About the Founders of Spindrift   

  

The Klingbeils often asked: "What are Christians and religious people going to do when God's creation is replaced with algorithms?" One scenario is the anti-Christ is a supreme form of AI.

         Christian Science practitioner advice: "Never let the sun set on an unprogressive day." 

I met the founders of Spindrift in Schaumburg, Illinois. 

For those people who are paranoid, manic, and conspiracy minded, the founders of Spindrift made a prediction that is truer everyday. The prediction is this: "A silent prayer is the only call you can make where the government can't hear what you're saying." The good news is, silent prayer has camouflage as its primary color. 

Another prediction is about the "Sound of Silence." The song lyrics "Hello silence, my old friend" won't be able to be sung anymore. Silence may become a sound that we may never hear again. Part of obtaining an attitude of mind for prayer and meditation is to have noise reduction and quiet in your environment. Silence is becoming obsolete. As the saying goes, "Silence is better than nonsense." For more about gaining silence through noise reduction, go to Question 7, section 4, on the FAQ page. Also, see this scientific study of the salutary signs suggested by silence.  

Humor

A joke the Spindrift staff appreciated: The detective said, "You heard me wrong, Ma'am. We're a pair of normal investigators, not paranormal investigators." 

Bruce and John Klingbeil enjoyed this joke. A teacher stands in front of his class and asks, "All of you who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand." The next day, the teacher said, "Today I'm going to speak about expectation, but you already knew that." Then the teacher passed around a box of oracle cookies.

A Buddhist monk is in New York City. He walks up to a hotdog vendor. The vendor asked, "How would you like your hotdog?" The monk said, "Make me one with everything." The monk pays for it, and says, "You didn't give me back my change?" The vendor said, "Change is hard to come by." 

I wanted to be an atheist, but they didn't have any holidays. - Henny Youngman

One seventh of your life is spent on Mondays. 

God, help me become half the person my dog thinks I am.  

And lastly, a mediocre Christian is always at his best. 

The unique Spindrift home laboratory in Schaumburg.

I was in the townhome of the co-founders of Spindrift Research. Bruce and John Klingbeil were father and son. Walking into Bruce and John's prayer laboratory was a surprise. The Spindrift laboratory filled the kitchen and extended to the dining room. In time virtually all the Klingbeils' living space became part of their spiritual and scientific endeavors.

As believers in prayer as having an underlying force, the Klingbeils asked a scientific question: "Does the inflow and imprint of prayer do anything countable?" The scientific age replied "Probably prayer doesn't do anything that can be counted. And if prayer does anything countable, it's exclusively the placebo effect." Bruce and John's analysis was correct about what our sophisticated and scientific society was beginning to think about prayer: Believing in prayer is related to the human imagination.

What did the Klingbeils accomplish?   

Bruce and John found a prayer connection to consciousness research. The Klingbeils tracked several subtle effects that went beyond just "Believing in prayer is related to the human imagination." 

I asked Bruce, "Could you help me explain to people what Spindrift is doing by monitoring thought and prayer through healing?” He said, "What we are attempting to do with our experiments is to see within a specific context how prayer works. When we take a measurement, we witness the healing pattern without interfering with the healing process.” Bruce added, "Prayer is an abundant reservoir of testable thought.” 

Some prayers are a form of psi.

"Many are called, but few are chosen." (Matthew 22:14.) Bruce and John said something unique. The father and son believed there are thousands of people walking the streets of the Earth who have subtle psychic and spiritual healing abilities they don't know they have.

The letters psi refer to psychic action across distance. If prayer has force to it, then prayer puts out a signal of psi. Some people are just naturally spiritual or have some degree of psi ability, but they don't know about it. Through Spindrift, the Klingbeils wanted to set-up testing facilities to find out who in the population had psi abilities or not. What could tests show us as results? Some abilities for being psychic could be a result. People with the potential to heal, or who expressed other forms of healing-psi as healing-love, could be a result.

The people who pay attention to their new found abilities could begin to help and heal humanity. With the tests to give some discovery of an ability and some credibility to prayer and psi, many people would find out for the first time about their God given gifts and talents. Additionally, those working already as spiritual healers, who passed modest tests, could illustrate to authorities that their invisible prayers are doing something measurable.

Were they unique pioneers of prayer research?  

Yes. The Klingbeils qualify as originals. Bruce and John Klingbeil felt their research scientifically explored how prayer worked in human consciousness, how prayer interacted with the world. The father and son worked as healers, known as Christian Science practitioners, in the Christian Science tradition. Bruce and John earned their entire living praying for people. After years of experiences with prayer and healing they believed that given the proper understanding of their hypotheses and designs of experiments, prayer and healing could be tested by science. Bruce reasoned that "'In a modern world, you need modern levels of evidence.”

The Klingbeils observed that an increasingly scientific society looked at the failures of prayer as proof that prayer didn't work. There were blunt examples of prayer not working. Other times there didn't seem to be clues to look for, if prayer was working in some unobvious manner. A scientifically educated society wanted to move beyond the mythology of prayer (and religion). If prayer was slightly believed, prayer was often said out loud as a good luck charm thrown at a situation, not expected to do too much. People often say, "Go ahead and pray. How could it hurt?"

The Spindrift founders noticed that many successfully answered prayers could also be explained by chance, coincidence, and the placebo effect. So the Klingbeils felt the necessity to ask, "What imprints of prayer on human consciousness could be isolated?"

John counseled, "We have to first shift the paradigm to shift society to consider investigating prayer scientifically.” The Klingbeils told me that through paradigm shifts absorbed by society, the unknown questions can begin to be known. Bruce and John had the curiosity to explore how their thoughts and prayers operated in a controlled laboratory environment.

The Klingbeils hope "Necessity is the mother of invention."

Bruce Klingbeil felt that after prayer research was introduced to the public, if there wasn't some impact of prayer research within a ten year period, the subject of prayer research would skip several generations and perhaps even go out much further into the future. Natural science has a lot on its plate. Unless there is a necessity for it, fringe psychic research, such as prayer research, will be put on a shelf and either forgotten or not looked into for decades. In the meantime, factions from education and skepticism will operate to debunk prayer or at least put it down as a worthless activity for an enlightened technological society.

Those researchers who look into taboo and borderline regions of the paranormal and religion could expect some sickness and stress from their inquiries. Stress comes from fringe researchers hanging out on a ledge and twirling in the wind without peer support let alone support from friends and family.

What would help researchers? If people of prayer could catch a glimpse of what is happening with technology and science which are eclipsing any credence to paranormal and religious experiences. It would help researchers if more people realized the importance of embarking on spiritual research in the midst of a materialistic world of overwhelming technologies.

Self-defining episodes that people have witnessed or experienced.  

I learned that Bruce and John had an aptitude for science and mathematics. I was soon part of the Spindrift research team. To be a participant or witness of tests of one's personal thoughts was a strange feeling because no one else was designing and doing tests the Spindrift way.

The effects of beans sprouting and grasses growing produced wavy lines on a graph. In particular the yeast test made waves as results came into the computer. As one of us would pray for the yeast to recover from stress, within two hours waves would form a computer graph that showed how one's personal healing-thoughts had done. These waves on a graph corresponded to prayer's healing-effect on a group of living yeast cells, for example. These graphed waves represented the results of paranormal effects on the yeast. The paranormal effects were either a positive ordering-effect on the yeast or a negative dis-ordering-effect on the yeast or there was no effect on the yeast.

Bruce and John were effect and result oriented. They taught that, "Holy prayer is an ordering-power.” Holy thoughts in prayer promote quality intentions that propell effects from love, compassion, and order. The words holy and holiness mean the degree of the ordering-Christ, spiritualiy, and Quality in thought.

The investigation of invisible forces

Bruce said, "'That's what the test is all about. It's about thought's qualitative power to bless. It's about the kinds of abilities, or lack of them, we have to be loving, healing, compassionate avenues of holy power to the yeast and, by inference, to the world.” I asked, "'If enough of these tests of beans, seeds, fungi, and yeast work well beyond chance, then Spindrift could make that leap of logic about mending-power healing at a distance?” Bruce said, "'If the series of tests hold up under scrutiny by independent scientists, that a holy prayer brings measurable healing-power to ‘a micro level,' then it could be inferred that a holy prayer brings some degree of healing-power to ‘a macro level,' even to our world.”

The quantum theory of ‘nonlocality,' the term physicists used to describe distant actions affected by thought, would seem to parallel what the Klingbeils were doing. Bruce said, "'When you pray about a situation, your consciousness somehow is observing it. Your consciousness links to a situation through paths of associations paved with your unconscious thoughts and beliefs. Associations link and pave the paths that bring healing."

The Klingbeils defined the term Associational Linkage as the unconscious connection of one's thought to another thought, person, or thing. John would say, "When you think it, you link it.”

The father and son took distant healing actions seriously enough to test during the 1970's and 80's. It would be enough for the Klingbeils to establish scientifically that thought as prayer had a distant healing-action on soybeans, grass, fungi and the like. A bonus would be for scientists to expand ways to test holy prayer-thoughts on a larger scale, even on the collective minds of the world. But the Klingbeils preached that science would have to start with basics first, from humble beginnings like testing one's ability to affect yeast across the distance of the living room in their home. (At the time many religious people said the Spindrift tests were blasphemous.)

Pride and Purpose

I knew Bruce and John were proud of their yeast test. I was getting proud of it, too. The idea that we human beings could witness a change, a healing in yeast, by the prayer efforts of someone like me, potentially anyone, was thrilling and scary. How would people look at this odd phenomenon? I anticipated that once some scientists witnessed this test of thought here in the Klingbeils' home, the scientists would say, "Here is an anomalous activity spawned by the nonlocal process of the mind. What we can do as scientists is figure it out.”

Bruce said, "Our research is concerned with the interface between science and religion.” He added that research of simple healing can be a link between science and religion. I liked the Klingbeils' research because it proposed original theoretical and experimental ways for science and religion to dialogue with each other. Healing simple plant organisms, through the nonlocal actions of consciousness, constituted a new bridge between science and religion.

