“Thought creates reality” has been the sine qua non of New Age philosophy for the last 20 years, providing the main focus for uncounted thousands of spiritual books and seminars, workshops and videos. But the way this statement is being used is profoundly inaccurate.
Yes—as one thinks and believes, so one acts. How else? In that respect the saying is correct. Although it would actually be more accurate to say “Consciousness creates reality.” Consciousness—the all-encompassing awareness and life orientation of the individual, including their thoughts—determines actions and paths chosen, right down to the finest detail.
But this, apparently, is not what much of the New Age spiritual community is actually interested in anymore. The focus, for some time now, has been on the power of the mind and the power to manifest. You know what I mean … turning one’s mind to the lottery and pulling the winning Megamillions ticket. Setting the firewood ablaze in the hearth with a thought. Forget the matches. Or manifesting a gold coin out of thin air.
In other words … magic.
The double-slit experiment
The “thought creates reality” story is swallowed whole and the power to manifest is hotly pursued by so many because people in the spirituality world have been told over and over that there is firm scientific evidence supporting this statement’s validity.
The science in question is the famous double-slit experiment, the first modern version of which physicists conducted in 1974.
Now, the nature of light has been puzzled over for centuries. Sir Isaac Newton was convinced light is made of teeny tiny particles. The 17th century Dutch physicist Christian Huygens believed light travels as waves. As it turns out, both were right. As strange as it seems, light acts as both wave and particle.
In the 1974 experiment, a light was situated in front of two slits in a wall, resulting in a scattered-light pattern created by the natural interference of light waves passing through both slits, landing on a flat surface on the other side of the wall. No surprises there.
When light was directed incrementally, photon by photon fired individually towards both slits (photons are subatomic particles and the smallest constituents of light), an interference pattern was STILL created—which meant light particles still acted like waves.
Okay, that’s strange. But then it gets weirder. When physicists added a sensor to count how many photons went through which slit, the resulting pattern showed up as two piles of particle “hits” on the back wall. In other words, suddenly the photons were acting like particles. When the detector was turned off—the photons went back to acting like waves.
The only difference in the experiment was the sensor.
The confounding results raged through quantum physics circles, with everyone wondering why light acted like a particle only while being “observed” by the sensor monitoring the individual photons. Which led to speculation about the possible impact of observation and the overarching intention of the experiment, which had been shifted by the researchers from simply firing individual photons at the slits to counting how many photons went through which slit. (Turns out it’s about 50/50.)
These questions morphed into a scientific debate about the potential impact of human consciousness on the photons themselves—a debate that was short-lived because the idea was dismissed as too woo-woo and fantastic.
The world of quantum mechanics marched on. A few curious scientists, however, continued the discussion and started developing experiments to determine whether thought can, indeed, affect the quantum world. To this day, although there are intriguing results pointings towards a “yes,” a hard, definitive answer has yet to be found. The “degree of influence” and the “hows” and “whys” of it have yet to be determined.
Tsunami
In the late 1980s, a woman named JZ Knight was channeling the spirit of a 35,000-year-old warrior from Lemuria named Ramtha. Although the earliest teachings of Ramtha focused upon the spiritual nature of humanity, by the early 1990s, a focus had developed around empowering the mind and personal will of the individual. Ramtha cited the findings of the double-slit experiment as proof that consciousness impacts the quantum field and is capable of changing reality by doing something called “collapsing the wave-function” of particles. (Which is exactly what adding a sensor to the double-slit experiment seems to accomplish.)
Ramtha wasn’t the only spiritual source talking about such things. In 1988, the Israeli-American scientist and mystic by Itzhak Bentov came out with the book Stalking the Wild Pendulum. As well, American spiritual teacher Gary Zukov wrote the award-winning book The Dancing Wu Li Masters, which also married quantum physics with mysticism. Both books went a long way towards providing some scientific credibility for spiritual beliefs—which was very important to people living in a modern culture that prizes logic, science, and a reality based in “show me” above all else.
The topic of human thought and its impact on reality remained highly esoteric and not at all interesting to the modern mainstream Jack and Jill out slogging for a living in the capitalistic jungles of America and Western Europe. But then, in 2004, the film What the Bleep Do We Know?! came out and blew the lid off everything.
Financed, produced and directed by Will Arntz, a student of Ramtha who believed the science behind spirituality deserved exposure—co-produced and directed by two other filmmaker/students, Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente, the movie took off, introducing millions of people around the world to the idea that “thought creates reality.”
I, too, was a student of Ramtha, and helped promote the film when it came out. I ended up working with Will and Betsy on various projects for over 15 years.
Then along came the film The Secret. And suddenly mind over matter and personal manifestation were all the rage. A situation that continues two decades later.
Exaggeration
The double-slit experiment is constantly being trotted out as rock-solid, scientific “proof” that the statement “Thought creates reality” is true … which is the whole basis for the personal manifestation industry as it’s run today. (And it is indeed an industry. I’ve often joked that to manifest a lot of money all you have to do is write a book about Quantum Manifestation and start holding Personal Manifestation workshops.)
And yet it’s gross exaggeration.
