Capitolo 1
The Mystical Science of Group Intention
When Lynne McTaggart's husband suffered a severe back injury, she found herself in a desperate situation. Conventional medicine offered little hope, and she watched helplessly as he endured excruciating pain. This crisis sparked her journey into alternative healing, eventually leading her to create what might be the largest mind-over-matter experiment in history. What began as scientific curiosity evolved into something far more profound-a discovery that small groups focusing their thoughts together could create effects that defied conventional explanation. Endorsed by luminaries like Deepak Chopra and featured in documentaries like "What the Bleep?!", McTaggart's work has transformed from fringe science to a global movement with tens of thousands of participants across 75 countries. Her findings suggest something revolutionary: when people gather with focused intention, they tap into a power that not only changes external reality but fundamentally transforms themselves.
Capitolo 2
The Birth of a Revolutionary Experiment
My journey into the power of group intention began unexpectedly. While researching for my book "The Intention Experiment," I wondered if I could scale down my large global experiments for workshop settings. My husband Bryan and I developed what we called "Power of Eight" groups-small circles of eight people sending healing thoughts to one member with a health problem.
At our first Chicago workshop in 2008, we divided 100 participants into these small groups and guided them through a focused intention exercise. The next morning, I was stunned by the reports: chronic insomnia cured, migraines vanished, depression lifted, and pain disappeared. Initially, I dismissed these as placebo effects, but when the same extraordinary transformations occurred in every subsequent workshop worldwide, I couldn't ignore the pattern. People with multiple sclerosis walked without crutches, vision problems cleared, and arthritic pain disappeared.
Despite witnessing thousands of these remarkable healings, I initially viewed them as a liability that might undermine my scientific credibility. I was more interested in conducting controlled experiments than exploring what seemed like miraculous healings. I failed to appreciate what participants kept telling me-that the process created a profound connection to something larger than themselves.
This tension between scientific skepticism and undeniable results defined my early work. As both a reporter and scientific explorer, I faced a fundamental challenge: how do you prove something that defies established scientific laws? When we began our first global Intention Experiments in March 2007, we were venturing into uncharted territory. While individual intention had been studied extensively, virtually no one had investigated group intention on a large scale. We had countless questions about wording, timing, distance, and optimal participant numbers-questions that would take years of experimentation to answer.
Capitolo 3
Finding Scientific Partners for the Impossible
Finding scientists willing to risk their reputation on such unconventional research proved challenging. Most established researchers wouldn't touch experiments involving consciousness affecting physical reality. However, I found an eager collaborator in Dr. Gary Schwartz, whose credentials were impeccable-Cornell undergraduate, Harvard PhD, professorships at Harvard and Yale-yet who had left East Coast academia for the University of Arizona where he could pursue his interests in consciousness and healing with greater freedom.
His Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health contained sophisticated equipment capable of measuring the subtlest changes in living organisms, including a digital charged-coupled device camera that could photograph the faint biophoton emissions discovered by German biophysicist Fritz-Albert Popp.
For our first major Intention Experiment in March 2007, we decided to start small-with a geranium leaf. Gary insisted on scientific rigor: "Small moves, Ellie," he'd quote from the movie Contact whenever I suggested more ambitious targets like curing cancer or ending violence. We needed to establish that group intention could have any measurable effect before attempting larger targets.
The experiment involved two identical geranium leaves with one randomly selected as our target. We asked participants to increase its light emissions (essentially stressing it) while we measured the results with sophisticated equipment. Despite feeling somewhat ridiculous conducting such an experiment after my career as a rigorous investigative reporter, I guided the audience through ten minutes of focused intention while meditative music played-unknowingly selecting a track called "Choku Rei" which means "strengthening healing energy."
To my astonishment, the experiment worked. The target leaf showed significant changes in light emissions compared to the control leaf. This first success led to increasingly ambitious experiments, including our work with Russian physicist Konstantin Korotkov, who had developed the Gas Discharge Visualization device to capture biophoton emissions from living organisms. By 2007, his GDV device was recognized by the Russian Ministry of Health as a diagnostic tool and used to assess Olympic athletes.
