Theory Behind the Influence of Focused Intention

We’ve provided you with only a tiny glimpse of the vast body of experimental evidence that our intentions have a very real, and in some cases a deeply profound, affect on ourselves and the world. There are many ways of explaining what may be happening in these intention experiments, all of them theories based on the experimental evidence but none of them claiming to be the explanation for what is happening. Most of them, however, are founded on the premise that there is some kind of nonlocal, universal field that connects human beings in a vast web of relationships with each other and with everything in the cosmos. In other words, we are entangled beings. (The two terms “nonlocal” and “entangled” are explained in the Quantum Physics section of this website). When a thought jiggles one strand in the universal web, strands in other, perhaps far removed, parts of the web vibrate in response. A single thought may have an infinitesimally small effect, but we collectively broadcast uncountable numbers of thoughts and intentions every second, forming a global mind and having a cumulative effect that may determine the state of our lives, of our world, and perhaps even of the universe at large.

So how can this effect be explained? Quantum physics theory includes the premise that there is a fundamental, universal “ground” field, with some physicists identifying is as the zero-point field. Zero-point energy is the energy left behind in a system when all other energy is removed from it. The zero-point field is the field of the vacuum, of the lowest possible energy state of atoms. Yet because it is the ground state from which particles and anti-particles blip in and out of existence, it is humming with energy. In fact, it is said that there is more energy in a few centimeters of the zero-point field than there is in all the matter in the universe.

Other scientists and philosophers speculate that the zero-point field is not only an energy field but also an information field. They speculate that it has a kind of “memory”, imprinting within itself information about everything that has ever happened in the universe. The zero-point field may be the Akashic field (or, as systems theorist Ervin Laszlo calls it, the A-field) talked about by the ancients. British biologist Rupert Sheldrake believes there is a “morphogenetic field” that provides a template for matter, with each species of life having its own template to direct its growth and shape its characteristics. Whatever this underlying universal information field actually is, and no matter what name it goes by, it is at the heart of many of the explanatory theories for psi and other kinds of noetic experiments.

Although our intention may be a force in the world unlike any we ever imagined possible, it may not be the actual mechanism by which we influence physical matter. Harry Massey, executive producer of the documentary The Living Matrix: The New Science of Healing, and co-founder of NES Health, which produces an information-based health assessment biotechnology based on the new physics, explains the dynamics this way:

“Intention seems to be a linking process, not an extracting process. For example, if you intend to connect with a person who is at a distance to send them a healing frequency, the intention is the connection point. Something more is going on that is allowing information transfer to take place. Intention seems to get you to the point where information can be accessed and transferred, but intention itself does not fully explain the mechanism for the transfer. It is obvious that this transfer takes place, and intention plays a key part, but I think there is more to be learned about intention and its relationship to information transfer.”*

Whatever the relationship between intention and information transfer, most neotic and even some frontier physics theories agree that human consciousness may be the most fundamental aspect of the universe. Consciousness may be the “deep down” force that molds the universe, moment by moment.

Evidence so far has revealed that consciousness extends outside of the body, so it is unlikely to be only an emergent property of our brains. As you have learned already in this website, our consciousness intentions affect us at all levels. It can influence not only the state of our minds and quality of our lives, but also our health at the most gross physical level (see the Healing section of this website). It’s stunning to think that what we think about others and the energy we are projecting toward them, for good or for ill, may actually affect that person in ways large or small. And it’s curious that our beliefs also appear to play a role in how effectively we can use our focused intention in specific, directed ways. (See the Belief section of this website). But there seems no question that entanglement is at the heart of the matter, which suggests that to some degree or another “as we think, so goes the world.”

This quantum nonlocal entanglement theory of consciousness is shared in one form or another by most of the major thinkers in the fields of psi research, consciousness research, and even frontier medicine, biology, and physics. These include psychoneuroimmunologist Candace Pert, systems theorist Ervin Laszlo, IONS researchers Dean Radin and Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, IONS founder and former astronaut Edgar Mitchell, physicians Larry Dossey and Deepak Chopra, physicists Amit Goswami and William Tiller, cell biologists James Oschman and Bruce Lipton, physiologist and director of research at HeartMath Rollin McCraty,.

We all have the ability to used intention to affect matter, but some of us seem to better at it than others. Internal coherence, especially heart coherence, plays a role. So does the ability to maintain your focus or attention. As Radin says,

“Is there a difference between quantity and quality of intention, since intention seems to change the world in some way? I think the answer is yes. In fact, I think the answer from the data is very clearly yes. The way we tell this is if we do an experiment where we have people who are trained in some kind of mental discipline. So if I ask you for 30 seconds to think about this-whatever this happens to be-for somebody who’s not trained in mental disciplines, you can do it for a second and a half and then you forgot what you’re doing- your mind will wander-so that by the end of the 30-second period, you may have actually applied your intention to it for a very small fraction of the entire time. So maybe if we get anything, it’s a tiny, little weak effect. By comparison, when I’ve asked long-term mediators, who are very used to keeping their intention on one spot for a long time, they almost always get much better results.”*

And yet William Braughton, a noetics researcher and writer, and Lynne MaTaggart, science journalist and noetic investigator, have shown that a gentle wishing rather than an overt striving produces better results. It appears that a nudge of intention projected consistently over time, and that is in alignment with both your conscious and subconscious beliefs, works better than an attitude in which you seek to control or dictate the outcome. (See the Belief section of this website for more about the alignment between the conscious and subconscious mind.) The work of William Tiller reveals that we can also condition our space, so that if we undertake a discipline such as healing, meditation or focused intention in the same place (say, your living room), then over time the atmosphere of the room somehow imprints that coherent energy into its field, and it retains that imprint for months and sometimes up to a year after the activity is no longer practiced in that room. This effect may explain why some locations, such as Stonehenge or Machu Picchu, and buildings, such as cathedrals and temples, have a palpable feel of serenity and reverence about them. Over long periods of time, people have come together there in coherent inner states-to pray, seek healing, impart love and express compassion-and they have left their energetic imprint there for us to feel even millennia later.

McTaggart describes much of the evidence and the theory behind psi and intention experiments in her books The Field: the Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe and The Intention Experiments: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World, as do Greg Becker and Harry Massey in their documentary film The Living Matrix: The New Science of Healing. We will cover their work elsewhere in this website, but both are good sources for the layperson to learn about how each one of us may be connected via a vast web of relationships, how consciousness (specifically our intentions and beliefs) influence our lives and other people, and how we may be participants in the unfolding of the universe.

Her sentiment is echoed by Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, director of IONS, who sums up the implications for our conscious participation in the universe as follows:

“. . .As you begin to think about this kind of quantum model . . . as a metaphor it begins to impact how we think about reality. It’s clear that rather than thinking about ourselves as separate from each other and separate from the world outside of ourselves that we begin to think of ourselves as entangled relationship-centered entities, that we’re not alone and that anything we do has consequences not only for ourselves but for the world outside of ourselves-because that world isn’t really outside of ourselves.”* 

How will this knowledge change you? Change your relationship to the people in your life and to the world at large? If you are like most people, you may find this knowledge uplifting and inspiring. Make no mistake about it: the untapped capacities you have are not miraculous; they are natural. We all have them. We just need to believe that we can use them, and then when we use them, we must choose to use them wisely. Then our fate truly is in our hands. Just imagine the kind of world we can create when we all begin taking responsibility for our thoughts and intentions, decide to increase our personal inner and heart coherence, and then join together as a global mind to shift the very condition of our world.