Thoughts become things. This is manifestly true. I am sitting on a chair right now. It began as a thought in someone’s mind – every detail of it. The frame, the fabric, the curves, the color.
Thoughts become things. This is manifestly untrue. I will never be a quarterback for the National Football League, no matter how earnestly I think about it. I will never be 16 years old again. I will never pilot the starship Enterprise.
Between the ways in which thoughts become things and the ways in which thoughts can never become things there is a wide middle ground.
This book explores that middle ground.
Why? We want to be able to create the outermost limits of our thought, expanding our lives to the limits of our potential. We want to be as happy, healthy, wealthy, wise, fulfilled, creative, and loved as possible. We also don’t want to chase pipe dreams, thoughts that are never going to become things.
When we apply the rigorous standards of science to the inquiry, that middle ground turns out to be enormous. Research shows us that with thought, used deliberately, we can create things beyond the ordinary.
The idea that thoughts are things has become a meme in popular culture. It’s held as a firm proposition in metaphysics, and some spiritual teachers ascribe infinite powers to the mind. Yet there are clearly limits to human creative abilities; I cannot manifest an aircraft carrier simply by thinking about one. I cannot become Indonesian, jump over Mount Everest, or turn lead into gold.
New discoveries in epigenetics, neuroscience, electromagnetism, psychology, cymatics, public health, and quantum physics, however, are showing that thoughts can be profoundly creative. The page or device on which you now read these words began as a thought. So did democracy, the bikini, space travel, immunization, money, the four-minute mile, and the assembly line.
THE SCIENTIST VERSUS THE MYSTIC
Science and metaphysics are generally considered to be polar opposites, Science is experimental, practical, rigorous, empirical, materialistic, objective, and intellectual. Metaphysics is spiritual, experiential, abstract, mystical, ephemeral, internal, irreplicable, imprecise, subjective, otherworldly, impractical, and impossible to prove. Science studies the world of matter while metaphysics seeks to transcend it.
I have never perceived science and metaphysics as separate and have delighted in being both a mystic and a scientific researcher. When I bring the rigor of science to the question of consciousness, each illuminates the other.
This book examines the science behind the creative powers of the mind. It reviews the studies that show, step-by-step, exactly how our minds create material form. As each piece of the puzzle falls into place, the science turns out to be even more astonishing than the metaphysics.
This book is also full of case histories – real, up close, authentic personal accounts of people who had an experience of mind-into-matter. Drawn from the worlds of medicine, psychology, sports, business, and scientific discovery, these stories run the gamut from profound to inspiring to heart- wrenching. They show us that thoughts can become things in ways that stretch the fabric of our space-time reality.
THE CHAIN OF EVIDENCE FROM MIND TO MATTER
[…] I read all or part of more than a thousand scientific studies per year.
I started to see a pattern. There are multiple links in the chain between thought and thing, and I realized that science could explain many of them. I wondered if anyone had ever connected all the dots to see just how strong the evidence was. Where was the chain strongest, and where were links missing?
If I were to treat the idea of mind as a scientific rather than a metaphysical hypothesis, would it hold up? I began seeking out research that addressed this question and interviewing some of the brightest minds in the field.
From the introduction to Mind To Matter by Dawson Church, Hay House, 2018. Reprinted with permission.
The extract was featured in the Autumn 2018 Cygnus Review. Mind to Matter is available to purchase from Cygnus Books.