What subjects were prayed-for in the experiments?

Examples of tested subjects were various grass seeds, wheat seeds, rye seeds, soybean and mung bean seeds, triticale seeds, yeast, yogurt, bacteria, some parapsychology tests that involved guessing the locations of cards, dice, and objects that other researchers performed. Bruce and John developed a VIUR Test. The VIUR Test meant that an unseen picture in an envelope could be detected by the psychic perception of the unconscious process in the mind. VIUR stands for Visual Image Unconscious Response. The Klingbeils also tested the ordering-effect of thought and prayer on random numbers produced within RNG electronic circuits. Bruce, John, and daughter Deborah also performed field tests of prayer on farm animals with needs and several farmer's fields of crops. See examples at the bottom of the Experiment page. The Klingbeils did experiments of prayer about the ordering-activity of earthworms which produced intriguing potential future inquiry. Prayed-for and control groups were monitored.

In computer terms, John would describe the experiments as low-tech high-concept.

I mentioned to Bruce that among the people I knew, most were interested in the huge miraculous healings, the big scores, not the smaller effects of healing brought out in the Spindrift tests. Bruce told me that the point was "Even though the healing-results from our tests are modest [in comparison to medical and so-called miracle healings], once having seen controlled tests of thought and prayer, society might start thinking of reasons to test prayer on healing.”

Even if the healing-effect is a drop in the ocean, people want to know that their thoughts and prayers are doing something.

Speaking of a drop in the ocean, what does Spindrift mean by indirect prayer? Indirect prayer has a vague concept or idea of what exactly is the subject being addressed by prayer. To learn more, on the Theory page, go to Theory 7, The Theory of Indirect Prayer.

About life in general, Bruce said that smaller healings or changes in life can be important. He said that "Sometimes enormous changes take place in people's lives from experiencing small healings and small changes.” Still he added "Spiritual progress is made drip by drip.”

What is God spiritually doing to us? God is distinguishing us from the masses. We are individual identities contributing our talents to the world.

For a theological explanation, in prayer our individual spirit-identities are speaking to the Holy Spirit.

People have the iPhone and the iPad. Spindrift has the iPray.

Bruce told me that during the 1960s, he had studied the progress occurring in the natural sciences, religion, and medicine. Bruce said he concluded that "Science has shown the most leadership of the three disciplines of science, theology, and medicine. The progress in medicine, for instance, has mostly been driven by scientific research. The world today has been informed by science.” Bruce respected the scientific process so much that he designed ways for the scientific method to test one's consciousness, one's prayer agendas of the mind, and some modest spiritual healing.

Mary Baker Eddy often asked her students to perceive and investigate the qualitative and quantitative connections going on in the three methods of "Science, Theology, and Medicine." See a four minute video that explores those connections through the quality of wonder.

For a Christian, a Jew, or any other religious person, how would Spindrift expand the perspective of Christianity and religions to include some religious truth and scientific truth under practical conditions? Spindrift taught me to think about the road in front of my home. You can think of the road as the street that goes through town. Or you can think of the road as going to the ends of two continents. It's the same road, but with a different perspective.

I asked Bruce, "How would you and John explain your purpose for testing prayer to someone who works in science?” Bruce said, "We live in a mental world with laws and rules. We're at the beginning of discovering some of these laws and all this substance of human consciousness like holiness and quality. Where our tests will lead, we hope, will be a less materialistic science which would bring forth more spiritual healing methods for mankind to apply.”

I said, "Do you think scientists might say you are making a mockery of science?” John said, "We have already been told that Dad and I have made a mockery of religion.... Religion can talk to science through mind-body interactions and healings.”

Bruce added in effect, "There is a give and take in science. Researchers debate each other's findings. If Spindrift, through a great number of volunteers, can get enough data repeating itself, scientists will have to look at it. We are getting the cold shoulder now, but the strength of our tests is that anyone can do them with a minimal amount of equipment. I believe resistance tends to break down over time.... Prayer in a lab is a new application.”

I said, "I think you're too optimistic about human nature on this emotionally charged business of testing prayer.” I thought of the job description of a debunker, which is "When the party is getting good, a debunker walks in the room and takes away the punch bowl.”

Bruce and John also knew the challenge for Spiritual Science was the following. Promising science is not always practical. Would prayer go the way of Betamax, Kodak and Polaroid film? Spindrift was an attempt for religion to keep pace with science.

Optimism began to turn dark.

From 1977 until 1983, Bruce thought optimistically that religious and scientific openness toward the research would be a fast development. He said, "It takes four steps to make a presentable package. You need the theory to explain the tests. You need the tests themselves. Next is the data produced by the tests. Then the methods of analysis for interpreting the data. When we are prepared with all that methodology, I feel sure we'll be given a fair chance to argue the case for our research.”

Bruce's optimism was shaken in 1983 when his church punished him for his excursions into the scientific research of consciousness, prayer, and healing. The church maintained it was good to present testimonial evidence as proof derived from what it calls the laboratory of life, but it's bad to test in a scientific laboratory. Bruce would not "recant" his belief that prayer could be researched and tested. Bruce said that the church punished him for his research, but when prestigious scientists outside the church do prayer and consciousness research, the church is impressed.

John said in effect, "The changes taking place in quantum physics and the faster computational power of computer chips only encourages me to track my prayers from my consciousness.... The stream of healing results is compared to a reference, a healed state.” Bruce added, "Our hypotheses provide new ways to test thought.... When some researcher sees our test in operation, he'll want to find the bugs in it--to falsify it. That kind of curiosity to falsify will draw attention to the test. That's what happens in science.”

I asked, "What would you and John do to help a scientist replicate one of your tests?” Bruce said, "We would contribute by providing guidance about the designs of the tests, but mostly John and I would provide the holy state of mind, the mental input to the tests, the prayers.... We feel that the Spindrift theories about the tests should help spiritual healing and parapsychology gain respect.... The data should help us get peer review.”

John said, "We're self-trained as scientists. We asked trained scientists for their advice about the setup of our tests, to check if our procedures followed the rules of the scientific method or not.” John remarked, "Our real expertise is the praying.”

Bruce added, "Since the 1950's, our culture has changed its basis of thought from religion to science. People of faith know that a great deal of change has happened, but not many of them know that we all accept a number of scientific values today that weren't in our thinking before [before World War Two]. This unconscious acceptance of science is a huge change!”

Bruce predicted, "'I think all spiritual healers are going to have to face being tested [someday].... I think that's the wave of the future.” 

The very first time I met John he said that tests should be conducted by scientific people with the mental input to the tests supplied by religious people.

John later added, "I found that the purely [religious] approach to answering my peers' questions did not seem to meet their need; my generation...has been trained to take nothing on faith. Science and its outlooks are very much a part of their experience."

I recall John saying, "If you are going to make a healing claim, make it modest." Another time John told me, projecting about the future of a secular society, "Religion has to become more scientific, or we're sunk." On a different occasion, John told me specifically about his religion that "The religion of Christian Science has failed to communicate. So let's give the science of Christian Science a chance."

"Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming." - David Bowie

"Bill Sweet illustrates the explosive nature of aligning science and religion." - Deepak Chopra

Christian Science and Natural Science

Spiritual Science and Natural Science involve the human mind moving from ignorance to understanding and demonstration.

Most Christians don't understand that the mission of Christian Science is a long-range view for Christianity to become in sync, where it's possible, with an increasingly materially minded scientific and technological future.  

For the indefinite future on the horizon, Christian Science views itself as a "Ghost of Christmas yet to come" for Christianity and religion to survive what is coming to mankind. What is coming to mankind? Expect more science, technology, and people connected to virtual reality as the zeitgeist. Religion has already lost the youth to the zeitgeist of science and technology.

Let us explore how Christianity survives the new zeitgeist.  

Many Christian Scientists devote themselves to being a Christian.

Christian Scientists also consider themselves to be Spiritual Scientists.

The Discoverer of Christian Science is Mary Baker Eddy. She is known as a healer who wrote a book about healing and started an honest newspaper called The Christian Science Monitor. In her day, Mrs. Eddy was as well-known as Steve Jobs of Apple is today. In the 1800s, it was unusual for a woman to be a scientific thinker. 

Mary Baker Eddy was 25 years old in 1847.  She wrote an article for The Covenant Magazine.  The following are excerpts:

"The boundless ocean of truth will be fathomed and investigated by those, whom, like Newton, a residence here scarcely acquainted with a few pebbles on its trackless shore.  The result of all experiments will then be satisfactory, since they will accord with the deductions of enlarged and enlightened reason.

Most authors have but dimly shadowed forth their own imaginings, and much of what they intended is involved in obscurity. This makes an approach to the regions of science and literature so extremely difficult; there this obstacle will be removed.  No veil will hide from our observation the beauties, lovely, inimitable, of wisdom and philosophy; all their charms will be there displayed." (May, 1847) 

Curiosity and Synthesis 

Mrs. Eddy was a curious and active amateur scientist. She wrote "The two largest words in the vocabulary of thought are 'Christian' and 'Science.'" (No and Yes, page 10.) What is her discovery? It is by perceiving Principle as God, seeing God as God-Principle, Christianity and aspects of science are companionable. “From the infinite One in Christian Science comes one Principle and its infinite idea, and with this infinitude come spiritual rules, laws, and their demonstration….” (Science and Health, page 112.) 

Mary Baker Eddy's modern and unusual addition to Christianity was adding the name of Principle as an alternative way to perceive God as Lawgiver. In the honed list of twenty-six Bible lesson subjects which Mrs. Eddy published to be studied, none is about God as Principle. Why? Principle is implied, but Principle isn't in the Bible. Principle is more of a scientific term than it is a theological term to name God. She was confident that modern man was ready to grasp the addition of Principle while he contemplates God. She believed that "The improved theory and practice of religion and medicine are mainly due to better views of the Supreme Being." ( Ibid. , page 224, 16th. Edition.) "It is our ignorance of God, the divine Principle, which produces apparent discord...." (Ibid., page 390, 1910 Edition.)

