living the field zero point perception by lynn mctaggart

LIVING THE FIELDZERO POINT PERCEPTION

LIVING THE FIELD

LIVING THE FIELD

Lesson 2 How strong is our intention? 5Lesson 3 Are there gremlins in the machine? 7Lesson 4 The universe in a single moment 11Lesson 5 When the dream becomes a nightmare 13Lesson 6 Dreaming the shape of things to come 15Lesson 7 Thoughts that move mountains 17Lesson 8 Cooking with the best intentions 19

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Contents

LIVING THE FIELDZero PointPerception


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LIVING THE FIELD

Agrowing body of scientific datademonstrates that our humanintention—our emotional, mental

and spiritual wishing—is an extraordinar-ily potent force that can affect living andnon-living systems in nature.

But how strong is this intention? Andwhat processes can it affect? And can wemeasure it in any way?

William A. Tiller, professor emeritusof physics at Stanford University, wishedto find out. Tiller, who holds four patents,and has written four books and more than300 papers, has been increasingly drawnto what he terms ‘psychoenerg e t i c s ’ .Over the years, he has conducted a num-ber of extraordinary studies of directedhuman intention offering solid proof ofphenomena that utterly shatter the con-ventional model of nature.1

The first study, carried out in the1970s, concerned a man with such astrong energy field that whenever he tooka photograph while experiencing certainfeelings in his seventh cervical and fourththoracic vertebrae, a weird anomalousvision would appear in the photo.

To carry out the experiment, Tilleremployed two cameras, both mounted onthe same tripod and employing the samesingle-shutter release with the same colorfilm, both of which would be developedby its manufacturer. Tiller’s subject wasnever allowed to touch the film, but oneof the cameras was ‘sensitized’ by beingkept close to his body for several days.

At the time he was taking the photo-graph, Tiller’s subject would hold in hismind an intention to “reveal God’s uni-verse”.

In many of the photos taken with the‘sensitized’ camera, the images of peoplein the picture appeared partially transpar-ent or translucent. The same people takenwith the unsensitized camera appearednormal. Even more extraordinary, thesensitized camera was able to take pho-tographs of the outside world with its lenscap still on.

Tiller has several interpretations of

this phenomenon. “Some radiations existin nature that can travel through materialsthat are opaque to visible light,” he said.“Because of some unknown quality inher-ent in the subject’s energy field, theseradiations can be detected by the film inthe sensitized camera.”

He also demonstrated that it takes acertain amount of time for the cameraexposed to this energy field to becomesensitized, but that this special sensitiza-tion will ‘leak away’ in about an hourunless continuously exposed to the sub-ject’s special energy field.

Tiller’s next experiment used a devicethat produced a high fidelity, high–volt-age source of gas discharge that couldcount the pulse of tiny avalanches of elec-trons passing through the gas. The pulsecounter had been set to run at a count ofzero for a number of hours, but waspoised to count more if the voltage wentup.

In the majority of more than a thou-sand experiments with a variety of humansubjects, when a participant placed hishands about six inches from the deviceand held a mental intention to increase thecount rate, the number of recorded pulseswould zoom up to the 50,000 range overfive minutes. Even when a participantwasn’t close to the machine, but held anintention to increase the rate of discharge,the electron counts would increase fromzero to 10,000–20,000 after five minutes.From these findings, Tiller discoveredthat people could direct their own energyin a specific direction to affect the mater-ial world, even over appreciable dis-tances.

Elmer Green and his colleagues at theMenninger Clinic attempted to quantifythis energy by wiring up an experiencedhealer with an electrode who sat in aroom with copper walls that would blockinterference from any other electromag-netic source. Although ordinary subjectshad the expected readings of 10–15 mVfrom ordinary breathing and heartbeats,the healer’s body voltage would zoom up

Zero PointPerceptionLesson 2

5

How strong is our intention?

LIVING THE FIELDto a voltage 100,000 larger than normal.

While this was happening, corre-sponding pulses of 1–5 volts would appear on each of the four copperwalls. On investigating the source of thisenergy, Tiller found that the pulses werecoming from the healer’s lower abdomen.Only a small current had to flow for ashort period of time to achieve this extra-ordinarily large voltage.

From this evidence, Tiller concludedthat a healer’s intention to heal ultimatelymanifests itself as an unusually huge elec-trical pulse in the physical world.

Tiller’s final experiment, carried outat the Institute of HeartMath, BoulderCreek, California, involved five trainedpractitioners of ‘freeze-frame’, a tech-nique which shifts the focus of attentionfrom mental and emotional responses tointernal and external events to the heart,while focusing on feelings of love orappreciation for people or things. Tiller

found that when the practitioners shiftedtheir focus to the heart, they produced a profound ordering of their heart rate and,thus, many of their bodily processes, creating a beneficial coherence through-out the body.

When practicing this technique, par-ticipants held an intention to alter thewinding of DNA in a solution held intheir hands. Tiller found that, in theiraltered state, they produced a significantdifference in the water compared withwhen they tried to influence the waterwhile in an ordinary state.