Capitolo 4
Unexpected Healing Miracles
While conducting these controlled experiments, something even more remarkable was happening outside the laboratory. After suffering severe burns in a gas explosion that should have required skin grafts and weeks in intensive care, a man named Daniel experienced a miraculous recovery when a small intention group from my website began sending him daily healing thoughts. He left the hospital after just five days, completely confounding medical expectations. By comparison, a colleague with nearly identical injuries who received only conventional treatment remained hospitalized for weeks and needed skin grafts.
This unexpected success led me to establish "Intention of the Week" on our website in 2008, inviting my online community to collectively send healing intentions to nominated individuals every Sunday. We received dozens of weekly requests-people with cancer, traumatic injuries, financial difficulties, and family problems. While not every intention produced results, particularly for those near death, we received enough extraordinary testimonials to suggest something significant was happening.
Brian, who had been paralyzed and unconscious after a major accident, showed remarkable improvement after becoming our intention target, regaining movement and consciousness months ahead of medical predictions. These unexpected successes pushed me to design even more tightly controlled large-scale experiments, investigating whether intention could affect seed germination and growth-a question with profound practical implications for agriculture and food security.
What became increasingly clear was that something extraordinary was happening not just to the targets of intention but to the people sending the intentions. Participants reported profound physical sensations, emotional releases, and spiritual experiences during these exercises. They described feeling "bigger than my body," experiencing unbearable heat, energy sensations, and deeper meditative states than ever before. Many wept uncontrollably, not from compassion for the targets but from the sheer power of the connection they felt.
Capitolo 5
The Peace Intention Experiments
By summer 2008, I was ready to move beyond seeds and leaves to test our collective intention on a major scale. Could we heal something significant in the real world? I proposed attempting to lower violence and restore peace in a war zone, inspired by the Transcendental Meditation organization's studies showing meditation groups could reduce conflict.
We designed an eight-day experiment running from September 14-21, 2008 (International Day of Peace), with daily ten-minute intention sessions. For scientific validity, we needed precise casualty records from a conflict zone relatively untouched by Western prayers. This proved extraordinarily difficult-most war zones lack detailed record-keeping, and I needed years of weekly violence data.
Despite having 6,000 participants already signed up, I struggled to find a suitable target. After contacting numerous peace organizations, universities, and government agencies without success, I nearly abandoned the experiment. Finally, through a series of connections, I reached Dr. Kumar Rupesinghe of the Foundation for Coexistence in Sri Lanka, who maintained an "Early Response Database" tracking casualties in Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war-an ideal "virgin target" overlooked by Western attention.
With just ten days remaining before our scheduled experiment, we faced another crisis when our website platform proved inadequate for the expected traffic. Fortunately, I remembered meeting Sameer Mehta and his team from Copperstrings, who generously offered to donate their services and host the experiment on their robust platform.
The experiment launched successfully on September 14th. We asked participants to intend "for peace and cooperation to be restored in the Wanni region of Sri Lanka and for war-related violence to be reduced by at least 10 percent." Initially, the results were alarming-violence dramatically increased during our intention week. The Sri Lankan government mounted full-scale attacks against Tamil Tiger strongholds, resulting in 461 murders and 312 serious injuries compared to 142 killings and 38 injuries the week before.
However, statistician Jessica Utts' analysis revealed something extraordinary. After this spike, violence plummeted to levels far below what statistical models predicted. The week of our experiment proved pivotal in the 25-year conflict, with the army winning strategically important battles that ultimately led to the war's end nine months later.
Capitolo 6
Entering Mystical States
What happened to participants during these experiments was perhaps even more remarkable than the external results. My participants had entered nothing less than a state of mystical rapture-what mystics call unio mystica, when the self completely merges with the Absolute. Thousands described experiencing a spiritual orgasm while simply sitting at their computers.
They reported overwhelming physical sensations: tingling arms and hands, goosebumps, strong currents through their bodies, magnetic force fields, and feeling "connected to my skin." Many experienced strange, detailed visualizations and even unusual smells. Most wept uncontrollably throughout the experiments, not from compassion for Sri Lankans, but from the sheer power of connection.