Isaiah 33:22 reads: "The LORD is our lawgiver." The modified Bible insight is, the God-Principle "is our lawgiver." The invisible lawgiver Principle behind creation can be perceived as "a wheel within a wheel." (Ezekiel 1:16.) Mrs. Eddy writes "'The God-principle is omnipresent and omnipotent." (Science and Health, page 473.) If Principle is true everywhere, it's scientific.

Through Principle, Mary Baker Eddy wrote the opening-salvo about Christianity as Science. 

A sea change began that was unknown to Christianity.

Mrs. Eddy initially made the distinction between the words physical science and Physical Science by using the capital letters P & S to designate Spiritual Science. (Years of Discovery by Robert Peel. Also note what Peel writes about the sciences on page 138 of Discovery.)

Then Mrs. Eddy changed the distinction of physical science contrasted with Spiritual Science by stating that "Christian Science is natural, but not physical." (Science and Health, page 111.) It's natural to see a reflection in a mirror or see numbers applied in math, but the image in the mirror and the numbers in math are natural but not physical per se. Mrs. Eddy proposes that "In one sense, God is identical with nature, but this nature is spiritual and is not expressed in matter." (Ibid., page 119.) "And because Science is naturally divine, is this natural Science less profitable or scientific than 'counting the legs of insects?'... The true sense of life is lost to those who regard being as material." (Miscellany, page 178.)

Physical science tends to be fixed on laws of materiality as the primary cause and creator of everything. Physical science may present few hints or no hints of laws of divine guidance that operate in the background.

In the distinction between the words physical and natural that Mrs. Eddy proffers, Natural Science does not exclusively have to be premised on fixed laws of materiality as the only cause and creator of everything. Natural Science can have a flexible premise based on a sliding scale of physical laws and materiality that can move up the scale to Spirit and Spirit's formations. Natural Science can include a materialistic premise or not. Mary Baker Eddy wrote "Christian Science eschews what is called natural science, in so far as this is built on false hypotheses that matter is its own lawgiver, that law is founded on material conditions, and that these are final...." (Science and Health, pages 127 - 128.)

Mrs. Eddy could work with Natural Science based on the human and divine coincidence of spiritual laws, causes and effects built on expanded hypotheses. Speaking of the Lord, she penned "Jesus of Nazareth was a natural and divine Scientist." (Retrospection and Introspection, page 26.)

Mrs. Eddy wrote "Natural Science denies miracles, if by a miracle is meant any variation from the regular order of divine cause and effect. Herein Christian Science is in line with Natural Science." (Science and Health, page 232, 30th. Edition.) Miracles are "Natural wonders." (Ibid., page 83, 1910 Edition.) "A miracle fulfills God's law, but does not violate that law." (Ibid., page 134.) "The miracle introduces no disorder, but unfolds the primal order." (Ibid., page 135.) A miracle is "That which is divinely natural, but must be learned humanly...." (Ibid., page 591.) "The central fact of the Bible is the superiority of spiritual over physical power." (Ibid., page 131.)

In the appropriate context, Christian Science could be coordinate with Natural Science. From a shifted premise of Natural Science, Mrs. Eddy correlated and upgraded metaphysical ideas, symbols, and laws that could be applied to a spiritual perspective of Science. "Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul. These ideas are...real and tangible to spiritual consciousness." (Ibid., page 269.) Mary Baker Eddy saw metaphysics or higher-physics as sometimes workable with Natural Science. Then in some instances, laws of Natural Science should allow for some fringe phenomena to occur, such as telepathy and the telekinesis of prayer and healing.

Could there be laws translatable for quality and quantity?

Potentially "yes." So much of our human experience involves quality. It seems reasonable that there are some laws that pertain to quality as well as quantity.

Christian Science pegs itself as a Christian institution and a scientific institution. The two nouns, Christian Science, suggest to the public that Christian Science might be a balance of religion and science. A balance between religion and science could also be translated as a balance between quality and quantity.

It's a fair perception by the public that Christian Science is an attempt to demonstrate a balance between religion and science. Other members of the public are puzzled by the word Science attached to the word Christian.

Research and experiments are more involved than teaching theology. "To point out every step to a student and then watch that each step be taken, consumes time, -- and experiments ofttimes are costly." (Miscellaneous Writings, page 117.)

Electrical innovator, Charles Steinmetz, predicted that "Someday...the scientists of the world will turn their laboratories over to the study of God and prayer and the spiritual forces." Charles Steinmetz said, "The best definition of electricity I have seen is on page 293 of Science and Health." Part of Mrs. Eddy's definition of electricity is "the least material form of illusive consciousness.... the sharp surplus of materiality...." Today, batteries are being charged without wires. Soon the surplus of electrical power will be transmitted through illusive air on the wings of airwaves. As a step of medical progress, neurosurgeons are replacing drugs with the surplus of electricity to assist recoveries.

Albert Einstein probably read but certainly heard Mrs. Eddy's "Scientific Statement of Being” that contrasts matter and Spirit when he attended a Sunday church service. It is well established that he attended services repeatedly. For example, I have a friend who went to my high school. When he was nine years old, he and his mother were in Fifth Church in New York City for a Sunday morning service. They were sitting in a side-aisle and Dr. Einstein was sitting a couple of rows behind them. (Other references are found here.)

Co-founder of Spindrift, Bruce Klingbeil, said essentially, "I drew my inspiration to pursue the scientific research of consciousness from the religion and science connections established in Christian Science."

Evolution

Scientists often object to mixing anything religious with anything quantifiable. Bruce and John felt they found exceptions where a religious point-of-view should add to the quantifiable point-of-view.

For example, Bruce mentioned the theory of evolution. In the later 1880s, when Christian preachers were decrying Charles Darwin for deducing that man evolved from lower organisms, Mrs. Eddy supported the discovery. She could accept that the material version of man was descended from animal organisms with the stipulation that Darwin portrayed the material nature of man that didn't touch the nature of man as a reflected image of God's nature. There is a primate man and a primary man. "May not Darwin be right in thinking that apehood preceded mortal manhood?" (Ibid., page 543.) Darwin described the animal man, not the reflected man: Man as a primary reflection of the divine Mind. This divine man is a reflected image that reflects God's nature. This man is described in 1st. John 3:1-3. (See Christian Science and its Encounter with American Culture, page 91.)

The ape is distinct from the reflection.

About this distinction between the animal identity of man and the reflected identity of man, Mrs. Eddy writes "Few persons comprehend what Christian Science means by the word reflection." (Science and Health, page 301.) Jesus is described as "the radiance of His glory, the very image of His substance." (Hebrews 1:3.) Does that description sound like Christ Jesus was evolved from apes? No. Speaking to men and women in a crowd, Jesus said, "You are the light of the world." (Matthew 5:14.) A reflected image as man, as the deeper definition of man, is not affected by his material definition and animal circumstances.

Does the reflected image of a woman or a man in the mirror exist? The image exists as a reflection of the solid body it reflects. Take away the solid body and the image in the mirror doesn't exist. The substance and form of the image is resident in the solid body, not the mirror. God reflects man. God is the substance that is reflected as the image of man and woman. Man is God's image. “It is in your light that we see light.” (Psalm 36:9, Aramaic Bible in Plain English.)  

Perhaps a breakthrough about the concept of reflection will be discovered by science. Mrs. Eddy predicted that someday there would be sufficient evidence for man as a reflection to be taught in the schools.

Reflection is a fringe concept for scientists to consider. Yet the current theory that mortal existence operates like a software program may let an outside reflection impinging on our mortal existence not appear so far-out.

We are evolving in awareness toward our reflected image.  

The two theories of creation are creationism and evolution. We should question our presumptions that there are only two debated theories of creation.

Mary Baker Eddy postulates a third theory of creation. Her theory of creation is an underlying spiritual blueprint creation that affects our more familiar sensory creation. This subsurface spiritual blueprint creation is in the wheelhouse of what the movie The Matrix suggests. The Matrix projection is a secondary creation that is superimposed over a primary creation. The veiled primary creation is revealed as a reflection in Christian Science. Consider that the primary creation underneath is a reflection. "Everything in God's universe expresses Him." (Ibid., page 331.) "His reflection is man and the universe." (Ibid., page 466.) "All the objects of God's creation reflect one Mind...." (Ibid., page 588.) "Was not this a revelation instead of a creation?" (Ibid., page 504.) She writes an analysis of the three theories of creation in her Chapter "Genesis." (Ibid., page 501.)

A revelation of creation as a reflection might be detected and expounded by the image analogies accomplished through the light reflection images produced by holography.

Under the heading "Optical Illustration of Science," Mrs. Eddy writes: "Divine metaphysics reverses perverted and physical hypotheses as to Deity, even as the explanation of optics rejects the incidental or inverted image and shows what this inverted image is meant to represent.” (Ibid., page 111.) Then we have a chance of seeing the spiritual identity of man emerging; instead of only seeing the ape man. Reflection illustrates a spiritual and optical insight. "Astronomy, optics, acoustics, and hydraulics are at war with the testimony of the physical senses.” (No and Yes, page 6.)

Two chapters in Science and Health are "Creation" and "Genesis." These two chapters often speak about creation and man as reflections of the divine Mind.

The accepted Christian theory about creation is that creation is finished. Mrs. Eddy’s view is that God is infinite. So the Creator and creation are in an infinite creation mode. She interprets the words finished and final as extending forward in our understanding bringing new revelations to man about Science. 

The third theory of creation as a revelation and a reflection argues its roots are in the first chapter of the Bible. This new paradigm view of creation reveals that "Subsequent Bible revelation is coordinate with the Science of creation recorded in the first chapter of Genesis.” (Science and Health, page 537.)

To summarize: The material species of man that Darwin describes has nothing to do with the first chapter of Genesis the sixth day of creation man who is an image and reflection. Looking at reflection, it is not man that is found, but the spiritual origin of man in Light.

Spiritual Mind in back of atomic force

What does Mrs. Eddy say about atomic force? "Atomic force is Mind, not matter." Her interpretation of atomic force is that Mind and Spirit are the prime atomic force. Mind and Spirit create substance, where matter is the misstatement of that substance of Spirit. Perceiving the misstatement of substance as only matter has an analogy to the movie The Matrix. (Miscellaneous Writings, page 190.) 

