Review The Intention Experiment

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem
Alhamdulillah
Assalatu wassalaamu ‘ala Rasulillah

Subhanak, Laa ‘ilma lanaa illa maa ‘allamtanaa, innaka antal ‘aliimul Hakeem.

In light of the fact that I have ample free time now that I’ve ORD-ed ;) I’m really in the mood to jot down my thoughts on a book I’ve recently finished reading. (I actually do not like the idea of to be governed by moods, why can’t we be vibrant 24/7? Or energetic in carrying out all our duties and responsibilities?) The book is titled “The Intention Experiment” by Lynne Mc Taggart. It is actually a follow up reading after Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. In his book, Dan Brown mentioned “The Intention Experiment”, and what are the chances that I actually already have the book in my house, although it was starting to age due to constantly being shifted down the list of ‘next-to-be-read’. Subhanallah

As I jot down my thoughts, I will refer to certain pages in the book that mentioned points I find fascinating and intriguing, especially to us Muslims. We as muslims know so well the importance behind Intention, or Niat; as emphasized by our Beloved s.a.w. in the numbered one Hadith in the collection of Hadith 40. “Innamal ‘amaalu binniat, wa innamaa li kullim ri-im maa nawaa” loosely translated as “Every action is based on Intention; and for every person, what he intended for”. Though the Hadith was set in the context of the Hijra to Madina, its implications are vast and affect virtually all our ‘ibadah, for in order for an action to be considered an ‘ibadah, an act of worship, intention is of paramount importance. One of the rukun for most if not all amal is Niat.

The Intention Experiment of course does not dwell into the Syariah aspect of the requirement of Niat in every ‘ibadah; rather the book is more in line with the second phrase of the hadith; “and for every person, what he intended for”. The book presented the findings of many SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS conducted by prominent, world-renowned scientists to suggest that immaterial things such as thoughts, intentions and prayer can all affect a physical change in the material world and that such changes can be measured! Subhanallah, as I read through all the experiments mentioned, I think we as Muslims have lacked to use the full potential of Niat as how our religion demands of us: can you imagine doa as the Muslims’ strongest weapon?

I would like to begin with some of the closing statements mentioned in the book:

Frontier Science is the art of inquiring about the impossible.

True science, unafraid to explore the dark passages of our ignorance, always begins with an unpopular question, even if there is no prospect of an immediate answer-even if the answer threatens to overturn every last one of our cherished beliefs. This was exactly what happened at the time of the conception of the idea about Gravity during the Middle Ages.

Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known in nature – St Augustine

Bearing those in mind, I hope that they can serve, at the outset, as a pretext to subdue whatever negative reservations we may have about such experiments, as there are a lot who will dismiss such things off hand as pseudo-science; which is why I suppose having a team of reputable scientists and scientific Institutions involved can lend some weight.
Granted, this area of inquiry is rather new, and it is also acknowledged that what we humans have gathered collectively about such matters intangible as thoughts, intentions and prayer are still very limited for us to have any conclusive say. I also do not intend to subject Islam, the Prophet s.a.w. or the tenets of Islam to strictly man-made yardsticks of measure, for Islam is Transcendent and Divinely Revealed. But humans, in their quest for knowledge, are beginning to see patterns that affirm the Truths – an idea also mentioned in the Quran in that Allah mentioned “We will show them Our Signs in the horizons and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the Truth” This showing is mentioned in the present or even future tense.

NONLOCALITY of matter in the Universe. (page 9-11)
John Bell, an Irish physicist, famous for his experiment Bell’s Inequality, have demonstrated that when quantum particles have been in contact with each other and then separated, they become ‘entangled’. ‘Entangled’ in the sense that one particle can influence the behavior of the other.
Vast implications: Influence does NOT only occur OVER TIME and SPACE (the classical 4D of things, x,y,z and time)

Physicists have long consoled themselves that such strange, counterintuitive property of the subatomic world only influenced their world, and that they apply to nothing bigger than photons or electrons. When macroscopic world of physics is talked about, the universe eventually behaves according to predictable and measurable Newtonian Laws.