Participants described losing control of their bodies, entering intense altered states, and feeling like channels for higher spiritual power. "It sort of came over me. It filled me up and it sought a way out," wrote Geertje from Netherlands. "It was like I was on autopilot," wrote Lars from Denmark. "I performed the experiment and it 'performed' me."
This experience mirrors astronaut Edgar Mitchell's cosmic epiphany while returning from the moon-a visceral feeling of extending to the cosmos's farther reaches. Thousands described a palpable sense of oneness, experiencing unity with each other and the targets of their intention, being "pulled into a wave of light" or "being light joining with thousands of lightbeams."
Most reported an overwhelming surge of compassionate love, unity with other participants, and profound connection. Many gained what William James called "direct insight into the nature of reality"-a sense of life's perfection and certainty. Ultimately, participants found the experience ineffable, beyond language or metaphor, matching all characteristics of mystical ecstasy: altered thinking, disturbed time sense, loss of control, emotional changes, body image shifts, perceptual distortions, and feelings of rejuvenation.
Capitolo 7
The Mirror Effect: Healing the Healer
Perhaps the most surprising discovery was what I came to call the "mirror effect"-how participating in intention experiments creates powerful healing effects for the senders themselves. Ingrid Pettersson, a Swedish woman whose husband died suddenly from cancer in 2013, found remarkable healing after participating in one of our large-scale experiments targeting a person with PTSD. Her debilitating grief vanished, she slept well for the first time in months, and she regained her energy and happiness.
This pattern repeated consistently. In the weeks following our experiments, nearly half of the participants reported healing in their relationships. They reconnected with estranged family members, forgave past hurts, and experienced improved connections with coworkers and spouses. One participant noted, "My life-everything about it-my health, relationships, outlook, energy level, happiness, openness, etc.-just keep improving. I've plainly shifted."
I realized that the rebound effect on participants mirrored the intention itself: when they prayed for peace, their lives became more peaceful; when they tried to heal someone else, they experienced healing in their own lives. The focus on healing another person brought on a mirrored healing effect in the sender.
This phenomenon appeared consistently in research. Dr. Sean O'Laoire's prayer study found that those doing the praying experienced greater health improvements than those receiving prayer. Karl Pillemer's twenty-year study showed volunteers were healthier, more physically active, and half as likely to be depressed as non-volunteers. When faced with stressful events, those who hadn't helped others increased their chances of dying by 30 percent, while helpers remained resilient.
The act of giving appears to be the ultimate vitamin pill for assuring a long and healthy life, with those who volunteer being 42 percent more likely to be happy than those who don't. Research by psychologist Dacher Keltner demonstrates that humans are wired for giving, not taking. His studies show that the vagus nerve-which connects to the heart, lungs, facial muscles and digestive organs-activates during compassionate acts, calming stress responses and releasing oxytocin.
Capitolo 8
The Neuroscience of Group Intention
What happens in the brain during these powerful group intention experiences? Research by Richard Davidson and Antoine Lutz shows that different types of meditation activate different brain frequencies. Focused attention and loving-kindness meditation activate fast beta and gamma waves (20-50 Hz), creating intense focus, while mindfulness uses slower theta waves (5-8 Hz), creating relaxation.
Studies with Buddhist monks revealed that compassionate meditation produces sustained bursts of high-frequency gamma waves (25-70 cycles per second), synchronizing throughout the brain and activating the "happy" left anterior portion. This creates a state of heightened awareness and joy that can become permanent.
Our intention experiments combined focused attention with loving-kindness-having both an altruistic goal to heal and a specific focus. This may have created a "happy brain" effect similar to what monks experience after years of meditation, but achieved in just minutes.
Neuroscientist Mario Beauregard describes gamma brain states as "oceanic," allowing people to move beyond their small self to something larger. His research shows these gamma frequencies can be contagious-when embedded in music, listeners' brains begin to resonate at the same frequencies.
"If you change the brain waves," Beauregard explained, "you change a person's sense of identity. The sense of self shifts and the self becomes larger." In this expanded state, people more easily release chronic emotional patterns and limiting beliefs, and more readily feel universal love.
