Magic, Miracles & Possibilities: Does Thinking Make It So?

By Janet Geis & Bart Brodsky

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
          —Hamlet, Act. I, Scene V

"Just think lovely thoughts and they lift you up in the air."
          —Peter Pan

Have you ever dreamt that you could fly? Or had a conversation with a long deceased relative? It all seemed real at the time, but then you awakened to find that you were "only" dreaming. Yet, maybe your "dream" was real and the "awake" state just another dream. Who is to say what is real, or that you're not dreaming NOW?

Have you ever taken control of a dream? Could lucid dreaming be a portal to another reality? A fundamental principle of metaphysics is the primacy of Mind. The material world has the appearance of being hard and immutable but may in truth be malleable and subject to one's will. "As above, so below," wrote the ancient Hermetics. Borrowing this theme, new age books such as "The Secret" declare that everyone has the power to attract success and abundance, to literally bend reality to one's desire.

Metaphysics also teaches that separateness is illusion, that All is One. And science seems to confirm this insight. Cosmologists say that the universe started with a bang 14 billion years ago, when out of nowhere a tiny something emerged, rapidly expanding to reach its present size, and expanding still. Through the phenomenon of "quantum entanglement" all things remain deeply intertwined, despite the immense separation of space and time. Indeed, in key subatomic experiments a choice made by the observer can change the nature of the phenomena observed. "What the —?"

Physicist Fritjof Capra uses systems theory to explore these "hidden connections." Physicist David Bohm refers to an "implicate order." Fred Alan Wolf, also a physicist, warns about buying "quantum snake oil" peddled by "motivational speakers" with no science background. Nevertheless, he tells us, "There seems to be the presence of something called Mind, or something outside of the physical world, which seems to be needed or present in order to explain, completely, the observations of reality that we have been able to carry out up to now. And, there seems to be no way to get out of that."

Irish philosopher Bishop Berkeley once famously quipped, "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind." Now physicists are declaring the old Cartesian duality, the separation of mind and matter, officially obsolete. The fundamental "stuff" of the universe may be information itself, or more precisely, the way information is organized and shared through hierarchies, from the smallest subatomic interactions to the universal attraction of gravity. With apologies to Madonna, it's not just a material world anymore.

This begs the question: Can mind really move matter?

Bending Reality

Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead...
only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.
          —From The Matrix

In the Matrix movies, Neo ("The One") seems to bend reality to his will. In our own "consensus reality," spoon bending is often a clever trick performed by stage magicians pretending to be psychic. But now there are documented cases of mind over matter that are making even mainstream scientists take notice.

Mind Reading By Computer

The Boston Globe reported that a rudimentary form of mind reading is already a reality. In an experiment conducted by Seung-Schik Yoo of Brigham and Women's Hospital, volunteers moved computer cursors with thoughts alone. Volunteers' brains were analyzed by an MRI scanner, which noted brain activity and translated it to a computer monitor. This technique may one day assist the paralyzed to operate machinery—and more. Christopher deCharms, a brain imaging researcher at Stanford University, speculated, "It's not [yet] possible to tell the difference between thinking of your mother and thinking of your car [but] I think 50 years from now that will be possible." (http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2004/07/13/mind_power_scientist_turns_thoughts_into_actions_literally/)

If thoughts can move a computer cursor, could amplified thoughts move mountains? Have you ever played a game where every second counts and your mind and senses race to meet the challenge? In emergencies people have been known to summon superhuman strength. Parents have freed children trapped under autos, displaced heavy boulders—almost like moving mountains. We hope that it doesn't always take an emergency to call forth our inner "avatar," but it's good to know that limits can be stretched!

