—that observation by
living things brings things into a final and set being. 1
SchmidtH. PK tests with and without preobservation by animals, in Henkel LS, Palmer J (eds).
Research in Parapsychology 1989. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1990: 15–9
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 o Scienc
Feeling the way to our own future e of
Lesson
The 12
ratory proof that our bodies can
anticipate and act out our ownField
future emotional states. It also
suggested that the “nervous
system is not just ‘reacting’ to a
future shock, but is also working
Consciousness investigator Dr R out athedemotional
i n ’s meaning it”.1
studies of were
Dean Radin came up with a novel successfully replicated by
twist for testing premonition. psychologist Dick Bierman, at the
Instead of relying on verbal University of Amsterdam.2 Bier-
accuracy, he tested the body man went on to use this model to
instead. Although some labs had determine whether people
examined whether people could anticipate good or bad news. In
forecast their futures in their studying the electrodermal
dreams, Radin was mainly activity (EDA) of people involved
interested in whether people had in a gambling card game, Bierman
In
thehis lab at
same sort the
of University of Las found that rapid changes in EDA
clear foreboding
Vegas,
when they Dean
were setawake.
up a computer were recorded before they saw
that randomly selected photos their cards—and the differences
designed to either calm or agitate, tended to correspond to the type
arouse or upset the participant. of cards they got. Those about to
Radin’s volunteers were wired up This receive suggests
a bad hand that,
wereonmore a
to physiological monitors that subconscious physiological
rattled, and showed signs of a level,
recorded changes in skin we have anfight-orflight
heightened inkling when we are
response.
The computer
conduction, randomly
heart displayed
rate and blood about to receive bad news or
color photos of tranquil scenes (of when bad things are going to
pressure.
nature or landscapes)—or scenes Radin happentried 3
another
to us. test of seeing
to shock or arouse (autopsies or into the future using a variation of
erotica). As expected, the Helmut Schmidt’s machine (see
participant’s body calmed down Living The Field Lesson Eleven).
immediately after observing the Radin’s device was a ‘pseudo-
tranquil scenes, and became random event generator’ — s t i l l
aroused after being confronted by unpredictable, but in a different
the erotic or disturbing. Naturally, mechanism. A seed number
the largestwhat
However, response
Radin came
discovered
after (initiating number) would start a
they’d
is thatseen
his the photos. were also highly
subjects complex mathematical
anticipating what they were about sequence of other numbers. T h e
to see, registering physiological machine contained 10,000
responses before they saw the different seed numbers and so
photo. As if trying to brace them- 10,000 different mathematical
selves, their responses were possibilities. The pseudo-random
highest before they saw an image number generator produced
that was disturbing. Blood sequences of random bits, or
pressure would drop in the zeros and ones. Those sequences
Strangest
extremitiesofabout
all, possibly
a secondreflecting
before with the most ones in them were
that
the image Americans
was flashed.are more deemed the best sequences and,
unsettled by sex than by violence, That, of course,
therefore, was desirable.
the most the trick of it.
The
Radin discovered a far higher The window
objective wasoftoselection
stop the was tiny:
machine
foreboding with the erotic than the at acorrect seed moment,
particular number would
on a
Radin
with now had some of the
the violent. flash up inseed
particular 20-msec
number,windows—10
to initiate
first labo times
the bestfaster than
sequences.
st people, at some point, have a premonition that turns out to be true. The problem is how to test this
in a laboratory. How do you make sure that someone can remember or has told the truth about their
forecast?
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi Y 1
el o Har 9
r per 9
d n
k Edg 7
human reaction o
Le time. So, to be n.
: e, :
Ne
ss successful at w
on this, somehow
you had to
11
9–
12 intuitively 24
know that a 2 Percept Motor
good seed Skills, 1997; 84:
689–90
number was
com
ing up and Bi
A
press the An s
er
D om p
button down 3m o
alo e

Travels foretold
The PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalous Research) laboratory at Princeton
University has amassed its own store of evidence showing that people can foretell
events. Programme directors Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne designed most of
their remote-viewing studies as ‘precognitive remote perception’, or PRP. All of the
studies consisted of a pair of participants. One was the ‘traveler’, who received an
envelope containing a destination; the other stayed behind in the lab.
The remote viewers remaining behind in the PEAR lab were asked to name the
destination of a traveling partner not only before they actually got there, but also
many hours or days before the travelers themselves knew where they were going.
Those involved in the experiment would pick the traveler’s destinations from a
pool of randomly chosen targets, or they could choose the destination
spontaneously, while the study was running.
The traveling partner would then follow the standard protocol of remote-viewing
experiments. They’d spend 10–15 minutes at the target site at the assigned time,
recording their impressions of it, taking photos and following the checklist of
questions produced by the PEAR team. Meanwhile, back at the lab, the remote
viewer would record and draw his or her impressions of the traveler’s destination,
from half an hour to five days before the traveler arrived.
Of PEAR’s 336 formal trials involving remote viewing, the majority was set up as
PRP and were just as successful as the usual variety.1
Jahn RG, Dunne BJ. Margins of Reality. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987: 162–7
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 nu Scienc
A brief story of time e of
Lesson
The 13
Field
mber of studies that violate time and space trouble many investigators of consciousness. The type of
zero-point energy scientists are most familiar with is electromagnetic: with cause and effect, and
certain laws and limits.

However, the Princeton and
Schmidt experiments
Lessons Eleven and Twelve)
suggest
The firstthree
is a possible
vision ofscenarios.
an utterly
deterministic universe,
everything that was ever going to
happen already has. Here, people
with premonitions are simply
tapping into information that is,
The second
on some lies
level, withinavailable.
already the known
theoretical laws of the universe.
Dutch psychologist Dick Bierman
has postulated that precognition
may be possible through a well-
known quantum phenomenon
known as ‘retarded and advanced
waves’—the so-called W h e e l e r
– F e y n man absorber theory,
which says that a wave can travel
When
backward one inelectron
time tojiggles a bit,
arrive
sends
source. out radiating waves into
both the past and future. The
future wave, say, hits a future
particle, which also wiggles,
sending out its own advanced and
retarded waves. The two sets of
waves from these two electrons
cancel each other out, except in
The
the end
regionresult of a wave
of The Field from
between
first
them.traveling backward and a
wave from the second traveling
forward is an instantaneous
connection. In premonitions, it
could be that, on a quantum level,
we are sending out waves to meet
The
our own third
future. possibility is that
everything in the future already
exists as pure potential and that,
in seeing into the future or the
past, we are helping to bring it
into being, just as we do a
quantum entity with observation.
Information via subatomic waves
doesn’t exist in time or space, but
is somehow spread out and ever-
present.
The past and present are blurred
into one vast ‘here and now’, so
your brain ‘picks’ up signals and
images from the past or the
future. Our future already exists in
some nebulous state that we may
beginmakes
This to actualize
senseinifthe
wepresent.
consider
that all subatomic particles exist
(see in a state of all-potential until
observed—which would include
being thought
Systems about.
theorist Ervin Laszlo has
where proposed a physical explanation
for time-displacement. He
suggests that the Zero Point Field
of electromagnetic waves has its
own substructure. The secondary
fields caused by the motion of
subatomic particles interacting
with The Field are called ‘scalar
waves’, and are not limited by the
speed of light, but can travel far
faster. Laszlo proposes that it is
scalar waves that encode the
information of space and time into
In Laszlo’s model,
a timeless, this quantum
spaceless bottom-
rung
shorthand of interferenceField—
level of the Zero Point pat-
it
at its the mother of all fields—provides
terns.
the ultimate holographic blueprint
of the world for all time, past and
future. It is this that we tap into
when we see into the past or
future.1 Pure energy at the
quantum level has neither time
nor space, but is present as a vast
continuum of fluctuating charge.
the
We, in a sense, are time and
space. When we bring energy to
conscious awareness through the
act of perception, we create
separate objects that exist in
The
spacelatest remarkable
through a evidence
measured
suggests
continuum. By creating time non-
that quantum and
locality—the
space, we notion createthatour
quantum
own
particles, once in contact, retain
separateness.
their connection forever, no
matter how far they are separated
— occurs in time as well. Caslav
Brukner, at the University of
Vienna, and colleagues, including
Vlatko Vedral, a theoretical
physicist at Imperial College,
London, made an extraordinary
finding with
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d quantum
particles. In a observer effect
Le thought experi- occurs in time
ss ment (which as well as
on physicists
routinely
space. It could
even mean
13 engage that our
in to predict an thoughts affect
effect through our past as
mathe well as our
matics), they future. A
found that thought not

The past in the present

One of the most remarkable of the Stanford Research Institute remote-viewing
studies of the 1970s involved the gifted remote-viewer Pat Price. The study
followed the usual protocol: an electronic calculator randomly chose a location—in
this case, the Rinconada pool complex—for Price’s traveling partner, and Pat’s job
was to describe and draw the (to him unknown) location of his colleague.
After 30 minutes, Price closed his eyes and described, with near-correct
dimensions, the large pool, the smaller pool and a concrete building. In all
respects, his drawing was accurate, save one: he insisted that the site housed a
water-purification plant. His drawing included rotating devices in the pools and
For
two several years,
water tanks onSRI
theinvestigators
site. Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ assumed that Pat
had got this one wrong. There was no water-purification system there, and there
certainly weren’t any water tanks.
Then, in early 1975, Russell received an annual report of the city of Palo Alto in
celebration of its centennial, containing some of the city’s highlights over the last
century. Flicking through it, Targ was flabbergasted to read: “In 1913, a new
municipal waterworks was built on the site of the present Rinconada Park.” There
was also a photo of the site which clearly showed two watertanks. Russ
remembered Pat’s drawing and pulled it out— the tanks were exactly where Price
When Pat ‘saw’
had drawn them.the site, he saw it as it had been 50 years earlier, even though all
evidence of the plant had long since disappeared.
This study suggests that there is no such thing as a ‘timeline’. When we see
beyond our senses, we can simultaneously ‘see’ into the future or reach back into
the past. Like an electron, we are everywhere at once.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 an Scienc
Healing through The Field e of
Lesson
The 14
An ingenious trial by Gerald
Solfvin showed that our ability to
Field
‘hope for the best’ may also affect
Nearly 130 good, the healing of other beings. He
controlled
human trials have been carried injected an entire group of mice
out on healing. In the 1960s, with malaria, which is invariably
biologist Dr Bernard Grad, of fast-acting and fatal in rodents.
McGill University in Montreal, a Five mice handlers were then told
pioneer in the field, wanted to that only half the mice had been
determine whether injected and that a psychic healer
psychic
healers could transmit energy to wasthe
All attempting
handlers tocouldhealdohalf
wastheto
plants that he made ‘ill’ by mice. Neither
hope that thestatement
mice in theirwas true.
care
soaking their seeds in salty water, would recover, and that the
which retards growth. Before he psychic healer’s intervention
soaked the seeds, however, he would work. In the end, the mice
had a healer lay hands on one performed just as the handlers
container of salt water to be used thought they would: if the
for one batch of seeds. The other handlers expected them to be
container of salt water (not healed, the mice did better; if the
Grad
exposedthentohypothesized
a healer) heldthat the
Up until expected
handlers the workthem of tothebelate
ill,
reverse
remaindermightof the also
seeds.happen—Elisabeth
More of
the mice wereTargmore
(see 7
ill. box, page
negative
the seeds feelings
in the batchmight have to
exposed a
120), the most impressive studies
negative effectsalt
healer-treated on water
the growth of
in people had been carried out by
sprouted
plants. He other
than in the had abatch.
few psychiatric
physician Randolph Byrd in 1988.
patients hold containers of ordi- In his double-blind trial involving
nary water, which were then used nearly 400 patients in a coronary
to sprout seeds. One patient, a care unit, half of the patients
man being treated for psychotic (unbeknownst to them) were
depression, was noticeably more Those who’d been
being prayed for byprayed for
Christians
depressed than the others. Seeds showed
outside ofsignificantly
the hospital.less severe
watered from the container held symptoms, and required less
In later
by this experiments,
depressed man failedGrad
assistance from a ventilator, and
to
grow. 1, 2
chemically analyzed the water by fewer antibiotics and diuretics
infrared spectroscopy and
Another study
than patients notfrom
prayed for.8(Mid-
MAHI
discovered that the water treated America Heart Institute) showed
by the healer had minor shifts in that heart patients had fewer
its molecular structure, including adverse events and a shorter
decreased hydrogen bonds
hospital stay if they were prayed
between the molecules, similar to for. In this instance, the healers
what happens when water is were ordinary Christians who
exposed to magnets. A number of believed in God and the power of
Grad
other moved
scientistsonconfirmed
to mice, Grad’s
which
prayer. After a month, symptoms
had been
findings. 3 given skin wounds in the
in the prayed-for group had been
lab. After controlling for various reduced by more than 10 per cent
factors, even the effect of warm These
comparedstudies have
with a number
those of
patients
hands, he found that the skin of profound care.9regarding
implications
receiving standard
his test mice healed far more the nature of illness and healing.
quickly when healers treated They suggest that illness is a
them.4 Other studies have shown disturbance in the quantum
that amyloidosis, malaria and fluctuations of an individual.
laboratory-induced goitre can be Healing, as Fritz-Albert Popp’s
healed in laboratory animals.5, 6 work on biophoton
we tap into The Field to control our own health or even to heal others?
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d emissions
suggests, . . . You Just
Le might be a Might Get It.
San Fr a n -
ss matter of cisco:
on reprogramming
individual
HarperSanFran
cisco, 1997:
14 quantum fluc 179
tuations to 3O EK J ( H
operate more t , n We
t i d o
coherently. It
o g s l
h ) i
t . s
t

