The Intention Experiment: Use Your Thoughts to Change the World. Lynne McTaggart
Interview with Popp, Neuss, Germany, March 1, 2006.
17. F.-A. Popp et al., ‘Mechanism of interaction between electromagnetic fields and living organisms’, Science in China (Series C), 2000; 43 (5): 507–18.
18. Ibid.
19. L. Beloussov and N. N. Louchinskaia, ‘Biophoton emission from developing eggs and embryos: Nonlinearity, wholistic properties and indications of energy transfer’, in J. J. Chang et al. (eds.), Biophotons, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998: 121–40.
20. K. Creath and G. E. Schwartz, ‘What biophoton images of plants can tell us about biofields and healing’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2005; 19 (4): 531–50.
21. A. V. Tschulakow et al., ‘A new approach to the memory of water’, Homeopathy, 2005; 94: 241–7.
22. E. P. A. Van Wijk and R. Van Wijk, ‘The development ofa bio-sensor for the state of consciousness in a human intentional healing ritual’, Journal of International Society of Life Information Science (ISLIS), 2002; 20 (2): 694–702.
23. M. Connor, ‘Baseline testing of energy practitioners: Biophoton imaging results.’ Paper presented at the North American Research in Integrative Medicine conference, Edmonton, Canada, May 2006.
24. Personal details about K. Korotkov the result of multiple interviews with the author, November–March 2005–2006.
25. S. D. Kirlian and V. K. Kirlian, ‘Photography and visual observation by means of high frequency currents’, J. Sci. Appl. Photogr., 1964; 6: 397–403.
26. Korotkov’s most important work on the subject was K. Korotkov, Human Energy Field: Study with GDV Bioelectrography, New Jersey: Backbone Publishing Co., 2002; K. Korotkov, Aura and Consciousness – New Stage of Scientific Understanding, St Petersburg: St Petersburg Division of the Russian Ministry of Culture, State Publishing Unit ‘Kultura’, 1999.
27. K. Korotkov et al., ‘Assessing biophysical energy transfer mechanisms in living systems: The basis of life processes’, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2004; 10 (1): 49–57.
28. L. W. Konikiewicz and L. C. Griff, Bioelectrography – A new method for detecting cancer and body physiology, Harrisburg, Va.: Leonard Associates Press, 1982; G. Rein, ‘Corona discharge photography of human breast tumour biopsies’, Acupuncture & Electrotherapeutics Research, 1985; 10: 305–8; K. Korotkov et al., ‘Stress diagnosis and monitoring with new computerized “Crown-TV” device’, Journal of Pathophysiology, 1998; 5: 227.
29. P. Bundzen et al., ‘New technology of the athletes’ psycho-physical readiness evaluation based on the gas-discharge visualisation method in comparison with battery of tests’, ‘SIS-99’ Proceedings, International Congress St Petersburg, 1999: 19–22; P. V. Bundzen, et al., ‘Psychophysiological correlates of athletic success in athletes training for the Olympics’, Human Physiology, 2005; 31 (3): 316–23; K. Korotkov et al., ‘Assessing biophysical energy transfer mechanisms’, op. cit.
30. Clair A. Francomano and Wayne B. Jonas, in Ronald A. Chez (ed.), Proceedings: Measuring the Human Energy Field: State of the Science. The Gerontology Research Center, National Institute of Aging, National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, Maryland, April 17–18, 2002.
31. S. Kolmakow et al., ‘Gas discharge visualization technique and spectrophotometry in detection of field effects’, Mechanisms of Adaptive Behavior, Abstracts of International Symposium, St Petersburg, 1999: 79.
32. Interview with K. Korotkov, March 2006.
NONE OF THE SCIENTISTS INVOLVED IN ‘The Love Study’ remembered who came up with its name. It might have started as Elisabeth Targ’s private joke, for the study involved couples who were installed in two different rooms and separated by a hallway, three doors, eight walls and several inches of stainless steel.1
The name was actually meant to be a gracious nod to the study’s arcane benefactor, the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love at Case Western Reserve. As it happened, the study became a posthumous valentine to Targ, who was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumour just before the grant money came through. The Love Study would be a fitting tribute to Targ, as the first major scientific demonstration of exactly how intention physically affects its recipient, and the name proved especially apt in describing this process. When you send an intention, every major physiological system in your body is mirrored in the body of the receiver. Intention is the perfect manifestation of love. Two bodies become one.
Targ began her career as a mainstream psychiatrist, but made her name in 1999 with two remarkable studies at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) in San Francisco, which tested the possibility of remote healing with end-stage AIDS patients. Targ spent months designing her trial. She and her partner, psychologist and retired hospital administrator Fred Sicher, sought out a homogeneous group of advanced AIDS patients with the same degree of illness, including the same T-cell counts and number of AIDS-defining illnesses. Because they wished to test the effect of distant healing, and not any particular healing modality, they decided to recruit highly experienced, successful healers from diverse backgrounds who might represent an array of approaches.
Targ and Sicher gathered together an eclectic mix of healers from all across America – from orthodox Christians to Native American shamans – and asked them to send healing thoughts to a group of AIDS patients under strict double-blind conditions. All healing was to be done remotely so that nothing, such as the presence of a healer or healing touch, could confound the results. Targ created a strict double-blind rota: each healer received sealed packets with information about the patients to be healed, including their name, photo and T-cell counts. Every other week, the healers were assigned a new patient and asked to hold an intention for the health and well-being of the patient an hour a day for six days, with alternate weeks off for rest. In this manner, eventually every patient in the healing group would be sent healing by every healer in turn.
At the end of the first study, although 40 per cent of the control population died, all 10 of the patients in the treatment group were not only alive but far healthier in every regard.
Targ and Sicher repeated the study, but this time, doubled the size of their study population and tightened