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An earlier pilot experiment had been conducted at a conference in London on the 10th of March. Here, 400 people sent a healing intention to another plant in the Arizona laboratory. The biophoton emissions of the plant were measured and showed a large and statistically significant variation compared with a control plant. You may well ask what is going on here? Can we change things merely by the power of intention? If so what does this tell us about faith and about prayer? Can we use this knowledge in a practical way to heal ourselves and the planet? Let us first consider what we mean by faith. The dictionary definition is an unquestioning belief especially in God or in religious tenets, but it can also mean complete trust or confidence. Unquestioning belief is the preserve of the uninformed, the misinformed and the insecure. Many people decide that it is safer to adopt a set of beliefs, especially those that are shared by their community. This avoids the mental effort and uncertainty of branching out to look for their own personal truth. I hope everybody is happier with the second definition of faith particularly that of confidence. If you really believe something you can make it happen. We know that both modern physics and Eastern philosophy tell us that we create our own reality in our consciousness. For those of you missed my previous talks I will repeat what I said on this subject. Physics tells us that we are surrounded by a universal field of energy, and that by observing it we cause it to collapse from a state of all possibilities to the particular possibility that we have selected. Eastern philosophy tells us that we have created this body and agreed to be limited by space and time in order to evolve spiritually and that this body is not who we really are. We are much more than this. We have created this limited reality and we have fooled ourselves into thinking it is all that we are. In this context therefore we could say that faith is a belief in our ability to create whatever reality we want. It is a belief in the power of intention. If we really believe in something we can make it happen, and if a large number of people believe something it becomes real for them. Thus, different groups can live in different versions of reality which are true for them. Although their version of reality may conflict with ours we should accept that this is their truth. Problems can occur at the interfaces of different realities, for example between Western civilisation and Islamic fundamentalism. Most of us live in a consensus reality and therefore we get along fine - most of the time that is. But this consensus reality disempowers us, because it leads us to believe that we are all stuck in the same version of reality and then we cannot do very much to change it. However, 400 people in London and 7,000 people on the Internet caused a significant change in the plants in the Arizona laboratory, and there are many other examples in the literature of the power of intention. In 1993 I took part in a large-scale advanced meditation experiment in Washington, DC. Four thousand meditators practised the TM-Sidhi programme together in gym halls and produced a statistically significant reduction in crime of 23%. The results were carefully analysed and controlled for factors such as weather and the number of police, and were published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Social Indicators Research. Lynne McTaggart reviews a whole range of such research in her book “The Intention Experiment” including a number of studies on the effect of prayer in healing. Some early studies where people were asked to pray for small groups of patients gave encouraging results. However, when attempts were made to repeat these studies with larger numbers of patients the results were inconclusive. In particular a study based on 800 patients carried out by the Mayo clinic gave disappointing results. Another study carried out by Herbert Benson author of “The Relaxation Response” involved 1800 patients and suggested that prayer might be harmful, as those prayed for had worse outcomes than to controls who were not prayed for! We cannot conclude that prayer does not work, we can only say that the research did not give any conclusive results. The studies were criticised because of poor research design. In particular, the lack of control over the type and duration of prayer. It appears that expressing an intention from a deeply settled state is more effective than prayer. The method indicated by Lynne McTaggart is to meditate for about 10 minutes and then to repeatedly express a formulated intention in certain words which have been given over the Internet. This has similarities to the method of the TM-Sidhi programme where participants meditate and then make use of the Sutras of Patanjali. These are formulae from ancient Indian texts. One of the reasons why prayer did not show up well in the research is the possibility that these prayers were not expressed from a settled mental state. Many people think that you have to pray very hard to be successful and this is clearly counterproductive. Many so-called religious people can actually be highly stressed in their daily lives and so their prayers may not be effective at all. There is also the question of belief. Some of those praying may not be confident in the effectiveness of their prayers. It is clear from the