The Power of Thought and The Field of Energy

The most powerful human ability, the ability that sets us apart from every other living creature on this planet, is without a doubt the power of our thoughts. I’m sure many of you have heard that monks sitting high in the Himalayans in freezing temperatures can keep their bodies warm with nothing more than the power of the mind. Powerful orators can inspire average people to accomplish extraordinary feats. And of course, we all know the power of our minds to create the stress that can destroy our bodies. But then thoughts can also heal our bodies, can they not? Then there are prayers which create miracles, but what is a prayer if not a special thought? How does this work? Can our thoughts actually affect physical reality? What does it mean to a businessman or woman and why should you care?

We actually change the operation of our body at a cellular level with nothing more than positive and well trained thinking. Our brain also transmits signals through time and space. You may find it shocking to know that science does have an explanation. It seems that perhaps that person who you always considered lucky or creative or inventive might just be creating their own future with the power of their mind to affect an outcome. There is no such thing as luck; there are no coincidences.

If you want to improve your life, your health, your business, you have the power and it has always rested within you. Yes, we can create a more successful life by asking, praying and thinking about it. Yes, we can attract unwanted pain, problems and disasters by thinking about it. Yes, we can improve or destroy our health by the power of thought. The old adage, be careful what you wish for, all of the sudden seems to take on a whole different level of significance.

What follows is a story about the seemingly inexplicable, universal forces which some might call mystical, others spiritual. This omnipresent energy was brought to my personal attention in the surprising form of Aunt Mary. We had not been in contact for almost a decade, and only after she passed through my mind one day did the phone ring and there she was on the other end of the line. Wow!  My first reaction was what an amazing coincidence; and then came the unbidden thought of, “… or was it?”

Another instance of such a cosmic connection took place when I was in Asia meeting the author of a book I found intriguing. Unbeknownst to me, as I was musing, “boy, my sister would love this,” halfway around the world almost to the minute my sister stopped in an airport bookstore to buy me a book she thought I would like. Care to hazard a guess as to which book? We’re not talking about a New York Times bestseller; in fact, I don’t think there are five thousand copies sold globally. It was the book from the man I just met, halfway around the world. Incidents like this give a whole new meaning to the advice given by Obi Won when he told Annikan Skywalker to be mindful of his thoughts.

After experiencing more of these “coincidences”, I actually began to pay attention. My right brain told me that this was the power of prayer and God’s work, ask and you shall receive, have faith. But my nuclear engineering left-brain wanted to know more. Consider for a moment a theory that there is some source or a shared net of common energy that connects all people and all things. It is totally pervasive and has existed for all eternity, a most ingenious creation beyond comprehension. My left brain calls it the source or universal field, while my right brain calls it God. Neither is incorrect. Some of my fellow Christians get upset when I refer to God and the source in the same breath. But from my research with those that study divinity, in the world of academia apparently there isn’t much of a distinction. In a recently published book, The Original Teachings of Jesus, Recovered, Translated and Explained, Michael Buckner states that when Jesus spoke of God, the actual word in Aramaic was Alaha, and the literal translation of this is “The One, which is actually the Spirit that connects all things in the Universe (the ‘Universe’ being the Aramaic translation of heaven)(2). So instead of God and Heaven, we have Jesus quoted as saying The One and the Universe. Could it be that even Jesus understood this energy and in fact, understood that we are all a part of one living being called by many different names?

Whichever term you prefer, this source is also what the famous Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung considered our collective consciousness. This collective consciousness and field of knowledge is not as wild as it sounds when we reflect on the fact that throughout history, humans have tried to explain the nature of “being” through such a theory. It has no religious, national or cultural boundary, a unified theory that we are all a part of some pervasive field of energy. Mr. Einstein found it so compelling, he spent the last thirty years of his life researching the unified field theory. If it exists, what is this energy field and how can the power of our thoughts affect it? It is all the rage in new physics, quantum mechanics and written about is such books as a Theory of Everything and The Field.