The ultimate test

One of the best studies of healing looked at whether prayer and intention could
cure the ultimate hopeless case: terminal AIDS patients living in San Francisco in
The late Elisabeth Targ, a psychiatrist, and Fred Sicher, a retired hospital
the 1980s.
administrator, selected AIDS patients with the same T-cell counts and AIDS-
defining illnesses. They then gathered an eclectic assortment of 40 healers across
America—from traditional Christian healers to a Native American shaman. The
healers were given a photo, a name and a T-cell count, and asked to rotate
patients each week so that each patient eventually received healing from 10
During the
different six months
healers. that the
All healing wasstudy
donelasted, 40 per cent of the matching controls
remotely.
died. But all 10 of those sent healing were not only still alive, but healthier, on the
basis of their own reports as well as objective medical evaluations.
Targ and Sicher repeated this study with even tighter protocols—matching for
age, degree of illness and many other variables as well as degree of illness.
Again, after six months, the treated group were healthier by every parameter
tested and far less likely to have developed new illnesses or to be hospitalized.
As for the healers, it didn’t matter what method was used so long as the healer
held an intention for the patient to heal. Calling on Spider Woman, a healing
grandmother star figure in the Native American culture, was every bit as
successful as calling on Jesus. Most of the healers claimed to have put out their
intention, then stepped back and surrendered to some other kind of healing force,
as though they were opening a door and allowing something greater to come in.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 ver Scienc
The intensity of the shared moment e of
Lesson
The 15
Field
yday observation requires a very low state of attention. You take in many sights, sounds and smells
around you in the course of your ordinary activities. However, when you do something that really
engages your mind and emotions—listening to music, watching a gripping moment of theatre,
attending a political rally or a religious service—you concentrate with every pore of your body. You
attend to it in a state of peak intensity.
 be trying to influence the machine
in any way.
When they analyzed the results,
they discovered that a large rise
in the graph corresponded exactly
with an intense, 20-minute
discussion that had captivated the
audience. Many of the 50
attendees had remarked that the
discussion was a special shared
moment. One member reported
Nelson decidedintothe
that a change trygroup’s
his FieldREG
ener-
Roger Nelson, a 56-year-old doctor gy had been almost palpable.1 and
on other events—business
of psychology who worked at academic meetings, a humor
Princeton’s PEAR laboratory, conference, concerts and
wondered whether the ability of theatrical events. He sought out
consciousness to order or influ- compelling events that kept the
ence depends upon how intent the audience riveted—when a great
observer is. And if it does, what number of people were all
would be the effect of more than engaged in the same intense
one person? He’d seen from the thought at the same time. 2, 3 A
PEAR data that bonded couples— member of the Covenant of
people who were intensely Unitarian Universalist Pagans
involved—had a more profound (CUUPS) expressed interest, so
effect on REG machines than Nelson made him a loan of a
Now,
individuals. 1 It suggested
suppose you assemble an
that two In every the
FieldREG; instance,
machine the REG
attended
entire crowd,
likeminded all focusing
people createdintently
more machine moved
six of their ritual into
pagan some sort of
gatherings
on
orderthe
in asame
random thing. Would the
system. order precisely
—including during moments
Sabbats and those of
effect be even greater? Was there peak attention:
held during the full moon. 1 special
a relationship between the size of presentations at meetings, the
the crowd or intensity of interest climaxes of humor conferences,
and the size of the effect? After the most intense moments of a
all, he thought, everyone had had pagan ritual. These effects were
moments in their lives where the large—three times what it was for
consciousness of a group event individuals at PEAR trying to affect
could almost be felt. And could a the machines on their own. During
Robert Jahn and
REG machine Brenda
pick Dunne of
up evidence the Pagan sessions, the FieldREG
were alreadyconsciousness?
a collective planning to attend The particular
veered wildly activity didn’t twice,
off course really
the International Consciousness matter.
both duringWhat seemed
full-moon 1
rituals. most
Research Laboratories in April important was the intensity of the
1993 and, on Nelson’s suggestion, group, the ability of the activity to
Jahn and Dunne kept a computer keep its audience spellbound, and
running throughout their it helped if there was some sort of
conference. What they were context that was emotionally
looking for was whether this meaningful to the attendees. At
steady shift from random the humor conference, the
movement would indicate some machine made its greatest
change in the ‘information’ deviation during an evening
environment, and be related to
keynote presentation, which was
the shared information field and
so funny that the audience gave
collective consciousness of the
the comic a standing ovation and
group. The main difference
demanded an encore. What was
between these and the ordinary
most important was that everyone
REG trials was that the group
wouldn’t was
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of focused in rapt attention, all academic meetings had no effect
Lesson
The 15
thinking the same thought. on the REG. If a group was bored
What appeared to be happening and their attention wandered,
Field was that, when attention focused then in a manner of speaking, the
the waves of individual minds on machine was bored, too. McTaggart
Lynne
something similar, a kind of group
quantum coherence occurred, 1 J Sci Explor, 1996; 10 (1): 111–41 2
which had a physical effect. The Radin D. The Conscious Universe. New
REG machine was in a sense a York: HarperEdge, 1998: 157–74 3 J Sci
sort of t h e r m o m e t e r,
Explor, 1996; 10 (1): 143–68
measuring the dynamics and
coherence of a group. Business
and
And the winner is . . .
Consciousness researcher Dean Radin wondered if there was such a thing as long-
distance coherence—the effect of lots of people in different places all thinking the
same thought. The most obvious vehicle for long-distance likemindedness is
television. Everybody watches television, particularly the popular shows. Would
they all be thinking the same thing while they watched?
To test this, Radin needed an event that would guarantee an audience on the
edge of its seat. For his first study, Radin chose the 67th American Academy
Awards in March 1995 which, with its estimated viewer size of one billion, was one
of the biggest audiences he could think of. This audience comprised people in 120
different countries, so their contribution to mass attention would be coming from
Radin
aroundused two REG machines, placed in different spots. During the broadcast,
the world.
both Radin and his assistant painstakingly noted down, minute by minute, the
high-interest and low-interest moments of the show. Any moments of peak
tension, such as the announcement of the winners for best picture, best actor or
actress, were timed and noted as ‘high-coherence’ periods.
After the show ended, he examined his data. During the highest-interest periods,
the REGs’ degree of order increased to such a level that the odds against it having
occurred by chance were 1000 to 1. The same did not occur during moments of
low intensity. Radin replicated his own experiment a year later, with similar
results. He got the same kind of results with the Summer Olympics of July 1996
and then the OJ Simpson trial.
LIVING THE FIEL
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 hus Scienc
The sacred and the profane e of
Lesson
The 16
Field
far, we’ve looked at the effect of collective intentions on random event generators (REGs), and whether
having many people think the same thoughts at the same time will cause a REG machine to move
away from randomness towards order. But does the collective memory have the same power?
 at the nature of collective memory and
resonance arose during a trip to Egypt.
Nelson decided to attend a two-week
tour of Egypt with a group of 19
colleagues, planning to visit the main
temples and sacred sites of the Ancient
Egyptians. There they would carry out a
series of informal ceremonies, such as
chanting and meditation. The trip would
give him the chance to see whether
The idea of sacred sites people engaged in meditative activities
particularly intrigued Princeton at these sites—the kind of activities, in
Engineering Anomalies Research a sense, for which the sites had been
intended—would have even more effect
(PEAR) scientist Dr Roger Nelson.
on the REGs.
Were such places sacred because
their use over the centuries had
invested them with that quality, or Nelson kept a PalmREG running in
had there been a particular his coat pocket during visits to all
characteristic of the site— the major pyramids and sites. The
configuration of trees or stones, or PalmREG was on while the group
even its very location—present meditated or chanted and when
from the outset that naturally they were simply wandering
elected it for that purpose? through the temples, and even
Ancient peoples are claimed to during moments when he was on
If there
have beenwas something
sensitive to thedifferent
earth’s his own, touring or meditating. He
about
signals,theable
placetoitself,
readhad and a type
pay also kept a careful record of the
of
attentioncollective
to special consciousness
energetic When
times athe’d returned
which varioushome and
activities
coalesced there like an energetic
configurations. compiled his data, an interesting
had occurred.
whorl, or had some sort of ener- pattern emerged. The strongest
getic resonance always existed effects on the machine were
there? And would any of this during times when the group was
Nelson
register on decided to seek out
a REG machine? engaged in a ritual such as
several sites in the US that had chanting at a sacred site. In most
been sacred to Native Americans. of the main pyramids, the effects
He walked around Devil’s Tower were six times that of the usual
monument in Wyoming, REG trials at PEAR and twice those
considered sacred by certain of ordinary
Indeed, theseFieldREG
were among
trials (see
the
tribes, with a tiny palm-sized REG Living The
largest Fieldhe’d
effects Lesson Fifteen).
seen—as large
(‘PalmREG’) in his pocket, and as with a bonded couple. But
visited Wounded Knee in South when he collated the data from
Dakota, the site of the massacre the 27 sacred sites he’d visited
of an entire Sioux tribe. Nelson while simply walking around them
surveyed the desolation, the with no more than a respectful
Later,
cemetery when he the
and looked at the data
monument to silence, the results were even
for
the the
dead. two
Heplaces,
fell intoitawas
deep beyond
quiet. more astounding. The spirit of the
doubt: his machine’s output was place itself appeared to register
definitely affected, producing a far Of course,
effects everyas bit
theasPalmREG
large as was
the
larger effect size than ordinary being carried
meditating in his
group’s. 2 pocket, his
PEAR studies (see Living The Field own expectations may have
Lesson Nine), as though there affected it—the well-known
were some lingering memory of ‘experimenter effect’. Or it could
theThe perfect opportunity
thoughts of all the to look
people have been the collective
closer 1 expectations and awe of the other
who’d lived and died here.
visitors—after all, he
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of was never at these sites At the sacred sites where chanting
Lesson
The 16
completely on his own. But other hadn’t taken place, simple group
Field controls demonstrated that the
situation was rather more compli-
presence, or perhaps even the
place itself, held a high degree of
When
cated. the group attempted resonating consciousness. The
chanting and meditation at other machine had registered an effect
sites not deemed sacred but were, even in the midst of the more
nevertheless, interesting, the mundane activities or places, so
effects on the PalmREG were And
long asnothematter how deeply
group attention had
significant, though smaller. Even engaged Nelson had been on his
been aroused.
when the members of the group own, he could not match the
seemed attuned to each other— effect size of the group. Clearly,
such as during a solar eclipse, some resonance reverberated at
attending a special astrology the sacred sites, possibly even a
session or at a sunset birthday vortex of coherent memory or
party—the machine’s effects were energetic ‘spirit of Lynne
place’. McTaggart
Both the type
also small, of place
not much and than
greater the
group’s activity during
those observed seemed to play 1 J Sci Explor, 1998; 12 (3): 425–54 2
a standard
contributing
REG trial. roles in creating a PEAR Technical Note 97002, July 1997
kind of group consciousness.

A pyramid in parallel
There was one other remarkable element of Nelson’s data collected on the Egypt
trip. During his trip to the Great Pyramid of Khufu on the Giza plateau, the
PalmREG veered off its random course with a positive trend during two group
chants inside the Queen’s Chamber and the Grand Gallery, and then with a
strongly negative trend in the King’s Chamber, where they’d carried on their
chant. A similar observation had been made at Karnak.
Nelson was amazed once the results had been plotted on a graph—both formed a
large pyramid. It was hard to keep from thinking that, on some level, the PalmREG
had been experiencing Nelson’s trip in parallel.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 ne
Sharing the dream
of the questions arising from the many studies conducted with random-event generators (REGs) and
the effect of human consciousness on them is the ownership of thought. If you can influence machines,
it rather begs the question of exactly where your thoughts lie. Where exactly is the human mind?
 Scienc
e of
Lesson
The 17
was this image, under a
foreboding sky, of some sort of Field
ancient Mexican civilization.1
By the time the dream lab closed
in 1978 through a lack of funding,
they had amassed 379 trials. The
Maimonides work was so
successful that, when analyzed by
The usual assumption in Western Jessica Utts, a University of
culture is that it is located in our California statistician and expert
brain. If this is true, how can in psychic research, the total
thoughts or intentions affect series showed an astonishing
others? Is it that the thought is accuracy rate of 84 per cent. The
‘out there’? Or is there such a The
odds ofdream laboratory
this happening also
by chance
thing as an extended mind, a attempted to study
were a million to one. 2
forecasting by
collective thought? Does what we examining people’s dreams about
Among the most
think or dream convincing
influence anyone their own futures. They devised a
studies
else? of telepathy ever novel procedure involving the
conducted are the dream studies gifted English psychic Malcolm
done at the Maimonides Medical Bessent. Bessent had honed his
Center in Brooklyn in the late special talent by studying for
1960s. Noted parapsychologist many years at the London College
pioneers Montague Ullman and Dr of Psychic Studies, under equally
Stanley Krippner carried out Bessent
gifted andwas invited to hands
experienced sleep atin
numerous experiments to see if the
ESP Maimonides dream laboratory,
and clairvoyance.
Typically,
thoughts acould dreamer would and
be sent be where he was asked to dream
asleep in a soundproof
incorporated into dreams.chamber, about what would happen to him
behind an electromagnetic shield, the following day. During the
with electrodes taped to his skull. night, he would be awakened, and
In another room, a volunteer asked to report and record his
‘sender’ would select random dreams. In one instance, Bessent
images (a painting, usually) and followed the agreed procedure for
attempt to ‘will’ this image to the reporting his dream. The next
dreamer to be incorporated into morning, another investigator,
his dream. Shortly thereafter, the who had no knowledge or contact
This workwould
dreamer achieved
be many
awakened and with Bessent or his dream, carried
staggering successes.
asked to elaborate onInhis
one case,
current out the procedure for randomly
Sol Fieldstein, a City College
dream. selecting a target among some art
doctoral student, randomly reproductions of paintings. It
selected the painting Zapatistas turned out to be Van Gogh’s
by Carlos Orozco Romero, Hospital Corridor at Saint-Remy.As
comprising a panorama of a further precaution against bias,
Mexican revolutionaries, followers the tape of Bessent’s recounting
of Emiliano Zapata, marching with As soon
of his as had
dream the been
painting was
wrapped
their shawled women under the chosen, the Maimonides
up and mailed to a transcriber staff
dark clouds of an imminent storm. went intotarget
before the highimage
gear.hadWhen
been
Sol concentrated on the image, Bessent
chosen. woke up and left the
attempting to ‘send’ it to the sleep room, he was greeted by
dreamer. Moments later, the
staff in white coats, who called
dreamer, Dr William Erwin, a
him ‘Mr Van Gogh’ and treated
psychoanalyst, was awakened.
him in a rough, perfunctory man-
The dream he was having, he
ner. As he walked along the
said, was crazy, almost like a Cecil
B. DeMille production. What he corridor, he
kept seeing
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d could hear the
sound of targets as well
Le hysterical as those he’d
ss laughter. The just seen. The
on ‘doctors’ forced
him to take a
use of dreams
to forecast
17 pill future
and events had an
‘disinfected’ equally
him with a remarkable
swab of cot- rate of
tonwool. accuracy.3
Later, the Lynne
transcript of his McTaggart
description
of his dream