research by Lynne McTaggart as well as the research on the effectiveness of the TM-Sidhi programme that intentions can be very powerful if expressed from a settled state of mind and that groups together in one place are more effective than people who are praying individually or acting together in large distributed groups using the Internet. This is because of the reinforcement of their individual energy fields. Numerous studies have shown the entrainment or synchronisation of various biorhythms when people are close to each other. The reinforcement of coordinated waves of energy can be very powerful. It is for this reason that soldiers are told to break step when they come to a bridge. We can state this in terms of physics. The sum of the energies of waves in phase with each other is proportional to the square of the sum of the amplitudes whereas for waves not in phase the sum of the energies is only the sum of the square of the amplitudes, a much smaller amount. To state this in less scientific terms, we can say that things that happen at exactly the same time and place have a multiplying effect while things that don’t happen at the same time or place only add together and may even cancel each other out. Research carried out on meditation has shown that thoughts are much more powerful in this settled state. In 1979 a group of 2,500 advanced meditators assembled at Amherst, Massachusetts. During the several weeks that the group was meditating together, tests were carried out using three meditators in Fairfield, Iowa, 1,170 miles away. The purpose of the experiment was to try to detect increased synchronisation of brain waves as a result of the large group meditating. Each of the three meditators was placed in a sound-proof room and neither they nor the laboratory technicians were aware of the times when the group in Amherst was meditating. The study showed conclusively that when the group in Amherst meditated, there was increased synchronisation between the brainwaves of the three meditators in Iowa. Jesus said in Mathew 18,20. “Where two or three people are gathered in my name there I am in the midst of them”. Many people believe that Jesus taught meditation and that he spent time with the Essenes an esoteric sect where he learnt Eastern practices. So where does faith come into this? Jesus says in Mark 11,24, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours”. Some translations say “believe that you have received it already”. Surely this is faith, not the unquestioning kind of faith but confidence, believing that we can create our own reality. But the way to do this is from a settled mind and for most of us this is difficult to achieve. We cannot just switch our mind off and while meditation enables us to transcend thought, we cannot be in a constant meditative state if we want to function normally. I do not know the answer to this problem but I will make some suggestions. The regular practice of meditation has been shown to leave the mind in a more settled state even during normal activity. So meditating regularly is one practice to adopt – maybe to meditate morning and evening. Another is to express your intentions for the day at the end of your morning meditation and then let them go. It is important to have faith - just express the intention and trust that it will be fulfilled in a manner which is for your highest good. As Jesus said “believe that you have received it already” then forget about it. So affirmations are fine but do them from a settled state. Another suggestion is acceptance. Eckhart Tolle in his latest book “A New Earth” says that we should do everything with enthusiasm. If we cannot do things with enthusiasm, we should do them with enjoyment. If we cannot enjoy something we should at least accept it. Lack of acceptance is the major source of worry and stress. Acceptance enables us to forget about our intentions and they will then be fulfilled sooner or later. In formulating your intentions it is best to express them in positive words. There have been some experiments which suggest that a simple specific positive intention is better than a negative intention or a vague intention. So we do not say “I express the intention that I will have no more illness”. Instead we say “I express the intention that I will have good health”. Maybe you are wondering where does God come into all of this? This is back to the old unity versus duality problem. Do we believe in our power to fulfil our own desires or do we ask God to help us? Ram Dass tells us that the trick is to operate on both levels simultaneously. By operating at the unity level we are tapping into one plane of existence and by operating at the level of duality we are tapping into another. They exist simultaneously and are not mutually exclusive. So we have a choice. We can express our intentions as desires to create our own reality or we can ask God and the angels and saints to help us fulfil them. What we don’t do is to ask God and the angels and saints to fulfil them for us. Don’t say “Dear God please make me better!” That’s denying our own power. Say “ Dear God please help me to heal myself”. Whichever way you decide to approach it, I advise you to express your desires from a settled state of awareness and in positive terms. Of course true freedom comes from having no desires at all but that’s for another day!
Kieran Comerford Sunday 26th August 2007
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