If you very vividly visualize a future, that future will come to pass. Without having to do anything.
Of course very few people in Western culture would accept this. Those who believe in the dominant paradigm might call such a premise "New Age", wishful thinking, superstitious, airy-fairy, unscientific. But the "science" which shapes their thinking and attitudes is the science of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. In 1687 Isaac Newton published Principia in which he bequeathed on the world a very powerful model of the cosmos as a great machine. His historic model of the universe continues to have such a firm grip on the minds of most Westerners that they ridicule as superstitious any idea which doesn't fit this model. In a long battle between the ideologies of science and religion, Newtonian science firmly established its supremacy --- the only valid way to judge reality.
Newtonian science has given us incredible power. A long history of successes --- from clocks and locks to jacquards and jets --- has convinced us. As a result this model of how reality functions has become firmly entrenched. So much so that most people have come to believe the world really does behave this way, and that anyone who questions the mechanical Newtonian model of reality is irrational.
And yet ...
Yet there is a flood of books now which claim that you can change the physical world just by thinking in a certain way. A claim which the dominant paradigm, the paradigm by which most people in "developed" counties live, would consider ridiculous.
At the same time the twentieth century has brought revolutions in physics. Physicists now realize that while the Newtonian model of the universe (upon which the dominant paradigm is based) is quite accurate for describing some phenomena, it is totally inaccurate for describing other phenomena. The new physics, whose accuracy physicists have verified to an absolutely incredible degree, demands that we think about the universe in a way which is radically different from the dominant paradigm. It shows that the Cosmos actually works in mind boggling ways --- ways suspiciously like those taught by ancient spiritual traditions --- ways that we think of as superstitious magic. Steeped in the Newtonian way of thinking, even the Nobel prize winning founding fathers of this new science of Quantum Mechanics found it hard to accept the incredible things it said about the way the world works. Neils Bohr, one of the most important figures in the development of Quantum Mechanics, said "Anyone who is not shocked by Quantum Theory has not understood it."Erwin Schrodinger whose wave equation is a foundation stone said "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it." Some of Albert Einstein's lesser known work was a stepping stone to the development of Quantum Mechanics. Yet Einstein could never reconcile himself to the outrageous implications of Quantum Mechanics. He kept inventing thought experiments to prove that it wasn't correct and Bohr kept pointing out what Einstein was overlooking, telling Einstein "No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical."
According to the Newtonian model of the universe you can watch something without affecting what it does. We now know that this is false! This has implications which are mind boggling. Implications which the dominant paradigm (the paradigm by which most people in "modern" Western society run their lives) would label absurd.
There is a saying that a watched pot never boils. Most people interpret this as meaning that if you watch a pot it will seem as if it will never boil. But the incredible truth is that if you watch a pot with great focus, concentration and vigilance then it actually will never boil! You may find this almost impossible to believe, but in fact this is the way the world actually works. Well ... actually it is not quite this simple. A key factor is --- what are you looking for when you watch the pot? In a well controlled experiment in physics it is pretty easy to answer this question, but in everyday life the answer can be very subtle and difficult to unravel. I will explore this question, starting with a simple example in physics where it is easy to see what is going on --- although if you look at the implications you may well be shocked. Remember that Neils Bohr said "Anyone who is not shocked by Quantum Theory has not understood it."
Here is how the Nobel Prize winner Yahir Aharonov described the Watched Pot phenomenon in the Physical Review in 1980:
"... if one checks by continuous observations if a given quantum system evolves from some initial state, to some other final state, along a specific trajectory in Hilbert space, the result is always positive, whether or not the system would have done so on its own accord."
It is only in recent years when I got involved with healers that the weird world of Quantum Mechanics began to be more real and believable. Healers in their work encounter many phenomena which are as weird as, and in fact similar to, those of Quantum Mechanics. Phenomena which those who live by the dominant paradigm of our culture ridicule, thinking that they are being "scientific", not realizing that their "science" is that of the 19th and 18th and 17th centuries. In the 20th century Relativity, and more especially Quantum Mechanics, has shown how constricted 19th century science is.
