Some succeeded at this task more than others. When the author did find just the right analogy to convey the main point, it became a beautiful passage of words to highlight in yellow.

But, what I found glaringly missing from most of these books was a sufficient nod to the underlying philosophical principles behind the topics. Perhaps that’s because the masses, to whom these books are targeted, find philosophy either boring or too legalistic in nature.

Philosophy is the single most critical element in having any true understanding of the Shift we are currently experiencing. As Billy Joel sang, “We didn’t start the fire.” We didn’t get to where we are from a vacuum. With all of the attention being given right now to minding our mind and being more aware of our thoughts, it’s important to recognize that our thoughts become our beliefs that become our philosophy that shifts our culture and creates the world we live in.

At this moment, there are two main philosophical paradigms vying for dominance as the basis of reality. The first is material realism and the second is consciousness. Both have existed for thousands of years and have traded places over and over again throughout our history as the accepted theory.

The coup being waged now by the consciousness adherents, who see both matter and energy as an epiphenomenon of a wholistic something, is to overthrow the hardcore material realists, who see nature as a machine that they can bend to their greedy will regardless of consequence.

While both philosophies endeavor to vault humans to a central platform of being far more than just voyeurs in the universe, the pop culture currently co-opting the consciousness philosophy espouses that we are critically important co-creators of “All That Is.” That has spawned a multi-billion dollar industry of self-help instruction aimed at creating a self-regulation regiment that will restore Eden on Earth.

But, there’s a real danger in going overboard with that idea. The philosophy of material realism last came into prominence in the West during the Protestant Reformation, which was a revolt against science based on a moral code and idealism. Because it had gone unchecked and unbalanced for so long, the consciousness-type philosophy led to beliefs based on superstition and outright myth.

Now that a consciousness-type philosophy is attempting to rise again, it is serving the beneficial purpose of balancing material realism that is out of control. It is showing that the current way is aggressive, invasive, and destructive to the point of annihilation if it is not constrained.

There is another philosophy that can mediate this balancing act. It’s called existentialism. What most folks know of existentialism is either the famous quote from Nietzsche, “God is dead” or the neurotic parodies of Woody Allen on Nietzsche’s Being and Nothingness. In fact, if it had not been for the enduring quality of Allen’s work, existentialism may have phased out quickly as just another pop culture fad.

But there’s far more to existentialism than that. The focus is still on the human element, but it does help place humanity in its proper position with regard to the whole by leaving a little room for the great mystery of existence in general.

One of the best descriptions I’ve found of existentialism comes from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which states:

“On the existential view, to understand what a human being is it is not enough to know all the truths that natural science—including the science of psychology—could tell us. The dualist who holds that human beings are composed of independent substances—“mind” and “body”—is no better off in this regard than is the physicalist, who holds that human existence can be adequately explained in terms of the fundamental physical constituents of the universe. Existentialism does not deny the validity of the basic categories of physics, biology, psychology, and the other sciences (categories such as matter, causality, force, function, organism, development, motivation, and so on). It claims only that human beings cannot be fully understood in terms of them. Nor can such an understanding be gained by supplementing our scientific picture with a moral one. Categories of moral theory such as intention, blame, responsibility, character, duty, virtue, and the like do capture important aspects of the human condition, but neither moral thinking (governed by the norms of the good and the right) nor scientific thinking (governed by the norm of truth) suffices.”

It’s good to learn all we can from science and morality. It’s better to hone both ways of knowing in order to have a full understanding of either. It’s best to balance the head and heart equally. When we, as individuals, learn how to do that, the culture will reflect it and balance itself out too. Perhaps then we will be in a position to move beyond this dualistic pendulum swinging between two philosophies and find a new way forward together.

An interview with her aired just prior to coverage of the opening ceremonies. The host questioned her initial reaction to the injury, wondering why she refused to get it x-rayed to see if her leg was broken. Lindsey replied that she wanted to see for herself how it was before any other examination was performed.

Now, to some folks, it may seem that Lindsey had so much at stake that she simply chose to be in denial about the extent of her injury. But, let’s follow the wise advice to consider the source and take a look at who made this statement.

Vonn is a world-class downhill skier, meaning that she routinely flies across the snow with little protective gear at speeds reaching 80 or 90 mph. She knows a little something about focus and intent. As a premier athlete, she is also very in touch with her body.

