Over the last 20 years I have researched the power of ‘Altered States of Consciousness’ to affect physical matter.

In the Autumn of 2002, I visited the Monroe Institute, an organisation devoted to research of consciousness and expanded human abilities that is located in Virginia (USA). I participated in a six-day psychokinesis workshop.

Psychokinesis is the term used to describe mind affecting matter, and more specifically, moving matter without the use of any physical force.

The workshop was run by professor of psychology Joe Gallenberger, PhD. The nature of this workshop was not dryly scientific, but was a way for the general public to explore the topic in an engaging and participatory way.

In the group, there were about twenty people, from all over the world. We met each morning for a meditation and to be briefed about the events planned for that day.  Many of the experiential aspects of exploring our consciousness involved the use of a sound technology designed to change our brain waves into specific patterns which in turn alters your state of consciousness. You create coherence between the heart, brain, mind and body and are a perfect antenna – receiver !

About five times per day we would go to our rooms, where we each had a sound-proofed sleeping cabin in which we would stretch out and put on headphones to listen to the special sound frequencies that helped induce the expanded state of awareness. Part of the process was to hold the intention to quieten your internal mental chatter and foster heart-based feelings of love, joy, kindness and appreciation.

After we spent some time attaining and experiencing these heightened states of consciousness, we would regroup in another part of the institute and experiment with our abilities to influence physical matter using only our minds.  We had a lot of fun playing mind games, such as trying to influence the dice in games of craps so they would come up a certain desired number.

Dr Joe, as we called him, was a statistician extraordinaire, and he recorded the results of many, many trials and showed us how the results showed every participant was able to influence the dice beyond chance odds.

(By the way, this is a common ‘mind over matter’ kind of experiment…

Rigorous studies conducted over the period 1935 to 1987, involving more than 2500 people trying to influence more than 2.6 million dice throws in more than 148 different experiments, showed that they able to do so to a staggering statistical probability: the odds against chance were 10⁹⁶ to 1! That’s 10 with 96 zeroes after it!

Control experiments, where no mental influence was used, resulted in chance expectations.)

We did other interesting experiments, such as trying to influence seed germination by sending one pot of seeds loving energy and talking to it as a friend or as if it were a baby we were nurturing (if my friends could only have seen me sitting out in the sun talking to my pot of seeds they would have definitely thought i had gone off the deep end!). We basically ignored the other control pot of seeds. The well-loved seeds sprouted very quickly.

In five days, they showed between 50-200% more growth than the seeds we had ignored!

We even made a neon light tube, which was unplugged from any source of electrical current, glow in our hands, just by holding it and expanding our energy.  I know this sound wild ! But, this is what happened, it worked!

Okay, we spent a lot of time in meditation and using the sound technology to ‘prime’ our minds and expand our state of consciousness. But preparation or not, all of these experiences happened, and it makes one wonder how our state of consciousness affects our environment…

On to the spoons…

They saved the spoon bending activity for our last evening. This was the one we had all been waiting for. By this time we had each had about twenty-five sound technology meditation-type sessions, and the whole group was in a highly expanded state of awareness…

We were in a state of ‘flow’…

In fact, as we gathered together on this final evening, it was as if we were not individuals at all but a single powerful energy field.

The bag of spoons came out, and we each selected one, as music played in the background of the room. We quietened our minds and focused on attaining a heart-centred, loving feeling. As we did this, we each held the shaft of a spoon in one hand whilst applying minimal pressure on the round part of the spoon. Our intention was to realise—to believe—that at the most fundamental level—at the subatomic level—both we and our spoons were made of vortices of pure energy.

I was so fully in a very expanded state of consciousness and felt in total flow… Before long my spoon was changing shape, the round part drooping as if the metal had been heated and softened. So were the spoons of others. People of all ages and backgrounds were bending spoons with very little physical effort. It was a spectacular experience!

(Only two people of the twenty failed to bend their spoons with their minds. In the debrief afterwards, they admitted that they had not believed from the start of the exercise that they could do it.)

The events of this week long course left me with two certainties:  the mind can influence matter, and flowing in a loving, open, receptive, heart-centered state is crucial to achieving that influence.

Overall that night I bent about 15 spoons using the power of my mind and very minimal physical force…

But you don’t have to take my word that our minds can influence matter. This phenomenon has been the focus of tightly controlled experiments over many decades.

Your mind is a force to be reckoned with, and it can be a tool to influence your environment—and your life—in ways we are only beginning to understand.