But stretched how far? At first glance nature's universal constants seem immutable. Circles always total 360 degrees; the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same; and laws of gravity work reliably from one end of the universe to the other. But there may be other universes where the constants are different, where circles aren't necessarily 360, where light travels slower or faster, and where gravity is stronger or weaker. Our own universe may be part of a larger "multiverse" where anything that can happen is already happening! In the distant future we may even learn how to create "baby universes" where alternate rules apply. It's a crazy notion, but our own universe indeed may have been created by some highly advanced alien civilization, perhaps as a science class project. Considering that the human race seems to be such a "work in progress," we might well wonder if our student Star Child aced his class or had to repeat it!

Short of taking a ride in the Mothership, how else might the rules be bent?

Just Think Cyber Thoughts

Intrepid programmers are already rewriting the rules, at least in cyberspace. Artificial intelligence expert Ray Kurzweil declares that the line between nature and "virtual reality" is blurring fast. In virtual reality the laws of physics can change practically on a whim. Imagine becoming anything you wish: young or old, male or female, black or white or green or blue! He who writes the rules of a universe effectively becomes its Creator.

Kurzweil forecasts that we are already becoming human-machine hybrids, and that conscious machines are only a few decades away. Critics warn, however, that our rush to embrace such overwhelming technology is not without considerable risk. Computers will soon be powerful enough to store a lifetime of memories. Will they also be able to store your consciousness, your very soul? Once you can be anything, will you still be YOU? Could you love? Would you still be loved for being unique? Would you still get to vote? What about back-up programs? Would back-ups be fully conscious "clones" or merely spare parts, stored libraries of data? Would erasing your "clone" constitute murder?

New technologies offer freedom from biological constraints and with it the promise of "virtually" eternal life. Putting your mind online might also be an instant passport to communication with many other minds, perhaps even a "global brain." Could this be instant god realization or the devil in disguise? Holy man Ram Dass once told us that he would never upload his consciousness onto a computer, not even to cheat physical death. Would you? If Kursweil is right in his predictions, you may one day get to choose.

Mind-Body Healing

OPEN EXCHANGE: The editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association says that he recognizes no link between mind and body in medical treatment.
DEEPAK CHOPRA: You should ask him how he wiggles his toes.

What is "mind" anyway? It's a tough question to answer, so it's no wonder that conventional medicine prefers to focus on the mechanics of the body. Holistic medicine has grown in popularity precisely because it recognizes the "person" residing within the "body."

Perhaps mind-body healing boils down to making informed choices. The decisions you make every day either take you closer to health or further from it. Are you exercising regularly? Do you eat enough veggies? Do you floss? These questions imply that you have some degree of control over your own fate. If free will is not real, it is certainly a most convincing illusion. We're all connected, and yet we each experience freedom of choice—what a conundrum!

Hypnosis Relieves Anxiety & Pain

A growing body of research supports the claim that hypnosis is an effective tool in treating a variety of problems, from anxiety to chronic pain. Hypnosis is "a form of highly focused attention," says Dr. David Spiegel, professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. "One of the interesting ironies is that old fantasy that it takes away control. It's actually a way of enhancing people's control, of teaching them how to control aspects of their body's function and sensation that they thought they couldn't." Hypnotherapy is used successfully in pain management, stress reduction, and habit control, as well as for specific ailments such as irritable bowel syndrome and gastric disturbances. The positive effects of just a few sessions can last for years. Treatments are often less expensive than drugs and without potentially dangerous side effects.

(Newsweek, September 27, 2004.)

Meditation Heals By Rewiring The Brain

Leading researchers have demonstrated that meditation works to relieve stress by stimulating a specific area of the brain associated with positive emotions. Richard Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, randomly selected a group of volunteers with stressful jobs to participate in an eight-week course in Mindfulness Meditation given by author Jon Kabat-Zinn. A control group received no meditation training. The group who practiced meditation showed a marked increase in electrical activity in their left prefrontal cortex, the locus of positive, optimistic emotions. "This shows that these changes are not just 'in your head,' so to speak," says Davidson. "The meditation produced real changes in the brain."

(Discover, January 2004.)

