Another contender for the inspiration of Katherine Solomon has to be Lynne McTaggart. She is the author of two key works, including one mentioned in the novel, The Intention Experiment. McTaggart lives in London, but she travels the world on a mission to channel the energies of human minds for the improvement of the lot of humanity. She and her husband began in the field of alternative medicine, publishing works such as What Doctors Don’t Tell You: The Truth About The Dangers Of Modern Medicine (1999) and The Cancer Handbook: What’s Really Working (2000). This London-based writer began exploring the work of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Resaerch Lab (PEAR) and the Stanford Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and this ultimately led to the publication of The Field.
Dan Brown introduces Katherine Solomon’s study of “human consciousness, as Noetic author Lynne McTaggart described it, a substance outside the confines of the body … highly ordered energy capable of changing the physical world. Katherine had been fascinated by McTaggart’s book The Intention Experiment, and her global, Web-based study—theintentionexperiment.com—aimed at discovering how human intention could affect the world” (56).
McTaggart’s The Field refers to a concept in quantum physics in which exists the least possible energy, i.e., it holds no physical particles or matter. This is called the Zero-Point Field. Nonetheless electromagnetic waves and particles appear to spring up on their own. The Field is appropriately subtitled: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe. She examines the history of research that has grown from the field of quantum physics to impact further research in a broad number of areas where the old dictum “mind over matter” becomes more like “mind determines matter.” The basis is that an energy field, an independent energy field, exists and that we can all collectively tap into that field with our consciousness. That ability is used to explain paranormal activity that is otherwise inexplicable, such as remote healing and telekinesis (the art of moving an object by thought).
McTaggart’s research involved scores of experiments and references leading physicists who inform this field of parapsychology. They include many of the scientific names in the novel, beginning with Werner Heisenberg, creator of this field of quantum mechanics and author of the “uncertainty principle.” McTaggart moves forward in time to the 1970s and up to the present to PEAR, IONS, Stanford, Copenhagen, etc. It is interesting that she notes that many of these individuals, respected researchers with scholarly credentials, “were philosophers as well as scientists” (The Field, 224). The new physics asserts: “The communication of the world did not occur in the visible realm of Newton, but in the subatomic world of Werner Heisenberg” (225). It is not clear that Langdon or Brown’s readers can comprehend this. Clearly this an an appeal to something found that was presumably intuited by the Ancients. This key to the unity of all matter and energy is the syncretic solution that the novel offers its readers. But ultimately such a solution has to be believed in, rather than known. This is not as revolutionary as it seems but simply leads us back to our early beginnings. This is the point where faith engages what the mind can no longer comprehend.
If The Field was the research that led to McTaggart’s belief system, The Intention Experiment is her own attempt to demonstrate and use the power of collective consciousness to impact the physical world. This is more than a book; it crosses the lines between the print world and the virtual world: “This is a book without an ending.... The Intention Experiment is the first ‘living’ book in three dimensions” (xxi).
Most of the book is focused on recapping some of the research done in numerous fields, including remote healing, plant telepathy, mental mastery of metabolism, mind-body therapies, etc. The book also provides a method to enable the individual to tap into her or his own human potential, and then to be involved in a broader experiment. Readers are invited to participate in the experiment harnessing human consciousness and focused attention by signing onto the website. Noteworthy is an announcement that the website will periodically require the reader to examine the book for a password to unlock the access to the work itself. This is not unlike Dan Brown’s embedding within his text information needed for deciphering messages. Readers have been invited to join in the project and the number of participants has grown dramatically since the publication of the novel.
While much of this is new, Brown’s faithful readers will recall his fascination with the Large Hadron Collider built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the work of Vittoria Vetra in Angels & Demons on “entanglement” and antimatter. Is it just a coincidence that they are at the center of this seventeen-mile circumference of the particle accelerator, not unlike the point in the circle that forms the circumpunct?
Front book cover of The Intention Experiment
WHAT THE DOCTORS DON’T TELL YOU
www.wddty.com
THE FIELD
livingthefield.ning.com
THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT
www.theintentionexperiment.com
LYNNE MCTAGGART ON NBC DATELINE
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33350056#33350056
INTERVIEW WITH LYNNE MCTAGGART
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dUsRWs-pZY