For example, in the Matrix movie, 99% of mankind lives in the blue pill reality. Less than 1% knows about the red pill reality. Taking the red pill elicits an awareness of an underlying spiritual reality base of Mind and Spirit existing underneath the Matrix of the blue pill reality. With the red pill, we find there is another reality that is concealed from us. That's a hard pill to take.

What is the meaning of the red pill? The red pill reveals the blueprint of men and women to be the holigraphic image and reflection within God's Mind and Spirit (pun intended).

Taking the blue pill maintains the viewpoint of only a stardust matter reality. The blue pill is easy and comfortable to take. Why? The blue pill is mankind's consensus reality. (Science and Health, page 521.) 

Jesus Christ is the ultimate Divine Scientist who had dominion over the Matrix-like appearances and beliefs of the blue world we know. Jesus presented himself as the ultimate escape hatch from the Matrix of the blue world.

Genesis, Chapter 2, describes the blue pill reality.

Genesis, Chapter 1, describes the red pill reality. 

Mrs. Eddy's ultramodern interpretation of the world as a day-to-day virtual-like reality is the following: The reality that we see, hear, taste, and touch is a misleading simulation of reality that overlays an underlying primary spiriutal reality. "The visible universe and material man are poor counterfeits of the invisible universe and spiritual man.” (Ibid., page 337.) "Mortals have a very imperfect sense of the spiritual man and of the infinite range of his thought." (Ibid., page 258.) "You command the situation if you understand that mortal existence is a state of self-deception and not the truth of being." (Ibid., page 403.)

The cultish view is gaining some ground.

Mrs. Eddy's cultish, far-out, and shocking interpretation of reality is often criticized by academics and theologians. Criticism is sometimes given with a wink because there is something about rival realities and levels of existence that rings true.

Many scientists and Christians do declare that the Christian Science view of an underlying existence to be an ontological shocker or nightmare. Yet with the strangeness of quantum physics with its underlying quantum world that is so weird that is gaining ground as true every day, and virtual reality VR that is gaining ground as another theory of creation every day, some doors should open to hear the shocking Christian Science interpretation of existence.

There are some leading thinkers in science who have proposed there is a 50% chance that we human beings are living in a mortal existence that is a software program. Christian Science isn't as shocking when lined-up with that proposal.

Why do physicists have shocking views of reality, but they aren't specifically aware of or keen on the Christian Science views about reality? Christian Science is this tiny religion that swims below the radar of awareness.

When do reason, revelation, and demonstration cooperate?  

When we watch the world making scientific progress, we often notice an intellectual gap between Christianity and Science. Christian Science points out that Christianity does need to develop some correspondence with Natural Science. The whole of civilization is becoming scientific about every avenue of life. The effects of scientific progress have pushed religion out of orbit.

Aside from the United Lutheran Church of America (ULCA), Christian Science could become "the last man standing" among Christian churches in regard to Christianity being in a relationship with Science. Mary Baker Eddy envisioned a future that included a companionship of Christianity and the sciences, where it is possible, in an increasingly materialistic world.

John Klingbeil said, "Mrs. Eddy's speaks of reason, revelation and demonstration.... Like (Saint) Paul, I like to see revelation and demonstration meet.... Mrs. Eddy deliberately put in reason.... The combination of reason, revelation and demonstration is a good definition of the scientific method." 

John added that for test results, a theory is required to predict and explain the test results. John quoted Albert Einstein "The theory determines what we observe."

What about the Christian Science religion's reaction to doing more scientific research? Christian Science students believe that since Mary Baker Eddy did the initial research of Science, not much additional research is necessary.

The increase of questions about claims that people make for most everything, shows that more research to develop evidence of effects from prayer is necessary. Additionally, with the increase in the disbelief in God worldwide, prayer is dismissed automatically by default.

It's been said, "A map is not the territory. People who believe they know everything they need to know on the map leave no room for discovery." The changing social climate from religion and Sunday school training to atheism and science with its mathematical equations, 3-D printers, and powerful algorithms that create self-deceiving realities is another reason for Christianity to keep current.

The alternative is to be self-deceived by algorithms that produce new creations. Jesus said, "'For false Messiahs will arise and Prophets of lies, and they will give great signs so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you beforehand.” (Matthew 24:24 - 25, the Aramaic Bible in Plain English.)

MATH AND SCIENCE

Bruce and John Klingbeil sometimes mentioned that people who say that math and science aren't for them have had a negative effect on American society. Other cultures, such as India and Japan, are more respectful of math and science. They have surpassed American culture in math and science. John said essentially the following: "Think of this attitude logically. If someone said to you, 'Reading words and interpreting literature aren't for me. I'll leave the reading of books to the brainiacs.' We would instantly know that something was wrong with that person's attitude. But when someone says, 'Science and math aren't for me,' then they shrug their shoulders and toss science and math from their thought, and say, 'So what?' We should instantly know that something is wrong with that attitude. If Americans don't want to learn to do the work, someone we don't know from another country will do the math and science work for us." John added in essence, "We can talk about religion all right, but ignoring Science is the problem with conveying Christian Science. American society needs more people who can grasp why Spiritual Science is pertinent to the progress and survival of Christianity and humanity. We need to raise our standards and be more scientific."

Bruce extended his comments about math and science to include the respect for law. In so many words, Bruce said that dismissing the importance of math and science for us personally may not only darkly affect and bias our practice of religion. The removal of math and science for us personally may also spillover and it affects our respect for other laws. The history of the United States and the history of science show why laws are respected. The United States is a society of laws, not men. We have three branches of government for the creation and correlation of laws. If we don't know much about laws and how laws are created, the nine person Supreme Court can rollover our ignorance of the laws and say alone by itself, "The Constitution sets the laws, but 'we' determine what the Constitution says. The heck with the other two branches of government and our citizens having a say about original intent and writing the laws."

Was Mrs. Eddy's original intent for Christianity to include Divine Science? Yes. Should some people further develop the purpose of the Holy Spirit as Divine Science? Yes. Mrs. Eddy encouraged intellectual spirituality. Why else would she start a newspaper? She believed that her discovery of special cases of laws of Spirit and matter occurred at the dawn of a material and scientific era. She referred to her discovery as the Science of Being. The ranks of her practitioners were established by the practitioners' experimental experiences. (Science and Health, page 456.) Mrs. Eddy kept up with the scientific idioms of her day. She would apply those scientific idioms differently today. For example, her "fourth dimension of Spirit" should be compared with present day theories about 4-D and a fourth dimension called the space-time continuum. Mrs. Eddy had no terms in her quiver for the placebo effect, the quantum theory, or cybernetic system theory, all of which she writes about in her books.

Mrs. Eddy had the word Ontology, which means the Science of being. (Manual, page 47.) Ontology leads to cybernetics. The word cybernetics wasn’t developed yet, but Mrs. Eddy found an inspired a way to employ it to mean the orderly operation of spiritual ideas. (Science and Health, page 123:24 -29.)     

Teaching symbols derived from cybernetic system theory.  

What is cybernetic system theory? Cybernetic system theory explains how material systems sequence through four states, stages or steps of input, process, output, and feedback.

Should we attempt to understand cybernetic theory in a spiritual context, too? Yes.

Mrs. Eddy speaks of conveying spiritual teaching through symbols. She writes "Spiritual teaching must always be by symbols." (Ibid., page 575.) Cybernetic system theory can have symbolic meaning. For example, let's take the four states of Spirit and Truth. The four states of Spirit and Truth sequence as seeking, finding, doing, and being. These four states line up with input, process, output, and feedback. The four states line up with the Word, Christ, Christianity, and the Holy Spirit. We seek the Word. We find the Christ. We do Christianity by producing fruits. We sample infinite being in the Holy Spirit.

The four steps or states of cybernetics parallel the four states of Spirit and Truth. For example, the input is seeking the Truth, the process is finding the Truth, the output is doing the Truth, and the feedback gives us hints about the Truth of being. The Truth of being is the Science of being that is the development of the Spirit of Truth or the Holy Spirit that promotes human and moral progress. A feedback loop circles back to the input to begin another layer of improvement.

The Bible suggests the four states of a system with its four gospels that recite four perspectives about Christ Jesus. The gospel of Matthew is about seeking, Mark finding, Luke doing, John being. The gospel of Matthew is input. Mark is process. Luke is output of the fruitage. John is the feedback of the fruitage.

The following is an example of cybernetic theory which includes its four states of input, process, output, and feedback. The Word of God draws one to God (input). Christ arrives and saves one (process). Christianity is lived and produces fruit (output). The Holy Spirit develops Life, Truth, and Love for our understanding (feedback). The feedback takes the output or fruitage and circles back to the input for another round. "So the last shall be first, and the first last." (Matthew 20:16, King James Version.)

How systems work within systems.  

Cybernetic system theory explains how systems work squarely: How systems work within systems. Mrs. Eddy's symbolism and theology parallel the four states of cybernetics before there was a name for it. The symbol of the square is an archetype of stability. Four walls are foursquare. The walls are connected to each other.

The four states or steps of cybernetics are suggested in the book of Revelation when the Bible describes "the city lieth foursquare [four-sided]. (See Revelation 21:16) Beginning with the North wall, the walls are in cybernetic order. Mrs. Eddy writes "The four sides of our city are the Word, Christ, Christianity, and divine Science [which is the Holy Spirit developing Life, Truth, and Love in man]." (Science and Health, page 575.) "As the crude footprints of the past disappear from the dissolving paths of the present, we shall better understand the Science which governs these changes, and shall plant our feet on firmer ground." (Ibid., page 224.)