This study suggests that our physio-logical state plays an important role in oursuccess in using our intention to achieve achange in our environment. When we aremore coherent, we are more able to influ-ence our world.

Lynne McTaggart

1 Sci Med, 1999; 6 (3): 28–33

Zero PointPerception

Lesson 2

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LIVING THE FIELD

In order to have other laboratoriescarry out his experiments on the signature frequencies of molecules,

French biologist Jacques Benvenistedecided to have a robot built. Little morethan a box with an arm that moves inthree directions, the robot could handleeverything but the initial measuring. Allone had to do was hand the robot the bareingredients plus a bit of plastic tubing,push the button and leave.

The robot took the water, which con-tained calcium, and placed it into a coil,played the heparin signal for five minutesso that the water was ‘informed’, thentook the informed water in its test tubeand mixed it with a sample of blood plasma. The robot then put the mixtureinto a measuring device, read the resultsand offered them up to whoever wasdoing the investigation.

Benveniste and his team carried outhundreds of experiments using theirrobot. They also handed out a batch ofthese devices to other laboratories. In this way, both the other centers and theBenveniste team in Clamart, France,could ensure that the experiment was universally standardized and that an identical protocol was being carried outcorrectly.

While working with his robot, Ben-veniste discovered anecdotal evidencethat the electromagnetic waves from liv-ing things were having an effect on theirenvironment.

Once Benveniste had his robot up and working, he discovered that, in gen-eral, it worked well—except for certainoccasions. These were always the dayswhen a particular female researcher waspresent in the lab. In the laboratory inLyon that was replicating the Clamartresults, a similar situation occurred,although this time involving a man.

In his own lab, Benveniste conductedseveral experiments—by hand and byrobot—to isolate what it was that thewoman was doing to prevent the experi-ment from working. Her scientific

method was impeccable and she followedthe protocol to the letter. The womanherself, a doctor and biologist, was anexperienced, meticulous worker. Never-theless, on no occasion was she able toget any results. After six months of suchstudies, there was only one conclusionpossible: something about her very pres-ence was preventing a positive result.

It was vital that he get to the nub ofthe problem as Benveniste knew whatwas at stake.

If he sent his robot to a laboratory,say, in Cambridge, and if their resultswere poor because of the presence of aparticular person, the lab would concludethat the experiment itself was at faultwhen, in fact, the problem had to do withsomething or someone in the environ-ment.

There is nothing subtle about biologi-cal effects. Change the structure or shapeof a molecule only slightly and you com-pletely alter the ability of the molecule toslot into its receptor. On or off, success orfailure. A drug works or it doesn’t. In thiscase, something in this woman was inter-fering with the communication of cells inhis experiment.

Benveniste suspected that the womanwas emitting some type of waves thatwere blocking the signals. Through hiswork, he had developed a means of test-ing for these, and he soon discovered thatshe was emitting electromagnetic fields,which were interfering with the cellularsignaling in his experiment. Like Popp’scarcinogens, she was a frequency scram-b l e r. This seemed too incredible tobelieve—more the realm of witchcraftthan science.

Benveniste then had the particularwoman hold a tube of homeopathic gran-ules in her hand for five minutes, and thentested the tube with his equipment. Allactivity—all molecular signaling—hadbeen erased.1

Since discovering the problem waselectromagnetic, the obvious next stepwas to protect the machine from EMFs


7

Are there gremlins in the machine?

LIVING THE FIELDby building an electromagnetic shield.But once this was done, the machinestopped producing good results.

Benveniste pondered over this devel-opment for some days. Perhaps it had todo with positive effects of the environ-ment and not simply the absence of nega-tive effects. He opened the shield andasked the man who’d been in charge ofthe lab for many years to stand in front of the robot. Immediately, the robot beganagain to crank out perfect results. As soonas the man left and the shield was put up,the robot no longer produced decent data.This suggests that, just as some peopleare detractors of equipment, so others areenhancers. The shield, originally erected

to stop negative influences, had blockedpositive ones as well.

Benveniste reasoned that the onlysubstance near the robot capable of pick-ing up positive or negative activity wasthe tube of water there, so he asked thehead lab technician to carry the tube in hispocket for two hours. He then placed thetube into the machine, removed the manand put up the shield. Since then, therobot’s experiments have worked virtual-ly 100 per cent of the time.1

Lynne McTaggart

1 From a telephone conversation with

Jacques Benveniste, 10 November

2 0 0 0


Lesson 3

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Smooth operators—or notMost people have a reputation for having a positive or negative effect on their computers and

machines around them—being an ‘angel’ or ‘gremlin’ when it comes to electronic equipment.

As noted parapsychology researcher Dr Dean Radin says, “The apparent tendency of things

to go wrong at the worst possib le t ime is so prevalent

that, in engineering circles, Murphy’s Law is regarded as a ‘first principle’.”1

In his book The Conscious Universe, Radin describes evidence that one of the fathers of

quantum physics, Wolfgang Pauli, was a brilliant theoretician, but a disaster when his hands

alighted upon anything mechanical. Whenever he arrived at his laboratory, mechanisms would

freeze, collapse or even be set alight.

