The Power of Thought: A Consciousness Experiment

I've discovered an amazing experiment that proves the power of thought.

This experiment will give you visual proof that your thoughts affect the physical world. In this experiment, you will control and affect the motion (and speed) of an object.

The Experiment
Take a white sheet of paper about 24 inches square (unlined paper is preferable. Grab a sheet of paper from your printer). Draw a circle as large as this paper will permit and then draw a horizontal line through the center of the circle. Mark the left end of the line "A," and the right end of the line "B." Now draw a vertical line through the circle. Mark the top of the line "C," and the bottom of the line "D." Your drawing should look similar to this:


Take a lead pencil and attach a string about 8 inches long. At the end of the string, tie a small weight, about the size of a quarter. Now then, for the proof.

Place the paper on a table, and hold the pencil above the paper, so that the pendulum will be just above the center of the paper, where the lines intersect. Now think of the line AB, but do not move; in a few minutes the pendulum will swing back and forth along the line AB. Now think of the line CD; the pendulum will stop swinging back and forth and will begin to swing up and down along line CD.

Now take your thought off the lines entirely and fix it upon the circle. As you think about the circle, move your eyes around the circle. The pendulum will begin moving in a circular motion!

Now then, begin thinking that the pendulum is swinging faster and faster, that you can hardly stop it. The motion will become so fast that you can hardly see it go. Then, begin thinking that the pendulum will not move at all—that something is the matter with it. It will stop! Once you begin thinking that the pendulum will not move, it will slow down, and stop moving entirely.

It's uncanny.

This experiment was first used in the 1920's by Charles Baudouin of the Jean Jacques Rosseau Institute in France to demonstrate the power of thought to his students. I discovered it by reading a book written by Charles Haanel. Haanel writes:

You may think this is will power. It is nothing of the kind. In fact, if you *will* the pendulum to move, it will not budge; you must think of the result, not upon how it is accomplished.
In his experiments, M. Baudouin found that the higher the intelligence the student possessed, the more rapidly did he secure results. Those students who were more or less deficient in mentality were very slow, and in some cases results were almost negligible.

A Couple of Tips/Comments:

• The hardest part about this experiment is finding a small weight to attach to the pencil (using string). I ended up using a tin container (about the size of a quarter) that held dental floss from a hotel.
• Make sure the string is long enough (about 8 inches). I measured 8 inches before I tied the weight to the string and the string to the pencil.
• Do not focus on making/forcing the pendulum to move. Focus on the lines. Think about line AB. Move your eyes from point A to point B. Continue doing this until the pendulum moves. You can speed up the movement by moving your eyes faster (and your thoughts), back and forth between points A and B.
• When switching your thoughts from line AB to line CD, the change in the pendulum's movement is not instantaneous. It takes a small amount of time for the motion to switch. Same when switching from circling motion to no motion at all. This is mirrored in everyday life. Usually, our thoughts do not *instantly* manifest. However, as we continue thinking the same thought over and over, the results appear.
• Repetition and emotion seem to make things appear faster in the physical world. The more a thought is repeated (and the more emotion is placed behind a particular thought), the faster the results appear. At least, this has been my experience.

Source

Isn't this kind of like how yours Driver's Ed instructor tells you to look at the center of the road, because if you look at the side of the road you drift that way?

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"How you get so big eating food of this kind?" -Yoda

Well, it's actually your subconscious mind that's doing the work. You wouldn't want to consciously direct your hand back and forth, but rather visualize, and your hand will automatically begin to move. Although, it's hard to tell that this is happening—it seems as if some strange telekinesis power were moving the object, but I don't think that's the case.

However, it does show how (unconsciously) we can do things by a mere thought. I think of those times when I'm driving, perhaps talking on the phone at the same time, having driven all the way to my destination without even noticing it! Pretty amazing what the subconscious mind can do, not to mention how perfectly it seems to do the work.

I may be taking this off into a tangent, but I'm not so sure we should be so quick to praise the ability of our unconscious mind to perform tasks generally controlled by our conscious mind.

Let's take your example of driving. We assume, because we made it to our destination with apparently no trouble, that our unconscious mind performed the task wonderfully. But how do we know this if we were not conscious of the events? For all we know, we hit a small kid on his bike on the way.

I also have to wonder about free will. If the action was performed unconsciously, can we say that action was free?

Then again, maybe these concerns are rooted in my suspicion of all mindless action. I've certainly had those experiences driving, where some portion of the trip is made unconsciously. There is no mindfulness in this - so how much room for life is there in that unconsciousness?

I wonder ... is moving the pendulum with our mind any stranger--or any different--than moving our hand to grasp the pendulum? If our minds can move our bodies, what prevents them from moving anything else?

As far as I can tell, a function of our mind is to move the hand, and other parts of the body. But I do not think the mind is connect to the pendulum such that our mind could move the pendulum.

Of course, we would then ask ourselves 'what is the mind?' but that's another topic.

Or we could also ask about the nature of the "connection" between body and mind, and why this "connection" does not appear to exist between the mind and other objects.

Which requires that we determine what the mind is. If we do not know what the mind is, how can we talk about the way the mind is "connected" to other things.

If we say that the mind is a function of the brain, then we have answered our questions about how the mind influence the body and why the mind does not govern other objects.

How does saying that "that the mind is a function of the brain" answer these questions? And I am not being rhetorical or contrary--I am asking seriously, very seriously.

Alas, I wish there was one answer in the universe--just one--that really did answer a question, any question. But I don't even know what that means--what it means to "answer" a question. The phantasms of forgotten dreams are sometimes more real to me than my own waking experience. Have you felt this way too?

I suppose you are right, though, and we should begin by defining the terms "mind" and "brain." But let me caution you: this is like building a tower to heaven after pushing the same boulder up the same slope over and over again for all eternity. To believe that it is easily done--even to assume that it can be done--directs your thinking into dangerous channels; and you may easily become decieved about your progress.

Yet even while knowing this, how can you or I resist the inner-suggestion that maybe once, maybe this time, we will come to the end of our labor? It's like falling in love for the first time and then losing the one you love--the heartbreak that follows crushes you like nothing else. Yet what happens? You fall in love again ...

Also perception also give's more proof that people's thought's effect there physical action's.

Even the act of precieving perception will in some way effect your point of view of thing's and in tern effecting your thought's, which would effect you in atleast one physical way.

An Example.
The middle finger, if i put it up by its self and aim it at someone, that person has a predictable perception that I mean to afend them, even tho to me that action could mean peace. And that action would result in a reaction that would maybe effect me physicaly.
that was just an example using fixed perception of a single action. a fixed perception would be like me flipin the bird to someone, because it normaly has a fixed reaction to my action.