Spreading round the pain

In addition to sharing thoughts during dreaming and meditative states, the
scientific evidence shows that people can empathetically feel another’s pain.
Psychologist Charles Tart, of the University of California at Davis, one of the
foremost experts into altered states of consciousness, once designed a
particularly brutal study in which he administered electrical shocks to himself to
see if he could ‘send’ his pain and have it ‘register’ with a receiver, who was
hooked up to machines that would measure heart rate, blood volume and other
What Tart found
physiological 1 his receiver was aware of his pain, but not on a
was that
changes.
conscious level. Any empathy they might have had registered physiologically
through a decreased blood volume or faster beating of the heart—but not
consciously. When questioned, the recipients had no idea when Tart was getting
the shocks. Deborah Delanoy, of the University of Edinburgh, has carried out
similar studies, and arrived at similar conclusions.2
Tart also showed that when two participants hypnotize each other, they
experience intense common hallucinations. The two also claimed to have shared
an extrasensory communication in which they knew each other’s thoughts and
feelings.3 1 Int J Parapsychol, 1963; 5: 375–86 2 Delanoy D, Sah S. Cognitive and
psychological psi responses in remote positive and neutral emo
tional states, in Bierman R. (ed), Proceedings of the American Parapsychological Association,
37th Annual Convention. University of Amsterdam, 1994 3 Radin D. The Conscious Universe:
The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomenon. New Yo r k : HarperEdge, 1997
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 ngo Scienc
Psychic spying through The Field e of
Lesson
The 18
Field
Swann was involved in the first Stanford Research Institute studies on psychic spying by remote view-
ing, sponsored by the US Central Intelligence Agency in the 1970s, and run by physicists Hal Puthoff
and Russell Targ. Swann himself proposed using geographical coordinates to provide a real test of his
powers, and to more closely resemble how the CIA envisaged using remote viewing..
 described the weather. But the
interior of one peak interested
Price. He thought he saw an
“underground storage area” which
had been well concealed, perhaps
“deliberately so”. “Looks like
former missile site . . . but area
now houses record storage area,
microfilm,
He describedfile the
cabinets,”
aluminumhe wrote.
sliding
doors, the size of the rooms and
what they contained, even the
After 50 attempts, Swann maps pinned on the wall. Price
improved and, by his 100th test, even gave details of one specific
Hal phoned Christopher Green, an office—including the names on the
analyst in the CIA’s Office of folders in the filing cabinets, and
Scientific Intelligence, urging him the names of the colonel and
to try a test for the agency. Turner
majors read the at
who sat reports anddesks.
the steel shook
Although Green was dubious, he his head. The psychics were
agreed to give them a set of map totally off beam, he said. All he’d
At Green’s request,
coordinates of a placehis
notcolleague
even he given them were the coordinates
Hank Turner produced
knew anything about. a set of of his summer cabin.2 Green went
extremely precise coordinates, away puzzled. That weekend, he
down to the minutes and seconds drove out to the site with his wife
of latitude and longitude, of a and, a few miles from the
place that only Turner knew. coordinates, saw a government
Green
At SRI, took
after Swann
the coordinates
was given andthe ‘No Trespassing’ sign on a site
called Hal. he described a burst
coordinates, What
that Swann
seemed and toPricematch
had ‘seen’
the
of images: mounds and rolling was a vast secret
psychics’ descriptions. Pentagon
hills, a river to the east, a city to underground facility in the Blue
the north. He said it seemed a Ridge Mountains of West Virginia.
strange place, “somewhat like the It was as though their psychic
lawns that one would find around antennae had picked up nothing
a military base”. He had the of note with the original
impression there were “old coordinates and so scanned the
A few days
bunkers later, Puthoff
around” received
or perhaps just area until they got on the
a
“a phone
coveredcall 1
from Pat
reservoir”. Price, a Puthoff
wavelength gathered nine remote
of something more
building contractor from Lake viewers
relevant in
to total, mostly beginners
the military.
Tahoe. Price was offering his with no track record as psychics,
services in their experiments as who performed in more than 50
he’d been using remote viewing trials. An impartial panel of judges
successfully for years, even compared the targets with tran-
catching criminals when he’d scripts of descriptions. The
Puthoff
served gave Pricecommissioner
as police the coordinates in descriptions may have contained
from the CIA.
Burbank, Three days later, Hal
Los Angeles. some inaccuracies, but they were
received a package from Price detailed and accurate enough to
containing pages of descriptions enable the judges to directly
and sketches. Price was describing As
matcha backup, Hal also
a description with asked
a targeta
the same place as Swann, but in roughlyof half
panel five the
SRI time—a
scientists
highly
not
more detail, with a precise associated with the project to
significant result.
description of the mountains, its blind-match unedited, unlabelled,
locale and proximity to roads, and typed transcripts and drawings,
a town. He even
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d 1
made by the
Le remote Schnabel J.
Remote
ss viewers, with Viewers: The

How Reagan started Star Wars

One day, a contract monitor came to the Stanford Research Institute with the
coordinates of a Soviet site of great interest to the analysts. They gave the
coordinates to Pat Price, who closed his eyes and spoke after a full minute.
“I am lying on my back on the roof of a two- or three-storey brick building,” he
said dreamily. “There’s a giant gantry crane moving back and forth over my head .
. .”1 Pat went on to sketch the building layout and paid particular attention to
what he kept describing as a ‘gantry crane’.
Several days later, Targ, Puthoff and Price discovered they’d been asked about a
suspected PNUTS—CIA code for a ‘possible nuclear underground testing site’.
Pat’s drawing closely resembled some satellite photos, even down to a cluster of
compressed-gas cylinders.
Pat’s descriptions included what was going on inside. He saw workers attempting
to assemble a massive 60-foot metal globe by welding together metal gores,
shaped like wedges of fruit.
Two years later, an Air Force report was leaked to Aviation Week magazine about
the CIA’s use of high-resolution reconnaissance satellites, which confirmed Pat’s
vision. The satellites were being used to observe the Soviets, who were
manufacturing enormous steel gores in a nearby building. “These steel segments
were parts of a large sphere estimated to be about 18 meters (57.8 feet) in
diameter,” the Aviation Week article said. “US officials believe that the spheres
are needed to capture and store energy from nuclear driven explosives or pulse
The CIAgenerators.”
power 2
made one assumption after another, which led the Reagan Administration
to develop the ‘Star Wars’ programme. Many billions of dollars later, it turned out
to be a red herring. Semipalatinsk, the site Pat had seen, was not even a military
installation. The Russians were indeed developing nuclear rockets, but for their
own manned Mars mission. All the rockets were to be used for was fuel. 1 Radin D.
The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomenon. New Yo r k :
HarperEdge, 1997: 25–6 2
Aviation Week, 2 May, 1977
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 he Scienc
The knowingness of plants e of
Lesson
The 19
Field
so-called ‘Backster eff e c t ’ launched Hal Puthoff on the work that would lead to the US Central
Intelligence A g e n c y ’s psychic-spying programme. In 1972, the year before he’d begun working on
his zero-point field theories, Puthoff was interested in the possibility of interconnection between living
things. He’d been dabbling in tachyons—particles that travel faster than the speed of light—and kicking
around the idea that, if electrons had non-local e ffects, this might mean something extraordinary on a
large scale, particularly in living things—a means of acquiring or receiving information instantaneously.
 The implications of a vast
ecosystem of non-local awareness
among all living things is perhaps
the most profound scientific
proposition of all. It portrays a
universe not unlike the imaginings
of G e o rge Lucas in his Star Wa r
s e p i c , where all deaths and
intentions are registered in The
U n d o u in
Force—or, b tthis
e d case,
l y, Backster’s
The Zero
extraordinary
Point Field. body of work needs
more independent confirmation.
However, in fact, a number of
prestigious organizations has
reproduced his experiments and
found the same results. In 1983,
It was then that he first sent a Colonel John A l e x a n d e r, then
proposal for a study to Cleve Chief of A d v a n c e d Human
Backster, the New York polygraph Technology at the US A r m y
expert who’d been carrying out Intelligence and Security
what were to become his famous Command, arranged for several of
studies to see if plants could his colleagues to visit Backster’s
register ‘emotion’—in the form of lab. He then went on to set up
electrical signaling—on standard identical equipment and
lie-detector equipment the same eventually successfully replicated
B
waya cthat
k s t humans
e r’s findings
do insuggested
response the human-cell
that animals and plants had the
to stress. biocommunications experiments
ability to engage in some sort of involving distances of up to 12
instantaneous communication, miles. Other confirmatory studies
even when separated by miles or have also been carried out by
shielded by a variety of means. Professor V.N. Pushkin and
His studies also showed that Nevertheless, this type
Alexander P. Dubrov, of work
a doctor of
plants appear to register strong presents
botanical extraordinary
science with difficulties
a PhD in
human intention—in effect, when
plant attempting
physiology, toand isolate the
adjunct
‘reading’ a human’s thoughts— experimental
faculty membereffects. For one
at the California
and also seem to respond to the thing, the human
Institute intention Science
for Human used in
Whether the subject
death or impending harmwasto eggs,
other the
(CIHS). 2
study must be genuine. As
yoghurt or other bacteria, or
living things, including bacteria. 1
even Backster says: “If you merely
human blood cells, in each case, a pretended, you would not cause a
mysterious communication took reaction. The plants seemed to
place between the living cells of There
know when is also the mean
you didn’t problemit.” of
different species. Puthoff sent isolating the plant’s sphere of
Backster a proposal for a modest interest. At the time of his early
experiment to test his tachyon plant experiments, Backster’s
hypothesis, and it was sitting on office was housed in Times Square
Backster’s desk when he was in New York, the hub of constant
visited by Ingo Swann, the gifted daytime activity in and out of his
psychic. Swann contacted Puthoff office. He often had to wait until
and the two devised a series of the building emptied— after 6pm
remote viewing-type studies that —before doing his experiments.
would be noticed and amplified by During the day, the plants would
the CIA (see Living The Field, register all sorts of human
Lesson Eighteen). activities, he says, but
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of in the evening, the plants showed who populate them. However, a
Lesson
The 19
‘stable readings’ until aroused by plant would not react to people or
Another interesting effect was the lifeforms outside of this ‘contained
Field something.
plants’ sphere of influence. They space’, even if it were close by.
registered his activities 75 feet Lynne McTaggart
away, yet not those of people on
the street the same distance 1 Int J Parapsychol, 1967; X: 141
below. He realized that plants 2 Dubrov AP, Pushkin VN. Pa r a p
appear to develop a territoriality s y c h o l ogy and Contemporary
like animals do, and their
Science. New York, London: Consultants
receptivity only extends to the
Bureau, 1 9 8 2
spaces they have staked out as
3 Ardrey R. The Territorial
‘belonging’ to them.3 In Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the
Backster’s experience, a plant Animal Origins of Property and Nations.
brought to a new space will Atheneum, 1 9 6 6
become attuned to the activities
of the lifeforms in those spaces,
including other interconnecting
rooms in offices or living spaces
and the humans
The experimenter effect
One of the main problems in conducting biocommunications research is the
possibility of ‘experimenter effect’. Since plants react to human thoughts, they
will also react to the experimenter’s intention that the experiment work.
Furthermore, in Backster’s experience, once a plant reacts to a given intention, it
stops reacting to it—thus confounding any attempts to repeat the experiment.
“Unfortunately, the requirements allowing for the accumulation of good data
produced by a repetition of the same event are in direct conflict with the
observations which suggest that spontaneous events are required to stimulate
reactions.” Backster’s solution has been to create an automated experiment to
remove any conflicting or experimenter human intention from confusing the
results.
He’s also had to ensure that animal experiments aren’t being carried out at the
same time, that no other lifeforms are being injured or killed during the
experiment (even bacteria in the drains!), that the plants haven’t ‘bonded’ with
the experimenter (even watering appears to do this, he says), and that the lab is
empty of other visitors, phone conversations and the like. Two major experiments
into the effect of the death of brine shrimp on neighboring plants failed because
he was unable to isolate the experimenter’s intention.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 cc Scienc
Tomorrow never comes e of
Lesson
The 20
The most challenging studies into con
sciousness are those that violate the
Field
most fundamental aspect of our
current world view: our sense of time
as an arrow with an inevitable linear
pro g re s s i o n . Leibovici's study
(see page 167) is only one of a large
body of research showing that the
information available to us doesn’t
conform to time as we know it.
ording to the evidence so far, it appears that, through the power of thought alone, we can reach back
in time to influence other living things—the spread of illness, the healing of others, our own physical
functions, and even our emotional and mental stress responses as they happened in the past.
 able to bend space–time. Theoreticians
believe that negative energy might
allow us to travel through wormholes
and at warp speed, build time machines
and even levitate.

When electrons are packed

densely together, the virtual
photon-spray density is increased
and become organized into
electromagnetic waves that flow
in two directions—so perhaps
There is also
going ‘back andthe possibility
forth’ 3
in time.that,
at the most fundamental layer of
our existence, there is no such
Pure energy
thing as as it time.
sequential exists at the
quantum level does not have time
or space, but exists as a vast
continuum of fluctuating charge.
It isn’t that we are changing what We, in a sense, are time and
happened; it’s that we are going space. When we bring energy to
back down the timeline to conscious awareness through the
influence what happened in the act of perception, we create
first place. and engineers have
Physicists separate objects that then exist in
attempted an explanation for space through a measured
time-displacement, suggesting continuum. By creating time and
that secondary fields caused by The latestwe
space, research
createtendsourto back
own
the motion of subatomic particles up this viewpoint.
separateness The results
and, indeed, our
interacting with The Field— called demonstrate
own time. that non-locality,
‘scalar’ waves—may be the also known as quantum
answer. These waves are not ‘entanglement’—the
electromagnetic and have no instantaneous influence of one
direction or spin; they are also not subatomic particle on another
limited by the speed of light, but without any known force or energ
can travel far faster. Thomas E. Caslav
y between Brukner of the University
them—occurs through
Bearden, a systems analyst and of
timeVienna,
as well asin space.
conjunction with
retired American lieutenant researchers from Imperial College
Scalar
colonelZeroandPoint
warField states have
specialist, first in London, carried out a thought
astonishing
proposed power.scalar
that One scalar-
waves experiment to examine how
powered
permitted laser
the can produce of
engineering a quantum theory links successive
single unit of energy with more
space–time. measurements
Brukner and his colleagues
of a quantum discov-
output than all the world’s power system.that the very act of
ered
We alsocombined.
plants know that 1 certain measuring the polarization of a
technologies, such as quantum photon for the second time affects
optics, can use laser pulses to the way it is polarized the first
squeeze the Zero Point Field to the time. In other words, measuring
point that quantum destructive the polarization of a photon the
interference overwhelms the usual first time is one measurement.
random fluctuations of the Field Then, if you measure a second
and sections of alternating photon and go back to measure
positive and negative energy.2 It is the first one again, you will get a
well accepted in physics that this different result (see Living the
negative energy, or exotic matter, is
Field Lesson Thirteen).
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of As the journal New Scientist ( 2 7 present, with all of it—’past’,
Lesson
The 20
March 2004) recently wrote: ‘present’ and ‘future’—open to our
changes—at any moment.
Field “Entanglement in time puts space
and time on an equal footing in Lynne McTaggart
If individual
quantum moments of time as
theory.”
well as space have a non-local 1 Sci Am (special edition updated from
connection too, then this must May 2002 issue): 77–83 2 Sci Am
change our very notions of the (special edition updated from January
laws of cause and effect, our very 2000 issue): 85–91 2 IEEE Microwave
Experiments
notions of theinvolving
way the world and Guided Wa v e Letters, 1993; 3: 824
retrocausation
works. suggest a universe
where life is one giant

Reliving the Holocaust?