The most extreme example of this, says Radin, was a M a t r i x-like story of machine v s m a n :

the true story of a vengeful supercomputer that reputedly killed his opponent, a noted Russian

chess champion called Gudkov, who had just won an important match. When the chess cham-

p ion touched the me ta l boa rd tha t t hey were p lay ing

on, he was immediately electrocuted. The computer was put on trial in the then

Soviet Russia for ‘cold-blooded’ murder on the premise that a machine that was

smart enough to beat a human being might also have been programmed to stop at nothing to

do so, even if it meant exterminating the opposition.

As some people in California are a ‘bad’ meeting, so I am a ‘bad’ computer at

times—a not-so-smooth operator. I can be a fairly intense person and, in those occasional

moments that I am crashing around in a foul mood, all the computers in our office begin to

crash in unison. On one occasion during a day of extreme agitation, after I’d broken my com-

puter and printer at home, I headed off for work and tr ied

to work on a variety of computers around the office. One by one, they died under my

hands. When one of our laser copier-printers also froze the moment I tried to

photocopy a page, my team firmly but politely escorted me off the premises.

These kinds of anecdotal stories of the ‘gremlin’ effect are not so farfetched when you con-

sider the mountains of data generated by the Princeton Engineering Anomaly Research

(PEAR) Laboratory, demonstrating that human intention has the ability to affect random com-

puters to a greater degree of order.

The studies suggest that the ‘angel’ or ‘gremlin’ effect may be important when

handling equipment. Microprocessor technology is now increasingly sensitive and

vulnerable. If living consciousness can influence such sensitive equipment, this by itself can

affect how it operates. The tiniest disturbances in a quantum process could create significant

deviations from established behavior such that the slightest movement could send it soaring

off in a completely different direction.

Given some of the evidence to hand, it may well be wise, every day before we approach

our computers or other equipment, to say a few kind words to it and to send out good inten-

tions for it to work properly. If you are in a particularly bad mood that you can’t shake, you may

do better to stay away. I f no matter what you do you are

a ‘bad’ computer, you could try—like Jacques Benveniste (see main article)—to use a sort of

talisman (even a glass of water) handled by someone known to exercise a kind of magic

around computers. If, as Arthur C. Clarke says, advanced technology is indistinguishable from

magic, then it can sometimes help to use a magic wand.

Lynne McTa g g a r t

1 Radin D. The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena. San Fr a n c i s c o :

H a r p e r S a n Francisco, 1997: 130


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LIVING THE FIELD

One of the most shocking realiza-tions to many of the pioneers ofquantum physics was that events

apparently localized in the here and noware, at a deeper level, distributed overtime and space. This strange property was dubbed ‘non-locality’, or ‘quantumentanglement’, and refers to the ability of one quantum particle such as an elec-tron to influence another quantum particleover any distance or time, with noexchange of force or energy.

In The Quantum Self, Danah Zohardefines non-locality with an analogy. Sheimagines a set of twins separated at birth,with no contact between them duringmaturity. Yet, despite this, each twin hasthe same nickname, job, proclivity fordressing in brown and a blonde wifecalled ‘Jane’'. Indeed, give the shins ofthe twin living in London a swift kickand, when he falls and breaks his leg, sodoes his twin living in California.1

Since this discovery, experimentshave shown that non-locally entangledquantum particles can be linked acrossany distance and, more astonishing,across time. Quantum events that aredays, months, even years apart (at least inprinciple) can appear to occur at the sametime. Whether on opposite sides of theearth or separated by thousands of years,they will act in synchronism without anyapparent cause or effect. To use a Zohara n a l o g y, it’s as though two boatmenworking during opposite shifts with nocontact with the other always somehow‘know’ to use the same boat.

As non-locality began to take centerstage in the thinking of many physicists,Einstein (who, ironically, had first provednon-locality) found it impossible toa c c e p t — l a rgely because it seemed to violate his theory of special relativity,where no information transfer can travelfaster than the speed of light. With non-locality, or ‘spooky action at a distance’as he called it, this transfer was instanta-neous. This, to his mind, was clear evi-dence that quantum theory was, at best,

incomplete or an utter failure. H o w e v e r, lab studies, particularly

using laser technology, have firmly estab-lished that non-locality is a central, ifchallenging, aspect of reality.2, 3 One out-come of this deeper scientific probing isthat the physical–spiritual dualism of thepast can be replaced by a more integratedpicture of reality in which all time andspace is an integrated whole.

The late British physicist David Bohmconsidered time to be part of a larger,multidimensional reality that “cannot becomprehended fully in terms of any timeorder”.4 Bohm reasoned that since spaceand time were essentially one matrix of‘space–time’, and parts of the universeare connected through all space, the samemust apply with time. He likened the truestate of the universe to an experiment inwhich an insoluble drop of ink is placedon the surface of a highly viscous fluid,which is then carefully stirred until theink drop is transformed into a threadextending throughout the whole of thefluid and lost to sight. If the fluid is thenrestirred in the opposite direction, theprocess will be reversed and the drop ofink will gradually reappear, reconstituted.