THE HUMAN ANTENNA (pages 21-23)
Gary Schwartz, as a child, played with old TV sets that used long antennas. He experimented that when we stand near those antennas, image on the TV blurred, and that when we touch the antenna, the images became clear. His experiment showed that his student became an antenna, received the EEG signal and then transmitted it to an amplifier.

(pages 27-28)
German Physicist named Fritz-Albert Popp, in the 1970s, stumbled upon the fact that all living things, from basic single-celled plants to sophisticated humans, emitted a constant tiny current of photons, particles of light. He called them ‘biophoton emissions’. Popp maintained that this biophotons, rather than biochemistry, is the true driving force in coordinating all cellular processes. Another German Biophysicist Herbert Frohlich, had proposed that a type of collective vibration coordinates cellular activities. Such theories were ignored until Popp constructed a machine, a photomultiplier, that captured light and counted it, photon by photon. Hence biophotons were detected. It also mentioned that cancer patients have fewer photons, almost as though they are fading out.

What does it imply then, that when the Prophet s.a.w. is constantly being described as a Light, that even his Holy Visage emanated a radiant Light? And that like Jesus, peace be upon him, had been granted the miracle of the healing touch? Where sahabas’ wounds sustained during wars were healed by his (s.a.w.) touch?? Of course we do not mean to reduce the Prophet’s miracles/barakah to some biophotons, perhaps we do not know exactly what is going on, but nevertheless it sets the mind wondering…

EINSTEIN-BOSE CONDENSATE (pages 30 to 32)
I’ve roughly read about this just out of interest years back, where this EINSTEIN-BOSE state is offered as one of the states of matter, like solid, liquid or gas. It occurs only just slightly above absolute zero (about 170 billionth of a degree above 0K) on the Kelvin Scale or the Ideal Gas Scale. At this extremely cold temperature, atoms that normally operate at different speeds, would slow down to identical energy levels, losing their individuality and behaving like one giant atom. (very different from solids, liquids or gas)

Then, Wolfgang Ketterle from Massachusetts Institute of Technology replicated the experiment using sodium that worked well. When particles are at the Einstein-Bose state, they will oscillate in perfect harmony, highly coherent and thus achieve extraordinary efficiency of energy…Like in resonance in Simple Harmonic Movements…when the driving frequency exactly matched the natural frequency of a substance, the amplitude goes to infinity…so in lasers, instead of sending light just 3 metres, a laser can emit a wave 300 million times as far…

Fritz-Albert Popp also found a similar property of these biophotons, which is not supposed to happen to living beings that operate in hot room temperature as compared to that temperature near -273.15 deg celcius. They acted like a single superpowerful frequency, a phenomenon called ‘superradiance’.

British Physicist Roger Penrose and his partner, American anesthetist Stuart Hameroff from University of Arizona proposed that microtubules in cells were like light pipes through which disordered wave signals were made coherent.

Gary Schwartz also witnessed a coherent photon stream emanating from hands of healers: if thoughts are generated as frequencies, healing intention is well ordered light.

When Nabi s.a.w. asked us to make doa upon visiting out ill brethren, it goes without saying that we ought to be SINCERE in our supplication, in our intention to have our brethren healed….

And sincerity is yet another aspect of Niat heavily emphasized in the ambit of Islam, especially tasawwuf. When sincerity is for Allah alone, it means that intention should be highly focused, eliminating all other than Allah…Oh my God, all these linking up is just dazzling! SUBHANALLAH!!!

Now I am really beginning to appreciate why Islam is against fragmentizing of Knowledge, If you are a physicist, do not say “I do not do Biology’ or worse “I hate Biology”. Ultimately all knowledge is from Allah. And today the broadest fragmentizing of knowledge is the dividing it into two classes: duniawi and ukhrawi…we ought to have BOTH! And I was advised that whatever field I intend to study, be they very specific to an industry, INTEND it for Allah…

THE RIGHT TIME(pages 106 to 108)
The book also suggests that the right timing plays a role in our intentions/prayers. Certain experiments showed that geophysical effects affect humans. I will refer more to this when I share about the ongoing intention experiment at the end of the book.