Love Heals Physical Wounds

Arguing less with your spouse can actually help you heal faster. Ohio State University researchers found that wounds on couples that expressed open hostility healed at 60% of the rate of non-hostile couples. They conclude that minimizing stress for patients scheduled for surgery could actually shorten hospital stays and save money.

Professor Steve Bloom, an expert in stress at Imperial College London, said, "These findings are interesting, and illustrate yet again the control that the mind has over the body." Andrew Weil, MD, renowned expert in integrative medicine, summarizes, "This study shows another good reason to be gentler with loved ones and practice stress reduction techniques." (BBC News; Andrew Weil's Health Newsletter, February 2006.)

More Friends = Better Immune System

Research says that the more friends you have, the healthier you'll be. Carnegie Mellon doctors gave 83 college freshmen an influenza vaccine and found that those with larger social networks produced more flu-fighting antibodies than those who hung out in smaller groups. Students who reported feeling lonely produced fewer antibodies as well.

(Prevention, November 2006.)

God & Health: Churchgoers Live Eight Years Longer

According to a recent survey, 84% of Americans think that praying for the sick improves their chances of recovery. In fact, life expectancy is greatest among regular churchgoers, 83 years, eight years more than for people who never attend church. Churchgoing is also associated with healthy habits, including less smoking, less drinking, more exercise, and a happier outlook on life. Is it divine connection—or the warmth of community—that promotes good health? Or both? Whether or not prayers are actually answered, faith seems to foster longevity. Of special note: it doesn't seem to matter which denomination you belong to, so long as you are in an organized group.

(Newsweek, November 10, 2003.)

Positive & Negative Thinking

Just what makes that little old ant
Think he'll move that rubber tree plant
Anyone knows an ant can't
Move a rubber tree plant
But he's got high hopes...
          —"High Hopes" sung by Frank Sinatra

On October 21, 1967, 100,000 peaceniks jammed the streets of Washington, D.C., channeling their collective energies in order to levitate the Pentagon to outer space. Why the Pentagon? Because that's where the real power resided. According to media savvy co-organizer Abbie Hoffman, his East Coast friends thought the whole thing was a cynical publicity stunt, while his California comrades dared to think, "Just maybe...." Some of them even claim to have seen the building briefly hover a few inches off the ground.

The followers of Transcendental Meditation (TM) teach a form of levitation they call "yogic flying." According to physicist and meditator John Hegelin, during advanced meditative states "the gravitational field loses its grip on the individual." Videos we've seen of "yogic flying" look like cross-legged hopping, but the meditators really do believe.

More amazing still, TMers say they can manifest world peace! The TM organization reports that they have conducted over 50 scientific studies to verify this claim. "By creating coherence in collective consciousness... just 1% of a population practicing Transcendental Meditation is sufficient to bring about a significant reduction in crime, sickness and accidents." What a lovely thought! Well, if enough people meditate, at least it thins the crowds. As we used to say in the 60s, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"

Believe This & You'll Live Longer

Optimists are more likely to live longer than pessimists, according to a new study conducted at the University of Pittsburgh. Researcher Hilary Tindle surveyed nearly 100,000 healthy women, ages 59 to 79, about their outlook on life, then tracked their health over several years. After eight years, the most optimistic women were 9 percent less likely to have developed heart disease, 30 percent less likely to have died from heart disease, and 14 percent less likely to have died of any cause. Women who scored high in "cynical hostility" were at even greater risk of dying in general. (THE WEEK, Aug. 28-Sept. 4, 2009.)

Some people may be "hardwired" to be optimistic. Can we actually extend life by training pessimists to think lovely thoughts? Apparently yes, according to a study from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Here researchers conducted a study whereby college students identified as "pessimistic" attended "optimism workshops" and subsequently had fewer visits to their school's health services department. They also had lower rates of depression and anxiety than classmates who had no happiness classes. (Scientific American Mind, February/March 2006.)