The status of the ink drop, unobserv-able but still present, is ‘implicate’. Thesecond reversed stirring makes it ‘expli-cate’ over time. With yet further stirring,this particular ink drop is again sub-merged and other patterns appear or aremade explicate. This is how Bohm triedto explain the continually evolving uni-verse of activities and events over time.

When Bohm considers the big pic-ture—cosmology—he is led to describethe implicate order as The Field: “a vastsea of zero-point energy . . . a plenum,which is the ground for the existence ofeverything, including ourselves.”44

Bohm's description is a reversal of the usual paradox: he wonders not howthe universe truly is whole when it seemsto be made of parts but, rather, why it isthat the universe, which is whole, appearsto be made of parts.


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The universe in a single moment

LIVING THE FIELDIn Bohm’s metaphor, enfolded data

are distributed over time waiting for itsday in the sun. Another often-used analo-gy considers the universe as a three-dimensional hologram, each portion ofwhich contains the whole image. So, ifyou cut it into pieces and illuminate anyone of the pieces, you would still see theentire image. This metaphor helps us to“see a world in a grain of sand,” as poetWilliam Blake put it.

Metaphors of non-locality don’t onlyapply to physics experiments. One area of its use is remote viewing, accessinginformation on events remote in time andspace. In the 1970s, concerned that theRussians were using remote viewing forpsychic spying, the US Central Intelli-gence Agency asked me to set up anddirect a remote-viewing programme atStanford Research Institute in MenloPark, California.

Recently partially declassified(73,500 pages), these studies, carried outover more than a decade, provide ampleevidence that humans can access infor-mation across time and space.5 In onetest, for example, a remote viewer inCalifornia targeted a research center inthe then USSR, rendered a detailed draw-ing of an unusual multistory crane anddescribed one of the main functions of the site—to make large 60-foot spheres.In another, a remote viewer in Ohio locat-ed a downed Soviet plane in Zaïre.6

Examples of viewing up to severalmonths into the past (and several weeksinto the future) were also recorded andverified.

Independent statistician ProfessorJessica Butts, of the University of Cali-fornia at Davis, concluded that, with hit

rates of 30 per cent or better, remoteviewing “is a robust effect that, were itnot in such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as areal phenomenon”.7 Statistical analysesof remote-viewing results8 leave littledoubt that The Field can be displayed ineveryday human activities.

The Princeton Engineering A n o m -alous Research (PEAR) group in NewJersey found that most studies of remoteviewing using partners (see Living TheField Lesson Three) were 'precognitive':the remote viewers had to draw theirdetailed impressions of a destinationmany hours or days before the site hadeven been chosen—yet, the outcomeswere still successful.

These findings suggest a world withno space or time—no separateness—butrather, a single dot in a single moment.

H.E. Puthoff, PhDHal Puthoff is director of the Instituteof Advanced Studies in Austin, Te x a s

1 Zohar D. The Quantum Self. London:

B l o o m s b u r y, 1991: 19–20

2 Rep Prog Phys, 1978; 41: 1881

3 Phys Rev Lett, 1982; 49: 1804

4 Bohm D. Wholeness and the Implicate

O r d e r. London: Routledge & Ke g a n

Paul, 1980

5 Tart C et al. Mind at Large: IEEE

Symposia on the Nature of Extrasensory

Pe r c e p t i o n. Charlottesville: Hampton

Roads, 2002

6 J Sci Explor, 1996; 10: 3

7 J Sci Explor, 1997; 11 (3): 345–8

8 Jahn RG, Dunne B. Margins of Reality.

London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,

1 9 8 7


Lesson 4

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LIVING THE FIELD

On my database, there are 312cases of human premonitions,precognitions or presentiments.

Of these, 76 per cent are about dangers,disasters or deaths.

In a survey of well-authenticatedcases of precognition collected by theSociety for Psychical Research betweenthe 1880s and the 1930s, H.F. Saltmarshfound that 174 out of 290 cases, or 60 per cent, concerned deaths or accidents.Very few were of happy events.

It is unlikely that selective memoryalone can account for the predominanceof dangers, deaths and disasters in report-ed cases of premonition. There are strongevolutionary reasons for this bias. In people and in animals, natural selectionwould have favored the ability to senseimpending dangers.

One of the most famous disasters ofthe 20th century was the sinking of theTi t a n i c on her maiden voyage fromSouthampton to New York. Some peoplecancelled their journeys on the Titanic asa result of their own forebodings orbecause those close to them persuadedthem not to go.