After the injury, the first thing Vonn did was to ask her body how it felt and what it needed. She didn’t need an outside authority to give her the answer. The next thing Vonn did was to give her injured body exactly what it requested, the main factor being rest.

If Lindsey were in denial, she would have continued to train and increased the injury, or she would not have dropped out of so many competitions. She was in the run for five medals. Instead, she chose to focus on her main discipline and stated that one medal would be plenty.

If she did not consider herself the authority of her own body, she may have tried to meet the demands of her sponsors and the expectations of the TV networks, who were counting on her to be the Michael Phelps of these games. To be in harmony with her body’s needs, she declined to march with the U.S. delegation during the opening ceremonies, denying herself one major part of fully enjoying of the Olympic experience.

You have to have a good head on your shoulders to make split-second decisions as you whisk down a slippery slope. Fortunately, Lindsey Vonn has plenty enough sense to put things in perspective and honor her long-term health. And, she obviously has honed many of the same skills as an intuitive healing practitioner and listens to her own body-voice as well as the skill of focusing intent toward a clear purpose.

She may have injured her leg, but the rest of her is doing just fine.

At this moment, there are two philosophical paradigms vying for dominance. They’ve both around since antiquity and have traded places over and over as the accepted working theory of the time. The first is material realism. The basic tenet is that matter is primary. As that concerns thought energy, it means that the brain is primary and thought is an epiphenomena of the brain. In other words, without a physical processing center, there is no thought.

The other philosophy has gone by many names and is in the process of being renamed again, but the basic tenant is that consciousness is the basis of all. Now, with material realism, quantum physics has shown that energy is as primal as matter, but the focus is still pretty much on matter. With consciousness as the basis of all, both matter and energy are epiphenomenon of it.

These are the two philosophies primarily behind the controversy of advancements in neuroscience being equated with honing  our ability to measure the manifestation of consciousness.

With material realism, the idea is that thought arises from the rapid and parallel processing occurring in the brain that eventually forms a cohesive, coherent thought.

Using the consciousness philosophy as the dominant theory, brain activity is seen as measuring the shadow of thought energy. That energy intersects the physical realm through a physical processing center. Some use the analogy of a radio broadcast to illuminate this idea. The broadcast signal is always present, but unless a receiver is on and tuned to that station, or frequency, it cannot receive the information.

One of the issues that drives the controversy between the two philosophies is the either/or Hellenistic way of thinking that has permeated all of Western culture since the rise of the ancient Greek civilization. With this view, there can only be one way that thought energy occurs. Another issue that fuels the fire is the pop-culture preference for simple answers.

Is it possible that we can reach a compromise and state that thought is a dynamic process that arises in the brain from two sources? Can we both receive and create thought energy simultaneously? That paradigm is easy to accept if you are inclined to view an entity as a function of mind, body, and spirit. It’s not so easy to accept if you are tasked with developing practical applications that pinpoint certain areas of the brain. Advancements in this area are bringing great hope to quadriplegics and amputees with the creation of mind-to-machine interfaces that help them manipulate physical objects and reconnect with the world by some form of interaction.

But, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about these promising experiments. I’ve read articles in e-zines that cater to intuitives espousing them as mind-over-matter. No such thing is happening. That would require some form of telepathy. At all times the subject is hard-wired to the physical thing that it is influencing. Even if no wires are involved, it’s like the difference in a corded phone and a blue tooth on a cell phone. It’s still considered a direct-connect system, not through-the-ether telepathy.

I’ve also read articles that this is some breakthrough in thought because the person using the device has to think differently. No more so than someone who has suffered a stroke has to think differently to learn to walk or talk again. They are simply re-wiring their brain around damaged areas to make new connections that control motor skills.

The only new things we have here are the ability to pinpoint certain areas of the brain with great precision and a better understanding of the true plasticity of the brain. With the rise of dementia, that’s getting a lot of attention these days.

A clear understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of these opinions will help us to better understand them so we won’t confuse the map for the territory. In other words, it will help us get past the novelty of the model and see it for what it promises to become, as well as its limitations.