So what in our past can we change? Would it be possible, in a sense, to ‘erase’
the Holocaust?
What the evidence shows is that open, or labile, systems—those most open to
change—are the most susceptible to ‘present’ or ‘future’ influence. This includes
random processes, like random event generators (REGs), but also the workings of
living things. Any one of a number of the biological processes in living organisms
requires an exquisite cascade of processes, which would be sensitive to the kind
of subtle effects observed, say, in the PEAR research.1
Another clue lies in the Schmidt experiments with audio REGs. He discovered that
it was essential that the person attempting to influence the tapes be the very first
listener. If anyone else heard the tape first and listened with focused attention,
the tape was less susceptible to influence later. Focused attention seemed to
freeze the system into final being. A few studies even suggest that observation by
any living system—human or animal—can successfully block future attempts at
time-displaced influence. This accords with the observer effect in quantum theory
—that observation by living observers fixes things into being, like set jelly. 2
It begs the thought that, had no one ever looked at Hitler, we might be able to
stop him right now. 1 Nelson RD. Technical Report, PEAR 99001. January 1999 2 J
Parapsychol, 1985; 49: 229–44
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 o Scienc
Tuned in to enlightenment e of
Lesson
The 21
Field
st of us believe that the path to enlightenment is an entirely spiritual journey, without a bio logical
component. However, study into the neurophysiology of the enlightened state shows that there are not
only certain physical characteristics common to all who claim a higher state of being, but also certain
physical means of attaining it.
 enhanced synchrony between the
two hemispheres of the brain.
Ordinarily, the two sides of the
brain process information
independently and ‘communicate’
only when strictly necessary.
However, in the altered state, or
even during sessions of ESP
(extrasensory perception), the two
The common state of all altered hemispheres work much more
states of consciousness is what After
coherently. 2 There
repeated out-of-body
are alsoexperi-
more
the US-based Monroe Institute ences, gifted American sensitive
low-frequency cortical brainwaves.
characterizes as ‘body asleep, Robert Monroe and colleagues at
mind awake’. The brain slows to his Institute began to experiment
the point where the cortex is not with using sound to produce an
aroused and the parasympathetic altered state of consciousness.
nervous system dominates, yet The result of these studies was
the mind is still aware—a state the development of Hemi-Sync, a
that isTranscendental
The often termed ‘restful
Meditation
alert- way to produce ‘binaural beats’
organization
ness’. characterizes this (see box, page 184). The Monroe
‘transcendental’, or ‘fourth’ state Institute has available a number
of consciousness— after waking, of CDs and tapes that use binaural
sleeping and dreaming—as Other
beats tostudies
produce carried out at
particular the
states
consciousness ‘unbounded’, Monroe Institute have also shown
of consciousness.
aware of itself, beyond the that binaural beats can lead to
TM subject and object.1
division of researchers have profound alterations in
demonstrated that during TM, the consciousness, depending upon
brainwaves show a more regular the speed of the frequency. For
pattern of slow frequencies—an instance, binaural beats in the
average of 8.5 Hz—which are alpha range (8–12 Hz) can lead to
closer to the extremely slow delta an increased percentage of alpha
waves typical of stage 3 and 4 waves in the brain, similar to the
Others
sleep, who
ratherhave studied
than the altered
mixed state of light dreaming or
states of of
frequencies consciousness
stage 1 sleep. have meditation, 3, 4 or slower ones in
found that a greater proportion of the theta-wave (4–8 Hz) or even
lower- f r e q u e n c y brainwaves Binaural
delta-wave beats
(1–4 in
Hz)the beta-wave
ranges, which
are produced. Likewise, range (16–24 Hz), the frequency
have reportedly aided meditation
researchers have recorded of ordinary waking 4consciousness,
and even creativity.
circulatory and metabolic changes have been used to improve
—increased central nervous concentration and general brain
activity and cerebral blood flow, The Department of Psychology at
function.
reduced or ceased carbon dioxide West Georgia College has even
production by the muscles, and a successfully experimented with
fivefold elevation of arginine binaural beats as a method of
vasopressin (a hormone thought improving
F. Holmes memory.
Atwater, the director of
to play a role in memory and the Monroe Institute, cautions that
learning) in the blood—features the effectiveness of binaural beats
consistent with the idea that, at depends upon the willingness of
Another
this key physiological
stage of change
higher the listener to relax and focus, as
during the altered
consciousness, thestate
bodyappears
is extra- well as other types of meditative
to be an
ordinarily relaxed with a practices, such as biofeedback or
heightened state of awareness.2 breath
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d
ing exercises.
Le Nevertheless, sciousness
beyond sleep,
ss the Institute is dreaming, and
on one of the first
to show that
waking, in
Gackenbach JI
21 modern (ed).
technology, as Sleep and

You’ve got the (binaural) beat

When a pair of human ears hears a sound, each ear hears the sound’s frequency
at a different phase. This is because the waves, on approaching the ears, have to
curve around the head, so each ear hears the sound at a different point of the
wave’s peak or trough.
German researcher H.W. Dove discovered the concept of ‘binaural’ beats: when a
different frequency is played in each ear via headphones or speakers, the brain
distinguishes the phase differences of each sound and integrates the two waves.
The brain senses this ‘third frequency’ as the frequency between the two being
played in each ear. As the two signals move in and out of phase, the brain
perceives an increasing and decreasing difference of phase, thus creating a
As the Monroe
‘standing wave’. Institute (www.monroeinstitute.org) has found, when these are
played continually in the ear, brainwaves are entrained to speed up or slow down,
depending on the frequency of the binaural beat.
This is largely because each hemisphere of the brain receives signals from each
ear. But when a binaural beat is produced, two separate standing waves (one in
each ear) are ‘heard’ at the same frequency and sent to each hemisphere. It is
this unique situation that helps the two brain hemispheres to become
synchronous.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 ne
Scribbling with Time’s pencil
of the most vexing problems to most physicists is the notion of time and its absolute relativity,
depending on the subjectivity of the observer. In the normal course of events, we experience time as a
flow, or arrow. But during extraordinary experiences— during a mystic revelation, while taking a mind-
altering drug, in a moment of madness, or even during a near-death experience (NDE)—humans
experience time rather differently: as an eternal moment of now or even, in the case of clairvoyants, as
a moment in the future.
 Scienc
e of
Lesson
The 22
to represent time as either a flow
or a moment, as an ordinary Field
experience or an extraordinary
state
To do of consciousness.
this, he required something
more sophisticated and three-
dimensional than a linear model.
He played around with fractal
geometry until, in the mid1990s,
he discovered a picture in a book
of what is known as a ‘pencil’ of
conics, where each different conic
section has four points in common
(see drawing below). Once he saw
this pencil, Saniga realized that he
To a person on a hallucinogenic had his model—something pliable
drug, time can even feel as Saniga
enough then resorted
to create to
a unified a
though it is flowing backward. specialized branch of
representation of time. 1
mathematics
H o w e v e r, mainstream physics called ‘algebraic projective
does not have a theory able to geometry’. Rather than delin-
embrace either our ordinary or eating each event in time as a
extraordinary perception of time. single point, he considers it more
Time to the physicist is still accurate to represent it as a
described in accordance with curved line within an infinite
Einstein’s concept of space–time, series of curves arranged in a
where time and space represent plane. These curves are called
one giant cube, and the moments ‘conic’ sections—circles, ellipses,
we experience are dots residing parabolas and hyperbolas—
somewhere inside it. There is no formed whenever a circular cone
physics equation to account for is intersected by a plane.
the ‘flow’ of time or, indeed, for Geometry, which describes the
those anomalous moments when mathematics of curves, and
time stops, speeds up, or even So, this iswhich
algebra, how Saniga’s
describesmodelthe
suddenly by
Frustrated jumps
the Einsteinian
backward view
or works. When you draw
mathematical a pencil
relationships
of time, a Slovakian
forward. Indeed, physicist
to has
most (see
betweenpicturetheon the right), taken
curves each
physicists,
come up with time
another
as model
a forward
that curve
together,represents a moment
could most accuratelyin
embraces
arrow is an both our conventional
illusion. time.
portray this new sense of time. is
A dot on one of the curves2
notion of time as an arrow as well your own perspective, your place
as the subjective time expe- in the present moment as it is to
rienced by humans undergoing you. The infinite number of conic
Metod Saniga,anomalous
extraordinary an astrophysicist
events.at sections outside of the point
the Slovak Academy of Sciences in represent the past, and the
Bratislava, studied the NDE infinite number of sections
research of Dr Raymond Moody
and others, and came up with his
ingenious mathematical model of
time. Saniga began by poring
through a batch of accounts of
people who’d described
extraordinary moments of time.
After gathering a large sample of
these data, he began to construct
a mathematical model of time
that elastic enough
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of the point lies inside of represent paper. Slot them into the pencil of
Lesson
The 22
the future. conics so that all four pencils
share the points where the lines
Field To represent an altered state of
consciousness, take a point (your intersect. Then take a piece of
place in time) and place it on top uncooked spaghetti (representing
of one of the four points in the yourself) and slot it through the
pencil where all the curves meet. entire model. If you place yourself
From that perspective, every on one conic and straight line, you
moment exists as the present, so are in a position of ‘ordinary’
To
timerepresent time standing
is experienced still,
as an eternal perception of time and space. But
says
‘now’.Saniga, you move the point if your spaghetti lands in a place
(your perspective) to one of the where more lines intersect, you
two lines which cross at the center may be at a point where you
experience time as an eternal
of the picture.
Saniga has devised a similar According to Saniga, there are 19
‘now’ or space as a giant
description of space as an infinite possible places to put your
stretched-out ‘here’.
set of lines that all pass through spaghetti—analogous to 19
one point. To represent three different possible experiences of
dimensions, he has created three time and space. Lynne McTaggart
pencils of straight lines over three
planes. At the point where all 1 Saniga M. Algebraic geometry:
three pencils intersect, you are A tool for resolving the enigma of time?,
standing at the place where all in Buccheri R et al. (eds). Studies on the
space feels like one big ‘here’. Structure of Time: From Physics to Ps y
(For a description of this model, c h o ( p a t h ) o l o g y. New York:
Now, to create
see ‘Einstein ona acid’,
complete modelin
published Kluwer Academic/ Plenum, 2000: 137–
of
Newspace–time,
Scientist, as Saniga
2003; 180 [2426]: 2
66 Bernstein P. Vital Signs: The
described
40.) in the New Scientist International Association for Near- D e a
article, draw your pencil of conics, t h S t u d i e s, 2003; XXII (2): 3–12
then draw three more pencils of
straight lines on three other
sheets of
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 ne Scienc
The holographic double-helix e of
Lesson
The 23
holistic continuum. Nucleotides
radiate certain instructions to Field
various parts of the body, and
those cells that are affected then
A possible answer has come from resonate to the same frequency
German mathematician Walter and pick upand
Schempp the signal.
Marcer provided
Schempp and British physicist impeccable calculations and
Peter Marcer, who have developed introduced a holographic model,
a mathematical model to explain but their ideas remained a
how DNA encodes shape and s e l mathematical map, as divorced
f - o rganization. Their work from the flesh and sinew of a
suggests that DNA is an oscillatinghuman body as a road map of
medium, like a radio station, lines on a grid is from the actual
which sends and receives all sorts terrain. Nevertheless, at the time
of genetic information via waves. they were working on their model,
This represents a radical new way Peter Gariaev, a molecular
According
of looking at to Schempp
the way and
biologist at Mosc o w ’s Institute of
DNA guides
the formation of any organism.1 of
Marcer, each base pairControl Sciences, Russian
nucleotides, containing the
Academy of Sciences, and his
genetic instructions A, C, G or T, colleague Georg Tertishny, a
encodes a diffraction pattern—an theoreticala laser
Through seriesphysicist,
of ingenious
gave
image of the wave containing experiments,
these theoreticalGariaev’s team
equations shape
patterns of shape at that
with hard experimental
demonstrated that chromosomes
data.
particular moment—the informa- emit radiation, or wave energy,
Think of human DNA
tion necessary “. . . asthe
to define a
that can be picked up at the fur-
stack of . . shape
organism’s . millions of CDs
at each stagewith
of
thest reaches of the organism.
information
development. on them sufficient to
They also demonstrated that DNA
generate you,” they write.2 Each appears able to transform one
base-pair bond provides a carrier In
typeone of the to
of frequency firstanother
of theto
wave for data in three dimensions, experiments,
send out information.the Russian
and takes the form of an scientists bombarded DNA
encoding–decoding process, much preparations in a test tube with a
as a magnetic resonance imaging laser beam. To their amazement,
(MRI) machine takes a picture of the DNA more or less
human tissue at one-second simultaneously converted the
In this model,
intervals genes them
and builds have upa holo-
beam into a radio frequency, or
into
graphic history
a moving image.2 of the soundwave.3 After receiving this
organism’s
development—a sort of 3-D
information, the DNA molecules
biography from the moment of began to polarize—to march in
conception. Your body as an infant step—and, like a miniature t r a n
is essentially an empty vessel, This
s d suggests
u c e that DNA is a type
r, instantaneously
into which wave information from of resonating cavity
converted these radiowaves that is into
not
your parents is passed on. As you only able to ‘read’ these
its own lower frequency to data, but
grow, your chromosomes slowly is also capable
transmit of converting this
instructions.
build up data through the 3-D information into a form that can
According
information tocarried
Marcer’s be sent out to other genes around
and stored as
mathematical
waves. mapping, the theabody.
In paper written in collaboration
chromosomes actually produce with Gariaev and others, Peter
laser-like beams containing infor- Marcer labeled this technique a
mation connecting the new type of ‘EPR spectroscopy’
chromosomes of the separate (after Einstein, Podolsky
cells of an organism into a
of the greatest mysteries of biology is how we, and every other living thing, take geometric shape.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d up and
and Rosen, the sending out
Le quantum signals, and
ss physicists who possibly the
on first described
non-locality).
means by
which the
23 Within this human body is
system, the able to read
Zero Point Field the whole.
emissions of
wave Lynne
information McTaggart
about objects
can be
recorded and
stored. It was
both a brand-
new type of CCAI J Integr
radiowave and 1 Study Artif
a unique stor Intell, 1993; 10

Radiation to raise the dead

Gariaev and his colleagues did a study with the seeds of Arabidopsis thaliana
(mouseear cress)—a small plant of the mustard family, a favorite of genome
projects—taken from Chernobyl at the time of the nuclear accident in 1987. These
seeds were certain to be dead, killed off in a wintry bath of nuclear radiation.
Having obtained some ordinary seeds of the plant, they then exposed these live
seeds to a laser beam. The same beam was then shone onto the Chernobyl seeds.
What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. Within a few days, the
Chernobyl seeds sprouted and, to all intents and purposes, were normal.
Using artificially produced DNA radiation, the Russians have dramatically
accelerated plant growth. In a study of potatoes overexposed to highly ramped-up
DNA radiation, they were able to produce a Frankenstein plant in fast forward,
with potatoes growing 1 cm/day. The radiation also dramatically altered the way
they grew—the tubers were produced not on roots, but on stalks.
Both this experiment and the more dramatic resuscitation of the dead Chernobyl
seeds used radiation as a control. Radiowaves without DNA information produced
no response in any of the seeds.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 n the last lesson, we learned how Peter Gariaev, the
Memory waves
molecular biologist at Moscow’s Institute of Control Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences, and his
colleague Georg Te r t i s h n y, a theoretical laser physicist, demonstrated that human chromosomes
emit radiation, or wave energy, to guide processes in the body. But their discovery told them some -
thing else even more fundamental about the way that the universe uses quantum information.
 Scienc
e of
Lesson
The 24
the body, is plausible because
waves, of course, are capable of Field
recording an infinite amount of
informationisinthe
Radiation 3-D.means by which
cells are in communication with
each other so that if something
goes awry, the cells receive a
quantum holographic image of
that part, and immediately set to
work to restore the body to its
original blueprint. This information
is read by the chromosome’s own
In their experiments, Russian laser radiations which, in turn,
scientists Peter Gariaev and Georg produce radio emissions to
Tertishny realized that they had DNA alsothe
regulate works
restinofa the
feedback
body asloopa
uncovered more than simply the with information
result of from outside.
this information.
key to DNA. What they had Marcer and German
discovered was a new type of mathematician Wa l t e r Schempp
memory in the universe. Their showed, via mathematical models,
work revealed a novel, static that primitive prokaryotic cells
storage/recording environment don’t simply replicate, but also co-
capable of recording the 3-D resonate with outside influences,
shape and dynamic behavior of and learn, adapt and change by
G a r i a as
objects, e vwell
’s discovery,
as a newhowever
type of picking up outside frequencies.
radio signal enclosing
unorthodox it sounds, information.
satisfies These basic cells recognize and
many unanswered questions select the chemical molecules
about DNA. The radio-station A good example
required, and of this are
block out‘super-
any
model creates the perfect bugs’. Bacteria
information they quickly
need to learn
avoid to
feedback mechanism, as DNA block
survive.antibiotics. According to
would pick up information from classical theory, this occurs
cells—say, during an injury—and through random mutations— but
beam back modifications—for that would take far too long. It’s
instance, instructions on how to more likely that a superbug learns
heal. It also allows for 3-D to reduce its intake of antibiotics
imaging, which would explain how With several
by blocking outof
thehis signal.2
colleagues,
drug’s
your cells know which cell gets Gariaev formed a company in
These messages
placed where, and how can occur
billions of Toronto— Eontech Inc—once he
simultaneously
cells know aboutoneach the other
quantum
and understood the enormous
level, without
coordinate the time lag of
their functions. commercial potential of his
cause and effect, and would findings. One day, we may be able
better account for how our bodies to repair wounds with light beams
do things instantaneously—far However, this technology
carrying genetic waveforms. could
faster than would be possible also enable the creation of
through chemical messages.1 Frankenstein foods that bear little
Even the fastest form of known resemblance to the real thing. And
communication in classical if your DNA data got into the
physics—the speed of light— wrong hands, it might be able to
The involvement
doesn’t account offorwavesthe inbody’s serve ashad
Gariaev thepublished
instrument twofor the
books
creating
ability to simultaneously with
shape, or dealing and in perfect60
and murder.
papers on ‘wave
dynamic processes
synchronization in to
react thestimuli. genomics’, but had never
organism involving many parts of presented his work outside of
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of Russia. Finally, in October 2000, how life evolved on the planet.
Lesson
The 24
he was allowed to travel, giving Rather than a system of fortunate
and progressive—but random—
Field him an opportunity to present his
work to the West. In a small wood- error, if DNA is a radar device and
paneled room, some 50 its messages are sent in waves,
mathematicians and brain this would suggest a mechanism
researchers at the Annual that develops through learning via
Symposium of the Institution of its own exquisite feedback loop
Analysts and Programmers in and by comparison, as it retains
London listened as this short, old information that is constantly
Lynne McTaggart
barrel-chested man phonetically compared with new data.
read the paper co-authored by 1 Gariaev P et al. The DNA-Wa v e
British physicist Peter Marcer. At B i o c o m p u t e r. CASYS 2000 , Liège,
the end, all but a handful of Belgium, 7 August 2000, Symposium 4:
G a r i a e v ’s
geneticists, model
who provides athe
appreciated 8
better explanation
implications of than
his the
findings, 2 CHAOS, 1998; 2: 307–15
current thinking for
clapped politely and sat in uneasy
silence, uncertain of how to react.