Starting with springtime, the four seasons have a cybernetic cycle. Seeds planted through harvest are cybernetic. There are "Four months between planting and harvest." (John 4:35, New Living Translation.) For example, Jesus Christ said "The farmer plants the word as (input)." The farmer's seeds are sown in four different ways in the ground. The ground symbolically represents nurturing seeds in the subconscious mind. Some of the seeds are planted deep in the ground, some not so deep. (Mark 4:14 - 20.) Jesus continued, "The ground produces grain by itself. First, the green blade appears, then the head, then the head full of grain. As soon as the grain is ready, he cuts it with a sickle, because harvest time has come." (Mark 4:28 - 29, God's Word Translation.)

We have an example of divine cybernetics with Mrs. Eddy's four translations of immortal Mind and mortal mind. First is her input of the "Scientific translation of immortal Mind.” This "Scientific translation" is the introduction or input to the three degrees she calls the "Scientific translation of mortal mind.” In the first degree of the three degrees, Christ is dim or indiscernible in the process of salvation over sin, error, and all darkness. In the second degree, from the impact of Christ on darkness, errors and sins, these evil beliefs begin to disappear from mortal mind. These former depraved beliefs are replaced with improved transitional human qualities that produce moral evidence as fruitage. The evidence of fruitage is output. The second degree involves humanity learning moral lessons. In the second degree, moral progress is made as artistry, invention, hope, respect, compassion, self-discipline, and practicing the beatitudes. The second degree moral improvements advance men and women to express divine Soul. In the third degree, a state of holiness and pure spiritual consciousness replaces mortal mind with man and woman as an image and reflection which provides feedback. "'In the third degree mortal mind disappears, and man as God's image appears. Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses, [that] 'The last shall be first, and the first last.'... A correct view of Christian Science and of its adaptation to healing includes vastly more than is at first seen.” (Ibid., pages 115 and 116.)

There could be a cybernetic sequence of Christ operating fourfold. The Christ of Christmas for creation is the birth of the Christ to human apprehension as the seed of the woman. (Genesis 3:15) The Christ of Church is the true sense of Christ as idea and the ideal Truth processing its proof of utility by reflecting saving grace for men and women (justification). The Christ of Christianity produces fruits of Church (sanctification). The Christ as the Comforter, as the Spirit of Truth as the Christ Science as Divine Science develops Life, Truth, and Love for individual man and woman. Divine Science feeds back fruits and authenticates man as man-I-festation. As the man in the mirror, as reflection, man feeds back to God. Spiritual man is God's feedback. "'Call the mirror divine Science, and call man the reflection.... As the reflection of yourself appears in the mirror, so you, being spiritual, are the reflection of God.” (Science and Health, pages 515 and 516. Notice the definition of the word Church, as it relates to man, found on page 583. Part of the definition reads "whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle.... is found elevating the race...from material beliefs to the apprehension of spiritual ideas....")

Principle will help close the gap between the material and spiritual.

Does the public think of Christian Science as another church down the block? No. The public thinks that somehow Christian Science has something to do with Science. Let's say a family wants to buy one of those newfangled digital television sets. A new television set is delivered to their home. The TV pictures are in black and white. It was assumed that the television set included color. It is assumed that the color, the Science, is inside Christian Science.

It is unusual for Christianity to be called a Science. Christian Science calls Christianity a Science because of divine laws yet to be discovered by Natural Science. Under the heading, "The unity of Science and Christianity," Mrs. Eddy wrote "Christianity must be Science, and Science must be Christianity, else one or the other is false and useless; but neither is unimportant or untrue...." (Science and Health, page 135.)

About science, Mrs. Eddy wrote "It is an era of Natural Science.... If Natural Science says one thing more clearly than another, it is this: that law is everywhere, and there can be no exception to it." (Ibid., page 232, 30th. Edition.) She advised "'The burden of proof that Christian Science is Science rests on Christian Scientists.” (Miscellany, page 158 within Mrs. Eddy's article Corner-stone Laid at Concord.)

If God is Divine Principle and this God-Principle operates in our human consciousness through spiritual laws, where it's possible, some people should be working on how seeking truth in religion is in alignment with seeking truth in science. The context where this alignment can work entails observations, intuitions, asking questions, forming theories about laws, and trying out experiments. Christian Science appears to be the logical linchpin between the two words Christianity and Science. Some denomination or system of spiritual thought should fill the intellectual gap, if Christian Science doesn't do it.

Overtime, the religious element became the accentuated focus of Christian Science. It's understandable that some Christian Scientists would rather work exclusively on the Christian aspect. It's surprising that only a minority of Christian Scientists are doing work on the Science aspect.

As what often happens, some members of a group lose track of some of the history of their group. A small segment of Christian Scientists, which included Mary Baker Eddy herself, were curious scientific researchers into spirituality, consciousness, what is now called the placebo effect, the newest in physics, science, medicine, and inventions. Some of Mrs. Eddy's curious students did experiments of the effects of thought and prayer on the body and on situations. One example was two of her students who were medical doctors; Miscellaneous Writings, page 455. In another example, tests of prayer on healing were conducted prior to 1910 and published in England in 1913 and 1915. The cases were in A Plea for Christian Science, 231 pages, which has an Index. The Wartime price was one shilling and a sixpence.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote about God as "...the Principle of all science (small s)." (Science and Health, page 124.) "The term Science, properly understood, refers only to the laws of God and to His government of the universe, inclusive of man." (Ibid., page 128.) For example, "Adhesion, cohesion, and attraction are properties of Mind. They belong to divine Principle...." (Ibid., page 124.) Mrs. Eddy proposes "The adoption of scientific religion...." (Ibid., page 141.) "When numbers have been divided according to a fixed rule, the quotient is not more unquestionable than the scientific tests I have made...." (Ibid., page 233.) "Experiments have favored the fact that Mind governs the body...." (Ibid., page 162.) With a few exceptions, those were Mary Baker Eddy's own experiments that were not replicated by other scientists. The experiments do establish Mrs. Eddy as a curious amateur scientist.

Then there is this quote: "We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and creation must collapse. Human knowledge calls them forces of matter; but divine Science declares that they belong wholly to divine Mind...." (Ibid., page 124.) What force is what force? It's the part of the elephant one's mind is touching to do the analysis of forces. For some people, for the materially minded, the forces are matter. To other people who are spiritually minded, the same forces are divine forces and belong entirely to Divine Mind. We human being either give credit and glory to mortal mind or the Divine Mind.

It's the job of at least some Christian Scientists to become Scientists and bring out that the forces of the universe are spiritual forces. That forces can be spiritual is pretty much an alien and absurd concept.

In addition to Jesus Christ being called the Savior, Mrs. Eddy writes under "Jesus the Scientist.... Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause." (Ibid., page 313.) It's been one hundred and fifty years since Christian Science was introduced in the United States to the public, but virtually no one has heard of Christ Jesus called a Scientist. Saying "Jesus the Scientist" to some Christians has sometimes been considered close to committing blasphemy and for sure heresy.

In our fast-paced technological society, there are few if any, opportunities to sit down on the floor and have a deep conversation about infinity with Jesus, as in the Martha and Mary story. (Luke 10:38 - 42.) One exciting and inspiring benefit of being on the Spindrift staff were those deep conversations about infinite subjects that go on forever. 

"Nature allows us to see the lion only by its tail." - Albert Einstein 

How does Spiritual Science use logic? Deduction and induction are tools of logic and natural science. Spiritual Science uses a lot of induction.

Because of the overwhelming contrary evidence of matter presented to the five physical senses, Mrs. Eddy writes under the heading "Proof by Induction.... Christian Science at this period must be accepted by induction." (Ibid., page 461.)

Induction is thinking from effect back to cause. Scientists tend to observe a situation and look for the cause behind it. Thinking from the effect you see to the cause you don't see is inductive thinking. With induction, we tend to think about the unseen underlying cause that gives a result. With deduction, we tend to see the result from a cause. Jesus appears to be applying induction when he said, "Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly." (John 7:24, New International Version.) Another Bible translation has Jesus saying, "Look beneath the surface so you can judge correctly." (John 7:24, New Living Translation.) Jesus appears to be speaking about the evidence derived from induction when he said to a skeptical crowd, "Even if you do not believe me, believe the deeds, so that you may come to know and understand that I am in the Father and the Father is in me." (John 10:38, NET Bible.)

Inductive thinking helps us go deeper and grasp the unseen cause of effects. Our thinking stretches to the cause that is hidden from view behind the seen information the material senses report to us to be the cause of the effects. With induction "We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen." (II Corinthians 4:18, King James Bible.)

Deduction is like looking out your car's front window to see what's in plain sight.

Induction is like looking in the rearview mirror to see where you came from to get here.

Mrs. Eddy writes that her discovery that religion and science can work together is an "open secret." Inductive thinking might be one avenue to flesh out the open secret. As the Science of Reflection, Christian Science does continue to have some curious Christian Scientists who reflect upon the significance of the word Science being connected with Christianity and consciousness.

After hearing a talk at a University of Chicago conference about quantum physics and consciousness, a Spindrift member got in line to speak with the presenter. In the quantum physicist's talk were remarks about matter and consciousness that were reminiscent of Christian Science. The Spindrifter asked the presenter if he had heard of Christian Science. The presenter said essentially, "'I know all about Christian Science. It's embarrassing that Christian Science said these things over a hundred years before scientists really got a hold of them. These discoveries have to come through the scientific process. It's just not going to be accepted when said by a religion. You would be surprised that there are scientists who don't yet believe that some of these discoveries are true.”

John Doorly, President of the Mother Church, elected First Reader, and a lecturer on Christian Science, said:

Someone who is in close touch with the medical profession and who wants to interest them in Christian Science healing asked me the other day, "'John, will you give me two or three dozen cases that I can present to the medical profession as proofs of Christian Science healing? Of course, they'll have to be cases that were recently X-rayed, and medically diagnosed.”

Well, I replied, "'that is an awfully difficult proposition. The majority of cases which come to us haven't been X-rayed and they haven't been medically diagnosed.” Even if one were able to produce the evidence of X-rays and medical diagnoses, the medical profession could say, "'We don't know, the case might have got better anyhow,” because they often find that cases get better unaccountably.

