The Intention Experiment has now been running for a half year, and we’ve not only managed to produce extraordinary evidence showing that ‘group mind’ is capable of changing the physical properties of plants and speeding up their growth. We’ve also produced the first evidence that experienced intenders have more powerful results.

Together our latest group of studies 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— but the biggest effect of all occurs through experienced healers.

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.

Lettuce pray

For all these early studies I have 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.

As readers of GI may recall, last spring we 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 me all four photos of seeds, each nestled in an individual seed pocket.

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

In each instance, after asking a member of the audience to select the target randomly, I 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.

Experience counts

I’ve now run this experiment four times, in geographically diverse settings and among audiences with differing degrees of practice in intense mental focus.

Besides our July 7, 2007 Intention Experiment which successfully carried out this study on the internet, the study was also run before audiences in Sydney, Australia, Rhinebeck, New York, and Hilton, Head, North Carolina. Participants, in each instance, were instructed 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.

But perhaps most interesting of all, the largest effect of all occurred with the final study, which was conducted among a group of experienced healers — all members of Healing Touch International. In this case, the seeds sent intention grew nearly twice as large as the controls.

Intention also seemed to work best when we sent very specific instructions: for the seeds to sprout a certain number of inches by a certain date.

In another of our recent studies, we also replicated our leaf experiment (see GI no xx) among Reconnection Healing practitioners. Once again, we got highly significant results.

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. And because the best results were obtained by experienced intenders, it suggests that intention is a natural skill that can be honed through training and discipline.

Cleaning up the water

Our latest Intention Experiment on October 26 is the most ambitious to date: to test whether group thoughts can change the pH and structure of polluted water.

This Intention Experiment will be open to our readers who join in on October 26 on our internet site (www.theintentionexperiment.com). If our experiment is successful, it will have vast implications about the power of thought to clean up the world’s polluted water supply.

For this study, I’ve enlisted Dr. Konstantin Korotkov, professor of physics at St. Petersburg State Technical University in Russia, an expert on the light emissions of living things, whose gas discharge visualization (GDV) equipment is regularly used by the Russian government to diagnose illness and test the fitness of Olympic athletes.

Korotkov has already recorded increases in light emissions from water sent loving intention. In this experiment, however, we will also test the water’s pH and examine its structure.

I also have plans to collaborate with Deepak Chopra’s Alliance for New Humanity in the early part of 2008 to create an Intention Experiment to lower conflict in an area of the world suffering from unusually high violence and unrest.

Although this is just the beginning of our experiments, we may have already demonstrated that one good thought can change the world.

Lynne McTaggart is a journalist and the award-winning author of the bestselling book The Field. Her latest book is The Intention Experiment. She also publishes several alternative health and spirituality newsletters. For more information: livingthefield.com & theintentionexperiment.com