From a historical and cultural perspective, this energy has many names. The Chinese call it Qi, the Japanese Ki, the Indians some form of Prana. In many cultures it is an essential part of human existence, the very energy field that explains such a visceral connection between thought and outcome. This source is the force behind practices such as acupuncture, Reiki, healing hands, and the practices of native North Americans and Australian aboriginal shamans. The power of our thoughts and pure thinking creating a force that we can harness is utilized in, alluded to, or supported by Buddhists in their Noble Truths and Eightfold Path; Hindus in their universal soul, Atman; Taoists in their Eight Immortal Gods and of course in prayer by Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

Most modern Western medical practitioners still frown upon acknowledging a healing force that cannot be explained through any science we fully grasp today, but certain hospitals in the West are now openly using Reiki before operations to help prepare patients for the physical trauma…with great success I might add. Is this force a result of prayer and faith, or science and energy? I’m not sure I see a difference; to me it appears to be a convergence of both, each supporting the other although they will never admit it.

There has to be some explanation for the spiritual and mental bond between people that precipitates such extraordinary coincidences as my sister and aunt’s example. Does it only apply to people or non living objects as well? In a recent Wall Street Journal article by Sharon Begley, she reported how noted physicists recorded “spooky behavior” from crystals during experiments. It seems that somehow beams of light, which were once a single beam but fractionate after passing through a crystal, still have an eerie connection to one another across the vastest reaches of time and space. If a scientist makes a measurement on one particle, the other will "feel" it instantaneously.”  The conclusion is that non-humans, dead things such as light are also transmitting signals and sharing information between each other.  How fascinating, it appears (no pun intended) that light is the carrier signal for information. The scientists amongst us will say, “Duh”, which is a technical term for “of course silly.”

How do physicists explain this power of transmission? Well light is energy and according to Saul Perlmutter, leader of the Supernova Cosmology Project headquartered at Berkeley Lab. “The universe is made mostly of dark matter and dark energy," he says "and we don't know what either of them is."(1) Both are technical names for … energy. Some studies have reported that the vast majority of all matter, seventy, eighty perhaps ninety percent, of the energy in everything, is dark energy and dark matter (another form of energy, I know, it’s confusing). Dark is not a negative term but was derived because of the discovery emanating from black holes. In other words, as many great philosophies, faiths and beliefs have shared for all time, across all nations and cultures, science is proving that this source (energy, field, God, light) is a part of everything even what science calls dead.

So how can thoughts transmit?

We’ve shared that it doesn’t matter if were talking about science or faith, past or present Jesus or Jung; it seems that many people have always believed in one form or another that our thoughts affect reality. We argue over what we call it but science actually can explain how it happens.

Let’s come back to my sister and ask ourselves, how does this happen? Did my thoughts transmit a thought halfway around the world to a specific target (like beams of light) and did that target feel it? Before scoffing, consider for a moment four interesting scientifically proven facts.

• Fact 1 – Everything that we see, smell and touch is matter. The vast majority of matter is all the same stuff (as noted above).
• Fact 2 – All of this highly energetic matter is made up of atoms. These atoms in turn are comprised of even smaller particles called protons and electrons that swirl around the nucleus.
• Fact 3 – These subatomic little specks do not fly around the nucleus of an atom in a comforting and predictable elliptical orbit, as pictures in textbooks would have us believe. They race around in close proximity in some kind of amorphous, erratic path.
• Fact 4 – The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which describes the behavior of these wonderful specks, (say an electron for example) states that we can know the path an electron takes or we can know precisely where it is at any given moment, but we cannot know both. If we attempt to know both, our actions and thoughts will change one!

Get this straight; the act of our thinking in this level of reality affects the behavior of subatomic particles.  Now this is getting spooky! Albert Einstein once put it this way: “When we look at things, the things we look at change.” Was Einstein referring to the fact that our thoughts change the behavior of atoms at the subatomic level? He actually had no problem with that, but what really bothered him was that light beams could do it as well!

What does it mean to a businessman or woman and why should you care?

