The intention revolution

LYNNE McTAGGART is one of the central authorities on the new science of consciousness, and the award-winning author of seven books, including the internationally bestselling The Intention Experiment, The Field, The Bond, and The Power of Eight.

In part 2 of this interview with PURNIMA RAMAKRISHNAN, Lynne talks about the role of spirituality in intention and healing, the effect of interconnectedness on our state of being, the science of altruism, and the intention revolution.

PR: What is the role of spirituality in intention and in healing? Do you see it as an essential part of the process, or is it more a personal aspect of the participants?

LM: It’s central to the work, which is all about group intention. A lot of my work is centered around small groups, using the Power of Eight. In 2008, I scaled down what I was learning in intention experiments to smaller groups of eight or so.

I started by introducing it in a workshop in Chicago in 2008, and I didn’t expect it to be more than a feel-good effect, like getting your back rubbed. I put people in groups, had them send intentions to a member of the group with a health challenge, and then had the people report on how they were the next day. I expected them to say, “I’m feeling a little more relaxed,” but they didn’t. One woman who had been limping badly because of arthritis in her knee was walking normally that day. Somebody else who had depression said she felt it was lifted. Somebody else with irritable bowel syndrome said her gut felt normal that day. And somebody else with cataracts said they were 80% better. I was astonished and kept trying it out. I have worked with tens of thousands of people and see amazing healing all the time.

One aspect is altruism. When you study the science of altruism, it’s like a bulletproof vest. People who do things for other people without regard for what they’re going to get back live longer, healthier, happier lives. The scientific data are very clear. If you are ill and you help somebody else with the same problem, you’re more likely to get better yourself.

One of the most powerful studies relating to this is a study of the immune system markers of two groups of people. The first group were called “pleasure seekers” by the scientists. These were people who were living the dream, so to speak. They had all the money in the world, went on wonderful holidays, out to the best restaurants, etc. The scientists expected these people to have really healthy systems, and were shocked to see that they didn’t. These were people with terrible immune system markers. They were perfect candidates for degenerative diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart attacks, strokes, and more. These people were going to drop like flies. Whereas the other group, who weren’t affluent, but who were living a life of service, had robust immune systems. These people were going to live forever. That convinced me more than anything of the power of altruism and service. That is at the heart of my Power of Eight groups.

Now here’s the interesting thing: You receive intention from the group and you do intention for the others. I have found over and over again that that is the recipe for healing yourself. I’ve had three people get up out of wheelchairs. I’ve had a woman called Lori, who was going blind with retinal damage in both eyes. Her doctor said they could do nothing for her, then her group did an intention for her. She felt a lot of energy behind her eyes. She went back to the doctor some weeks later, and he told her that her retina was completely healthy. And she has 20-20 vision now.

She’s not alone. There was another woman called Lisa, who was born with a genetic disease of the liver. Her liver was scarred and her spleen was swollen. She was on track to become a candidate for a liver transplant. She did one Power of Eight session, felt a lot of energy around her body, then a few months later saw two liver specialists. They told her that her liver and spleen were normal. All of the scarring, all of the swelling was completely gone. I’ve seen this over and over again, people even reversing stage four cancer.

“Forget yourself, do an intention for somebody else, 
and see what happens.”
Over and over again that produces a shift.

Going back to spirituality and altruism, when people are stuck, I will invariably say, “Forget yourself, do an intention for somebody else, and see what happens.” Over and over again that produces a shift. One woman, Andy, had a financial issue. She was going through a divorce and needed money. She had two small kids, and she’d sold her business and couldn’t get other work. She was trying this and that with her Power of Eight group. I finally said, “Andy, forget yourself. Intend for this young boy.” It was a young boy who had tried to commit suicide by jumping off a 40-foot structure onto hard ground. The doctors didn't think he was going to live. He’d broken everything, and had nerve damage, brain damage, everything. Andy and the rest of the Power of Eight masterclass did intentions for him on three successive Sundays. We had feedback from his parents saying that he had responded each time. He was out of the hospital in record time.