Some people with no plans to sail onthe boat likewise feared the worst. One of them was Blanche Marshall, who livednear Southampton and, together with herfamily and friends, watched the Titanicas it set out from the dock. Suddenly, sheclutched her husband’s arm and said,“That ship is going to sink before it reach-es America.” The people present tried topersuade her that this was impossible, butshe became angry and said, “Don’t standthere staring at me! Do something! Youfools, I can see hundreds of people strug-gling in the icy water!”

Although we have to trust in the testi-mony of the people who told such stories,even with stories about premonitions thatare eventually found to be true, the valid-ity of the premonition becomes apparentonly in retrospect.

One way of investigating these pos-sibilities quantitatively is to study thenumbers of passengers on ships, trains or

planes when accidents occurred. If fewerpeople booked, or if more people can-celled than on the preceding days orweeks, when accidents did not happen,this would provide a way of measuringpossible premonitions, even if this reasonfor the behavior was not experienced consciously.

This kind of investigation has beencarried out only once, when W.E. Coxanalyzed railway accidents in the USbetween 1950 and 1954. Sure enough, hefound that significantly fewer peopletraveled on the trains that had accidentsthan on comparable trains that did not.

Soon after the terrorist outrage thatdestroyed the twin towers of the WorldTrade Center in New York, I made a small appeal for information about pre-monitions of the disaster. I received 57seemingly relevant accounts. Of these, 38involved possibly precognitive dreams,and 15 were premonitions or presenti-ments.

About one-third of the dreams hap-pened on the night before the disaster, andanother third in the preceding five or sixdays.

In some cases, the dreamers were pas-sengers on airplanes. For example, on themorning of 10 September, Leora Giacoidreamed she was on a commercial flight,“sweating, nervous, almost as if I wasafraid we may hit something. There was aman sitting across from me. I could notsee his face, only his dark skin tone, longthin nose and shoulder-length black hair. Iwas facing forward and I saw all of thecontrols of the plane . . . I could see thewindshield and outside the sky was clearand blue. I saw this light gray building.We crashed into the building. Flames shotout of the glass windows and the planecaught on fire. I heard voices screamingand sirens. Then the building began to fall. . . I amazingly was still in my seat aliveand well. There were flames everywherearound me.”

In another example of an airplanedream, Mike Cherni, a forensic scientistwho lives in Manhattan and works around


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When the dream becomes a nightmare

LIVING THE FIELD300 yards from the World Trade Center,says: “Some five days prior to the disas-ter, I had an unusually vivid dream. Idreamt that I was a passenger on a com-mercial jet, seated at a window seat on the left-hand side . . . I remember a per-vasive sense of dread. The passengers and I were deeply concerned about theflight path we were taking; we were fly-ing very low over Manhattan's buildings . . . Then there was a tremendous impactand I woke up. This dream disturbed mefor days afterwards.”

Some dreams were not about planes,but about being in terrifying situationsinside of skyscrapers. A number of thesespecifically concerned the World TradeCenter.

The morning of 11 September, forexample, at around six o’clock, AudryParrish dreamed she “was in World TradeOne and it caught fire. I escaped bycrawling across a glass bridge abouthalfway up into the second building whenit too caught fire and burned.”

In contrast, Keith Vass dreamed thathe was high up in a prominent skyscraperthat was not in New York, but inPhiladelphia—the Mellon Bank Center,where he used to work.

“Across the way from me was anidentical building to the Mellon BankCenter. In reality, there is no such build-ing . . . My building was shaking, as was

the one across the street . . . Then Inoticed the building across the way began to break and crumble at the top.Chunks of the gray granite facing startedto break away and fall to the street. Thenthe entire building imploded and wentdown, visually appearing much like theWTC when it went down.”

No doubt, every day, some peoplehave fears or forebodings that are not followed by disasters. Similar argumentshave been used for years by skeptics totry to dismiss telepathy as an illusion.Only through detailed research and quan-titative data can we hope to find answersto these questions.

Cox’s quantitative research on traincrashes in the1950s set a precedent. Andfor the doomed flights on 11 September2001, quantitative data do exist, but theyare currently impounded by the FBI.Perhaps the FBI could be persuaded to do an analysis comparing the data forthese flights with those for the sameflights on the days before and after thedisaster.

Rupert SheldrakeWebsite: www.sheldrake.org

Dr Sheldrake is the author of more thantwo dozen books, including his latest,The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind(Hutchinson, 2003)


Lesson 5

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LIVING THE FIELD

In the early 20th century, British aeronautical engineer John Dunnemade an astonishing discovery about

dreams, which he summarized in hisremarkable book An Experiment Wi t hTime, published in 1927. He found that he often dreamed about events that wereabout to happen, but easily forgot thesedreams. Only by keeping careful recordsof his dreams, writing them down as soon as he awoke, did this phenomenonbecome clear. Dunne persuaded hisfriends and acquaintances to do the same, and found that they, too, were hav-ing precognitive dreams without havingbeen aware of it. He described a simplemethod by which anyone could do hisexperiment.

Dunne made his key discovery whenhe was a young man serving in the BritishArmy in South Africa. In a particularlyvivid nightmare, he found himself on anisland that he knew was in imminent peril from a volcano. In his dream, he was desperately trying to persuade the Frenchauthorities to evacuate 4000 peoplewhose lives were under threat.