How our body repairs

The wave model also accounts for the body’s capacity for regeneration. Numerous
animal species have the ability to regenerate a lost limb. Experiments with
salamanders in the 1930s have shown that an entire limb could be amputated,
yet entirely regenerate as though following a blueprint.
This genetic blueprint may also account for phantom limbs, the strong sense
among amputees that a missing limb is still present. Amputees complaining of
cramps, aches or tinglings in the missing arm or leg may be experiencing true
physicality—a shadow of the limb as imprinted in The Field.1
Indeed, during Gariaev’s experiment, once he had removed DNA material from
the laser, he’d assumed the beam would return to a random pattern of photons.
Instead, he found a coherent patterning that was not exactly the DNA, but
something else—a phantom pattern of it—which persisted for a time before
disappearing. This recalls the work of George De La Warr, who developed a
camera that, when shone on DNA, would produce images of the final plant.2, 3 1
Talbot M. The Holographic Universe. HarperCollins, 1996: 25–6 2 de La Warr G. New Worlds
Beyond the Atom. London: Vincent Stuart Publishers, 1956 3 de La Warr G. Matter in the
Making. London: Vincent Stuart Publishers, 1966
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 a
A little light music
ny frontier scientists are discovering that non-locality—the telepathic ability of subatomic particles to
communicate instantaneously with each other—is present everywhere: in the light from stars, in the
Zero Point Field and even in our bodies. German physicist Fritz-Albert Popp has carried out new work
demonstrating that when one portion of our body is changed in some way, the rest of us knows all
about it.
 Scienc
e of
Lesson
The 25
Similarly, in a patient with
psoriasis affecting both arms,
Field
Popp applied a standard treatment
for psoriasis, shining a UV
(ultraviolet) lamp on both the
psoriatic portion of one arm and a
healthy portion for five minutes.
After a few minutes, Popp
measured thetaking
When photon emissionsthese
from both parts ofPopp
measurements, the arm.and his
colleagues used exacting
equipment that can count the
Some 30 years ago, while light emissions, photon by photon
investigating a cure for cancer, —and they discovered something
German physicist Fritz-Albert Popp remarkable. If the number of
stumbled upon the fact that emissions in one part of the body
human beings emit tiny packets of In his first experiment,
increases or decreases, Poppsofounddo
light, which he called ‘biophoton a large
those in change
other partsin the number
of the body. of
emissions’ (see Living The Field light emissions not only from
Lesson Two). He came to believe where he’d applied the ointment,
that living systems maintain a but also from distant parts of the
delicate equilibrium of light— too body. Furthermore, the size of the
much or too little indicates changes correlated all over the
disease. He also discovered what body: even from those places
he called ‘delayed luminescence’: where no ointment had been
when light was shone on living applied, Popp recorded the same
cells, the cells would take this In the case
increase of the
in light psoriatic as
emissions patient
from
light and, after a certain delay, and the where
the spot UV-light
thetreatment,
medicine had the
shine intensely. Popp considered emissions
been used. roughly quadrupled
Popp
this a has been studying
corrective effect; inthesethis after using the light from both
light emissions
instance, when for manysystem
a living years at is healthy and unhealthy regions of
the International
bombarded Institute
with too much light, of
it skin, regardless of whether or not
Biophysics, which has 15 groups
rejects the excess. they’d been exposed to the UV
of scientists from international lamp. An hour later, all parts of
centers
He andall around the world. have
his colleagues the body—treated and untreated,
uncovered many new findings healthy and unhealthy— had
since those early days. For reverted to identical light
instance, he’s discovered that the emissions, although the healthy
number of these emissions regions of skin showed twice the
matches on both hands and the amount of delayed luminescence
forehead, and that they seem to as the unhealthy regions. This
One
follow of weekly
Popp’s andmost monthly
recent may be because healthy skin
rhythms. 1
investigations concerns the Popp
doesn’t believes
‘need’ thethat light he
and hasso
change in light production after uncovered
‘gets rid’ a of newit,communications
whereas the
medical treatment. In one channel
psoriatic within
regionsthedidbody
havethat uses
a need
experiment, he and his colleagues light
for it as
anda someans of instantaneous,
retained it.
applied medicated ointment to a or ‘non-local’, signaling to the rest
spot on a patient’s right arm, and of the living organism. “These
then measured the light emissions signals contain valuable
from the treated area as well as a information about the health state
number of untreated parts from all of [the body] as well as of
over the body. therapeutic effects,” he says.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of P o p p ’s research takes us one chronobiology—how the
Lesson
The 25
step closer to understanding how movements of the planets affect
us. Like a watch that starts ticking
Field our body communicates with itself
and with the rest of the universe. at one point and carries on
Parts of the body tell each other thereafter, there’s also evidence
about the state of things with that we ‘lock into’ certain
these tiny messages of light. It periodicities after we’re born.
also tells us why the tools of Popp’s research offers more
modern medicine often have such evidence that we are intimately
blunderbuss effects. Even if a connected to a vast ecosystem—a
Lynne McTaggart
therapy is intended for a specific not-so-blind watchmaker.
The periodicthis
location, light emissions tie in 1
communications J Photochem Photobiol, 1997; B
with the research
channel will causewe’ve covered
it to have a 40: 1 8 7 – 9
on
global effect.

As powerful as the sun

Popp believes that such a signaling system is possible because the body’s light is
highly coherent, or organized. This means that all the frequencies of our body
begin to fuse into one giant frequency through ‘hyperbolic light oscillations’. 1
To understand coherence, physicist William Tiller, professor emeritus of Stanford
University, uses the case of a 60-watt light bulb. It does not provide much
illumination because the emitted photons destructively interfere with each other
—some waves are peaking while the others are troughing—so that most of the
But if all
bulb’s the photons
potential light isinlost.
the light bulb were to be ‘in phase’ with each other, such
that all of the waves were operating in unison, the energy density of the light bulb
would be thousands to millions of times larger than that of the sun, which emits
6000 watts per square centimeter.
This metaphor affords us a small glimpse of the vast energy potential within
human systems, once it can be harnessed for activities such as healing.
Physics Lett A, 2002; 293: 93
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 cien Scienc
Peering into The Field e of
Lesson
The 26
places at once without disturbing
Field
it or collapsing it down to the one-
dimensional reality we are used
to.
A h a r o n o v, with colleagues
such as Benni Reznick, has
devised a particle detector that
makes use of the principle of
uncertainty—that you can never
One of the most frustrating know exactly where a particle is
problems with the quantum world and where it’s going at the same
to most scientists is the fact that time. The particle detector takes
it cannot be observed as it really such a ‘weak’ s i d e w a y s
exists—in its multiple state, called glance at the particle that any
‘superposition’—without its being measurement taken moves it to
disturbed. Instead of being a bil- less than the level of Heisenberg
liard ball of certainty, every uncertainty. Because it has little
quantum particle exists on its own H o wone the
effect v eexperiment,
r, becauseit these
does
as a cloud of p r o b a b i l i t y, measurements are so weak,
not appear to collapse they
superposi-
In
like this strange
a person twilight
occupying world,
every seat are
tion (seealso often224).
box, page inaccurate.
where everything
in a stadium exists
at the same in a Nevertheless, Aharonov has found
time.
gelatinous goo of all possible that, if you repeat the experiment
states, the very act of measuring enough times and average your
or observing reduces the quantum results, you can get a result that is
particle to one particular state, Scientists
more or less such as Raymond Chiao,
accurate.
The only thing
referred to asthat dissolves this
‘collapsing’ the of the University of California at B
cloud of
wave function. probability into e r k e l e y, and Aephraim
something solid and measurable Steinberg, of the University of
is living observation. Take the Toronto, believe these weak
tiniest peek at an electron, and measurements may explain quan-
you reduce it to a single state. tum ‘tunneling’—the ability of
Take the quickest measurement quantum particles to tunnel
about where it’s heading, and you through barriers at faster than the
end up with just one direction. By speed of light while using more
noticing or weighing, you create If Aharonov
energy thanisthey
right, hesupposedly
are may have
what we think of as the ‘real’ discovered capable of. how to observe a
world—some set something—but single quantum particle with
The
you observer effect suggests
also affect what you’rethat measurable e ffects on matter at
our realityand
observing is ‘participatory’,
so cannot observe that two places in the universe at the
we are utterly
it in its pure state. intrinsic to the same time. At some point, we
nature of our world. Nevertheless, may even be able to use this
our inability to objectively observe weak measurement to
the undisturbed quantum state (or scientifically demonstrate that two
‘pre-world’ of pure potential) has contradictory things can happen
severely limited our in the universe, and yet be con-
understanding of quantum physics sistent. A h a r o n o v ’s work may
Yakir
— untilA hrecently.
a r o n o v, a prestigious be one means of explaining
physicist at the Quantum Group at anomalies about time such as how
Tel Av i v U n i v e r s i t y, has it can move backward and forward
discovered a means—at least in Weak
at oncemeasurements
or even have a ‘negamay also
tiv
theory—to observe the quantum give scientists
e ’ presence the
that is ability
somehow to peer
can-
world of superposition or multiple into celledthe
out.
tists have always been limited in their understanding of the multiple nature of quantum particles
because the very act of observing them collapses them into a single state. But n o w, several scientists
claim to be able to look right into The Field without disturbing it.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 Scienc
e of quantum world sideways, as it were, to
Lesson
The 26 discover more of its A l i c e - i n
Wonderland qualities. This may be the first step
Field being able to see directly inside of The
towards
Field. Lynne McTa g g a rt

To be and not to be
Aharonov’s weak measurement is a variation of a very strange thought
experiment devised by University of Oxford’s Lucien Hardy. Through the use of a
gadget called an ‘interferometer’, an electron hits a mirror, which creates a
superposition, causing the particle to travel down two arms of the device at the
same time. The two versions of the particle are then reunited and hit another half-
silvered mirror, positioned so that, if the electron has been undisturbed during its
travels through the interferometer, it will be collected in detector ‘C’. If it has
Hardy thought itup
been disturbed, a situation
is sent where
to detector ‘D’. he’d have two such interferometers
positioned so that one arm of each would overlap. He then imagined firing a
positron (an electron’s ‘antiparticle’) in one, and an electron in the other. At one
point of their multiple journeys, they should meet in the central overlapping
region (the ‘annihilation zone’) and annihilate each other. However, according to
quantum probability, as these particles exist in multiple states, in some instances,
the two particles could meet, but fail to wipe each other out.
This stumped many physicists as an unresolvable paradox until Aharonov came
up with an interesting twist. He and some of his colleagues from the Tel Aviv
University Quantum Group imagined detectors that would measure so weakly that
they could record their presence in the annihilation zone AND in the non-
overlapping arm of the equipment at the same time. Although this would suggest
that the equipment is not recording anything accurately, Aharonov’s calculations
also record a ‘negative’ (in other words, 21) presence of the positron and electron
in the non-overlapping section of the interferometers.
In Aharonov’s view, this may mean that the quantum world is even stranger than
we thought, and that pairs of particles can have a negative presence—they can
be there, but not be there. “Every paradox in quantum theory may simply be a
manifestation of other strange behaviors of quantum objects that we have not yet
detected,” declared his colleague Sandu Popescu of the University of Bristol.
LIVING THE FIELD
 hro Scienc
The power of touch e of
Lesson
The 27
ured. The control groups showed
Field
no significant differences, whereas
the glands of the group that had
received healing weighed
considerably less than the others.
There was no doubt: the healing
had clearly slowed the
development of goitre in the
Can our positive intention have a For his second study,
Estabany-treated mice.2Grad made
physical ‘presence’ through our identical wounds the size of a US
hands and other items we touch? quarter (about one inch or 25 mm)
Researcher Bernard Grad of McGill on each animal. Wounds are a
University in Montreal attempted good yardstick for such studies as
to answer that question through a they tend to heal according to a
series of mouse experiments that precise schedule and, unlike other
also involved the Hungarian physiological mechanisms, don’t
These studiesEstabany.
healer Oszkar followed on from Once tend to again,
vary Grad
from used
personthree
to
the work of Gerald Watkins and groups: person. two control groups, one of
his wife, whose studies had shown which received heat treatment;
that, by using intention, you could and one that was to receve
revive anaesthetized mice more Up healing
to twofrom
weeks
Estabany’s
later, the
hands.
wounds
quickly.1 Aside from moral were measured, and 12 had
considerations, the central differences that were clearly
problem for Grad was to get the evident to the naked eye. Again,
mice used to handling by a careful statistical analyses
human. Grad’s solution was to confirmed, as with the goitre
build metal boxes housing 12 tiny study, an inescapable conclusion:
‘apartments’ for each mouse, Grad then repeated
the laying on of hands the thyroid
had a
covered with a wire screen, where experiment
profound effect.but, instead of using
the mice were placed for, at most, Estabany’s hands, he simply
In
an the
hourfirst
at series
regularof intervals.
studies, Grad
The placed a cloth that had been held
induced goitre (abnormal swelling
healing was to take place while by Estabany into the apartments
of
thethe
box thyroid
as heldgland)
within the
the mice of the mice to be healed.
by feeding them an iodine- Remarkably, simply the presence
inside.
deficient diet while giving them of an item held by the healer
thiouracil, which blocks iodine in Grad slowedcarried out similarof studies
the development goitre.
the body from being delivered to with plants (see Living The Field
From his previous researches, Lesson Twenty). As with his mice,
the thyroid.
Grad knew that whenever the box he first made barley seeds ‘sick’
of mice was held in a healer’s by inhibiting their growth by
hands, the heat in the box would soaking them in salt water. Grad
rise. So, he had two control had divided plants into control and
groups: one which received treated groups, and had asked
nothing when placed in their Estabany to hold the salt water
apartments; and one which would Eight intendeddays for later, the seedlings
the treated plants
experience increased heat via began between to his hands.
break through the
thermal tape, intended to surface of the soil. Once again, a
simulate the heat achieved by a clear difference was evident: the
Weeks
pair ofafter the event,
healing hands.the The third seeds that had received ‘healed’
animals
group were weresacrificed
to and their
experience salted water were clearly taller
thyroids
Estabany’s meas
‘laying on’ of hands. than the others.
ugh the ages, people have believed that saints and other holy men have healing hands that can imbue
an object with healing power. Researchers studying healing have discovered that we may be leaving
our psychic imprints—good and bad—in objects that we hold.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d
Like many
Le healers, stream of
ss Estabany often energy to his
on used materials
such as pieces
patients.3
Lynne
27 of cotton or McTaggart
paper as ‘go- 1 J Parapsychol,

