McTaggart, who begins by describing herself as "a hard-nosed reporter," more often uses the term intention than prayer, perhaps to give her work a more scientific air. Her thesis is that a group of people — eight being an ideal number, she finds, though sometimes her groups number in the thousands — can lead to physical healing, decreased crime rates, improved relationships and even peace in war zones when everyone intends at the same time that such things take place.
Her early work took the form of actual scientific experiments, complete with control groups. Her groups intended that certain plants grow at a faster rate than other plants, and that is exactly what happened. In what she calls the Peace Intention Experiment, a large number of people around the world all focusing on peace in Sri Lanka at the same time led to a sudden decrease in hostilities there in 2008. "This was like entering another dimension," she writes.
The author reports scores of positive results from her Power of Eight groups. Here is a partial list: "Kristi's digestive issues disappeared; Marie began attracting new tax clients with no effort; Bev reconciled with her estranged brothers; Iris's chronic congestion began clearing up; Martha's insomnia completely resolved." Individually none of these occurrences could be described necessarily as a miracle. Taken as a group these and countless other examples make one wonder.
Yet the benefits of intention or prayer fall not just on the targets of these intentions and prayers but also on members of those groups. She calls it the Mirror Effect. "Focusing on healing someone else brings on a mirrored blessing." It helps explain, she writes, why people who attend church services regularly on average live seven years longer than those who don't.
Hers is a remarkable book, one that will tempt readers to conduct their own experiments in prayer.
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