What was even more interesting was what happened to Andy. As soon as she started doing intention for Luke, she got a call out of nowhere the next week offering her a dream job. I’ve seen over and over again that when you put out for someone else the universe rewards you. So, spirituality is at the heart of my work.

PR: Wow. That really touched my heart. You have written a book, The Power of Eight, and you emphasize the impact of these small intention groups. What makes the number eight so impactful and unique? And how does it work? Is it because of the group dynamics or is it a matter of energy?

LM: It doesn’t have to be eight. It became the Power of Eight when I was discussing how to shrink the work down to a workshop. I was with my husband and another member of staff, and I said, “Maybe I’ll put them in groups of eight or so, and have them send an intention to a member of the group with a health challenge.” My husband, who’s a very good headline writer, said, “I love it. The Power of Eight.” That’s how the name stuck.

I’ve seen over and over again that
when you put out for someone else
the universe rewards you. 
So, spirituality is at the heart of my work.

Over time, I’ve recognized that it works with six, 10, or 12. I usually tell people, don’t go under five as then it’s not really a group, and don’t go more than 12 because you’ll never get a turn.

Also, eight is like a Goldilocks number. It has a lot of meaning attached to it in different cultures. China thinks it’s good luck. It’s a sideways infinity sign. And there’s a lot of sacred geometry around it. So, it was chosen by accident, but maybe it wasn’t an accident; maybe it was just a brilliant synchronicity.

The other part of your question was about how this energy works. There are several reasons why it works. Number one, intention works. Group intention amplifies things, even in a small group, and more is not better. Intention in a group works as well with eight as it does with 80. Our thoughts affect other things and they are amplified in a group.

Number two, there is an elevating effect of groups when people get together, even over the Internet. Émile Durkheim, the famous French sociologist, called it the collective effervescence when people get together in groups. Groups elevate us, and that has some effect. There is no question that altruism has a health-inducing effect. We were born to give to each other. We were born to connect and belong, and we need that like we need to breathe. I wrote about it extensively in my book, The Bond. Our nature connects, we are very tribal. That is really impactful.

Finally, the biggest reason of all—Oneness. People report altered states whenever they are in intention experiments or Power of Eight groups. I have surveyed people and they say they felt that they were part of a higher network. For example, they say, “I was crying uncontrollably,” “I had goosebumps up and down my arms,” “I felt like I was in the tractor beam of Star Trek.” They also report being almost out of their heads.

So I wanted to find out about these things. I was lucky enough to work with Dr. Stephanie Sullivan, a neuroscientist at Life University, the largest and most prestigious chiropractic university in the world. Dr. Sullivan and I devised a study where seven groups of student volunteers did Power of Eight groups. They were people who had never meditated and never done Power of Eight work before. We put an EEG cap on one of the senders in the group and measured what happened. We also took information from the recipient. Every recipient in the group reported a lowering or elimination of pain, and there were always people who had painful situations.

We were completely shocked by the results! The brainwave signatures of the senders showed a significant lowering of the parts of the brain that makes us feel separate—the parietal and temporal lobes—the ones that help us navigate through space. The right frontal lobes involved in worry, doubt, and negativity were also dialed way down. Their brainwave signatures were almost identical to those recorded by Dr. Andrew Newberg when he studied people in ecstatic oneness, including Buddhist monks during ecstatic prayers and Sufi masters during ecstatic chanting. But here’s the thing: it takes years of practice to become a Buddhist, and it takes hours of priming to do Sufi dancing. Our people made an intention for just 10 minutes, as all the Power of Eight Groups do. They were total novices, yet their brainwaves demonstrated that they were already on a fast track to a miraculous altered state of mind. They were essentially experiencing oneness.