However, the power of positive thinking can also turn negative, says another study conducted by psychologist Joanne Wood. Subjects were asked to repeat the phrase, "I'm a lovable person" while performing a menial task. The mental affirmation did indeed improve the mood of people who started off with relatively high self-esteem. Subjects who did not think highly of themselves, on the other hand, felt much worse. Apparently you have to believe in yourself enough to embrace change. Positive affirmations, Wood concludes, "may backfire for the very people who need them the most." (THE WEEK, July 3-10, 2009.)

Negative Feedback

Is there such a thing as too much self-esteem? The most popular personal growth trainer of the early 1970s was the charismatic Werner Erhard, founder of EST. Erhard implored EST participants to "get it," although "it" was never actually defined. Erhard preached the message of self-esteem and personal responsibility to the extreme, and on more than one occasion he infamously proclaimed that German Jews were "responsible" for the Nazi holocaust. Some held Erhard personally responsible for this insult, but EST had always been about provoking strong reactions and garnering headlines, too. In another context, Tiger Woods' father once credited EST for Tiger's success, "What I learned led me to give so much time to Tiger, and to give him the space to be himself, and not to smother him with dos and don'ts." Tiger unleashed—again, too much self-esteem?

Author Barbara Ehrenreich is on a crusade against positive thinking, culminating with the 2009 release of "Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America." A charter member of Progressives for Obama, Ehrenreich says that the cult of personal responsibility has gone too far, playing into the hands of corporations who want to escape their own responsibilities for a bad economy, unfulfilling jobs, inadequate healthcare, and social decay. Ehrenreich, a breast cancer survivor, rails against the relentless culture of positive thinking. She notes that, contrary to popular belief, there is no science supporting the notion that negative emotions cause cancer or that positive ones cure it. She didn't give herself cancer so she doesn't want to be guilt tripped over it, either. She especially resents being told that her cancer is a "gift." "If cancer is your idea of a gift," she replies tartly, "take me off your gift list." Ehrenreich is funny but she's not necessarily having fun. In place of positive thinking she counsels stoic realism.

Loving Thoughts & Distance Healing

Bay Area researcher Ellen Levine, PhD, tested the healing power of love at the California Pacific Medical Center with volunteers Carol and Mary. Carol is a breast cancer survivor and Mary is her partner. Carol sat in a sealed room while Mary, in another sealed room, sent her messages of love and compassion at random intervals. Both were wired up to measure brain wave activity, heart rate, and skin temperature. Carol's brain wave measurements changed markedly when Mary was transmitting the love vibes. "I felt that I could sense it," said Carol.

OPEN EXCHANGE asked Levine to speculate on the significance of her findings. By what mechanism can healing thoughts be transmitted? Some skeptics charge that mental projection, if proven, would overturn the known laws of physics. "I leave the theorizing to others, such as Elizabeth and Russell Targ, who have pioneered research into distance healing. I want to move it closer. I don't really know how it works. As a researcher I'm just interested in results."

Studies such as this are yet to be corroborated by mainstream science.

(KRON Television, 2/20/2004 and OPEN EXCHANGE.)

Curing vs. Healing

Dr. Larry Dossey, former real life MASH surgeon and bestselling author, truly believes in the healing power of prayer. Yet he makes an important distinction between curing and healing. He explained it to OPEN EXCHANGE this way: "Sometimes the best outcome of an illness is death. Completeness in life does not always mean that the disease goes away. We're all going to die. The statistics are overwhelmingly convincing! So, it's not always the best outcome that the disease goes away. Statistically speaking, if all the diseases that people tried to pray away suddenly vanished, the earth would have become overpopulated years ago and there would be no place to stand! Everybody wants their disease to go away, but it's a blessing in disguise for the human race that they don't always go away. So, it's a tough lesson for us to learn. But we can heal into death."