The data gathered in the PEAR, Global Consciousness Project (GPC), and other such studies has shown irrefutable proof that some phenomena is at work that cannot yet be accounted for by physics as it is currently understood. In other words, even with all of the experimental evidence based on quantum theory, we still have an incomplete understanding of reality, scientifically speaking.

These controlled studies often produce results that are only slightly above random. While that may not sound like much to a lay person, it gets the full attention of statisticians. Keep in mind that quantum physics is built entirely on the work of theoretical mathematicians such as Einstein. Statistics matter.

Both the PEAR and GPC data is based on the statistical deviation of a REG device as affected by an individual or group of “senders.” This model is significantly different from an experiment where two individuals are coupled to a common goal.

The bottom line is, a REG device does not care whether it spits out ones or zeros and the sender of the intent will not have their life turned upside down if the target is not reached. A mother with an endangered child both care about the outcome in a very intense way. When real need comes into play everything changes.

Countless books and videos are filled with stories of miraculous recoveries from danger and illness. In scientific terms, such incidents are considered anecdotal at best because there is no way to independently verify what single action brought about the final result.

Dramatic results like these are nearly impossible to reproduce in a lab. Consider this story. There is a car wreck and a bystander sees a baby trapped in one of the cars that is on fire. He rips through the tangled, bent metal as if it was plastic and retrieves the infant just before the car explodes. Even though he produced what seemed like super-human strength in that moment, he would be hard pressed to reproduce it under normal, or controlled conditions.

The sciences of physics and biology write off this scenario as the bystander’s physical reaction to his body being flooded with adrenaline. But, no such explanation exists for when a mother knows that her child has been harmed and needs “rescuing” only to find out later that the child was involved in the car wreck 100 miles away. And, there is no pardon for a one-time-only psychic event such as this in the mother’s life. The expectation is that she can reproduce this connection at will under controlled conditions.

The fact is, need, desire, and intent all play heavily into how our consciousness affects reality. These factors simply do not exist to the same heightened degree during lab experiments. So, in many ways, science is gathering data out of context. This is considered akin to “studying the cadaver.” In other words, biology only made so many gains by studying the anatomy of a cadaver. To advance, at some point they had to begin applying that knowledge to a living system.

The good news is that systems theory is gaining popularity among all branches of science. In ecology, for example, it was no longer enough to study just the animals and/or plants in a region. It became evident that studying how they interacted together was the only way to develop a real understanding of the whole.

With studying focused intent, it is also becoming evident that caring counts and new experiments must accommodate ways to include this fact. We are at a point where we are realizing that simply reading statistics from a baseball game without ever having seen a game is no longer a valid way to study what is happening. The emotional content of the game playing out is a significant factor in the whole endeavor.

The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom, was featured in Publishers Weekly shortly after its debut. Visit www.SageAge.net for more information and to read articles on many of the topics covered in the book.

What physics can’t accurately measure, physics can’t study with great precision. That is the limit of physics, but not the limit of reality. One of the most frustrating aspects of setting up experiments to show the effectiveness of energy healing is the ability to accurately assess and measure both the intent of the healer and the affect on the receiver.

The bottom line on this problem comes down to two types of questions, with variations depending on the experiment. Those basic questions are: 1) How do you measure a dose of prayer, and 2) Do you feel better after having received it?
Countless experiments have been conducted over the last forty years in an attempt to set up a controlled environment in which data can be gathered and analyzed to show whether or not energy healing has any real effect.

One of the aspects of a controlled experiment is to compare data between at least one test group that receives the healing that is being studied and a control group that only receives standard care. In all such studies, the statistical norm for the placebo, or power-of-belief effect is known to be established at 35%. This means that a study showing healing among the test group must first discount 35% of the positive results due to the placebo effect. The same 35% must be deducted from the control group. The odd thing about all of this is that to gather statistical data for analysis, a full one-third of those who had positive results in each group must be discounted. That begs the question about priorities. Is the point to heal, by whatever means, or to discount something known to heal? If the placebo effect statistically brings some favorable results, why not include it as standard treatment in addition to any other treatment delivered? After all, it has no ill side effects.

Another statistical bane for these studies is accurately measuring how much better someone feels after receiving treatment. In many cases this measurement is anecdotal, meaning that it is somewhat subjective in nature. If the patient was in pain, for example, they may be asked to assign a number to their pain level both before and after treatment. Considering that everyone’s pain threshold is different, there is no way to absolutely quantify the result stated.