MENTAL BLUEPRINTS (pages 127 to 133)
Aye, finally, some boxing action!
The legendary Boxer, Muhamamad Ali, was not only a skilled professional boxer, he was also a master intentionist! The book describes how Ali uses ‘mantra’, even songs that described how he knocks his opponents down. Ali would repeat the same mantra even to reporters. Ali also uses mental trial runs, intense imagination of his fists impacting Frazier’s eyes, Ali basically envisages the future in minute details as it is unfolding. If image of difficulty pops into the head, he will change the internal movie, editing the scene to one of success…Athletes that employ the mental trial run not only do visual imagery, they engage all the senses in their mental rehearsals! Studies were done to compare the effects on neuro-pathways when a thought of doing something is compared to actually doing it. The neuro pathways used were essentially the same and postulations were that such mental rehearsals eases the way for the real realization/manifestation/happening of the real thing.

“wa innamaa li kullim ri-im maa nawaa” and for every person, what he intended

Allah’s qudrah is also a manifestation of His Will (Iradah)… and whenever He decrees a matter, He Wills (or Intends) it and it comes into being.

(pages 143 to 145)
Psychologist William Braud conducted a study that suggested that we can most influence others to become ordered when we ourselves are more ordered. Calm people were most successful in sending intentions to calm other nervous people.

Dr Daniel Benor also conducted an experiment with lettuce seeds; those seeds that were exposed to positive intentions for their germination showed 10% more crops with significantly less fungal diseases compared to the controls.

THE VOODOO EFFECT (pages 150 to 155)
Negative intentions, those that intend to harm, tend to have higher success rates at remote influence, even when they are unconscious such as when one harbors ill-thoughts or intention about another person. A negative thought about yourself or even such as calling names can ultimately manifest itself as an energy and thus become a SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY. Such negative thoughts were also shown to influence the people around you.

Again, Islam is so against harboring of ill-thoughts, ill-intentions…and even name calling, explaining that that in itself is a doa that can manifest…

(pages 157 to 158)
The idea that we can ‘charge’ inanimate objects with our thoughts is the basis for many dark arts of native culture, also known as black magic, sihir etc, which infuse effigies and voodoo dolls with negative intentions and then use them to target people. There can also be benevolent voodoo, where effigies are used to send positive intentions.

The book also recommended some method to ward off incoming negative intentions. Methods recommended include imagining one’s self in a bubble, impenetrable to such negative thoughts, or imagining a light that ward off the darkness of the evil intentions.

And again Islam has a rich culture for similar stuff, ayat pendinding or husun, are recommended for such objectives.

The Prophet s.a.w. also once suffered from Jewish Sorcery. After the victory at Khandaq, the unsatisfied Jews from Khaibar approached an elderly Jew named Labid, a very skilled magician, to formulate an evil spell on the Prophet s.a.w. Labid, who lived in Madina, acquired several strands of the Prophet’s s.a.w hair and tied 11 knots and upon each knot Labid’s daughters would breathe devilish incantations. The tied strands were then thrown into a well only Labid knew.

The angel Gabriel told the Prophet s.a.w. of the sorcery and revealed the 11 verses of surah al falaq and surah an-naas, upon each verse the knots were untied one by one.

PRAYING FOR YESTERDAY (pages 170 to 175)
Our idea of causation dictates that a certain Cause causes an Effect to happen, and as such, Cause must precede the Effect. However, discoveries in quantum physics tend to defy that understanding. Subatomic particles exist in a state of potential until observed or thought about. This sort of backward influence resembles nonlocal correlations found in the quantum world, as if the connections were always there in some underlying arrangements. Experiments done with Random Event Generators (REGs) showed that thought done in the present can affect the past. In audio REG experiments, audio clips were recorded and then in the present, were influenced by the thoughts of an observer to somewhat influence some sense of order in the sounds which were supposed to be random. It was observed that the person attempting to influence the tapes must be the first listener. Some studies suggest that observations by sentient beings will block future attempts at time-displaced influence.

