Thoughts Heard Round the World: The First Intention Experiments

The first scientific experiments into the power of mass intention to affect the physical world, carried out by a global laboratory of leading scientists, have produced extraordinary evidence showing that ‘group mind’ is capable of changing the physical properties of plants and speeding up their growth.

The studies, organized by Lynne McTaggart, author of the best-selling book The Intention Experiment (Free Press, 2007), and a consortium of leading physicists and other scientists involved in consciousness research, demonstrates that the intention of a group as small as 100 is powerful enough to affect the growth of seeds and seedlings more than 7000 miles away.

Arguably the largest mind-over-matter studies in history, these studies have involved thousands of people around the world sending intention to targets under strictly scientifically controlled conditions through the Intention Experiment website (www.theintentionexperiment.com) or during individual gatherings around the world.

After recording significant results with these early trials, McTaggart is presently organizing mass Intention Experiments to measure whether group intention is powerful enough to tackle some of the world’s current problems.

Working with noted Russian physicist Konstantin Korotkov, McTaggart has scheduled an Intention Experiment to attempt to purify water by changing its pH, which will have vast implications about the power of thought to clean up the world’s polluted water supply. 

She also has plans to collaborate with Deepak Chopra’s Alliance for New Humanity to create an intention experiment to lower conflict in an area of the world suffering from unusually high violence and unrest.

Lettuce pray
For her first studies McTaggart paired up with leading psychologist Dr. Gary Schwartz and a team of scientists at the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health at the University of Arizona.

McTaggart and Schwartz decided to test whether thoughts could make seeds sprout earlier and grow faster.  In each instance the Arizona scientists prepared four sets of seeds — one set of seeds, and three controls — to eliminate chance findings.  Prior to each study, the lab emailed McTaggart all four photos of seeds, each nestled in an individual seed pocket.

After asking a member of the audience to select the target randomly, McTaggart showed the audience photos of the target seeds and ask them to send an intention to the seeds to enjoy enhanced growth and greater health. 

As soon as soon as the 10-minute intention was completed, the Arizona lab, which remained blind to which seeds had been chosen, planted all four sets of seeds and took regular measurements during subsequent weeks. They were only let in on which target seeds had been chosen after all the calculations were completed.

As far away as Australia
Thus far, McTaggart has run this experiment four times, in geographically diverse settings and among audiences with differing degrees of practice in intense mental focus.

On July 7, 2007, McTaggart successfully carried out this study on the internet, inviting her readers to send intention to one of the chosen set of seeds.

She was scheduled to appear before many diverse audiences in many countries during the summer of 2007, which afforded her numerous opportunities to test this experiment in a variety of settings.

Throughout the summer of 2007, the study was also run before audiences in Sydney, Australia, Rhinebeck, New York, and Hilton, Head, North Carolina, who were instructed, in each instance, to direct their thoughts to target seeds in the Tucson, Arizona lab.

After analyzing the data from all four trials, Dr. Schwartz discovered that in each of the experiments, the germinated intention seedlings sprouted significantly earlier and grew significantly longer than the control seedlings.

The largest effect of all occurred with the final study, which was conducted among a group of experienced healers. In this case, the seeds sent intention grew nearly twice as large as the controls.

These results present intriguing possibilities about the power of our thoughts to change physical reality.  They suggest that group intention can have an effect, no matter what the size or location of the group or distance from its target. Even a tiny group of 100 in a room in upstate New York had a profound effect on the seeds, which were at least 3000 miles away— as did a group scattered around the globe.

How the tests began
In earlier studies McTaggart also enlisted Schwartz to test whether group thoughts can alter a basic physical property of geranium leaves:  the tiny light — called biophoton emissions —emitted from all living things.

The little leaf that glowed
The first experiment was carried out using the attendees of a conference held by McTaggart’s publishing company in London on March 11, 2007.  The 400 delegates were asked to send intention to increase the light emissions of a geranium leaf at the University of Arizona — to make the leaf ‘glow and glow’. 

After randomly choosing the target leaf, the audience sent intention to the leaf for 10 minutes. As soon as the intention period ended, the leaves were placed in the CCD biophoton imaging system and photographed for two hours.

 “The results of the glowing intention were so strong that they could readily be seen in the digital biophoton images,” said Dr. Schwartz, to whom the target was revealed again only after he’d analyzed figures from both leaves.  “In addition, the increased biophoton effect was highly statistically significant.”

Indeed, the CCD photos show a clear distinction between the target leaf, which is glowing far brighter than the control.  Schwartz has submitted papers about both sets of studies to scientific journals for publication.  McTaggart has also successfully ran this experiment on the internet and before an audience in Los Angeles. 

Cleaning up the water – by the power of thought
McTaggart’s latest experiment on November 30 will test whether group thoughts can change the pH and structure of polluted water. For this study, she has enlisted Korotkov, professor of physics at St. Petersburg State Technical University in Russia, an expert on the light emissions of living things, whose equipment is regularly used by the Russian government to diagnose illness and test the fitness of Olympic athletes.

McTaggart’s violence study, in collaboration with the Alliance for New Humanity, is scheduled for the early part of 2008.

Lowering global warming
McTaggart’s ‘global laboratory’ is also moving on to a ‘mini-Gaia’.  The scientific team is working on constructing a little terrarium and artificially raising the temperature to examine whether intention can lower it. 

“If we find we have a significant effect, the implications — that our collective thoughts could tackle global warming — will be extraordinary,” she says.

McTaggart’s scientific team numbers among some of the leading investigators into consciousness research. Besides Drs. Schwartz and Korotkov, they include German physicist Fritz-Albert Popp of the International Institute of Biophysics, senior scientist Dean Radin and vice president Marilyn Schlitz of the Institute for Noetic Sciences in California, and Cambridge’s British biologist Rupert Sheldrake.

“We’ve had some good first results, but I want to stress that this is just the beginning,” says McTaggart.  “What we may have already demonstrated, though, is that one good thought can change the world.”

For more information, contact:

Pavel Mikoloski
Intention Experiment Public Relations
Email: pavel@livingthefield.com