book review: The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe

I recently finished reading The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe. As promised, here is my take on it. Click the title of this post to order the book from amazon.com.

Author Lynne McTaggart is an investigative journalist. Her mission here was to examine the cutting edge of science, quantum physics specifically, by reading studies, interviewing scientists, and translating scientific findings into a layperson's language while maintaining as much accuracy as possible.

She got interested in this topic when she kept bumping into hard scientific evidence about methods of healing that went against the prevailing ideas about human biology, including studies validating homeopathy, acupuncture, and spiritual healing.

Now some of you may think, what's the big deal? Everybody knows they work, even if science doesn't know how. Well, the answer to that is that science is a prevailing paradigm in Western culture,and science is on the verge of a revolution that goes far beyond alternative medicine. McTaggart says that scientific stories create our perception of the universe and how it operates, and from this we shape our social structures.

What McTaggart discovered is that a small number of scientists have been working on the fringe of science (although their work is slowly becoming more and more acceptable to the mainstream), using the scientific method to prove things that fly in the face of the scientific belief system. These scientists were often at risk of ostracism from the main scientific community, yet they kept at their research because like true explorers, they knew they were on to something new, and that's what is exciting about science--discovery of the new. These men and women are the revolutionaries of the scientific community.

McTaggart interviewed scientists from around the world, adding personal information about their appearance, background, and so forth to humanize them. She stuck with scientists with solid credentials--some at prestigious universities like Princeton and Stanford--and limited her reporting to studies using rigorous scientific criteria, such as the double blind study design with a control group. The bulk of the book is about their studies.

She interviewed 22 scientists, some up to 20 times, basically translating their findings into metaphors that you and I can understand, in the process receiving an education in quantum physics, statistics, brain neuroscience, and other hard sciences.

Very few of these scientists would discuss the metaphysical implications of their work. McTaggart herself says that although her sympathies lie with alternative medicine, she still demands scientific proof. "There is little of the woo-woo about me," she writes.

The prevailing scientific paradigm is based on Isaac Newton's work in the 1600s. Remember the apple falling on Newton's head and his "discovery" of gravity? Newton basically saw the universe as a machine that follows laws and behaves predictably, independent of human observation.

Then came quantum physics in the early part of the 20th century. The smallest bits of matter were not set things. They were mutable, often many possible things all at the same time, and had no meaning in isolation but only in relationship to everything else. Subatomic particles existed in all possible states until disturbed by us--our observation influenced them to settle down. Time and space did not exist except as arbitrary constructs.

Most scientists assumed the strange quantum world only existed in the world of dead matter, or that one set of laws (Newtonian) applied to the visible world and another to subatomic particles (quantum). It was all so counter-intuitive to their belief system.

Reading her stories about the studies was a good experience. Some were pretty amazing. I especially liked the studies where scientists worked with psychics--who could see inside machinery (influencing it at the same time) and also describe remote locations they'd never been to and only had geographic coordinates for. Even in Russia. (Hint: The NSA gets involved.)

In a nutshell, some of the findings are:
--Human beings and all living things are a coalescence of energy in a field of energy connected to every other thing in the world. There is no duality to our bodies in relation to the universe. There is one field that underlies everything, us included.

--"Nothing" does not exist. Even in absolute zero degrees (the closest we can get to a vacuum), things are happening. There is a field of energy, called the Zero Point Field.

--The field is a recording medium for everything, the means by which everything communicates with everything else. It holds the memories of everything that ever happened. The brain is a receiver.
[define coherence and resonance]

--Perfect coherence is an optimum state just between chaos and order.

--Health is a state of perfect subatomic communication.

--Each molecule in the universe has a unique frequency, and the language it uses to communicate is a resonating wave. Molecules "speak" to each other, regardless of distance, virtually instantaneously.

--We perceive objects by resonating with them--perception occurs by tuning in to the field.

--Consciousness is a global phenomenon that occurs everywhere in the body, not just in the brain. (Perhaps it occurs everywhere, not just in the body. Perhaps consciousness IS the field.)

--Observation puts a halt to randomness and creates order.

--Intent can change the physical world, even the past.

--Pairs of people of the opposite sex have more power to influence outcomes, and bonded couples have even more power, than individuals.