In short, our thoughts affect physical reality by transmitting information – in and through our bodies as well as others – and it influences actions and events - by sending information using this common field, which every thing has in common. Things that science calls dead, for example light beams, can transmit signals between themselves as well.  When it comes to humans, the more intensely we focus on a person, place or thing, the greater the energy and the greater the change. Imagine for a moment how an object might change if hundreds of people intently focused on changing an object with the desire to achieve a stated outcome. I believe many call that praying.

A Japanese scientist, Dr. Masaro Emoto, conducted just such an experiment. In July 1999 Dr. Emoto and 350 of his supporters successfully carried out a dramatic demonstration on the shores of Lake Biwa in Japan. Lake Biwa was polluted and dead, but shortly after these people intensely focused on a clean, pure, and pristine lake, their intent was manifested. Dr. Emoto called this effect hado, and describes it as “the intrinsic vibrational pattern at the atomic level in all matter.” The theory of hado, just as in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, postulates that since all phenomena are resonating energy, by changing the vibration we change the substance.

Similar experiments have been found to cause effects from distances of up to fifty miles away. So the theory, supported by most religions and science, is that energy in the form of thoughts can instantaneously affect particles thousands or even trillions of miles away.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is the basis of studies and theories in quantum physics and supports the physical results in Lake Biwa. The results are an outcome, a symptom, of some unknown physical law.  It is obvious that many such laws guide our environment and dictate how energy affects matter. This is the heart of New Age Physics and is ferociously being studied by dozens of research facilities and Nobel laureates all over the world. Even if we are successful and discover these universal laws of energy, there are many questions that come to mind, foremost being, who or what created these laws and for what purpose? Is there any difference between thoughts and prayers or are all thoughts prayers or all prayers thoughts? When I send a thought out into the universe, besides Aunt Mary, did all the birds, air, water, and wind receive it as well? All of this is wonderfully presented and researched by Lynne McTaggart in her two books, The Field and the Intention Experiment (6).

And now you see we are beginning to enter a dangerous realm, which is why such theories are seldom shared or if so, they are positioned with much political correctness. The foundations of iconic structures such as science, physics, religion, begin to shake. It is too frightening to consider that we might all be universally connected to each other on some intrinsic level, let alone to flora, fauna, or basic elements that can’t possibly be alive. It is incomprehensible to propose that all thought might be a manifestation of prayer…besides the atheists would hang, shoot or cane me for it. It is inconceivable that God, Allah or Brahma might some how be related, just different names. And, very concerning to the West, it is upsetting to think that billions of Asians who live in third world countries and have far less material wealth might actually have a far greater comprehension of the meaning and existence of life as they balance their environment with the science of feng shui (balancing the energy of the earth, wind, fire and water), and use acupuncture (needles that manipulate the human energy field though our energy channels called meridians) to heal the body without pills.

Forget what you just read, that our thoughts might be harnessing more than just the energy in our human body. Forget that our thoughts might be influencing the birds, air, water and soil to help us, or hurt us if we seek to harm them. Forget that the planet might be a part of a single living organism that we share with this unified field, and the planet might be rejecting us through hurricanes, tsunamis and global warming.

Just focus on the fact that the more caring, beneficial, cooperative, loving and universal your goal is, the more people that will share it, feel it and get excited about it. And that is what makes dreams and miracles come true. It works with companies, families, dreams and oh yes, even on water and flower seeds.

Remember that our thoughts direct energy and change physical reality.  The power of our thoughts and where we focus those thoughts is one of seven secret powers we can all harness.

References

(1) Science Beat, Berkeley Labs, June 1999. http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/dark-energy.html
(2)  The Original Teachings of Jesus, Recovered, Translated and Explained, by Michael Buckner, M. Div. Ph.D. © 2006
(3) The Art of War by the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu. The two precepts are the “Science of Life” (energy) and the “Science of Essence”.
(4) Nobel laureate research on how our thoughts affect physical reality, by Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg;
(5)  The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield
(6) The Field- The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe and the Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart

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