He told several people about thisdream the next day. Soon afterwards, hereceived a copy of the Daily Telegraphfrom England containing the headlineVOLCANO DISASTER IN MAR-TINIQUE. The article described how thecapital of this French island in theCaribbean had been swept away, and how more than 40,000 people had beenkilled.

The article had been written beforeDunne’s dream and many thousands ofpeople had already read it, so telepathyrather than precognition was one possibleexplanation. But although Dunne dream-ed that 4000 were endangered andthought the paper mentioned this figure,he later discovered that he had in his hastemisread the paper which, in fact, gave afigure of 40,000. He then realized that thedream referred not to what the paper actu-ally stated nor to what had really hap-pened—as later reports gave more accu-

rate figures that were neither 4000 nor40,000. Instead, the dream was related towhat he thought he had read. As Dunnepointed out, this would have seemed normal enough if the dream had occurredthe night after he had read the paper as amemory of the experience of having readit. What was surprising was that it waslike a memory of an experience, but ithappened in advance! It was as if thedream had occurred on the wrong night.

Dunne carefully recorded his dreams,and studied what happened before andafter he’d had them, and came to the con-clusion that some referred, in the normalway, to things that had happened in theprevious day or two. But others referredto things that were about to happen in thenext day or two, and sometimes further in advance. Without the written records,he would never have realized this.

He also found that sometimes he hadexperiences that seemed familiar, andlater found that they corresponded todreams he had already had, but had for-gotten. Such uncannily familiar experi-ences are often described as déjà vu,French for ‘already seen’. Dunne suggest-ed that some of these déjà vu experienceshappened because they had been fore-shadowed in dreams.

He tried to calculate what proportionof his dreams related to past experiencescompared with those that related to thefuture. He confined the timescale for thisanalysis to the near future and the nearpast because, otherwise, the comparisonwould be misleading—memories fromthe distant past could be recognized andcounted, but anticipations of the distantfuture could not be recognized and counted because they had not yet hap-pened. He came to the amazing conclu-sion that “images which relate indis-putably to the nearby future are aboutequal in number to those which pertainsimilarly indisputably to the nearbypast”.'

Dunne gave instructions for recordingdetails of dreams immediately on waking,


15

Dreaming: the shape of things to come

LIVING THE FIELDand emphasized the importance of writ-ing down the actual images seen ratherthan any interpretation that might begiven to them. Then, the records are readon subsequent days to find out if any of the details correspond to experiencesthat happened after the dream. He pointedout that the experiment is best carried outwhen traveling or in other non-routineperiods because, in normal everyday life,it is hard to identify familiar images indreams as belonging to the past or thefuture. Also, the more unusual theimages, the better the evidence for pre-cognition.

When I tried out Dunne’s experimentfor myself, at first I found it hard toremember my dreams at all, and evenharder to summon up the effort to writethem down as soon as I awoke. With practice, it became easier. I soon foundthat I did indeed seem to have dreams that foreshadowed experiences that hap-pened later.

For example, in one disturbing dream,I was at a gathering in which a man was chasing people around, bran-dishing what looked like a metalsyringe—a shiny cylindrical object with a needle sticking out at one end. I record-ed the image itself, as Dunne suggested,as distinct from my interpretation of theimage, which was that he was trying toinject people with heroin.

The following day, I was at a livelyparty in London, where I saw someonechasing others around holding a shinymetal object with a needle sticking out. Itwas an ear piercer. He was not trying toinject them, but threatening to pierce theirears as a kind of joke. If I had concen-trated on my interpretation of the dreamimage rather than the image itself, Iwould probably not have recognized thesimilarity.

If you want to experience precogni-tive dreams yourself, try followingDunne’s instructions. The idea that weoften dream of things that have not yethappened is so contrary to our usualassumptions that it can easily seemimpossible, or something we would rather dismiss—until it becomes a matter of personal experience. But evenpersonal experiences of precognition are hard to assimilate because they con-flict with our usual ideas about time.

Nevertheless, the reality of precog-nition is strongly supported both by spontaneous experiences and by experi-mental tests.

Rupert SheldrakeWebsite: www.sheldrake.org

Dr Sheldrake is the author of more thantwo dozen books, including his latest,The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind(Hutchinson, 2003)


Lesson 6

16

LIVING THE FIELD

Agrowing body of scientific datafrom Princeton and many otherresearch centers around the

world has quantified how the energy generated by our thoughts, particularlyour intentions—our emotional, mentaland spiritual wishing—influence both living and non-living systems. Studies at a number of respected universitiesaround the world have shown decisivelythat human intention can:◆ change the output of machines—

particularly random-event generators(REGs), the 21st-century equivalent of an electronic toss of the coin. Themost persuasive of these studies weredesigned and carried out by formerdean of engineering Robert Jahn at thePrinceton Anomalies EngineeringResearch (PEAR) laboratory atPrinceton University, New Jersey. Therandom selection of these machines(to either heads or tails) is controlledby a randomly alternating frequencyof positive and negative pulses. Thesepulses are totally random and withoutany inherent order. So, according tothe laws of probability, they can beexpected to produce heads or tailsapproximately 50 per cent of the time.