Of course this raised the clichéd questions that occur when you watch movies like Back To The Future. The truth of the matter is, we know too little even about time-displacement phenomenon in the quantum world. Though this may offer a glimpse of how every event is laid, past, present and future, and that God, being unbound by Time, Transcends Time itself.. wallahu ‘alam

THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT (pages 182 to 184)
During Transcendental Meditation, when minds of mediators become tuned to same frequency, this coherent frequency will begin to order the disordered frequencies around it. Resolution of individual internal conflict leads to resolution of global conflict. A group of meditators were experimented and results were that during the period of the experiment, crime rates significantly drop. When experiments were over, they rose again.

Perhaps this could be one of the mechanisms that cause the widespread peace during the reign of al-Mahdi?

Even intentions and prayers can affect weather. PEAR’s Roger Nelson’s experiment seemed to show that intentions can affect weather…

The very idea of solat asking for rain, again, established in Islam.

Japanese Masaru Emoto, studied water crystal appearances after being exposed to positive and negative thoughts and intentions. Positive thoughts such as those of love produced aesthetic, symmetrical crystals whereas the negative thoughts one produced disordered crystals.

Dr. Emoto even experimented with ZamZam:
As for the ZamZam water you asked, it is true that we could see a beautiful double crystal (one over another one) with six points when we dilluted by 1000. And I commented that maybe it created a double crystal since the word consists of two words.I've already experimented on the 99 word of God or Koran about four years ago and showed the results in a book.However, we are not Muslim and cannot read Arabic. So we put the Arabic words on the water bottle and left it over twenty four hours. Then photographed it. It is true that each crystals were unique and beautiful.

How can the ZamZam not be blessed when it washed the heart of the Prophet s.a.w.?

I may not have covered the experiments in high detail, otherwise that would be very lengthy. If you are skeptical, you just need refer to the names mentioned, search them online, or if you want, you can search the book itself, I have loosely referenced some pages. Even the book has more footnotes pointing to reputable scientific Journals such as Nature.

In conclusion, these latest discoveries offer convincing evidence that all matter in the universe exists in a web of connection and constant influence, which often overrides many of the laws of universe that we used to believe held ultimate sovereignty. Admittedly, even for modern particle physics, much of it is in the realm of theoretical physics, so much of the information about such novel ideas like the String Theory, Warp Passages and the Unified Theory that sought to combine all the four fundamental forces of the universe into one are all very much speculative work and subject to constant modifications and refining; think Stephen Hawkings ;) So theoretical physics now I suppose is very messy and convoluted.

At the end of the book, the author asked the reader who has finished reading to partake in an ongoing worldwide experiment involving intentions. The author recommended several preparatory steps that needed to be taken before going through the Intention experiment.

I’ve read through the author’s guide and I can safely say that I am not keen to participate, though at first I thought the idea was cool. Several reasons why: time consuming, the preparation and all require commitments of no less than 20 mins each time, and the thing is it has to be consistent. Plus, in the context of accommodating readers from all faiths, she recommended chanting mantras that you feel comfortable with, such as OM for Hindus or prayer with the rosary for Catholics and maybe Muslims. I’m not so much for syncretic ideas.

Another interesting point is when the book mentioned that at certain times of the day, the environment is more conducive for sending out intentions. For example, the early hours after sunrise. The morning rays are a natural air ionizer, and positive ions in the air somehow helps in sending intentions. As muslims, we know that there is much Barakah in the morning hours, we are encouraged to work, do Dhuha, send salawat upon the Prophet s.a.w. etc. But of course we are not about to reduce Barakah to the measure of positive ions in the air, or claim that the amount of barakah is directly proportional to the amount of ions in the air.

Somehow this book makes me more aware, or appreciative of the fact that when you send a salawat upon the Prophet s.a.w. or rather when you implore God and thereby intend God to send Salawat upon the Prophet s.a.w., then surely he receives it! And when he s.a.w. receives it, he will reply it and have it sent back to you ten times over!

Subhanallah,
All these frontier discoveries, even if they just barely scratched the surface, can already dazzle the mind. What more when we see Allah’s Visage in Paradise like how we see the Moon, a single glimpse leaves us in wonderment for a thousand years!

Let us all be humble like how the angels were humble:
Subhanak, Laa ‘ilma lanaa illa maa ‘allamtanaa, innaka antal ‘aliimul Hakeem.