June 13, 2009

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Dear Readers:

I am thrilled to announce that we have now planned another Intention Experiment, this time with a fantastic target: clean water.  We’re working once again with our psychologist Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona’s Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health and his fabulous chief lab technician Mark Boccuzzi. 

Mark, as you may remember, carried our Germination Experiments, which required hours of meticulous preparation. 

This experiment marks the start of our work in attempting to take intention out into the community with real targets and real results. 

Why water?

Water is an excellent target because, as we’ve shown in our own Korotkov Water Experiments, water is highly susceptible to intention. A solid body of scientific evidence has examined chemical changes caused by intention.

Bernard Grad, an associate professor of biology at McGill University in Montreal, for instance, has examined the effect of healing energy on water that was to be used to irrigate plants. After a group of healers had sent healing to samples of water, Grad chemically analysed the water by infrared spectroscopy.

He discovered that the water treated by the healers underwent a fundamental change in the bonding of oxygen and hydrogen in its molecular makeup. The hydrogen bonding between the molecules had lessened in a similar manner to that which occurs in water exposed to magnets. 

A number of other scientists confirmed Grad’s findings; Russian research discovered that the hydrogen–oxygen bonds in water molecules undergo distortions in the crystalline microstructure during healing.

In William tiller’s Black Box experiments, he has also shown that intention can affect water pH – the measure of acidity or alkalinity in a solution up and down by one unit.  Ordinarily pH –remains fairly static and tiny changes of one-hundredth or even one-thousandth of a unit on the pH scale can be measured; a change of a full unit or more on the pH scale would represent an enormous shift that was unlikely to be the result of an incorrect measurement.

Power of positive thoughts

We also know from numerous studies, including one attempting to scientifically validate the theories of Masaru Emoto, that the structure of water crystals is affected by positive and negative emotions.

Emoto claims to have carried out hundreds of tests showing that even a single word of positive intent or negative intent profoundly changes the water’s internal organization. The water subjected to the positive intent supposedly develops a beautiful, highly complex crystalline structure when frozen, whereas the structure of water exposed to negative emotions became random, disordered, even grotesque. The most positive results supposedly occur with feelings of love or gratitude.

Consciousness investigator Dean Radin placed two vials of water in a shielded room in his laboratory at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California. Meanwhile, a group of 2000 attendees at one of Emoto’s conferences in Japan was shown a photo of the vials and asked to send them a prayer of gratitude.

Radin then froze the water in those vials as well as samples of control water from the same source that had not been exposed to the prayers, and showed the resulting crystals to a panel of independent volunteers.

He had carefully blinded the study so that neither he nor his volunteers had any idea which crystals had been grown from the water samples that had been sent intention. A statistically significant number of the volunteer judges concluded that water sent the positive intentions had formed the more aesthetically pleasing crystalline structure.

Inhibiting bacteria

 We also have seen that positive or negative intention has a profound effect on microorganisms, like bacteria. For instance, Carroll Nash, the director of the parapsychology department at St Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, carried out work using intention to affect the grown of Escherichia coli, microbes with a direct impact on human beings. Millions of this bacteria, which help to digest food and keep hostile bacteria at bay, peacefully reside in the gut. E coli also metabolizes lactose, the enzyme present in milk. Yet, as with many microbes, E. coli can suddenly turn unfriendly by migrating out of the digestive tract or mutating into a virulent form that causes illness. Many toxic strains are also present in food.

Nash decided to test whether mental influence could affect the mutation rates of E. coli bacteria. Usually, an E. coli population starts life unable to ferment lactose (and so is ‘lactose-negative’), but after it mutates, over numerous generations, the new population can do so (at which point it become ‘lactose-positive’).

This process ordinarily occurs at a predictable rate. Nash wanted to see whether his volunteers could slow it down or speed it up. To work out the growth rates of these tiny organisms, Nash employed an electrophotometer, which counts the microbes by measuring the slightest differences in the density of the media in which they are suspended.

Each of his 60 student participants received nine test-tubes containing both lactose-negative and lactose-positive strains of E coli culture. The students were asked to mentally encourage the transformation of the unmutated bacteria in the first three test-tubes from lactose-negative to lactose-positive. With the next three test-tubes, they were to attempt to inhibit the process of mutation. The final three, the controls, would not be exposed to influence of any kind.

Bacteria affected

When he tallied the results, Nash discovered more mutation than normal in the test-tubes that had received the positive intentions to mutate, and fewer than normal in those for which intentions were to inhibit the process, although the greatest effect occurred with negative intention.

Gary Schwartz also has also shown that bacteria that has been ‘shocked’ by a sudden blast of heat can be ‘healed’ by intention sent by Reiki practitioners, particularly once they’d worked on a human patient first and their healing ‘pumps’ had been primed, so to speak.

All these early studies revealed several important aspects of intention. Thoughts take aim with great accuracy; although their effects on living things can drastically differ depending on the nature of the intention – whether it is positive or negative.

We also know from our earlier work, particularly the Germination studies, that we are more successful, the more specific we are with our intention.

Our challenge is to work out a way to do this experiment that sends a specific intention that does not entail murderous intention - ‘killing’ bacteria.  We are examining the possibility of sending an intention to mutate the bacteria, so that it is harmless, or attempting to affect the growth of algae in water.

How to participate

At the moment, while we are working on the protocol, the most important thing is to register on our website (www.theintentionexperiment.com), if you have not done so before.  Then you will receive information about how to proceed.  You may have to register again to participate in the experiments, as we are using another web host. 

So write down the date and time now and tell all your friends.

For other time zones, consult the world clock consult the world clock and use their converter. Simply type in June 13 4 pm GMT  and write in your location, and the converter will tell you what time it will be in your area.

Out in the field

Once we’ve tried this experiment a few times in the lab, we’ll take it out in the field.  I’m planning a series of experiments, including one with Masaru Emoto, to clean up a body of water in Japan. 

Please make some suggestions below for good bodies of water that would make good targets for us,  plus ways we can send positive but highly specific intention.