Research by Ulman Lindenberger at the Max Planck Institute found that when guitarists play "with one accord," their brains synchronize, creating "in phase" patterns across frontal, central, temporal and parietal regions. This "hyperbrain pattern" makes multiple brains function as one giant brain. Similar results were found with jugglers, who develop synchronized thinking, heart rates, and breathing.
My Power of Eight groups weren't just connecting-they were merging into a supercharged collective, with the boundaries between individuals dissolving completely.
Capitolo 9
Water as a Consciousness Recorder
I began conducting informal experiments with water in my Power of Eight workshops, inspired by scientific evidence suggesting water could "record" thoughts. Following Dr. Melinda Connor's methodology, I'd have participants mentally "embed" words into jars of water, then ask others to intuit what word had been programmed.
Consistently, at least half of participants correctly identified at least one of the embedded words or something closely associated. When Peter embedded "barbecue," Dorothy saw a mental image of a burger cooking on fire, and Sarah felt heat emanating from the jar.
Even unintended thoughts seemed to be recorded-when Janet tried not to think about snakes while programming her jar, multiple participants later sensed "something long and slimy" or specifically identified "snake." Similar results occurred when Annika was distracted by an iguana while embedding "lion."
The most extraordinary results came during a Costa Rica retreat with nineteen participants. For "conch shell," four wrote "shell," one wrote "spiral," another "funnel," and someone drew a conch shape without realizing what it was. For "needle," participants identified "needle," "something sharp," "something with a point," "quill," and "porcupine."
To better understand water's receptivity to thought, I collaborated with Rustum Roy, a materials scientist at Pennsylvania State University and water expert. Roy explained that water molecules cluster together in various three-dimensional arrangements that remain stable from a fraction of a second to several weeks. These clusters, connected by weak van der Waals bonds, might explain why water structure could be influenced by thoughts and other subtle energies.
We designed an experiment using a Raman spectrometer, which measures how light scatters through matter, to detect changes in water's molecular structure. Inspired by Chinese experiments where a Qigong master affected water from 1,000 kilometers away, we prepared four beakers of water-one target and three controls-and asked participants to visualize changing the water's molecular vibration pattern to resemble "healing water."
Remarkably, the target water showed significant changes in molecular vibration intensity during our intention period, with the biggest shifts occurring during our "Powering Up" phase. The water returned to its original state an hour after the experiment ended, correlating perfectly with our intention timing. Control samples showed minimal or no changes, suggesting our thoughts had indeed restructured the water.
Capitolo 10
Creating Bridges Between East and West
For the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I wanted to offer an alternative to America's annual revisiting of the horror. A chance meeting with Tadzik Greenberg, founder of Planet Coexist, led to collaboration on "One: The Event"-a three-day global festival in Seattle designed to transform 9/11 from a day of fear into one of love and unity.
I partnered with Dr. Salah Al-Rashed, the "Deepak Chopra of the Middle East" who had pioneered the human potential movement in the Arab world. As founder of the Salam (Peace) Group with thousands of members across forty Arab cities, he could ensure significant Arab participation.
My previous workshops in Kuwait had shown me how enthusiastically Arab audiences embraced ideas about intention and new science, seeing them as compatible with their religious beliefs. This cross-cultural connection made Salah's followers the perfect counterpoint to al-Qaeda for our experiment.
We designed the "Twin Towers of East and West" experiment to demonstrate communion and solidarity for peace, with both sides offering apologies-Arabs for the terrorist attacks, and Westerners for the deaths of innocent Afghans in the subsequent war. We chose Afghanistan's Helmand and Kandahar provinces as our target, areas with the highest war-related casualties and Taliban strongholds where violence had intensified after failed peace initiatives.
The experiment attracted participants from 75 countries including every Arab nation, with people joining from mountaintops, during Native American ceremonies, and even from pulled-over vehicles. One participant noted feeling "an energy shift about ten minutes past the hour" each day. With thousands participating from One: The Event, seven thousand more registered on our website, and tens of thousands watching daily webcasts, this became the largest mind-over-matter experiment in history.
The results were remarkable. Civilian casualties dropped 22% in September 2011 compared to August, continuing to fall in October (14% further decrease) and November (30% more). November's figures were 46% lower than the 28-month average. Attacks using explosive devices fell 19% immediately after our experiment and continued declining through December.