One of the biggest hurdles faced in these types of studies also lies with the significant paradigm difference in allopathic and energetic healing models. In allopathic treatment, for example, a pill is given with the expectation of quickly relieving the physical symptoms and/or affecting remission of the underlying physical cause. Energetic healing primarily deals with the underlying cause, which may be rooted in the psychological or emotional state of the patient. The illness is considered a physical manifestation of an unbalanced energy state and not, in and of itself, the problem.

Energy healing often takes time to bring about a real cure. As most any energy healer can attest, instantaneous healing is atypical. In fact, the first few visits with an energy healer may only result in reframing the mindset of the patient to receive healing, take responsibility for their own health, and become willing to have the root cause surface. This is especially true if they are uneducated in energy work in general and are fully indoctrinated to allopathic expectations of something outside of them, be it a doctor or a drug, bringing about the relief of symptoms.

In effect, energy healing studies are being conducted on a model that does not suit the real conditions in play. In other words, they are comparing apples to oranges while maintaining that fruit is fruit and healing is healing.

In the last installment of this series, we’ll have a look at why controlled studies of energy healing and focused intent do not usually display the dramatic results found in everyday life.

The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom, was featured in Publishers Weekly shortly after its debut. Visit www.SageAge.net for more information and to read articles on many of the topics covered in the book.

The experiments at the PEAR lab began in 1979, but physicist and parapsychologist Helmut Schmidt had been using REG devices in consciousness studies since the 1960s. For the most part, all of these studies involved a strictly controlled environment where a person focused their intent on causing the REG device to deviate significantly from random. Many variations on this theme were run including having the person be miles away or focusing their intent long after the REG data had been run and sealed. Regardless of distance or time, the results were still the same. The “intender” had the same effect on the REG as if they had been sitting in the room with it while it was running.

The natural evolution of such studies became what is now the Global Consciousness Project (GCP), which monitors field REG devices all over the world. The data they have archived for the past decade clearly shows a significant shift from random in the REG devices just before a major event happens somewhere in the world.

There are important differences between the PEAR and GCP studies. In the PEAR experiments, the person attempting to affect the device used focused intention. There was a specific goal, or target, that they were trying to achieve. With the GCP study, there is no specific goal and the recorded events are in reaction to an event.

In other words, the PEAR study measured focused intent. The GCP measures focused attention. The PEAR study measured an individual’s intent. The GCP measures global consciousness.

The difference in these studies brings to bear an entirely new aspect to future experiments and helps scientists develop trials that distinguish what type of data they are gathering. This is especially important in studies on energetic healing.

In the next installment, we’ll look at healing studies and why the PEAR and GCP models are inadequate models to show the whole picture of what is transpiring.

The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom, was featured in Publishers Weekly shortly after its debut. Visit www.SageAge.net for more information and to read articles on many of the topics covered in the book.

The target of the experiment was to get the REG to spit out either more 1s or 0s in a consistent stream, indicating that the events were no longer random. Over the course of the study, scientists were able to acquire enough data to show conclusively that a person could influence a machine.

The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) uses field REG devices placed all over the globe. Some may know it as the EGG Project. Recently they’ve recorded spikes just before the great tsunami that wiped out Indonesia and just before the 9/11 events. Notice that the spikes occurred just prior to the event. (Modern field REG device made by Psyleron shown to the left.)

This means that the GCP brings to light two important aspects of consciousness studies. The first is that focused attention can influence a REG device, even if that is not that target or intention of the ones holding the thought, as it was in the PEAR experiments. The second is that the collective consciousness of humans is aware and reacting to a major event just prior to it actually manifesting in linear time.

There have been many such studies under strictly controlled conditions that all show, irrefutably, that focused attention can affect matter and that awareness can precede an actual event. However, none of these studies reflects the dramatic results of anecdotal evidence displayed with focused intent, especially when there is a sense of urgency or great need between two people who are closely bonded.

In the next installments of this series, we’ll look at the difference in focused attention and intent and why healing with intention experiments are so difficult to conduct.

The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom, was featured in Publishers Weekly shortly after its debut. Visit www.SageAge.net for more information and to read articles on many of the topics covered in the book.