Interview with Lynne McTaggert

The world is an infinitely complex place comprised of atoms and molecules, particles and waves, thought and matter. For the longest time, we were taught that they were all separate entities, existing without connection. The work of Lynne McTaggert evidences clearly that what we had accepted as truth, may indeed be otherwise. Her first book, "The Field" was published in 2002. It was just re-issued with a new preface. According to Lynne, many of the scientists mentioned in "The Field" have, "been very prescient in that a lot of the ideas they developed and were exploring in the 70’s have now come to pass." Much of her work is about bringing these concepts into people’s lives so that they can experience greater fulfillment. Some involve the confluence of matter and energy, cause and effect, as well as the power of thought. Her latest release is entitled ‘The Intention Experiment" and chronicles the journey of science and spirit. She invites the reader to take a leap into the unknown and become intrepid explorers of ancient ideology. According to her website www. theintentionexperiment.com "The Intention Experiment is a series of scientifically controlled, web-based experiments testing the power of intention to change the physical world. Thousands of volunteers from 80 countries around the world have participated in Intention Experiments thus far." Lynne also leads courses and seminars called "Living the Field."

Wisdom: Why the worldwide fascination with the subject of intention?

Lynne: I think it’s a point of evolution. A lot of things are coming together. We now realize that the world is in crisis. We’ve realized that we have created a technological mastery of the universe but that has not brought us any closer to any kind of contentment and happiness. We’re just blowing ourselves up. That has caused a lot of people to start sitting back and thinking about things spiritually. On the other hand, you have scientific advancements going on that are suddenly looking remarkably like what spiritual masters have been saying for centuries. These two things are coming together and are starting to create a new spiritual movement and it’s a spiritual movement for the first time that’s based on science. So I think that’s why people are so drawn to the work that I do. These are people from all kinds of persuasions; whether they are alternative practitioners or ordinary folks who say "At last, I have the scientific proof for what I believe in."

Wisdom: So you are bridging the worlds?

Lynne: I guess we are bridging the worlds. I think people are ready to live in a different way. If what quantum physics tells us is true, that we are all connected, then we have to come up with a different way to be. Everything that we are doing, all of that technological mastery is based on the idea of being separate, in competition with nature, with the Earth, with ourselves, with each other. It emphasizes our separation. People are really casting around for a new way to be. That’s what this kind of work is speaking to.

Wisdom: In "The Intention Experiment", you begin by comparing and contrasting classical physics and quantum physics. In simple terms, can you explore that here?

Lynne: Up until now, scientists had believed that there were two types of science; the science of the big visible world and the science of the tiny invisible world. They believed that they operated differently. The science of subatomic particles is an Alice in Wonderland world, where all sorts of weird things happen. There are instantaneous connections between particles, where particles themselves aren’t a ‘set something’ like a billiard ball, but a packet of vibrating energy. That energy packet is only a potential of something. It’s like sitting in an auditorium and when you want to describe a seat in the auditorium, you have to describe every seat. We also recognize in quantum physics something very strange that when a scientist observes something or takes a measurement, he collapses that potential of something into something real. Somehow observation or the involvement of consciousness is intrinsic in turning a potential something into something real. Physics would have us believe that once that little tiny subatomic thing becomes part of a greater whole and big visible world it comprises, it starts behaving itself and acting according to Newtonian laws. This is the science we still operate by and it is 300 plus years old. It describes a very well behaved universe where big objects are separate and finalized assemblages and they operate according to six laws of time and space. What we are now recognizing in science, is that there is not this great divide. Big things, like big molecules, act like subatomic particles, those Alice in Wonderland principles. They are also not a set something. They are in a state of what scientists call ‘super position’. They also seem to collapse with observation and have these instantaneous non-local connections. We are starting to realize that there is one physics and that is the quantum world; this bridging of the divide. That throws our understanding of how the world works completely up in the air. The world is a lot more mutable than we thought. Consciousness seems to have a lot more central role in finalizing , determining and affecting matter.

Wisdom: Do those same principles apply to people? When we see them as their unlimited potential and acknowledge the adage "there is only one of us here," and we observe, do the same things happen as with subatomic particles?