Planting positive thoughts

Grad’s most intriguing study concerns the effect of a positive mental attitude on
plants. As with his other studies, he set out four groups of pots containing barley
seeds. All were saturated with 1-per-cent saline solution, but first, the vials of
water were held by one of three people, with the fourth vial serving as a control.
The first vial was handed to a healer who had a passion for plants. The healer
held the water for half an hour.
The other two vials of water were held by two patients from the hospital where
Grad worked—one was a psychotic depressive, the other was neurotically
Grad himself didn’t know who held what.
depressed.
One patient was so depressed that he didn’t even ask what was in the bottle, but
simply assumed that Grad, who wore a white coat, was just another of the many
doctors who prepared him for periodic electroshock therapy. The second, a
woman, visibly lifted when Grad told her that the bottle was part of an
experiment; a half-hour later, when he took the bottle off her, she’d been cradling
Grad’s
it like results more or less followed his expectations.
a child.
The plants whose water had been held by the psychotic depressive grew the
slowest, followed by the control plants, whose water had been held by no one; the
next-slowest were the depressed woman’s plants and, finally, the plants watered
by the green-fingered healer.
The only surprise was the depressed woman’s plants coming in second place.
Although she’d been chosen for her negative state of mind, she’d apparently
regained her joie de vivre at the thought of being involved in the experiment.
Although this was only a small study, Grad realized the astonishing implications:
your intention worked better or worse, depending upon your state of mind at the
time.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 on Scienc
Bad news comes early e of
Lesson
The 28
studies of presentiment,
participants were more likely toField
receive precognitive information
about photos that were disturbing
or discomfiting. In fact, the photos
that tended to create the greatest
anticipatory response were of
erotic material, whereas calming
Stories abound as to premonitions picturesBierman failed to elicit
has also the samethe
reanalyzed
level of pre-information.
of catastrophe— for example, all data from other studies similar to
those passengers booked on the his presentiment study, but with
Titanic who cancelled at the last different goals. One from the
minute (see Living the Field University of Greifswald in
Lesson Five). Scientists have stud- Germany examined the speed
ied precognition and with which fear arises in people
presentiment: the ability to who are afraid of spiders or
receive information about a future snakes after being shown a photo
event through no known sensory of the relevant creature. T h e s e
mechanism. But when exactly do responses were compared with
we receive information about our those elicited by calm or erotic
future? Is it minutes before? Or pictures.3 When Bierman looked
Such
hours or questions
even days intrigued
before? Dick
And to see whether the test subjects
Bier-man,
do we get alla kinds
Dutchinformation,
physicist ator had any premonition of their
universities
only the bad in both Utrecht and feared animals, once again, the
news?
Amsterdam, who has made a Bierman also
greatest anticipatory reexamined
response a
study of unconscious emotion and University of Iowa study looking
was reserved for the erotic photos, at
the decisions we make the
with skin
the conductance
frightening animalsof brain-in
unconsciously. He has carried out damaged and4healthy people who
second place.
a number of experiments to were gambling with cards and fake
In one series,
examine our he and his
ability to American
react to US dollars. In the original study,
associate,
future events before consciousness
they occur. skin conductance was measured
researcher Dr Dean Radin, wired just before the participants took a
up participants and flashed photos winning or losing card from one of
of calming or emotionally four possible decks of cards—
upsetting images. Skin which had been ‘stacked’ with
conductance tests showed that either winning or losing cards. The
the participants were uncon- goal was to determine whether the
sciously registering the participants’ bodies demonstrated
Other
appropriate emotion about four On
studies have suggested that any reanalysis of these ofdata,
learned knowledge the
the information
seconds before available
they saw can the
be Bierman
decks found that
before they the became
healthy
pictures.1
anticipated even earlier—15 participants
consciously awarebeganof it.5generating
minutes or more. In a study of anticipatory responses before
extrasensory perception (ESP), for picking cards from the ‘bad’ d e c
example, participants were able to k s , whereas the brain-damaged
guess a color more quickly even participants showed no
when the color’s name was given In a third of
premonitions study of cards.
the bad 4
Japanese
Most interesting
as long of all is Bierman’s
as 15 minutes after the symbols, he found presentiments
evidence
guess.2 that we’re more likely to mainly with those suggestive of
receive presentiments of bad Taking the three
erotic subjects. 6 studies together,
news, rather than good fortune. In Bierman and Radin discovered
the Bierman/Radin that
sciousness researchers have been fascinated by the notion that our body is given a glimpse of our
future before our mind is consciously aware of it. Some, like Dutch physicist Dick Bierman, have tried to
quantify ‘when’ we get this brief glimpse into our future.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d
violent stimuli Eur J
Le were felt Parapsychol,
1983; 5: 19–49
ss earliest in the Ps y c h o p h y
on body—even
earlier than
s i o l o g y,
1999; 36: 66–
28 erotic stimuli.7 2 76
O t gr anti 4 Fer J ( F S
ve h ea cip na e r ci
nd d o e
ra e te ator
es ) n n
ll, st y . ti c
e e,
r

Connecting with our future

Radin and Bierman did a final study using functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) to show the workings of the brain. While emotional photos were being
flashed, clear presentiment effects showed up in the visual cortex of the brain as
well as in the amygdala—the so-called emotional seat of the human brain. Such
anticipatory consciousness is not only available to us—a similar study with
earthworms found that they, too, could anticipate vibrations.
Bierman’s studies suggest a universe that is more sophisticated than a dualistic
relationship between mind and matter, where mind sits inertly in the brain and
nature sits inertly outside it. Consciousness researchers have supposed that
intention has a cause-and-effect relationship to the world through a mechanistic
signal transfer of some variety.
But, as these data show, the influence is felt before the intention is even
specified, so it cannot be the result of a signal transfer, even one faster than light.
Rather, it allows for the possibility of a correlation that was there all along, a
quantum non-local connection that was always there in some underlying
arrangement.1 All the studies Bierman has examined suggest that intention
transcends time.
Bierman D. Do PSI phenomena suggest radical dualism?, in Hameroff S, Kaszniak A, Scott A (eds).
Toward a Science of Consciousness II. MIT Press, 1998
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 i Scienc
The right-brain stuff e of
Lesson
The 29
In earlier lessons, we’ve examined
how geomagnetic flux from the sun
Field
affects psychic ability. As studies
with gifted psychics have shown,
manipulation of these fields can
help or hinder Field e f f e c t s .
chael Persinger, professor of psychology at Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada, has spent several
decades examining the subtle influence of natural electromagnetic (EM) and geomagnetic (GM) influ-
ences upon the brain. Over hundreds of studies, Persinger has looked at how psychic experiences have
a physical counterpart in the brain that is related to GM interference.
 Next, Persinger began
administering complex, modulated
magnetic fields ranging from 2000
to 5000 nT (nano-Teslas) in
counterclockwise direction in the
middle of Swann’s head. Swann’s
psychic perception was suddenly
altered. The images he’d been
receiving vanished from his head,
and were replaced by out-of-body
experiences and images of inside
his own brain. He also began to
‘see’ the skeletons of the
experimenters standing outside
At
the aexperimental
later session, Persinger
chamber. His
wanted to explore
description whether
of their his GM
positions
fields
exactlyhad the power
matched whereto interrupt
they were.
the ability of one of the greatest
But can these pulses be used to remote viewers in the world. He
enhance or block so-called bathed the photos in computer-
paranormal capacities? To answer generated, complex, magnetic-
this question, Persinger decided to field patterns that were less than
put his theories to the ultimate 20 nT. Suddenly, Ingo’s accuracy
test by enlisting the help of began to plummet. One of the
master remote viewer Ingo computers shown to be the most
Swann. Swann, who was 68 at the disruptive was sending out
time, has an international There was only
waveforms of one conclusion
varying phasesto
reputation as a gifted psychic. be
(theydrawn: remote and
were peaking viewers like
troughing
Indeed, as the first psychic used in Swann picktimes).
at different up weak signals as
the preliminary programmes of waveforms—signals that can be
psychic spying funded by the CIA easily interrupted by weak,
and begun by physicist Hal Puthoff As Persinger
variable says, fields.
magnetic “If this patterns
In
in his studies,
1972, he’dPersinger
earnedplacedthe contain the information involved
Swann in a sealed
appellation: fatherchamber, then
of remote with Mr Swann’s accuracy, then
had
viewing.an assistant select a enhanced geomagnetic activity
photograph from a magazine and would be a primary candidate to
place it in an envelope on a table mask . . . the contrast and shape
in a room six meters and three of thesestudies
Other patterns.”
have shown that,
doors away from Swann. When when the earth’s geomagnetic
Swann was notified that the activity exceeds 20 nT, people are
envelope containing a photo was less likely to have spontaneous
Persinger thenhe’d
on the table, conducted
draw fora series
three psychic experiences. This proba-
of outbound
minutes trials,
before enlisting
moving on tosome
the bly means that the signature EM
of hisphoto.
next assistants as travelers, who Persinger
frequency also
aroundbelieves
objectsthat this
is less
would go to landmark sites around information
than 20 nT. is perceived in the
Laurentian university, while older, more primitive, portion of
Swann would attempt to draw and the brain which evolved, says
describe
In their whereabouts.
both instances, Swann proved Persinger, as a survival
adept at both drawing the mechanism to make snap
pictures and the whereabouts of decisions about the meaning of
his outbound partners. threats. He discovered that the RV
activity was being felt not in
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of the neocortex, but in the more thought
Lesson
The 29
primitive ‘subcortical’ portion of s.
Persinger concluded that all things
in the world are immersed within
Field the brain—the hippocampus or
amygdala—the primitive seat of the geomagnetic field and that
emotions. This may be why each object has its own signature
remote viewers perform best with interference pattern. When
‘archetypical’ images, says subtracted from the general
Persinger. Those are the shapes background field, these
Persinger also believes
that possess meaningthat when
that res- electromagnetic units could be
remote viewers ‘see’ with the
onates deep in the unconscious. “integrated into another form of
eyes of their traveling partners, perception of space and time”. If
what they are picking up is the we are ordinarily immersed in
spatial and holistic information Lynne from
static, then broadcasts McTaggart
The
being processed by their right Field are picked up by the brain
brain, not their left-hemisphere only when the static clears.
ideas and

A bigger and better radio

From his work with Swann and others, Persinger concluded that gifted psychics
may possess differences in the microcircuitry of the right hemisphere of the brain
—the portion of the brain more associated with processing information spatially
With Swann, he discovered this to be the case. During their experiments,
and intuitively.
Persinger recorded electroencephalographic (EEG) activity over various areas of
Swann’s brain. Persinger discovered a different structural and functional
organization in the parietooccipital region of Swann’s right hemisphere—where
sensory and visual information is processed. In fact, Swann’s receiving
mechanism for intuitive information is larger than normal.
Sean Harribance, another special subject of Persinger’s who is able to pick up
memories and other information about people just by standing close to them, also
exhibited a similar special brain configuration.
Persinger believes that the organization of Swann’s brain may be allowing more
access to more information than is usual, which would account for Swann’s claim
to be ‘inundated’ with images.
Nevertheless, Swann psychic abilities improved as time when on and he received
more feedback—an indication that remote viewing is a learned skill.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 a ny neuroscientists studying the brain of
The plastic brain
experienced meditators have discovered that Tibetan monks can modify their brains to work in such a
highly ordered and rapid manner that they are able to attain a permanent state of bliss.
 Scienc
e of
Lesson
The 30
m o n k s ’ brains were firing
sustained bursts of brain activity Field
that he’d never seen before
—‘gamma bands’ of very fast
cycles of 25–70 Hz—and that
neural assemblies in distant parts
of the brain were working in
Richard Davidson, of the harmony and across vast
Laboratory for Affective distances. This type of
Neuroscience at the Waisman synchronization was believed to be
Laboratory for Brain Imaging & crucial in integrating and
Behavior at the University of distributing various neural
Wisconsin at Madison, has been processes into some sort of highly
ordered function and heightened
carrying out breakthrough Indeed, the brains of the middle-
awareness. 1 They might even cause
research into ‘affective process- aged monks had been
changes in the very structure of the
ing’—where the brain processes permanently altered. Even during
brain’s synapses.
emotion, and the resulting their resting state, the monks had
communication between the brain a high ratio of activity in the
and body. His work came to the happiness portion of their brain.
attention of the Dalai Lama, who Despite their age, their
invited Davidson to visit his home brainwaves were far more
in Dharamsala, India, in 1992. His coherent and organized than his
Holiness, something of a science robust young student controls.2
Eventually, eight of
buff himself, wished the Dalai
to understand With his equipment, Davidson was
Lama’s
more about the most seasoned
inner workings of able to pinpoint intense activity in
practitioners
Tibetan monksoftrained Nyingmapa and
in intensive the left prefrontal cortex, just
Kagyupa
meditation. meditation were flown to Meditation
behind the alsoleft appeared to be
forehead—often
Davidson’s lab in Wisconsin. dose-dependent.
considered the sector Monks
of thewho’d
brain
During the studies, Davidson been at meditation
that registers happiness. the longest
attached more than 250 sensors had the highest levels of gamma
to the scalps of the monks, and activity. These induced changes
wired them up to an elec- More recently,
were permanent. Harvard
troencephalograph, which psychologist Sara Lazar has used
measures neuronal output during magnetic resonance imaging
mental activity and provides an (MRI) to map out exactly what
instant readout of the electrical brain regions are active during
activity of the brain. He then simple forms of meditation. Like
asked them to meditate on Davidson, she found increased
compassion, the unrestricted signals in some areas of the brain
readiness to help all living beings as time went on. It suggested to
that lies at the heart of Buddha’s her that the neural activity during
teaching: Davidson chose this meditation was a dynamic process
He
statealsobecause
set up aitset of controls—
would remove that evolved as you practiced it.
undergraduates
any attention interested
on particularin These jibed with the personal
meditation but who’d
objects, memories or objectives never reports of meditators who claimed
practiced it, and trained
and concentrate insteadthemon fora Until recently,in scientists
that changes have
their subjective
a single week.
particular, They were
transformative also
state of maintained that throughout
states continued the brain the is
fitted
being. out with EEG sensors and nothing
duration ofmore
their than 3
a complex
meditation.
told to meditate on compassion computer that develops its
Davidson
while they were soon discovered
being that
monitored. hardwiring in youth and,
the thereafter, is more or less fixed
permanently. However,
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of new evidence like Davidson’s trical circuitry, and not the other
Lesson
The 30
shows that the brain is an elastic way around.
Lynne McTaggart
Field organ
The
that
brain isn’t
throughout
revises itself
life.just a piece of meat 1 Neuron, 1999; 24: 49–65
and wiring, but an elastic 2 Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 2004;
receiving mechanism. It is 101 (46): 16369–73
consciousness and mental training 3 NeuroReport, 2000; 11: 1581–5
that forms the brain and its elec