Most striking was the reversal in Taliban-initiated attacks. After climbing relentlessly until August 2011, attacks began a steep downward trend after our September experiment. The southwest region-our target area-recorded an extraordinary 790% decrease compared to the previous month and a 29% decrease for the entire year versus 2010.
Capitolo 11
The Year-Long Experiment
To explore the long-term effects of group intention, I created a year-long experiment with 250 participants organized into Power of Eight groups meeting virtually each week. Previously, I had only tested these groups over weekends focusing primarily on physical healing, but now wondered if working together for a full year would transform other areas of participants' lives.
Participants like Patty Rutledge experienced remarkable transformations. Patty, who suffered from chronic fatigue, heavy metal overload, black mold exposure, and breast lumps, saw her breast lumps completely disappear after group intentions. Through the support of her group, she discovered the source of her health issues-black mold in her home and liver glycogen problems-leading to dramatic energy improvements. Her relationships with her stepchildren improved, and her husband began embracing integrative medicine despite previous skepticism.
Other participants experienced similar breakthroughs: Mitchell Dean found the root cause of his lifelong depression through liver filtration issues; Alison Maving's twenty-year vitiligo began healing after discovering vitamin D deficiency; and Laura, an outside intention target, recovered from debilitating sciatica and breathing problems. The groups' intentions seemed to provide both healing energy and the impetus to discover underlying causes of longstanding problems.
The masterclass groups continued meeting weekly even after the year-long program ended, becoming "miracle vortices of transformation." Nearly all 150 regular participants experienced significant life changes: Teri went from near-homelessness to steady income; Linda's program gained major college recognition; Melissa received unexpected financial windfalls totaling $20,000; relationships healed; businesses flourished; and health conditions improved. The Proteus group even conducted their own experiment, successfully increasing rainfall in drought-stricken Charlotte.
When analyzing the success rate, close to 100 percent of participants experienced personal miracles during the same year, far beyond what could be attributed to coincidence. Participants described the profound connection they felt with their groups despite never meeting in person. They spoke of the invaluable support, the sense of becoming "one brain together," and how the process of focusing on others created a unified energy field.
Capitolo 12
Creating Your Own Power of Eight Circle
Now it's time to test the Power of Eight in your own life. The optimal group size is eight people, though six to twelve works well-enough for critical mass but not so many that individuals get lost. You can meet in person or virtually, as both are equally effective. Assemble like-minded friends open to healing and intention, perhaps from book clubs, church groups, or neighborhoods.
Begin by selecting someone with a healing challenge as your first target, designing a clear intention statement, and gathering in a circle with hands joined or placed on the subject. Each member should clear their mind, focus on the intention, and visualize the recipient as healthy. After ten minutes, discuss any changes or experiences. With time, you can expand to targets outside your group while tracking progress in your own life.
For virtual Power of Eight groups, establish structured meeting times (at least weekly) and designate a tech-savvy person to help with online platforms like Skype or Zoom. Begin meetings by sharing personal intentions and discussing concepts from the book. Include practice sessions where members pair up to send and receive mental images of meaningful objects, recording your experiences in a journal to track accuracy over time.
To maximize intention effectiveness, create a dedicated intention space for your practice. Learn to focus your mind through breath work and present-moment awareness of your five senses. Make meaningful connections with intention recipients through touch or compassionate focus. Develop universal compassion by radiating loving thoughts from your heart to yourself and others. Craft highly specific intentions with detailed outcomes, visualize results using all senses, maintain belief in the process, choose optimal timing, and then surrender to the universe without attachment to outcomes.
Try group experiments like "Message in a bottle" where one member mentally "sends" an object into a jar of water while others intuit what it is. Or conduct plant growth experiments by sending loving intentions to one set of seedlings while leaving another as a control. You can also attempt water purification by using pH strips to measure changes after sending intentions to raise the alkalinity of water. These simple experiments demonstrate the tangible effects of group intention in accessible ways.
The power lies not in individual effort but in collective focus-making a statement "homothumadon," with one passionate voice. As Lynne concludes, "Don't play small when it comes to healing yourself or healing the world. This is too big an enterprise to attempt by yourself."