--Women produce better results at influencing outcomes when multitasking; men when concentrating on the task at hand.

--Consciousness results when individual quantum particles lose their individuality and begin acting as a single unit.

--Coherence of consciousness is the greatest form of order known to nature.

--Wishing or intending makes our own coherence infectious.

--People can influence their body functions by directing their attention.

--Other people can have almost the same mind-body effect on you that you can have on yourself.

--Influence increases depending on how much it matters to the influencer or how much he/she can relate to the influencee.

--The greatest effect is when influencees really needed influence. Needing something such as calming down or focusing attention makes people more receptive to influence.

--Humans have a latent ability to see anywhere across any distance. Even those skeptical of this idea can be primed and do this after a little practice.

--The important ingredient in remote viewing is being in a relaxed, even playful, atmosphere that avoids causing anxiety or nervous anticipation in the viewer.

--The information often comes across as if in a dream state. Interpreting or analyzing it colors impressions as the information is still coming through and makes it less accurate.

--People can remotely view the past and the future. It's as if the field is just NOW and all points in space and time exist in a single instant.

--People can influence the future. Using a random click generator, they could influence the output of the machine before it generated clicks. Present or future intentions act on initial probabilities and determine what events actually come into being.

--It is important for the influencer to be the first observer. Others observing first make the machine less susceptible to later influence. So focused attention freezes the system.

--Theoretically everything in the future exists in the ralm of pure potential, and in seeing into the future or past, we help shape it and bring it into being.

--Theretically, the bottom level of the Zero Point Field is not electromagnetic. The secondary fields (scalar waves) travel far faster than the speed of light and provide the ultimate holographic blueprint of the world for all time.

--To remove time, remove separateness. Pure energy at the quantum levelexissts as a vast continuum of fluctuating charge. We create time and space, and therefore we create our own separateness.

--On a subconscious physiological level, we have an inkling when we are about to receive bad news or when bad things are going to happen to us.

--People communicate and respond to remote attention, although unaware of it.

--When the left brain is quiet and the right brain predominates, ordinary people have access to telepathy.

--You can block or prevent influences you don't want by visualizing a protective shield.

--The more organized a sender's consciousness, the more ordering influence on a less-organized recipient. The most ordered brain pattern always prevails.

--The capacity of our brains to receive information from the field is limited in ordinary consciousness; states of altered consciousness such as meditation and relaxation loosen this constraint.

--Children under five permanently function in the alpha state.

--Gentle wishing works better rather than intense willing when using intentions to achieve certain outcomes.

--Plants have empathy for each other. They respond when a neighboring plant is injured or dies.

--Death is a disturbance in the field.

--Human intention can be used as an extraordinarily potent healing force. We can establish greater 'order' in another person.

--Distant healing works. All kinds of healing were tested. Conventionally religious Christians, evangelicals, kabbalists, Buddhists, and healers from the Barbara Brennan School of Healing Light, those changing colors/vibrations in patients' auras, using contemplative healing and visualizations, working with tones and singing or bells, a Lakota Sioux pipe ceremony with drumming and chanting, a qi gong master.

---The main commonality of successful distant healing was healers being able to put out their intention for the patients' health and then surrender to some kind of healing force.

--Asking for help was more effective than not. Whether it was Jesus, Spider Woman, or a healing energy was irrelevant. Help came in the form of energy.

--Experienced healers have abnormally high electric field patterns during healing sessions. This may be a sign of greater coherence.

--Intention on its own heals, and healing is a collective force. There may be a collective memory of healing spirit.

--Illness may be isolation, from oneself, community, and spirituality, rather than physical conditions.

--Experiments suggested individual consciousness doesn't die. Death may be a decoupling of our frequency from the matter of our cells. It may be simply returning to the field.

And there's more. I'm getting tired of summarizing; maybe you are getting tired of reading this very long post too.

One more point sticks out. McTaggart actually says, on page 159, "the left brain is the enemy of The Field."

NLPers, does this ring a lot of bells for you, about congruence, rapport, maps/territories?

Hypnotists, are you inspired to bring the implications of quantum physics into your trances?

McTaggart's next book is about Intent, inspired by what she learned in writing this book. I intend to get it!