I feel, however, that the time is coming when we Christian Scientists will have to prove the healing power of Christian Science in no small way. I would like to be able to ask the medical profession to give us six cases in one of their clinics or hospitals which they couldn't heal; I would ask them not to treat those cases, but attend to their human welfare, keeping them clean and well fed and so forth, and to tell the patients honestly what they are doing. I know that whilst we might not be able to heal all those six cases, we could make an impression that would convince them that Christian Science does heal. Sooner or later we have got to do these things. If the subject is Science, it can be scientifically demonstrated. When you see that it is Science, and not chance, then you are not afraid of a challenge. So if the doctors came to us tomorrow and said, "'Well, here are six cases,” we ought to be able say, "'All right, we'll heal them.” I don't say that we would heal all the cases, but I am certain that we could produce an effect that the medical profession could not produce, and that we could do enough to convince them. The medical profession, although biased, as all professionals are, consists of men and women who are very honourable, men and women who want to help mankind, and they would have to admit that Christian Science heals. (Christian Science Practice, pages 293 - 294.)

Mrs. Eddy wrote the following:

Bishop Berkeley...was a great Natural Scientist in his day...but even Berkeley could not foresee the immense gains which Natural Science would make in the next century. Upon the western slope of the mountains the last sunbeams linger. If there is any thought which is associated with the West, it is the thought of freedom and progress....

Science is the watchword of our day. Note its advances! In Berkeley's time men travelled in springless wagons, as they had for centuries. An efficient postal system was barely dreamed of. Telegraphs and railways were unknown. It is said that the first steamer coming to America brought with it a book in which it was logically proved that no vessel could possibly cross the ocean if propelled by steam-power alone. In decade after decade this contradiction has been repeated. Thousands of discoveries have been developed into practical benefits to mankind, which at first were derided both by the educated and ignorant....

The ocean-cable and the telephone are omnipresent. Electricity now lights our streets, and will soon move our street-cars. Men can read the answer in the stars, to questions about cycles and comets. Nay, by the stars they can measure forces once unknown. (Science and Health, pages 230, 231, and 232, 16th. Edition.)

"The electric telegraph is a symbol of mind speaking to mind, that in progress of time will not require wires, for Spirit destroys [and supplants] matter, electricity, etc..." (Ibid., Chapter Two, Imposition and Demonstration, 1st Edition, 1875.)

"'The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity.” (Ibid., page VII, 1910.) What might be a means to gain "'Truth, independent of doctrines?” Is it not Science in place of dogmas?

In closing, What power is behind gravitation?

“True, Newton named it gravitation, having learned so much; but Science, demanding more, pushes the question: Whence or what is the power back of gravitation, - the intelligence that manifests power? 

A falling apple suggested to Newton more than the simple fact cognized by the senses, to which it seemed to fall by reason of its ponderosity; but the primal cause, or Mind-force, invisible to material sense, lay concealed in the treasure-troves of [Spiritual] Science.” (Miscellaneous Writings, pages 22 -23.)  

Here is a mystery to be solved by researchers.

An experiment from the past is a mystery for a detective to solve. Mary Baker Eddy taught classes on Christian Science. In front of one of her classes, Mrs. Eddy demonstrated an experiment with a budding plant. She illustrated buds that suddenly blossomed. The blossoms formed from an affirmation of the conception of the budding plant being a fully completed idea. One speculation is that the buds blooming may be related to Jesus' observation of a field of crops. Jesus said, "Don't you have a saying, 'It's still four months until harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest." (John 4:35, New International Version.)

In Mrs. Eddy's first edition of Science and Health, page 320, she wrote the following that I assume applies to the buds. "Intelligence outside of matter, that forms the bud and blossom will regulate the body, even as it clothes the lily, if we do not interfere by some belief." Mary Baker Eddy also has these mentions in the 1910 Science and Health. "[God as] Love giveth to the least spiritual idea might, immortality, and goodness, which shine through all as the blossom shines through the bud," page 518. "By its own volition, not a blade of grass springs up, not a spray buds within the vale, not a leaf unfolds its fair outlines, not a flower starts from its cloistered cell," page 191. "The plant grows, not because of seed or soil, but because growth is the eternal mandate of Mind," page 520. "And the florist will find his flower before its seed," page 125.

It seemed all were impressed in a positive way by the plant experiment performed in class except for a guest journalist in the class, Mrs. Georgine Milmine. Mrs. Milmine witnessed the buds blossoming. She said in effect, "I can't believe what I'm seeing. It must be a type of black magic or witchcraft?"

The account of the budding plant and what Mrs. Milmine said during the demonstration were written in Georgine Milmine's book, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science.

The mystery is that the account of the plant budding was quickly taken out of the book. It seems impossible to find a copy of the Milmine book with the plant description. The Klingbeil family had a copy of the book and the US Library of Congress had a copy.

The missing account of buds blossoming was reduced to:

Mrs. Glover [Eddy] also taught that the natural law which produces flowers and fruit can be changed at will, even now, if one has a grasp of her science. In a personal letter written in 1896 she stated that she had caused an apple tree to blossom in January, and had frequently performed "'some such trifles in the floral line,” while living in Lynn [Massachusetts]. (From The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science by Georgine Milmine, a footnote on page 186.)

Here are other examples of praying for plants. These examples are written-up on page 265, which also has a footnote reference on the bottom of page 265. Arthur Buswell had been part of Mrs. Eddy's household, was an experimenter with prayer himself, and had earned an M.D. degree.

Mr. [Arthur] Buswell remembers that in her classroom she sometimes related how once she was driving through Boston in an open carriage, a cripple had come up to the carriage and she had put out her hand and healed him. She also discovered that when she was in the house the plants could live without sunlight or moisture, so, instead of watering them she put them in the attic and treated them mentally, after which they were completely restored.2

This incident may have been one of Mrs. Eddy's "floral demonstrations" referred to in a letter sent [by her] from Pleasant View, in March 21, 1896, which says: "...while Mrs. Eddy was in a suburban town of Boston she brought out one apple blossom on an apple tree in January when the ground was covered with snow." (From a footnote on the bottom of page 265. Students who knew Mrs. Eddy sometimes referred to her "floral demonstrations.")

Why was this floral demonstration that was shown to a class edited out of the Milmine book? Could Georgine Milmine have inserted herself into the class when she was not actually there making her first person account untrue? We don't know. What we do know is, the Klingbeils had a copy of the book with the demonstration in it. Until the early 1990s, the Library of Congress in Washington D. C. had a copy of the book with this demonstration in it. Did the bud to blossom experiment make Mrs. Eddy look like a magician or too foolish or too easily misunderstood? Perhaps in Mary Baker Eddy's day, this floral demonstration made her look kooky. In our modern times of thumbnail gadgets, DNA splicing, and 3-D printers, the floral demonstration should make Mrs. Eddy look like a curious amateur scientist who added a spiritual teaching about how the affirmation of roots and buds can lead to a full identity.

To add to the mystery of the disappearance are these facts:

A Simon Fraser University scholar named David Stouck discovered a hidden author of the book. It was not Georgine Milmine. The University of Nebraska republished the [Mary Baker] Eddy book in 1993. This year could be the time the copy of the book with the plant demonstration in the Library of Congress disappeared. In 1992, the book with the demonstration was seen and read in the Library of Congress by a friend. See http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Life-of-Mary-Baker-G-Eddy-and-the-History-of-Chri,673642.aspx. Here is an excerpt from that page.

Although a Canadian newspaperwoman named Georgine Milmine collected the material and was credited as the author, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy was actually written by Willa Cather, an editor at McClure's at the time.

Bill Sweet learned that Willa Cather was a prodigious respected writer. Why did Mrs. Cather decide to edit out the plant demonstration in the book or who did take it out and why is the mystery.

Here is an excerpt from Gillian Gill's book Mary Baker Eddy that relates to the mystery and maybe conspiracy.

In...1970...[Edwin] Dakin...had a kind of epiphany when he happened upon a rare copy of Georgine Milmine's book. He was told by the bookseller that all the copies of the book were being methodically bought up by Christian Scientists and destroyed. (From page 576 of Mary Baker Eddy by Gillian Gill)

An excerpt from a book review by Diego Banducci (San Francisco, CA) on Amazon sheds some light. This review is from: The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (Hardcover).

Although the book was the subject of favorable reviews when it was published in 1910, the response of the church was, predictably, less enthusiastic. According to the Afterword, even before it was published, "three spokesmen for the Christian Science church visited the McClure's office and tried to suppress the series of articles. Christian Scientists were said to have later bought and destroyed most copies of the book, and library copies were said to be kept out of general circulation through constant borrowings by church members.... The copyright for the Milmine book was purchased by a friend of Christian Science, the plates from which the book was printed were destroyed, and the manuscript also acquired...." (pp. 497-498)

As the church moved forward, there was less interest in exploring scientific related topics. Christian Science became more involved as a religion.

Church historian, Robert Peel, pointed out that the decade of 1900 to 1910 included the most articles written for the Christian Science periodicals about the progress in science and medicine. As the religion's early accent on being scientifically curious diminished and almost disappeared, scientific terms and references were still part of teaching Christian Science, but the terms were not taught in a broad scientific sense. The scientific terms were essentially translated into in-house religious symbols and meanings. The scientific symbols and meanings can be enriching but tend to be limited by narrow definitions. Fortunately, the periodicals of Christian Science do continue today to monitor and praise scientific discoveries. Just please don't try and make the religion itself broader scientifically.

In the 1980s, Bruce Klingbeil was chagrined when he was told that someone from the scientific community asked the Board of Directors of the Church about what was the science component of Christian Science. The Board turned over the question about science to an employee in the music department to answer, so Bruce was told. In 1980, a Ph.D. in bio-physics had an appointment with staff members of the church about testing spiritual elements of Christian Science. She was essentially laughed out of the building, as it was told to her that testing spirituality was not a part of Divine Science. (A Journey Into Prayer, page 301.)

Among the reasons that Bruce saw the importance of scientifically experimenting with prayer and spiritual healing was that the education and qualifications for becoming a healer in the Christian Science Church were outdated. In 1910 for example, one of the most progressive years for Christian Science, ninety percent of the doctors in medical practice had no college education. Most medical schools were free-for-all wild west unchecked groups. The United States government and the newspapers finally demanded improvements in medical education.