The most common REG configu-ration is a computer screen that is randomly alternating two images—say, cowboys and Indians. Over hun-dreds of thousands of studies, Jahnhas decisively demonstrated thathuman intention can influence theserandom electronic devices to producemore of the image specified by theparticipant (for example, more Indi-ans than cowboys).1

◆ influence living systems, humanand otherwise. One of the dozens of researchers examining the effect ofintention on living systems, WilliamG. Braud, PhD, professor and researchdirector of the Institute of Transpers-onal Psychology, has shown thathuman thought can control the direc-tion in which fish swim, make gerbils

run faster on activity wheels and pre-vent the breakdown of human cells inthe laboratory.2

◆ ‘ o r d e r’ less organized re c i p i e n t s.Braud has also produced research suggesting that the mental and physi-cal structures of the sender’s con-sciousness are able to exert an ‘order-i n g ’ influence on those who most need it. Calm individuals can calmdown highly nervous individuals andfocused people can help distractedpeople to focus.3

◆ exert a similar level of ‘mind–body’power on other people as on them-s e l v e s. Exhaustive research hasproved the power of biofeedback orpsychoneuroimmunology (mind–body medicine). In statistical terms,according to Braud’s evidence, lettingsomeone else express a good intentionfor you is almost as good as usingbiofeedback on yourself.4

◆ heal other people remotely. At least150 good scientific studies havedemonstrated success with remotehealing.5 The best, detailed in thebook The Field: The Quest for theSecret Force of the Universe (Harper-Collins, 2001), showed that remotehealers across America were able tosuccessfully improve the health of terminal AIDS patients, even whenthey’d never met or been in contactwith them.6

◆ change our bodies. The research ofthe Cleveland Clinic Foundation inOhio (see Living the Field Lesson Six)shows that ‘virtual’ workouts cansculpt the body almost as well as actu-al workouts. While regular visits tothe gym can increase muscle strengthby 30 per cent, performing the sameexercises purely in the mind canincrease muscle power by nearly halfas much.

Volunteers aged between 20 and35 were asked to imagine flexing oneof their biceps as hard as they couldduring daily training sessions carried


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Thoughts that move mountains

LIVING THE FIELDout five times a week. After ensuringthat the participants weren’t doing any actual exercise, including tensingtheir muscles, the researchers discov-ered an astonishing 13.5 per centincrease in muscle size and strengthafter just a few weeks, an advantagethat remained for three months afterthe mental training had stopped.7, 8

S i m i l a r l y, in 1997, a series of studies by Dr David Smith at ChesterCollege, University of Liverpool,showed that people who worked outcould achieve 30 per cent increases in strength, while those who justimagined themselves doing the phys-ical training increased their musclestrength by 16 per cent.9

◆ affect the growth of plants. A seriesof double-blind experiments carriedout over two years by Dr SerenaRoney-Dougal, in Somerset, showedthat lettuce seeds that have beenprayed for yielded 10 per cent morecrops, with significantly less fungaldisease, than those grown convention-ally and without prayer.10

◆ change our own brain physiology.Recent studies by David Spiegel, pro-fessor of psychiatry and behavioralsciences at Stanford University inCalifornia, showed through brainscans that hypnosis produces physicalchanges in the brain.

During the test, patients wereshown a colored grid painting, ratherlike a Mondrian, but were asked toimagine the color draining from thepicture, leaving it only black andwhite. Through the use of positronemission tomography (PET) scans,which can measure physical activity

in the brain, Spiegel showed thatblood flow and activity were notice-ably diminishing in the parts of thebrain dealing with color perceptionwhereas the areas that process black,white and gray images were beingstimulated.

When the experiment was revers-ed, and the subjects were asked toimagine gray images turning intocolor, the opposite changes in brain-perception patterns resulted.11

In fact, when we think we are see-ing black and white, our brain actual-ly registers black and white.

Lynne McTaggart

1 J Sci Explor, 1997; 11: 345–67

2 M c Taggart L. The Field: The Quest for

the Secret Force of the Universe.

London: HarperCollins, 2001: 128–9

3 J Parapsychol, 1983; 47 (2): 95–119



London: HarperCollins, 2001: 132

5 Benor DJ. Healing Research, vol 1.

Southfield, MI: Vision Pu b l i c a t i o n s ,

2 0 0 1



London: HarperCollins, 2001: 181–96

7 Report presented at the Annual

Meeting of the Society for

Neuroscience, San Diego, California,

2 0 0 1

8 New Sci, 2001; 172: 17

9 Proc Br Psychol Soc, 1998; 6: 116

1 0 J Soc Psychical Res, 2002; July:

1 2 9 – 4 3

1 1 Henderson M. The Times [London], 18

February 2002


Lesson 7

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LIVING THE FIELD

Food carries an emotional charge,which affects its flavor in a subtleway. I found that out more than 40

years ago. While I was growing up in Mar Del

Plata, Argentina, we always ate at home,with simple, vegetarian fare: vegetablesoup, salads, cooked squash and potatoes,wholegrains, occasionally cheese and,rarely, dessert.

