The first worldwide double-blind experiments to test the power of intention have produced extraordinary evidence that we can change the physical properties of plants and speed up their growth when we harness the power of ‘group mind' over matter.

The studies have involved thousands of "intenders" around the world sending intention to targets under strictly scientifically controlled conditions through the Intention Experiment website and during individual gatherings around the world.

For these initial experiments, Lynne McTaggart, who has become an internationally recognized spokesperson on the science of spirituality as the author of the classic bestseller The Field, and, more recently, The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World, paired up with a team of scientists at the University of Arizona.

They decided to test whether thoughts could make seeds sprout earlier and grow faster.  In each instance the Arizona scientists prepared four sets of seeds — one set of seeds, and three controls — to eliminate chance findings.  Prior to each study, the lab emailed McTaggart photos of all four sets of seeds.

McTaggart was scheduled to appear before many diverse audiences in a number of countries during the summer of 2007, which afforded her numerous opportunities to test this experiment in a variety of settings.  She also successfully carried out this study on the internet, inviting her readers from around the globe to send intention to one of the chosen set of seeds.

Throughout the summer of 2007, the study was also run before audiences in Sydney, Australia, Rhinebeck, New York, and Hilton, Head, South Carolina, who were instructed, in each instance, to direct their thoughts to target seeds in the Tucson, Arizona lab.

In one of the series of experiments, the intention of a group as small as 100 was powerful enough to affect the growth of the seeds, which were nearly 3000 miles away.

The greatest effect of all occurred with the final study, which was conducted among a group of experienced Healing Touch healers. In this case, the seeds sent intention grew nearly twice as large as the controls.

In an earlier study, Lynne, working with the University of Arizona team, demonstrated that group thoughts can alter a basic physical property of geranium leaves:  the tiny light — called biophoton emissions — emitted from all living things.

The results of the glowing intention were so strong that they could readily be seen in digital biophoton photographs using powerful CCD cameras.

Most recently, McTaggart, partnered with noted Russian physicist Konstantin Korotkov, carried out a successful Intention Experiment involving thousands of people from 80 countries around the globe, who were instructed to send love to a little vial of water in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Sophisticated equipment later showed that this experiment changed it essential properties, specifically its light emissions. This result has vast implications about the power of thought to clean up the world's polluted water supply.

McTaggart's ‘global laboratory' is now moving on to a ‘mini-Gaia'  which will involve constructing a little terrarium and asking readers to attempt to lower its temperature.

"If we find we have a significant effect, the implications of it — that our collective thoughts could tackle global warming — will be extraordinary," she says.

She is also working with top scientists to design experiments to see if group intention can lower violence in certain hotspots in the world, raise the educational results in the US's poorest districts and increase the availability of certain biofuels.

"Although the first experiments have ‘worked,' it's important to understand that all we have at the moment is an intriguing demonstration of possibility, and not one single definitive statement," says Lynne. "Each scientific experiment must be replicated many times to be accepted as fact.

"But here is the first evidence that one good thought is all it takes to change the world."

Lynne McTaggart is the award-winning author of five books. Wayne Dyer called The Field "the most profound and enlightening book I have ever read." She was also featured in the film What the BLEEP!? Down the Rabbit Hole. Learn more at TheIntentionExperiment.com.