The Intention Experiment is a series of experiments that are going to test an outrageous premise: that human thoughts and intentions are an actual physical ‘something’ with the astonishing power to change our world.
A sizeable body of scientific research has shown that directed thoughts are capable of affecting everything from the simplest machines to the most complex living beings.
The Intention Experiment is going to test whether this effect gets stronger, the more people think the same thought at the same time. Our plan is to invite thousands of people from around the world to participate in what will be the largest ongoing mind-over-matter study in history.
This is not about sending intentions to make a million dollars. The targets are philanthropic: healing wounds, helping children with attention deficit or patients with Alzheimer’s, counteracting pollution and global warming.
To participate, basically all you need to do is send your good thoughts on the day of the experiment. The first one will take place on 24 March 2007 at 5:00pm GMT. However, we are looking only for committed participants, since experimental evidence suggests that those who are the most effective have trained their minds, much as athletes train their muscles.
From the experimental evidence of what worked best in the laboratory, we have created a series of exercises and recommendations for how best to ‘power up’ your intentions effectively. These are described in my book, The Intention Experiment and participants will be asked to digest its contents fully beforehand. They will only be allowed to participate if they can supply a complicated password comprising some words and ideas from the book.
To get you started, here are our recommendations for ‘powering up’ - reaching the optimum inner state for sending out an intention.
Power up
In order to ‘power up’ to peak intensity, you must first slow your brain waves down to a meditative, or ‘alpha’, state of light meditation or dreaming - when the brain emits frequencies (measured on an EEG machine) of 8-13 hertz (cycles per second).
Sit in a comfortable position. Many people like to sit upright in a hard-backed chair, with their hands placed on their knees. You may also sit on the floor cross-legged. Begin breathing slowly and rhythmically in through the nose and out through the mouth (slowly blow all the air out), so that your in-breath is the same length as your out-breath. Allow the belly to relax so that it slightly protrudes, then pull it back slowly as if you were trying to get it to touch your back. This will ensure that you are breathing through your diaphragm.
Repeat this ever 15 seconds, but ensure that you are not over-exerting or straining. Carry on for 3 minutes and then keep observing it. Work up to 5 or 10 minutes. Begin to focus your attention just on the breath. Practise this repeatedly, as it will form the basis of your meditative practices.
To enter an alpha state, the most important feature, as any Buddhist understands, is to still the mind. Of course, just thinking about nothing is often virtually impossible.
After entering the state by concentrating on the breath or focusing on a single object, most meditation schools recommend some sort of ‘anchor’, enabling you to keep your chattering mind quiet, so that you are allowed to be more receptive to intuitive information. The usual anchors include focusing on:
• the body and its functions, or the breath;
• your thoughts, as though they are floating by on a flying carpet, so that they are not ‘you’;
• a mantra, such as used in Transcendental Meditation, is usually ‘a word’ such as OM (‘The Field’ in Buddhism), AH (the universal truth of life) or HUM (the physical manfestation of the truth - the universe itself). In the early 1970s, many practitioners of TM were given the mantra AH-OM;
• numbers, through silent repetitive counting, either backwards or forwards;
• music - usually something repetitive, such as Bach or chanting;
• a single tone, such as that produced by an Australian didgeridoo;
• a drum or rattle, the repetitive sounds of which have been used by many traditional cultures to still the mind;
• prayer, as with a rosary, since the repetitive sounds still the mind.
Practise until you can comfortably focus on your ‘anchor’ for 20 minutes or more.
Extracted from The Intention Experiment, © 2007 by Lynne McTaggart (published in the UK by HarperElement) and from www.theintentionexperiment.com
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