Our lives changed every summer. Wehad a hotel that was open four months ofthe year, so we moved there to run it. Buthotel food was very different from homefood. Besides the fabulous breakfastcroissants and white sourdough toast withfresh butter, there were such delicaciesas vol-au-vent with creamed chicken andcannelloni à la Rossini. For about twoweeks, we gleefully abandoned our vege-tarian diet.

But after about two weeks of gluttony,the family slowly gravitated back to simpler fare. We lost interest in the vol-au-vents and cannelloni, and preferredwhat we called the simpler ‘family food’.

I often wondered why that might be.Finally, I concluded that the intentionbehind the hotel food was diffuse andopen to the public, while our own ‘familyfoods’ were intended just for us. Public,‘unfocused’ food, regardless of its deli-cious flavors, soon became boring where-as the plain family food never did.

Years later, I got involved in a dietarysystem known as macrobiotics, started by George Ohsawa. One of its tenets,derived from Japanese Zen monasterycooking, was that the intention of thecook changes the ‘energy’ (prana, ch’i orki) of the food. We were enjoined to cookwith care and attention. Who was doingthe cooking was also important. The ideawas that food creates the human who eatsit and, therefore, its quality and ‘energy’is of utmost importance.

Michio Kushi, one of the best-knownpopularizers of macrobiotics, used topoint out in his lectures that, when fami-lies don’t eat the same food, they don’t

harmonize. I paraphrase his thoughts: “Ifthe mother eats at the taco place, and thefather eats at the burger place, and theymake a child, the child is then the off-spring of the tacos and the burg e r s .People don’t understand each other.” Bytheir cooking, mothers—or fathers, ifthey liked to cook—were seen in this cosmology as the prime creators of thefamily’s health and wellbeing.

There may be something to thatnotion. Intentionality, or the effect ofintention on matter or organisms, hasbeen studied extensively. Prayer can beconsidered thinking with intention andgood feelings, and the request for a spe-cific outcome; numerous studies haveshown that prayer has a measurable effecton healing, and intention is now clearlyrecognized as having an effect on materi-al events. If it does, the effect may not be limited to random-event generators orstudies of distant healing. The effect maybe present every day in our lives, in theirmost mundane aspects.

Cooking could easily be one of them.If so, the intention of the cook will flavorthe food as much as herbs and spices. Itcould be said that food is the carrier ofintention. The chef’s bad mood mayshow up in the fights between those whoeat his (or her) culinary preparations.

Many years ago, I was in a seriousfight with my then husband. We had justhad dinner in a restaurant and startedfighting. As we almost never fought, wetook a moment and noticed how strangethis was—especially because the fightwas over nothing, absolutely nothing. Itwas just words. We tried to figure outwhat had happened, and our only expla-nation was that the chef in the restaurantmust have been in one lousy mood. Thatwas the end of our fight.

Conversely, the good mood and goodintentions of the chef can also have anoticeable effect. That understanding isbehind the frequently used phrase “madewith love” that graces many ‘healthy’foods and biscuits sold in healthfood


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Cooking with the best intentions

LIVING THE FIELDstores. I have frequently noticed that ifthere are good feelings in the cooking—as in the thousands of cooking classes I have taught between 1972 and 1998—after a disparate group of people finisheating, their conversations are lively andharmonious.

The epitome of intentional cooking is, of course, a meal prepared with theintention of seducing the one who con-sumes it. This is an ancient and very popular practice in many cultures. Thevariety of foods used for this purpose isstaggering: saffron in Spain, bird’s nestsoup in China, camel’s hump among theArabs, cocoa for the Aztecs. (It was saidthat Montezuma had 600 concubines and,to satisfy them, he drank 50 cups of cocoaper day from a golden goblet.)

Over time, almost every interesting or exotic foodstuff, particularly if remi-niscent of the male or female sex organs—from bananas to dates—has been used

to inspire desire and stimulate perfor-mance. But was it the actual foodstuff thatmade the difference or the intentionbehind it?

Perhaps we can enhance poor energyin commercial meals of questionablehealthfulness by blessing the food,putting our own good intention into it, orsaying grace. Perhaps if you always feelgood after eating in a particular restau-rant, it could have something to do withthe mood or personality of the chef.

It may well be a good idea to let someone else cook when you are angry or upset. Cooking with love and goodintentions cannot fail to make both thecook and the recipients happy.

Annemarie Colbin, PhDAnnemarie is the author of severalbooks, including Food and Healing(Ballantine Books, 1996), and founderof The Natural Gourmet CookerySchool in New York City.


Lesson 8

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living the field zero point perception by lynn mctaggart

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