Christian Science healing did well against a backdrop of substandard medical practices. When serious education, qualifications, and scientific research was introduced to the practice of medicine, doctors started doing better healing work.

In comparison, the practice of Christian Science healing was finding itself stuck in what was perceived as a pre-scientific and pre-medical age. Documented Christian healings by metaphysical laws were being appreciated principally by the choir, the already convinced. The gradual effect of medical improvements was, Christian Science was becoming less attractive and accountable for its claims by the 1950s and 60s. A respected and successful spiritual healer in the church, Ralph Wagers, gave up teaching classes on Christian Science to investigate what had happened to the attraction to healing and the downward spiral of the church that was the fastest growing church in America in the year 1900. Ralph Wager's explanation for dropping his church administration positions in 1969 to investigate what miscalculations infiltrated Christian Science is available to read.

A sea change took place in the American mind and culture.

During the 1960s, Bruce Klingbeil foresaw that religious, spiritual, and psychic beliefs would continue losing credibility without providing some scientific explanations to attempt to balance the increase of medical knowhow, atheism, and technology. Bruce predicted that religions, prayers, and claims of the paranormal would become demoralized and suspect as superstitions because natural science was leading the way in explaining everything.

Bruce suggested that the accountability and education of practitioners of Christian Science needed some upgrades. It seemed a reasonable step to just keep up with the scientific times, as some aspects of Christian Science were in a time warp. Bruce was not taken seriously in trying to improve the qualifications and accountability of healers and spiritual healing in an increasingly scientific world.

Life has become so reversed that we don't recognize much of anything that we would call familiar.

Take a look at how religion has become demoralized in America in the following example:

Without youth, what is the future of religion and religious training in America? There is no future. On college campuses, religious groups received religious preference cards, so the groups knew who to invite to their meetings. In 1969, under the cover of an interpretation of the separation of Church and State, atheist groups got colleges and universities not to ask freshman and new students their preference for a religion on campus. That year, the attendance at religious groups on campus was cut about in half. A year later, attendance was cut about in half again. Society moving away from giving permission to ask any student about his religious upbringing has hampered and handcuffed the organizing of religious groups on campus and the discussions of religious ideas on campus. Campus religious groups have no one to invite. Any student with an interest has to walk in on his own.

Not allowing to ask your religion implies there is something wrong with religion.

Not allowing prayer in schools implies there is something wrong with prayer. That asking your religious preference and praying in an institution of learning are wrong to do is the negative message absorbed by the subconscious minds' of youth. The law that prevented asking a new student's religion setup a collision between the Millennials and the Boomers.

How twisted. Atheists would not send their children to Christian colleges. But by legal default today, Christians are sending their children to atheist promoting colleges. At the very least, colleges ban asking your religious preference. Please view this 90 second video.

Cause and Causeless = Good and Evil  

"It's not a lie if you believe it's true." -- comic Jerry Seinfeld

The Klingbeils found the effect side to evil helpful in developing hypothesizes that could be tested by prayer. Here is how that worked. The movement of an organism toward order and norms, is also the movement of an organism away from disorder and evil effects. An analogy might be, a flame moving toward an ice cube, is also the ice cube moving away from hardness and coldness.

The Christian Science view of evil often blocked a potential person from looking into Christian Science. Occasionally someone would not look into Spindrift when they found out the Spindrift research was begun by Christian Science practitioners, even though they were maverick Christian Scientists. Bruce and John Klingbeil received correspondence from haters of Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science. We all got bad letters. The summation of the letters would be something like this. "We were interested in your findings until we found out you were with Christian Science. If you were Methodists or Lutherans or Jewish or non-religious, we'd be interested, but hell no, never Christian Scientists."

One Christian theological point of contention was sure: How evil was explained in Christian Science.

For a Christian, the two sources for evil are a gang of angels that disobeyed God and when Adam and Eve disobeyed God. Disobedience, defiance, and insubordination do connect with how evil and sin get their momentum. They are rebellious actions against the God-Principle. These actions of evil are not causes of evil. This twist sounds counter-logical at first. The Christian Science view of evil and sin is just as bad as other folks. It's that the source and cause of evil is explained differently.

Here is the Christian Science view of the lawless cause of evil. This view may sound repetitive, a circular argument, and illogical, but wrap your mind around this new viewpoint. Can the presence of darkness and the presence of light occupy the same spot? No. Why not? There is no law that sustains darkness. There is a law that sustains light and irradiance. When light arrives on the scene, darkness leaves the scene. The law of light supersedes darkness wherever it goes. "The greater controls the lesser." The way to describe the cause of evil was not to describe a sustaining law as a cause underneath evil. Evil does not have a principle to drive it. Evil is principleless. Evil is the lack of a sustaining principle.

Mrs. Eddy's point is, when mortal man looks for the cause of evil and sin, his mortal senses confuse correlation with causation.

Correlation is not causation. When we connect the dots to the bad effects of evil, we are not connecting the dots to any principle cause behind evil, even though our mortal senses confuse us to think we have found causation. Christian Science says of the cause of evil "How can people make sense of the senseless? Things senseless don't make sense. People can correlate the senseless to a person or event. The things that do make sense can correlate to a principle or cause."

Evil does not have a principle to hang a hat on to produce it. When we hear disharmony in music, we make a correlation to the disharmony, but we know that what we are hearing isn't harmony. Harmony is the principle of music. Disharmony is a distortion of the principle of music, not a cause. The devil and its evil effects are distortions of a principle.

Though evil is causeless, not the outcome of a principle, evil does produce effects. Evil effects are evoked as disorder, out-of-sync norms, the movement away from a principle, stress, resistance, deception, murder, and destruction. Jesus Christ said, "The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy." (John 10:10, New Living Translation.) Devils and evils may have the power to produce effects. They do not have the authority to produce these effects. Authority has to have a principle and cause behind it.

Evil is causeless until it finds a pathway into mortals. Another way to put it is this: evil is lawless and causeless to give a curse until mortals give an opening for evil. Proverbs 26:2 suggests such. "Like a bird and a flying creature in the air, so an empty curse wanders." (Aramaic Bible in Plain English) The King James Version reads "As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come."

Falsehood and evil have no origin in the truth. Since evil is a falsehood to claim its authority, it has no origin in truth. The authority is in the truth. Truth is causative and can remove evil. Evil can't be sustained as a falsehood, because evil has no cause or foundation underneath it.

With no principle underneath it, evil has no infinite origin point. If evil has no infinite origin point, how does evil produce cause and effect? Evil can't be a cause on its own. Evil leeches off of other causes that are true causes. For example, let's look at disharmony again. Does disharmony have a cause? No. Disharmony isn't a cause by itself. Disharmony has its effect in its relationship to harmony that has a true cause. I sometimes felt the anger returned to me when I tried to explain this insight of cause and effect. I understood the Christian Scientists' reluctance to share this insight about evil having no cause that it can exclusively call its own.

It's not that evil doesn't have an effect. It's that an effect from evil has no underlying basis in a cause or principle. That is why there are examples of evil being healed. Evil effects are principleless.

If evil had a principle, its effects would be good. Why? Jesus said, "How is Satan able to cast out Satan? For if a kingdom will be divided against itself, that kingdom will not be able to stand." (Mark 3:23-24, Aramaic Bible in Plain English.) Good generates structure. Evil generates anti-structure. There is not a principle of good that brings forth order from anti-structure.

In short, a principle demonstrates order, not disorder. Evil demonstrates disorder, but not a principle.

Mrs. Eddy writes "Spiritual ideas, like numbers and notes, start from Principle, and...lead up to their divine origin, God, and to the spiritual sense of being." (Science and Health, page 298.)

Evil is "A rebel without a cause." Jesus Christ said of the devil, "Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from what is his, because he is of falsehood and is also its father." (John 8:44, the Aramaic Bible in Plain English.) If a person does evil, another translation has, "You belong to your father, the devil.... there is no truth in him.... he is a liar and the father of lies." (John 8:44, New International Version.) A person practicing falsehood can have an effect, but a falsehood does not have a basis in any truth or principle to support it. "God made humankind upright, but they have sought out many evil schemes." (Ecclesiastes 7:29, NET Bible.) Also this translation, "God made human beings for righteousness, but they seek many alternatives." (Ecclesiastes 7:29, International Standard Version.)

Evil is formidable because it works in covert ways to hypnotize people to do things that in their right minds that they would not ordinarily do.

Evil shows disruption and deviation, but evil does not demonstrate a principle or cause. That is, evil shows effects of rupture, such as disruption, interruption, and corruption that deviate away from a principle. The return of the principle is the elimination of types of corruption, interruption, and disruption. The return of order demonstrates a return to principle.

Good does demonstrate a principle of order. Good has a cause or principle underneath it. Evil does not have a cause or principle causing it. To a Christian Scientist, that evil does not have its derivation from a cause or principle is profound. To others it can be profane.

DEPRAVITY AND DISORDER

What is another way to define evil? Evil is a dis-ordering-effect.

A wrong note played in music could also be called a dis-ordering-effect. A wrong note is out-of-order. It deprives one of hearing harmony.

A wrong note in music is outside the principle of music. We can hear the wrong note as effect, but the wrong note is not derived from a principle of music. The wrong note is an effect that has no cause nor truth behind it. The wrong note is operating outside the principle of harmony.

The source of harmony is the principle of harmony. The God-Principle "is our lawgiver." (Isaiah 33:22.)

Someone might say that their frustrations in life are 'caused' by another's actions or that a person pushing someone off a cliff or someone shooting someone shows evil has a cause. These causes may explain why something evil happened, but there is no principle in the cause behind what brought about these actions. There is no cause to make these actions happen. Evil is a deviation from following a principle or cause. Evil has an effect. However, evil is causeless.

Here is a pithy explanation by Mrs. Eddy. "Human sense may well marvel at discord, while, to a diviner sense, harmony is the real and discord the unreal [no abiding principle]." (Science and Health, page 563.)