I think this is the greatest secret sauce of all. We usually don’t experience oneness in life. Everybody talks about it, and I have written about it—we are all part of a giant energy field, the zero point field. But we don’t experience life like that. We experience life in separation. We experience life as lonely little people on a lonely planet. Yet, during these ten minutes of intention we don’t, and I think that is an important part of why this works so powerfully and how we heal.

The biggest reason of all—Oneness. 
People report altered states whenever they are in 
intention experiments or Power of Eight groups. 
I have surveyed people and they say they felt 
that they were part of a higher network.

PR: Thank you. That was even powerful to listen to!

What are your hopes for a society that can understand these concepts and can work towards interconnectedness?

LM: It is more than a hope. I am starting an intention revolution. By that, I mean when I start looking at the state of things around me, I realize that the whole paradigm we have is falling apart. Our leaders don’t know what to do to solve things. The life we have been living is based on a faulty view of ourselves, an old fashioned view of us as separate entities according to an outdated scientific view of people. It assumes all things are separate, well behaved entities, operating according to fixed laws of time and space—the old Newtonian view. It has been well superseded by quantum physics and information about the interconnectedness and interdependence of things and human beings as essentially being a system of energy. And so, I think we have to learn to live life differently and much more interconnectedly.

You receive intention from the group and 
you do intention for the others.
I have found over and over again that 
that is the recipe for healing yourself.

I started thinking that I needed an army of changemakers and then I realized that I have an army of changemakers. They are the Power of Eight groups. There are tens of thousands of them around the world. What if I brought them together to start changing their neighborhoods from the ground up; what would happen? That is the process of explaining to people that small groups of eight can change the world, can change the community. It can change you and your life. It can change the lives of everybody in your group, and other Power of Eight groups working together can make small changes and big changes.

Here is the final thing to think about—the ripple effect of this kind of activity. I did three intention experiments for Gaza, with about 30,000 people. We did an intention for ceasefire and the return of hostages, and the one and only ceasefire occurred right after that intention. Did we do this? Who knows! The point is, we were thinking of the ripple effect of that. These 30,000 people all have social networks averaging around 150 people each.

According to research done by Nicholas A. Christakis, a sociologist at Harvard, our positive or negative attributes ripple down a social network. Happy people are more likely to have happy friends, not because they self-select happy people to be with, but because of the natural spread of happiness. The same with negative attributes like loneliness. He also found that good deeds like being kind to others, doing a positive intention, having love for strangers, ripples down a social network. For instance, if Jack is kind to Joe, Joe is more likely to be kind to Tammy, who is more likely to be kind to Bob, who is more likely to be kind to Sam, and so it carries on. It ripples down their social network too. Ultimately it magnifies enormously. If everybody has ~150 people in their social networks, I found out that, after a while, you would reach 4.8 million people. That is half the population of Israel.

Ultimately, you would get to everybody on the planet. That is what I am really interested in—a ripple of change, a ripple of love and non-violence, and I think small groups can achieve this.

Small groups have been behind every major social movement. Gandhi liberated India from the British by going to small communities and giving them spinning wheels so that they did not have to rely on the British textile industry. Martin Luther King Jr. started civil rights with a tiny group of people. It always is. I have great hope and plans for these groups to be changemakers for a better world, where we can use this extraordinary power to heal ourselves and each other.

So that is the biggest and most amazing effect,
the mirror effect of these intentions:
the people who are sending intentions
are being healed as much as the targets.

PR: If you could have an unlimited supply of resources and participants, what is your dream experiment?

LM: It is close to what we are going to do on February 1. We are going to measure what happens to people when they participate in an intention experiment. I want to know exactly why this is so powerful. I want to measure inside and out. Of course, I would like to end wars like the wars in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, doing these intention experiments. I would love to ignite the world into doing this. That is what I am working toward.

PR: The readers of the Heartfulness magazine are on a journey of personal growth and spirituality. Is there a mindset shift that you would like to suggest to them?

LM: You don’t need years of practice. You don’t need hours of priming. All you need is a small group and a common intention and you have the tools to change the world.

PR: Thank you so much.