Placebo Effect: Mind-Body Connection

More than a generation ago, battlefield medics discovered quite by accident that when they ran out of morphine they could "trick" their patients into feeling relief with injections of nothing more than salt water. But the placebo effect is more than "a whole lot of nothing." When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy added naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, the pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared! The placebo effect is not just in your mind; it is somehow biochemical. The mind does seem to impact on the body's chemistry, but the mechanism is still unknown.

(New Scientist, "13 Things That Don't Make Sense," March 19, 2005)

Harnessing the Powers of Mind

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
          —Arthur C. Clarke

Do you want to sample mind technologies for yourself? OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE offers a wealth of modalities, among them:

The Avatar Course: "Teaches simple, practical tools that allow you to move into new areas of consciousness... at will."

Lisa Cooney's ThetaHealing: "An attainable miracle," which includes "manifesting abundance." Lisa's philosophy is that a positive attitude reconnects with natural vitality and physical well-being.

Marilyn Gordon's Center for Hypnotherapy Certification: Beyond certification, the training is considered a "blessing" and "transformational." (See Schools.)

Christine Metawati: "Energy Healing & Consciousness Transformation." (See Coaching.)

NLP Marin: "An elegant and effective toolbox of communication and change skills" useful in both personal growth and to facilitate professional success. (See Schools.)

Judith Orloff, MD: "Intuitive Healing" at the New Living Expo.

Reiki Center of the East Bay: "Healing Through a Higher Power." (See Health & Healing.)

The Spiritual Healing Center: Offering "grace and inner light," "spiritual healing," "intuitive development," and more. (See Spirit & Soul.)

Learn Telekinesis, "Mind Over Mater," at Earthrise Retreat Center.

What Do You Think?

Mind and body are inextricably linked, but the limits of mind power are still unknown. Put another way, the full extent of human abilities is yet to be realized. Popular literature and "fringe science" is filled with stories of magical thinking, superhuman feats, miracle cures, foreknowledge, teleportation, the healing power of prayer, time travel, and more!

How do we know which are true? A popular meme in consciousness literature is that in order to access higher powers, you have to put aside self-limiting beliefs. If you really want to fly, first you must believe! This is a seductive concept, but it has the distinct disadvantage of being unimaginable to the poor benighted skeptic. The skeptics' mantra is, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

For the present, let's avoid unnecessary arguments by separating what is easily testable from what we have to take on faith. The law of gravity works equally well for skeptics as well as believers, and tests always produce consistent results. So the law of gravity rests on solid ground, so to speak. (For now we'll reserve judgment on levitation.) What else is this reliable? With respect to health and longevity, there's ample evidence documenting the salutary benefits of many mind-body modalities, including hypnotherapy, yoga and meditation, touch therapy, loving thoughts, and yes, the power of positive thinking.

On the other hand, there are many phenomena yet to be explained, let alone confirmed by mainstream science. These include intuition, ESP, out-of-body experiences, distance healing, life-after-death, and a host of other mysteries, including consciousness itself. It's much more difficult to establish generally accepted proof for these phenomena, in part because researchers don't necessarily agree on testing methodology, let alone standards of evidence.

Right now we imagine a chorus of protests, "I don't need proof. It happened to ME!" And that position is entirely valid—for YOU! But what would you say to convince a non-believer? Let's say you have a dream that literally comes true. How can you prove that it wasn't just a coincidence? Some believers just don't want or need validation. Others, however, want to win over skeptics and see science come to embrace new methodologies, new paradigms—even if some old cherished beliefs are ultimately disproved.

The personal healing experiences of frontline practitioners and their clients may well be ahead of the science. Many such "powers of mind" could turn out to be emergent faculties in human evolution. Others could be the triumphs of artificial intelligence technology. Still others may not pan out. Meanwhile, let's not dismiss anything out-of-hand. Let's proceed, feet on the ground but looking upward, skeptical of easy "miracles" but open to endless possibilities.

So, does thinking make it so?

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