Lynne: Exactly. This is the problem. It’s this whole mindset that we are separate which influences every way we act, toward relationships and the way we educate our children. We tell them to honor individuality and competition. In our work life, we tell people to honor separation and competition. In just about every facet of our lives; in our towns, cities and countries, it’s about individuals on a little lonely planet in a lonely universe. We are now understanding according to the new science, that’s not true and that on some nether level ofour beings, we are all connected.

Wisdom: I had an experience that is reflective of what you are saying about connection with all things, including nature. During a wind storm a few years ago, I was standing near a row of 100 foot tall oak trees. I had a thought "What if one of these trees came down?" No sooner had the thought crossed my mind, then "BAM!", a tree did just that, crashing down a few hundred feet from me. Is that the observer effect? Was I picking up on the tree transmitting a message that it was about to give way?

Lynne: You were connected. Are we effecting? Are we picking up information? All of that kind of extra-sensory experience is discouraged in ordinary science. They are saying "That doesn’t work." A lot of renegade scientists discovered in scientific laboratories all around the world, that there is robust evidence of ESP and pre-cognition that we pick up things with far more than just our five senses. We are picking up on our future before it occurs. We are effecting all the time. We are much grander than we think.

Wisdom: Does that tie in with the concept that we think of someone and then they show up?

Lynne: Oh yeah, either you are picking them up pre-cognitively or you are manifesting them. We have evidence of that.

Wisdom: How does intentionality work with machines?

Lynne: We know that people effect machines. There is a vast body of data that has been collected from the Princeton PEAR group, Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne who have demonstrated over and over again that when people send an intention to Random Event Generators, the 21st century tosses of the coin, they will effect them. They can create a situation where people are setting an intention to get more heads than tails or in the case of these REG machines, there are usually computerized images and they have shown millions of trials that people can send an intention for randomly swapping pictures of cowboys and Indians. Left to its own devices, the machine will have 50% cowboys and 50% Indian images. If they sit an operator in front of this machine and say "Set an intention for more cowboys than Indians.", they find a small but significant effect, that this person has effected this machine away from random activity. Also, there is a huge body of lore about the effects of people as gremlins or angels with equipment. A famous physicist had such a strong force field that he used to set equipment alight. Rosalyn Bruyere, a famous healer has a strong force field and she effects equipment. When I’m in a bad mood, I break equipment all over the place. It doesn’t happen too often. I am a pretty cheery person. When it does happen, my staff don’t want me near equipment. What it boils down to, what I have written in both the Intention Experiment and The Field, is that we are transmitters and receivers of information at every moment. All living things are beaming out a tiny current of light and that light has also been demonstrated in laboratory evidence as being received by things around us and being replied to. A computer is just an inanimate object, but also seems to be a receiver of information.

Wisdom: What was the outcome of Gary Schwartz’ work about healing energy?

Lynne: I think Gary’s work is interesting, because he has photographic evidence of what thought is. Fritz-Albert Popp is one of the first to come up with the idea that all living things are emitting tiny currents of light; bio-photon emissions. He showed this through a number of pieces of very sophisticated equipment. Gary took this one stage further and said, "Let’s see if we can photograph this light.", so he got ahold of CCD cameras, which are these highly sensitive cameras that photograph very faint light coming from outer space. He put leads and a number of different living things under this camera and basically showed a leaf in relief; shadow image with light. He showed the light coming out of the leaf. He tried this with healers and he actually showed that when a healer is ‘running energy’, you can see a current of light coming out of his dominant hand and that also was photographed. He and others have shown that there is this big surge of energy when someone sends a healing intention. They demonstrated with volt meters and an EEG and amplifiers. There is this giant surge of electrical energy. Schwartz also showed that there is this giant surge of magnetic energy. What we see from that, is that intention is an energy surge. A simple way of saying it is that intention seems to be a current of light and information.

Wisdom: That’s very much in line with the work of Eric Pearl and Reconnective Healing.

Lynne: Eric likes to use the words ‘light and information’. There is certainly evidence in Gary’s work of that. It may be more than that too. We show the fact that it creates an electrical and magnetic surge. It doesn’t mean it is magnetic or electrical. We also know that when we put a healer in a magnetic barrier, it seems to effect the healing. There is some sort of magnetic remediation. It doesn’t mean it is magnetic energy. I think healing comes in many different ways. There isn’t one definitive ‘super healing’. I don’t agree that other ones don’t work. I’ve seen healing work in all kinds of ways. I have interviewed a number of intention masters and master healers of all persuasions to find out what they do and what the commonalities are, so I can distill from this a simple program that people could use to master intentions themselves. I have found that people get better over time. They all do pretty common things. A lot of it is letting go in some way or another.