I’ve interviewed credentialed scientists who’ve spent decades trying to prove the connection between mind and matter. And while there are, indeed, isolated cases of certain people capable of telekinesis; and while there are some studies that show that intention and the mental focus of groups of people on things like creating peace in a war zone or increasing the electrical conductivity of seeds can have measurable positive effects … the effects are invariably slight.
Even with thousands of people focusing their minds upon a specific outcome, the “meter” in such experiments barely budges.
Why? We don’t have a clue. Credible scientists know the double-slit experiment is telling us something. And they’re humble and honest enough to admit they don’t yet know what.
They’re working on figuring it out.
In the meantime, many famous spiritual “experts” and lots of wildly uninformed yet well-meaning New Agers are running personal manifestation workshops and writing books advertising the secrets to mastering the power of the mind.
Power hungry
So, let’s look at the magnetic draw the idea of “personal manifestation” emanates. The level of consciousness it operates at.
Personal means it’s all about me—my desires, my dreams, my needs, being fulfilled. Which is fine. However, our highly materialistic, not-so-altruistic society has programmed most of us with some pretty limited ideas about what’s important in life. Which means most peoples’ personal desires tend to be fairly predictable: more money, bigger houses, nicer clothes, nicer vacations, better cars … maybe a boob job.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with having personal desires, wanting things and getting them. Desire brings forth wonderful and amazing creations. Desire for certain experiences (including boob jobs) are part of what helps us individually and collectively grow and evolve. But in the highly insecure, competitive, “me, me, me, mine, mine, mine” focus of modern society … personal manifestation is a two-edged sword that can swing the wrong way.
Which is why The Secret was such a closely guarded secret.
Eastern mystics have long warned against the development of personal powers—what they termed “siddhis.” If one is still insecure, immature, and into building up their ego through obtaining magical mental power over the material world, this can become morally and spiritually corrupting … dangerous. Basically, the spiritual equivalent of handing a nuclear device to a five-year old.
The phrase “Mind over matter” is quite telling in this respect. Personal manifestation is all about POWER OVER … manipulating matter with the mind to obtain desired outcomes and objects is very much a reflection of a patriarchal mindset based in control and domination.
Again, getting and having stuff is not bad or wrong. Getting and having stuff is fine. It’s the consciousness behind the dynamics involved that’s in question.
Hit or miss
Then there’s the “hit or miss” part. Anybody who has spent any time at all trying to “manifest” something knows the truth: sometimes manifestation seems to work, most often it does not.
Setting intention, writing affirmations, visualization … these are the standard tools of the manifestation trade. And when you use them, sometimes magic happens. You barely think about something — like wouldn’t it be cool to go to South Africa and go on a camera safari? And then, two days later, your best friend calls and says they won a package deal for a safari in Kruger Park and would you like to come with them? And you’re gobsmacked. Amazed! Delighted!
Manifestation works!
Then you try to manifest a new car or a new kitchen garbage disposal and nothing happens. Or a new job. Or a new boyfriend. Or a winning lotto ticket. You focus and visualize daily for months and months and … nada, zip, nothing.
What’s the deal?
Ugly ramifications
I’ve written about this before in the essay “Staying in the Question.” But it seems the whole game of personal manifestation is far too much of a game.
It all too easily becomes a competition. I’ve been at lunch or dinner or at parties with spiritual people where most of the conversation centered around who manifested what. And it usually ended up as an escalating event where people tried to outdo each other with better and better stories about bigger and more important-sounding manifestations.
And those of us who hadn’t manifested squat in the past 90 days? Or two years? I can’t say anything about how anybody else felt, but those conversations always made me feel like a total loser—failing at both the social game of wealth acquisition, and the spiritual version called manifestation.
And woe betide the person who had only manifested ill health! Or a foreclosure. Or a divorce! Those of us on the receiving end of bad luck were obviously not “getting it.”
Oh, you have high blood pressure? “How’d you manifest that?” Your dog ran away? “Gee, how’d you manifest that?” Car accident? “Wow! Why’d you manifest that?”
Granted, it’s been years since I’ve been in a group of people who were still playing this game. But that doesn’t mean I don’t keep seeing the Facebook ads or get the occasional stray email pitching a “Power to Manifest” workshop. And frankly, it always shocks me. This stuff is still a thing??
The other day I was approached about editing a book about the power of meditation, and sure enough, as I started assessing the manuscript there it was—the whole thing about the double-slit experiment proving that “Thought creates reality.”
I didn’t take the job.
Another view, another way
All this said … there is still the inescapable fact that observation and intention do impact the quantum field. Something about engaging in the act of measurement changes how light manifests. It’s a scientific fact. And intention experiments do have slight, but measurable effects. And prayer … there are many studies proving its inexplicable and frequently shocking effectiveness.
Maybe the impact of observation and intention is not what we’d like to imagine it should be. Maybe we’re not as powerful in the ways we imagine and would like to be powerful. What (adult) kid doesn’t want superpowers? All hail the Avengers!
But that doesn’t mean we’re power-less.
Maybe there’s a different way of approaching manifestation—a way we haven’t seen because we’ve been stuck in what remains of humanity’s addiction to old patriarchal “power over” dynamics and “making things happen” versus being open to aligning with what can happen … things and adventures that may stretch far beyond our wildest dreams.
More on this next week … stayed tuned.
Much love and aloha ~