Human heaters
The study of monks and meditation began with Herbert Benson, the famous
cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, now president of the Mind/Body Medical
Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Benson coined the
term ‘relaxation response’ after discovering the profoundly relaxing and beneficial
effects of meditation on the body: your metabolism and breathing, heart rate and
In 1988,
blood Bensonalland
pressure team1traveled to remote monasteries in the Himalayas, in
hisdown.
slow
northern India, where a number of Tibetan monks live in exile, and wired them up
to record their heart and breathing rates, and blood pressure. He also observed
the seemingly impossible in mind–body influence: using Tum-Mo meditation, the
monks raised the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 degrees.
They also could raise their metabolism—oxygen consumption—by 61 per cent and
It was itthe
lower bylargest cent.2, 3
64 per change in resting metabolism ever reported; during sleep,
metabolism only drops by 10–15 per cent, and even experienced meditators can
only decrease it by, at best, 17 per cent.
Benson went on to do extraordinary studies with monks in Normandy. In the drafty
40˚F (4.4˚C) room in the monastery and only wearing flimsy garments, the monks
were covered in sheets soaked in cold (49˚F; 9.4˚C) water. Within minutes, steam
began to rise from the sheets and, within an hour, the monks were able to dry the
sheets— solely by the force of their will alone. 1 Ps y c h i a t r y, 1974; 37: 37–46 2
Nature, 1982; 295: 234–6 3 Nature, 1982; 298: 402
LIVING THE FIEL
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 pr Scienc
A snapshot of the life force e of
Lesson
The 31
Since the invention of GDV,
Korotkov has been using his
Field
technique to predict certain
clinical situations, such as the
recovery of people after surgery.
Physicist Konstantin Korotkov, who GDV is becoming a well-accepted
has published some 70 papers on diagnostic tool for many illnesses,
biology and physics, and holds including cancer and stress.2, 3
patents on a number of
He’s even been able to correctly
inventions, had long been
predict the likely success of
intrigued by the work of Armenian athletes training for the
engineer Semyon Davidovich 4
Olympics. The US has begun to
Kirlian, who discovered that an
show interest, and the National
electrical spark will photograph Korotkov and his colleagues from
Institutes of Health has assembled
itself if it passes through photo- the Research Institute of Physical
a stateof-the-art examination of
graphic emulsion. Kirlian believed Culture in St Petersburg, together
the technology thus far.
that photographing living things with the Scandinavian
placed in a pulsed
International University in Orebro,
electromagnetic field (EMF) would Sweden, have demonstrated that
capture the human ‘aura’. On pub- the biofield undergoes profound
lishing was
Kirlian his first
mostly
study
ignored
in 1964,
by the
he
changes in altered states of
Soviet
gave the scientific
idea ofmainstream Most
until
auras scientific recently, he’s been
consciousness such working as
the 1960s,
legitimacy (seewhen the 264).
box, page 1
with
Russian
meditation. 5, 6
University of Arizona
press professor of psychology Gary
discovered
bioelectrography, as it came to be Schwartz, best known for his after-
called. Kirlian photography also life experiments, the scientific
Korotkov’s contributionin was
became respectable to
studies of mediums. They have
outer-
create Kirlian photography in real
space research. discovered certain aura
time with state-of-the-art
‘signatures’ a r o u n d
instrumentation. He developed a homoeopathic preparations,7 a
technique called ‘gas-discharge
halo around inanimate objects,8
visualization’ (GDV), using 21st- But the most important revelation
and a certain glow that persists
century tools such as fiberglass was the interaction between these
even after a living thing has
optics and powerful computing, biofields. K o r o t k o v ’s work
died. 9–11
blending photography with light- offers evidence that these
intensity measurements and emissions, or wave resonances,
computed pattern-recognition have a purpose beyond the body
techniques. Korotkov’s camera His —communication
photos offerbetween
living proof,
living
was able to take pictures of the captured things. on a computer, that both
EMF around the hands, one finger living and nonliving matter in the
at a time. The resulting computed universe is not a solid stable
image offers real-time viewing of thing, but a dynamic, pulsating
Korotkov
bioenergymanaged
emanating to convince the energy field.
from people, Lynne McTaggart
Russian
plants, Ministry
liquids, of powders—and
Health of the
importance
even inanimate of objects.
his invention to 1 J Sci Appl Photogr, 1964; 6: 397–403
medicine. At present, some 300 2 Konikiewicz LW, Griff LC. B i o e
doctors, practitioners and l e c t r o g raphy: A New Method for
researchers use the technology Detecting Cancer and Body Physiology.
worldwide, and Korotkov has gone Harrisburg, PA: Leonard Associates
on to write five books about the Press, 1982
human bioenergy field.
ofessor of physics at St Petersburg State Technical University in Russia has discovered a way to capture
the total play of light emanating from living things.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d 7

Le
Pa t h o p h y s i
ss o l o g y, 1998; J Alt

Living pictures
Kirlian had two ways of taking his pictures. He could either place an object
between a sandwich of two electrodes at either end of a circuit and a
photographic plate, or make a sandwich of electrode, object, film and a
dielectrical slab (an insulating material such as glass).
He then applied a pulsed high voltage between another electrode touching the
living thing. When any conductive object (metal, or anything containing water
such as part of the human body) is placed on this plate, an electrical discharge
occurs where the gap is narrow, close to the object. The low current that results
between the two electrodes creates the corona discharge—a halo of colored light
around the object. Light from this discharge can be recorded on a photographic
film placed between the object and the electrified plate.
The electrical impulses resulting from the ionization of water molecules and even
salts on the skin or iron in the blood are responsible for creating the image. Any
changes in the aura are claimed to be evidence of disease, as diet, hormones, the
autonomic nervous system, psychological and emotional states, and even organ
function are supposedly revealed in the biofield.
LIVING THE FIEL
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 o Scienc
Asking the universe for help e of
Lesson
The 32
Field
st prayer and directed intention for recovery requires an negative intention—that the microbes or
cancer cells die so that the patient can live. But many enlightened healers find that simply putting out
an intention to restore the natural order works best.
 absorbed. This will reflect the rate
of synthesis of the cells’ DNA. In
his own practice, Laskow only
worked by establishing some sort
of emotional connectedness with
anything he sent intention to,
even cancer cells. The
experimenter, quantum
Any form of healing of an researcher Glen Rein, decided to
infectious agent or a rogue cell see which Laskow
He asked intentiontoofsend
Laskow’s
out five
was the more powerful.
implies a murderous intent. For different intentions while holding
the patient to get well, the cancer Petri dishes containing identical
cell or microbe has to die. But to numbers of cancer cells. The first
study the effects of murderous intention was that the cells return
intent on bacteria or cancer cells, to the natural order and harmony
or any other unwanted invaders, of cell growth, which would be a
presents impossible obstacles to normal cellular growth rate, rather
researchers. What if the healer’s than abnormal accelerated growth
aim is slightly off that day and the of a cancerous cell. For this,
negative intent is instead sent to For the used
Laskow next dish, he adopted
a simple a
intention,
the host? In many of the most Taoist visualization
without imagery. exercise
famous studies of negative taught by Mantak Chia called
intention, healers like Olga Worrell ‘Circulating the Microcosmic
have refused to carry out negative Orbit’, and imagined only three of
intention on bacteria, worrying For the the
cellsthird, he didinnot
remaining thetry to
Petri
that their negative intent might direct
dish. the intention in any way,
move beyond the bacteria and but simply asked for God’s will to
take aim at some of the humans For flowthe
through
fourth, hishehands.
offered uncondi-
she was attempting to heal. tional love to the cancer cells,
Parapsychologists have had to which involved just meditating on
content themselves with working the state without any direction at
But what,
on the at the
most end of
basic of lifeforms—
the day, is all.
For the final group, he imagined
the strongest type
Paramecium, mouldof intention?
and fungus, In them dematerializing—either into
many
seeds studies, the research
and sometimes shows
cells. No The Light or into The Void. He
that negativewill intention
researcher agree may to tried both to see if it was more
perhaps be stronger.
intentionally Studies
kill a large of effective to release an entity
living
Qigong
thing. have shown that negative through a direction (The Light) or
intention was stronger, as have simply to give it a full range of
studies attempting to inhibit or After doing
potential focused breathing,
(The Void).
But
growifmutating
negative fungi. 1
intention is indeed which he believed balanced both
the stronger force, do you always sides of his brain, he carried out
have to be negative and several exercises to help center
murderous in intent to heal and energize himself as well as
Leonard Laskow didn’t think so.
someone? help him to achieve a loving state
Laskow was an American and resonance with the tumor
gynecologist and healer who cells while he focused
Laskow’s intentions
on them.had
participated in a study attempting extraordinarily different effects.
to inhibit the growth of cancer The most powerful of all was
cells. To measure their exact yielding to a positive higher power
growth, the researchers planned and asking the cells to return to
to measure how much radioactive the natural order, which inhibited
thymidine the cells the cells’
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of growth by 39 per cent. Yielding to Indeed, imagery combined with
Lesson
The 32
God’s will was only half as intention exerted a powerful
Field effective,
cent, as
inhibiting cells by 21 per
was the focused
effect. The effects were also
extraordinary when he treated the
visualization, which inhibited cells tissue-culture medium rather than
by 18 per cent. Non-focused the cells themselves. In this case,
thought—such as unconditional using either imagery or his
love, unconditional acceptance of These results suggest
natural-order intentionthatinhibited
certain
the way things are—had no effect intentions
the cells by 41and states
per cent. of
either way, and neither did consciousness are more effective
imagining the than others, and that your
cells
dematerializing. In the former intention needs to be highly
In a secondthe
instance, study, Laskow
thought waslimited
notspecific to work properly. The
himself
focused atto all;
focused
in the intent either
latter, it was most effective type of intention
through visualization
possibly not or through
focused enough. may be to ask that the universe
his intention to the cells return to and the natural order be restored
the natural order. With both of Lynne
and allow the greater McTaggart
intelligence
these, he achieved an identical 20 to work through you. 2
per cent inhibition of cancer- c e l l 1 Benor D. Spiritual Healing.
growth. However, when he Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, 2000
combined his natural-order 2 Rein G. Quantum Biology: Healing with
intention with imagery that only Subtle Energy. Palo Alto, CA: Quantum
three cells were left, remarkably, Biology Research Labs, 1992
he doubled his success rate—
inhibiting the cells by 40 per cent.

The healing memory of water

For his third study, Laskow wanted to see whether each one of his five states of
consciousness had a signature pattern in water. He held each of his five states of
mind while holding a vial of water, which would later be used to make up the
He discoveredmedium.
tissue-culture that water was able to store and transfer his healing information to
the culture medium and on to the cancer cells. As with the first study, the ‘natural
order’treated water had the greatest effect, with a 28 per cent rate of inhibition.
LIVING THE FIEL
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 or Scienc
Biofeedback brainstorming e of
Lesson
The 33
Field
40 years, biofeedback—the use of computerized feedback—has been employed for a variety of medical
conditions such as Raynaud’s disease. More recently, scientists have discovered that people can use it
to control their own brainwaves.or a cat, nirvana is the food bowl just around the corner. Dr Jaak
Panksepp, of Bowling Green University in Ohio, theorized that this anticipatory joy has to do with the
‘seeking’ mode of the brain (see Living the Field Lesson Thirty).1 The seeking circuits are fully engaged
when an animal is involved in high anticipation, intense interest or insatiable curiosity. It’s a state of
being fully present and engaged in life.2
 began using EEGs for brainwave
feedback. At the sound of a tone,
his participants had to guess
whether their brainwaves were
mostly alpha or not. Kamiya then
compared their answers with the
information recorded by EEG. By
the second day, his first
participant was able to guess
correctly two-thirds of the time
and, two days after that, virtually
all of the time. A second
participant
Two American discovered a meansDrs
psychologists, of
putting himself into a particular
Eugene Peniston and Paul
brainwave
Kulkosky, state
built on cue.7Sterman’s
upon
and Kamiya’s findings with what
many would say was an impos-
sible goal: reforming an alcoholic.
Forty years ago, Barry Sterman, Peniston and Kulkosky used
professor emeritus of autogenic training (see Living The
neurobiology and psychiatry at Field Lesson Nine) and
UCLA, accidentally came across biofeedback to train alcoholics to
the discovery that this damp down beta brainwaves,
anticipatory mode sent cats into a which tended to be predominant
meditative state—a state of during moments of craving and
perfect stillness, yet fully alert— dependency, and to increase the
moments before they got their lower alpha- and theta-wave
reward. Their brain settled into a Not only were
frequencies, 80 per
which centthem
helped of the
to
particular electroencephalography relax
alcoholicsandableestablish
to controlgreater
their
(EEG) rhythm of 12–15 Hz, cravings
brainwaveand stay off alcohol, but
coherence.
corresponding to alpha brain the training also appeared to
frequencies in humans. increase beta-endorphins, the
In effect, theSterman
Eventually, animalsfound
could that
control
he ‘feel-good’ chemicals in the brain.
their
could getbrainwaves. But
the cats to recreate could
this Brain feedback, combined with
humans do the
state at will, andsame? To testwhen
not simply this, work on their self-image,
he
theysettled upon a woman
were awaiting food. troubled eventually eliminated much of
by periodic epileptic seizures these alcoholics’ dysfunctional
caused by too many theta brain- Building
behavior and on transformed
this information,
them
waves. Sterman then constructed patients
into better have
people. 8, 9
been able to use
a biofeedback EEG machine that EEG biofeedback for sophisticated
would flash a red light in the control of the range and type of
presence of a theta wave and a wave frequencies emitted by their
After
greenalight
while, the patient
during an alphawas able
state. brain. It has worked especially
change her brainwave state at with trauma patients stuck in EEG
will, reducing the amount and ‘slowing’, which leads to
intensity of her epileptic fits. depression and mood swings,
Sterman spent the next 10 years Researchers have deficit
confusion, attention also been and
of his life studying epileptics and fatigue. 10
investigating the use of
Then Joethem
training Kamiya, a psychologist
to reduce their own biofeedback to help students
teaching
fits.3–6 at the University of concentrate or focus, or enhance c
Chicago, r e a t i v i t y. The goal is now less
the
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of achievement of one or another relaxed tions: Of animal brains and human feel-
Lesson
The 33 state than a kind of neural equilibrium: ings, in Manstead T, Wagner
H, eds. precision and control of a particular state Handbook of Ps y c h o p h y s i o l o g y.
Field
Chi-for a given situation. c h e s t e r, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1989:
With such preliminary successes, 5 – 2 6 consciousness investigators
have begun 3 Semin Ps y c h i a t r y, 1973; 5 (4): 507–25 to consider the
unthinkable: that you can 4 Ann Behav Med, 1986; 8: 21–5 learn to control
your mind, brainwave by 5 Biofeedback, 1997; 25 (1): 6–7, 20–1, brainwave.
23
Lynne McTaggart 6 Clin Electroencephalogr,
2000; 31 (1): 4 5 – 5 5
1 Panksepp J. The anatomy of emotions, 7 Psychol To d a y, 1968; April: 7 in
Plutchik R, ed. Biological Fo u n d a -8 Clin Exp Res, 1989; 13: 271–9 tions of
Emotions. Emotion: Theory, 9 Med Ps y c h o t h e r, 1990; 3: 37–55 Research and
Experience, Vol III. N e w 1 0 J Head Trauma Rehabil, 2001; 16 (3): York: Academic
Press, 1986: 91–124 2 6 0 – 7 4
2 Panksepp J. The neurobiology of emo-

How does biofeedback work?

