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successfully used intention to influence the growth rate
of bacteria cells. In one experiment, he was able to
reduce growth rate of bacteria cultures 50% over
controls. Another researcher, Dr. Bernard Grad, has
“demonstrated that the absorption spectrum, surface
tension, conductivity and acidity of water can be
altered by focused thought or intent.”
While studies of distant healing involving human beings
are challenging to design because of uncontrollable
factors such as hope, expectation, and the
healer/patient relationship, there have been several
well-designed studies that confirm such an effect. In
1994 California Pacific Medical Center designed a
methodologically sound research project with the purpose
of determining whether healing intentions over distance
is effective. Two double-blind studies were completed
using Aids patients as subjects with findings that
showed a 40% mortality in the control group but no death
in the prayed-for group. Researchers Braud and Schlitz
successfully demonstrated in thirteen experiments the
ability of 62 people to influence the physiology of 271
distant subjects, who were unaware of the time that the
attempt would be made. The effects proved to be
consistent and replicable.
Surprise Findings from Intention
Studies
Several research studies have yielded some surprising
findings that indicate just how powerful one’s belief
and intention can be. In three double-blind studies of
the use of
Vitamin E in treating angina pectoris, an enthusiastic
doctor who believed in the
efficacy of Vitamin E found it significantly
more effective than a placebo, while two studies
conducted by skeptics showed no effect. In another study
using a minor tranquilizing drug, three of four studies
suggested strongly that the effectiveness of the drug
over the placebo was correlated with the physician’s
attitudes and beliefs toward it. Its conclusion was that
the beliefs of the prescribing physician can somehow
penetrate double-blind conditions of the experiment and
shape the action of the drug. In yet another
scientifically sound double-blind experiment using human
subjects, one researcher who
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believed
in distant healing, showed that her subjects had
statistically significant increases in autonomic nervous
system response, while another skeptical researcher
following the same procedures did not obtain any
significant results. Again, these inconsistent results
have lead researchers to postulate the influence of an
“experimenter effect,” or researcher’s bias which can
penetrate double-blind studies.
Even more amazing have been studies on intention
involving mechanical devices, such as a random event
generator (REG). In over 50 million trials over more
than 15 years the results overwhelmingly showed that
individuals can influence the REG, steering its output
from sheer randomness toward a particular pattern. The
odds against being a chance happening were a trillion to
one. Operators described an emotional bonding with the
machines, “becoming one” with the device while they are
trying to influence it. These experiments conducted at
PEAR lab at Princeton University show clearly that the
effects of emphatic bonding transcend space and even
time. Operators were asked to influence the machines
output ‘after’ it had run, and the results were
identical to efforts made in the present. Helmut
Schmidt, a physicist, found similar results showing that
subjects can influence the output of a REG after the
machine had run. Esteemed statisticians estimate the
likelihood of Schmidt’s results being due to chance at
seven million to one. Schmidt’s experiments appear to
indicate that past subatomic events are malleable,
capable of being influenced mentally, even though they
have already occurred and been recorded in some way, so
long as they have not been consciously observed. In
quantum physics, too, looking, or the ‘observer effect,’
converts possibilities and potentialities into actual
events and fixes them. Could this concept not apply to a
person receiving a medical diagnosis?
Distinctions between Energy/ Psychic/ Spiritual
Healing
Energy and psychic healers, whether in contact or at a
distance from the client, hold a specific intent of
replenishing or manipulating the ‘energy flows’ or
symptoms of the client. Psychic and energy healing
modalities (in general) involve training, conscious
effort,
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