Wisdom: Why does intentional thought work in healing some of the time and not others? Is it more about the recipient or about the sender?

Lynne: Both. There are a number of things we can say so far and remember I am only talking from evidence. Is there evidence of something or not? It doesn’t mean it’s not the case, it just means there is no evidence for it. What we have seen in the evidence so far, if the healer and healee have a concurrence of belief, that seems to make it work better. The receiver has to believe and it's best that the receiver believes in what the sender is doing. It seems important, at least in some of the work that Gary Schwartz has done, that the sender works best when he or she is healthy and well in every way. He found that healers had a variable effect, depending on how well they were and when they weren’t well, they didn’t do so well in effecting their target. There is one very interesting study with Jean Achterberg who found a much greater effect if the healer and healee had formed some sort of bond.

Wisdom: What if the recipient doesn’t know that prayer, energy or healing is being offered?

Lynne: Obviously it works. There have been some double blind studies. Healing and prayer have been subjected to a lot of studies. Some of them have shown effect and some haven’t. The latest big prayer study has shown no effect and in some cases, harmful effect. But, I think there are a lot of things wrong with those studies and I have devoted a whole chapter to it later in the book. In the prayer studies carried out by Dr. Herbert Benson, the cardiac patients receiving prayer were told "You might get prayer. You might not." The people who did get prayer did worse than the people who didn’t. It could be argued that if you’re told that you are very sick and might get prayed for and you might not, that could piss you off. It also may piss you off if you are an atheist. The cardiac patients were from the American Northeast where there are a lot of atheists and they were being prayed for by Christians in the Midwest. That also might piss you off if you don’t believe what they believe. The healers didn’t know anything about the people they were praying for, other than their first names. That’s like me phoning you and only have 3 digits of your phone number. The late Elizabeth Tart, a psychiatrist in California ran a healing study, using healers from all over the country of all persuasions, sending healing to AIDS patients. They did have their photos, their full name and their T-cell count. The people who were being sent intention didn’t know if they were being sent healing, but they were all open for it. The point was, they were asked permission.

Wisdom: Let’s talk about The Intention Experiment.

Lynne: We started doing the Intention Experiments themselves because I was very interested in the whole concept of group mind and the ability of the group to have a lot of people thinking the same thought at the same time to see if it magnifies the effect. My husband suggested to me that I do these experiments myself. I thought that was kind of ridiculous, because I’m not a scientist, but I do have hundreds of thousands of readers and I could invite a small proportion of them to come online and I could work with one of the number of laboratories that I know of all over the world. It would be the biggest living laboratory in history. It’s a living book without an ending. What we have been doing over the past year is running these intention experiments where we’ve tried to effect physiological processes to see if our group mind has an effect. I’ve been working with the University of Arizona and Dr. Gary Schwartz. We’ve run a number of experiments showing that you can effect that little living light of the leaf and all these cases, have been blinded experiments, so the scientists don’t know which targets we’re sending to. In all cases the targets are sitting at the University of Arizona and we’re sending intention from the conferences I run over the world or on the web. We’ve had some amazing results. We tried to increase the light on a geranium leaf, so it would glow. We had robust data on that, running it three times. We also ran a germination experiment, seeing if we could make seeds grow quicker. I ran it four times, once from Australia with a group of 500, once from Rhinebeck, NY, with a group of 100, once from Hilton Head, South Carolina where I had a group of 400 healers and once over the internet with thousands of people. We found, in every instance, we had significant effect. We had four sets of seeds in each case. The scientists didn’t know which ones we were sending intention to. The seeds we had sent intention to started earlier and grew faster than the others and in the case of the healers, they grew twice as fast.

Wisdom: Can people still be part of this?

Lynne: Oh, definitely. They just need to log on to www.theintentionexperiment.com register and come on to the next experiment. To learn more about Living the Field, people can log onto www.livingthefield.com