A biofeedback patient gets hooked up to a variety of monitors that provide instant
information on unconscious bodily functions such as brainwaves, blood pressure,
heartbeat and your brain’s instructions to your muscles. This instant snapshot of
your body’s autonomic state helps to pinpoint the precise instructions you should
send to your body, usually to improve a medical condition.
The more orthodox medical explanation of biofeedback is that it works through
relaxation—calming the fight-or-flight responses triggered by stress. Only a few
maintain that the success of biofeedback has to do with positive intentions,
carried out during deep meditation or relaxation, that detour past the conscious
mind, with its critical thoughts and negativity, and travel straight to the limbic
Nevertheless,
system, wherethe experimental
it registers evidence
on a deep 1
level.supports such a view. Virtually all of the
bodily processes that can be measured on a machine—stomach-acid secretion,
blood circulation or even a single nerve cell controlling a muscle fiber—have
proved pliant to an individual’s control.
Biofeedback is a modern method of enhancing self-intention.
Megabrain Rep: J Mind Technol, 1995; 2 (3): 29–35
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 inst Scienc
Einstein’s other brainstorm e of
Lesson
The 34
Field
ein made the intuitive discovery that, at very cold temperatures, subatomic particles take on another
property that enables them to act like a single entity. But the quantum particles of living things also
appear to have internal coherence. The theory of relativity wasn’t Einstein’s only great intuitive leap.
He’d had another astonishing insight in 1924, after correspondence with an obscure Indian physicist.
Satyendra Nath Bose had been pondering the then new idea that light was composed of little vibrating
packets called ‘photons’. He’d worked out that, at certain points, the photons should be treated as
identical to particles. At the time, nobody believed him— nobody but Einstein, after the Indian had sent
him his calculations.
 for Astrophysics (JILA), managed
to cool a tiny batch of rubidium
atoms down to 170 billionths of a
degree above absolute zero, a
billion times colder than the fur-
thest
It hadreaches of outer
been quite space.
a feat, requiring
trapping the atoms in a web of
laser light and then magnetic
fields. At a certain point, some
2000 atoms—measuring about 20
microns, or about one-fifth the
thickness of a sheet of paper—
began behaving differently from
the cloud of atoms surrounding
them, like one smeared-out single
entity. Although the atoms were
still part
Four months
of a later,
gas, theyWolfgang
were
Ketterle, at the
behaving more Massachusetts
like the atoms of a
solid.
Institute of Technology (MIT),
Einstein liked Bose’s figures and replicated their experiment, but
used his influence to get the used a form of sodium, for which
theory published. The data also he along with Cornell and Wieman
sparked an idea: perhaps under won the Nobel Prize in Physics
certain conditions, not only pho- 2001. A few years after that,
tons, but also atoms in a gas, Ketterle and others like him were
which ordinarily vibrated Scientists believed
able to produce thethat
samea form of
effect
Einstein
anarchically, set
mighttoalsowork
behave on in the Bose–Einstein theory was
with molecules.
determining
synchrony. which conditions responsible for some of the
these might be. According to his strange properties they’d begun
calculations, at very low to observe in the subatomic world:
temperatures—just a few Kelvins superfluidity, when certain fluids
above absolute zero—something flow without losing energy or even
strange would happen. Atoms spontaneously work themselves
normally operating at d i fferent out of their containers; and
speeds would slow down to superconductivity, a similar
identical energy levels, and would property of electrons in a circuit.
both look and behave like one In superfluid or superconductor
If this atom.
giant were true, Einstein
Nothing in had
his Ketterle had or also
states, liquid discovered
electricity could
stumbled
mathematical upon nothing less than
armamentarium another amazing
theoretically flow atproperty
the same of
an
couldentirely new
tell them state of matter
apart. atoms or molecules in this state.
pace forever.
with utterly different properties All the atoms were oscillating in
from anything known in the perfect harmony. It was similar to
universe. What those properties the photons in a laser, which
Einstein
were he published
could onlyhis findings,
guess. behave like one giant photon,
and even lent his name to the oscillating in perfect rhythm. This
phenomenon, called a ‘Bose– organization is extraordinarily
Einstein condensate’, but was energy-efficient. Instead of a
never convinced that he’d been Scientists
three-metre were
beam convinced thatthe
of light, a
right. Nor were other physicists Bose–Einstein
laser emits a condensate was a
wave 300 million
until 5 June 1995, when Eric peculiar property of atoms and
times as far.
Cornell and Carl Wieman, of the molecules slowing
Joint Institute Laboratory
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of down so much that they are
Lesson
The 34
almost at rest, on exposure to
Field temperatures only a fraction
above the coldest temperatures in
But then, Fritz-Albert Popp and the
the universe.
scientists working with him had
made the astonishing discovery
that a similar property could be
seen in the weak light emanating
from organisms. This was not sup-
posed to happen in the boiling
inner world of living things. What’s
more, the biophotons measured
from plants, animals and humans
were highly coherent.
They acted like one single
frequency. This living frequency
was able to organize to one giant
coherent state, the highest form
of quantum order known in
nature. When subatomic particles
are said to be ‘coherent’, they
become highly interlinked by
bands of common electromagnetic
fields, and resonate like a
multitude of tuning forks all
attuned to the same frequency.
Lynnelike
They’d stop behaving McTaggart
anar-
chic individuals and had begun
operating like one well-rehearsed
marching band.
Organized thoughts
The idea that mind can affect matter is not so strange when you consider the
constant energy exchange that goes on between all matter and the Zero Point
Field, and also the unimaginable energy contained in so-called ‘empty’ space.
Based on Einstein’s famous equation E = mc 2, the Zero Point energy contained in
a single hydrogen atom has “almost a trillion times as much energy as in all of the
stars and all of the planets out to a radius of 20 billion light years,” says William
Tiller, engineering physicist and founder of The Institute of Noetic Sciences.
All quantum particles contain this extraordinary energy, and any shift in the Zero
Point Field to a greater degree of order will cause massive changes in the ground-
state energies of atoms and molecules and, ultimately, the matter they comprise.
Since human intention represents a higher order of energy than anything in
nature at ordinary temperatures, and since it has been shown to interact with and
order extraordinary Zero Point energy, it is not surprising that intention can
influence matter. Our ordering effect upon the Zero Point Field must ultimately be
responsible for a shift in matter, as all matter is always carrying on its energy
dance with The Field.
LIVING THE FIEL
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 ara Scienc
The thinnest of boundaries e of
Lesson
The 35
D r. Stanley Krippner, arguably one
of the world’s experts on altered
Field
states, decided to test the
‘boundaries’ of students at the
Ramtha School of Enlightenment
and discovered a gro u p with some
of the ‘thinnest’ b o u n d a r i e s
he’d ever seen.
psychologist Stanley Krippner had the opportunity of examining boundaries in an extreme situation:
with individuals studying at Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment. It was housewife J.Z. Knight’s claim that
a 20,000year-old warrior named Ramtha had once appeared to her and henceforth used her as a
channel. Ramtha, through J.Z., had gone on to set up a school of enlightenment, which was extremely
successful, but also the object of a great deal of skepticism. Tired of being labeled as a fraud, J.Z.
Knight and her students asked Krippner and a few other scientists to carry out testing on herself and
several of her students. Krippner contacted fellow psychologists Ian and Judy Wickramasekera, who
traveled with Krippner to the school’s headquarters at Ye l m , Washington. There, they set about carry-
ing out psychological testing on six of the long-time students who claimed to have developed keen
clairvoyant skills.
 times of major life changes, Krippner
believed that his model could also apply
to mediums and healers.

Krippner and the Wi c k r a m a s e

k e r a s subjected the Yelm
students to three psychological
tests, two of which measured the
capacity to enter an altered state
of consciousness, plus one other
designed to reveal the individual’s
openness to transformative
2
experiences. One test had been
shown to predict when and how
individuals entered altered states
High scores on and
of consciousness these created
tests
indicated one of two things:
psychophysiological changes eitherin
the person
their own bodies. had3 a propensity
toward insanity; or he was
extraordinarily psychic.
Wickramasekera had once noted
that, if these types of exceptional
abilities were focused on
transcendent
If the tests are goals
to beandbelieved,
ideals,
they mightstudents
Ramtha’s offer thesehadindividuals
virtually
a positive
no boundaries.
edge. Hartmann’s own
mean score, derived from 866
individuals, was 273. The Ramtha
studies had scored 343. The only
other group Krippner had seen
with boundaries this thin were
music students and those
suffering from frequent night-
Wickramasekera had developed a mares. The Yelm Ramtha students
high-risk model of threat also showed a high degree of
perception, which attempts to what psychologists call
identify people most likely to have ‘dissociation’, with abilities to u n
psychic experiences or to be d e rgo profound alterations in
susceptible to hypnosis. He found their identity or sense of self. They
that he could readily identify also scored high on absorption—
those whose sturdy and inflexible an ability to readily accept other
sense of reality blocked their own Many
aspects of of
the techniques
reality, which taught
has been by
In Wickramasekera’s
access model, in
to intuitive information. Ramtha—focusing
associated in other on a desired
studies with a
order to be able to perform outcome and excluding
susceptibility to alteredall stimuli,
states
healing or other psychic abilities, blindfolding students and having
such as hypnosis.
individuals had to be able to enter them find their way around in the
an altered state of reality and to labyrinth—reminded Krippner of a
block their sense of threat when modern shamanic journey,
they let go of their separatist designed to help in the extending
notions of self.1 Although of an i n d i v i d u a l ’s
Wickramasekera had developed the boundaries. An important
model to predict those people at high
component appeared to be the
risk of psychological problems during
ability to engage in imaginative
fantasy, which they
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Science of
Th
e
Fi
el
d
Le
ss claimed led
on them to an
untapped area
J Am Soc
Psychol Res,
35 in the brain. 1 1998; 92: 1–24
Krippner’s T
t
w
psychological ind e
2 h ivid s e t
testing did e r h
ual t
e
s
not take a
Absorption
point of view

Gateways to an altered state

Krippner’s work offers evidence that another important component of intention is
engaging in practices that develop thin boundaries and enable one to dissolve the
personal ego. The method isn’t important: praying or sweating in a sweat lodge
can work as well as meditation. Holding an intention with compassion and a sense
of unconditional love also offers a gateway into an altered state.
It recalls Kripper’s own experiences as a young man. He’d been drawn to Salvador
Dali’s painting of The Last Supper, and the surreal figures that appear and
disappear in the back of the table. He’d often used the image as a focus point for
meditation, but found that he would merge with Jesus, not simply by staring at the
image, but also by putting himself in a state of compassion or ‘Christ
Communal situations, such as during formal worship, also offer a means of tearing
consciousness’.
down the fence of the self.
LIVING THE FIEL
D
 ne Scienc
Till death do subatomic particles parte of
Lesson
The 36
Einstein called it ‘spooky’, but non-
locality is perhaps the most import
Field
a n t f e a t u re of the quantum
world and is now being discovered
in the world of the large as well.
of the strangest aspects of quantum physics is a feature called ‘non-locality’, also poetically referred to
as ‘quantum entanglement’. The founders of quantum theory discovered that once subatomic
particles, like electrons or photons, are in contact, they remain cognizant of and influenced by each
other instantaneously over any distance, forever, despite the absence of the usual things that
physicists understand as being responsible for influence, such as an exchange of force or energy. When
entangled, the actions—for instance, the magnetic orientation—of one always influences the other in
the same or very opposite direction, no matter how far they become separated. Erwin Schrödinger, one
of the original architects of quantum theory, believed that the discovery of non-locality represented no
less than quantum theory’s defining moment—its central property and premise.
 special-relativity theory—
considered by many to be the
most fundamental principle of the
universe.
Nevertheless, modern physicists
such as Alain Aspect and his
colleagues in Paris have
demonstrated decisively that the
speed of light is no longer an
absolute threshold of the speed of
Aspect’s experiment,
physical influence which
in the universe.
involved two photons fired from a
single atom, showed that the
measurement of one photon
instantaneously affected the
position of the other photon, such
thatBennett
H. it has the
oncesame
put it,‘luck’
‘opposite
or, as
IBM physicist
luck’. The twoCharles
photons continue to
communicate with each other so
that whatever happens to one is
identical to or the very opposite of
Today,
what happens even the
to the other. most
conservative physicists accept
non-locality as a strange feature
Most quantum
of subatomic reality. experiments
incorporate some test of Bell’s
inequality principle. This most
famous experiment in quantum
physics was developed by John
Bell, an Irish physicist from
It is analogous to a set of twins Belfast, who developed a practical
being separated at birth, but This
meanssimpleto test test howrequires two
quantum
retaining identical interests and a quantum particles
particles really that had once
behave.
telepathic connection forever. been in contact being separated,
Let’s say that one lives in Colorado and then measurements being
while the other lives in London. taken of the two. It is analogous to
Although they never meet again, a couple named Dorothy and Ted
both like the color blue, both take who were once together, but are
a job in engineering and both like now separated. Dorothy can
to ski. In fact, when one falls down According
choose one to ourof commonsense
two possible
and breaks his right leg at Vale, view of reality,
directions to go Dorothy’s
in, and so direction
can Ted.
his twin breaks his right leg at should be utterly independent of
precisely the same moment, even Ted’s, and certainly his choice
Albert
thoughEinstein
he is refused to accept
4000 miles away shouldn’t influence hers either.
non-locality, referring
sitting on a stool, to ita latte at
sipping At the time that Bell carried out
disparagingly
Starbucks. as spukhafte his experiment, most physicists
Fernwirkungen or ‘spooky action expected that one of the
at a distance’. This type of instan- measurements would always be
taneous connection requires larger than the other—a
information that travels faster demonstration of Bell’s
than the speed of light, he argued, ‘inequality’. However, when the
through a famous thought measurements were taken, he
experiment that would violate his discovered that this inequality had
own been ‘violated’ in
LIVING THE FIEL
D
Scienc
e of that both measurements were the tiny do not apply to the large.
Lesson
The 36
same. Some invisible wire Since the development of
appeared to be connecting these quantum theory, physicists have
Field quantum particles across space to consoled themselves regarding
All physicists
make them since
follow each other. Bell non-locality by arguing that this
understand that a violation of strange, counterintuitive property
Bell’s inequality principle means of the subatomic world, which
that two of the basic assumptions violates all logic and
science has made about our world commonsense,
At the level does of not apply and
atoms to
are wrong: that the world out anything bigger than a subatomic
molecules, which in the world of
there consists of things that are particle.
physics is considered
isolated and self-contained; and ‘macroscopic’, or large, the
that the properties of one particle, universe starts behaving itself
Nevertheless,
like Dorothy, theareprevailing
entirely inde- again by following the predictable,
wisdom
pendentcontinues
of anotherto maintain
particle, that
like Lynne McTaggart
measurable, Newtonian laws of
the
Ted.laws of the physics.

Bigger connections
For some 50 years, physicists have accepted, as though it makes perfect sense,
that an electron behaving one way is subatomically somehow transmuted into
‘classical’ (that is, Newtonian) behavior once it realizes it is part of a larger whole.
Nevertheless, several recent experiments have shattered such a pat
interpretation. Researchers at the University of Chicago have demonstrated that
‘macroscopic’ matter such as atoms also evidence non-local effects at very cold
temperatures. This invisible connection enables these atoms to override strong
interference such as the application of a strong magnetic field.
These findings suggest that a type of ‘telephone network’ is threaded through all
matter, creating instant communication, and a permanent connection over time
and space.1, 2 1 Science, 2002; 296: 2195–8 2 Nature, 2003; 435: 48–51