One attempt to explain evil logically is the following. Evil is a deviation away from the truth or principle that govern the correct effects. For example, 2 X 2 = 9 has no real cause or principle. The 9 is a deviation away from what the principle does support. The principle supports the number 4. The 4 has its origin from the principle of 2 X 2 = 4.

Not addressing the furious public reactions to insights into Christian Science bothered the Klingbeils. Even if it hurts to share, one should find appropriate ways to share and communicate what could potentially be beneficial for mankind to know about the roots of evil, science, and spirituality.

What would the world be like if prayer and religion was reduced to mythology which is only practiced by the ignorant? That may be an unfair question, but it's being asked more often. The increasing public view that prayer is an ancient superstition that needs to be eliminated along with all religions should be addressed by human intelligence. Bruce Klingbeil believed that if we fear the public square, we are going to expect trouble and censure.

Trouble and mocking are what religions are getting. Why? The cultural change is chiefly because of scientific inventions and machines that are replacing humans and religions. There is no need for God to explain creation and moral values to us when the machines become our superiors. When people become content with life, wealth, inventions and the machines, they tend to push God out of the picture.

The Bible book of Deuteronomy presents a warning that applies to the negation of religion and the rise of atheism. It reads:

Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. (Deuteronomy 8:11-14, New International Version.)

Thinkers and atheists focus on the bizarre and evil behaviors of trusted people in religion. Bad memories tend to be remembered instead of normal memories. That's the way it is. What is the result of social media and the increasingly non-religious public pointing out bad behaviors of religious people? We might be at the gateway of a post-Christian era. The Bible portrays an atheist's reference for thinking and seeing as "the mind of the flesh [which is sense and reason without the Holy Spirit]." (Romans 8:6, The Amplified Bible.)

PRAYER AND RELIGION CAN BE ABUSIVE OR A BLESSING. 

There are evil prayers from some religions.

The father and son Spindrift founders had to investigate negative prayers in order to do a balanced assessment of the different effects from prayers. Most of us know about hurtful thoughts toward people. Imagine what a constant barrage of concentrated prayers sent through dark consciousness can do to people? It's not a pleasent image which may explain why many people avoid the topic of investigating negative religion and prayer.

There are Muslims who practice a spiritual Islam life-style. These spiritual Muslims are not the topic. Their bad brethren are the topic.

In the Twenty-first Century so far, the best examples of negative prayers come from pure Islam.  There are Muslims who practice pure dogmatic Islam that has infected prayers with evil. Pure dogmatic Islam has mixed prayer with Sharia laws and politics. The plan is to takeover the world.

Pure and radical Islam reminds one of an episode on the Twilight Zone. Aliens land in New York City and appear peaceful. The aliens walk into a United Nations Council meeting with a greeting from their planet and a book offered to the Council to translate into English. They ask permission to migrate to our planet.

After many aliens have migrated and mingled with the population, the translation of the book is completed. Much to humanity's alarm, the book is a cookbook. For today, could that cookbook be a nasty interpretation of the Koran with the endgame being Islam immigration and takeover? Yes.

UFO and military expert, John Alexander, wrote:

Around the planet there are many conflicts. The predominant ones are Islamic fundamentalists and Jews, Islamic fundamentalists and Christians, Islamic fundamentalists and Hindus, and Islamic fundamentalists and everyone who doesn't agree with them - even other Muslims. The analytically minded reader can discern the critical pattern that emerges." (Winning the War, St. Martin's Press, 2003, page 208.)

Jesus Christ recommended praying in secret most of the time. See Matthew 6:6.

Praying en masse is the opposite of praying in secret. Praying synchronistically with others may lead to mob routines and trance states of mind and prayer.

Parapsychologists have speculated about what would happen if a million people in China were ordered to get together and focus on one subject? If you saw the two thousand and eight drummers playing in the 2008 Beijing, China Olympic Games, you might worry about what focused mass intention might do.

There is a potential downside to group prayer when it becomes groupthink. Muslim group prayers spill out into the streets of cities all over the world including some cities in the United States.

Bruce and John and the Spindrift staff tried to get people stirred-up about negative prayers. Spindrift had little success with promoting the dangereous consequences from negative prayers, even after 9/11. As far as is known, Spindrift was the first group to report and warn people about the negative malpractice threats from terrorists and negative prayers from other religions.

For a thorough explanation of negative and evil prayers from religions, click these FAQ links for Question 10 and for Question 11. These two questions explain the Spindrift concern about religions gone bad and negative prayers including evil prayers that eventuate into terrorism.

Here is an example of negative thought.   

During the 1970s draft for the Vietnam War, my friend Richard got a notice to appear for a physical for the army draft. He hypnotized himself to get sick. It worked. He got out of the army draft temporarily for two months.

Richard joined the Navy Reserve. He did everything he could to communicate that he would not kill if so ordered. When rifle training began in boot camp, Richard naturally acted nervous when given a rifle to learn how to handle it and shoot it. Wisely the drill sergeant in charge noticed his unease and asked what was wrong. He told the drill instructor he felt uncomfortable with the rifle and that he could not ever learn to shoot it or use it to kill someone. The sergeant sent him to the company psychiatrist. The psychiatrist determined that he was not potentially good material for the military and sent him to a counselor to see what could be done.

Before seeing the counselor, who was part of the process of dealing with situations like this, Richard decided he would tell her the truth. That was, how nervous, anxious, fearful, disgusted, neurotic, worried, and freaked out he was about the prospect of learning to use a rifle to kill people. He intentionally prepared to come across as negative and dark minded as possible. He had read the military regulations on mental health, so he just poured out all the red flags on to the counselor who was a potential advocate for him in the process.

Richard walked into the counselor's office in a deplorable state of mind conditioned by his own plan. The woman counselor sat across her desk from him. He answered the counselor's questions to produce a negative impression on her. The session lasted about forty-five minutes.

On the counselor's desk to his left was a plant with large leaves. The plant may have been in the elephant leaf category. As soon as the session began, this plant began to droop. The counselor and Richard couldn't help notice it sagging. As Richard continued with his negative thoughts, the plant kept wilting. By the end of the session, the leaves of the plant had bent over to half their original height.

The drooping plant freaked out the counselor. Her eyes followed it down, but she didn't say anything. Richard acted like he didn't notice it going down but inside thought it was really neat because obviously the plant's descent was a reaction to his negative state of mind.

The counselor was sympathetic. Gradually, Richard was released from his obligation to serve in the military.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

During a 1990 Chicago Radio show, the host asked, "Does prayer work?" The host wanted to hear, "Yes, prayer works!" Since Spindrift was trying to be a scientific group and not a dogma group, the Spindrifters couldn't answer the question the dogmatic way the host wanted. Bruce said, "What we can say is that within the parameters of a test, prayer works."

As for skeptics who were scientists and magicians trained to conduct a scientific test of a person praying, Bruce said, "I don't want [James] Randi and other skeptics walking into the [Spindrift] lab, looking around the room, then waving their arms in the air, and saying, 'I don't like it,' then turn around and walk out." Bruce and John wanted a third party to mediate and balance out the distrust between the two groups; the prayer performers and the magician skeptics. Consultations with the skeptics ran into trouble over a third party negotiating the behavior of the two groups.

The Spindrift Equations  

The Four Laws of Consciousness and The Four Ratios of Consciousness 

Bruce and John Klingbeil developed mathematical ways to interpret how elements of human consciousness interact. The Klingbeils deduced four laws and four ratios. These laws and ratios attempt to breakdown how human consciousness interacts with non quality thought, Quality thought, and resistance in thought. Sometimes resistance is stress added to an organism or it's non quality thought that pushes to go its own way (also known as volitional goal-directed thought or prayer) not yielding to the introduction of Quality thought that works to bring creative changes to the circumstances. Quality thought is also known as non goal-directed thought or prayer.

What is healing? Healing is the movement toward the norms of an organism or situation.

The four laws are called the "'four laws of consciousness.” These four laws help to explain how thought works in healing stress in a plant, for example. Healing is understood when the deviation from a normal state of an organism is moved back in the range of the norms that define what is known as a normal state. Three of these laws of consciousness are called The Law of Quality and Measurable Effect, The Law of Cumulative Effect, and The Law of Human Intent and Measurable Effect.1

Footnote number 1 refers us to the books the Klingbeils wrote that expand on the math equations as ratios for each of these laws. That is, The Law of Quality and Measurable Effect is represented as K = E / r. The letter K is a constant. E is Quality of thought or measurable effect. The letter r is the resistance in the system. E and r are in a continual relationship. The Law of Cumulative Effect is represented as K = E / q. K is a constant. E stands for Quality of thought as a Quality effect. The letter q represents the quantity of prayers and intentions on the organisms. If r or resistance is kept the same or constant, the Quality of effect and the quantity of prayers or treatments of intention are in a continual ratio to each other. The Law of Human Intent (of non quality thought) and Mesurable Effect is represented as E = m r / m c . Here m r represents the measurement of non quality thought as volitional thought. Here m c represents the control group measurements. Effect or E is proportional to the strength of the force of volitional non quality thought. An r value is not necessary in this equation.

THE LAW OF THE CONCEPTUAL WHOLE  

The fourth law about consciousness is The Law of the Conceptual Whole. This law of conceptualizing the whole of something relates to a question I asked John Klingbeil. "'John, how can we pray for thousands of grass seeds or a bunch of beans or especially many yeast cells at the same time?”

John said, "'We are praying with love and support for the identities of the yeast cells as a whole group. This praying for the whole group as a unit is applying The Law of the Conceptual Whole. The more you can think of the thousands of yeast cells as a single unit--a conceptual whole, the more easily you can conceptualize the pot of yeast cells in your prayers.”

John referred to a page he wrote. "'In praying for a person, the effect of spiritual healing is not related to the number of cells in the body.... Thus...comparing various tests, one notices that there is no loss of effect...as long as one can conceive of the ‘patient' as a conceptual whole.” Prayer stabilizes the norms of a system as the whole patient. Footnote 2

For this law, E = m 1 + m 2 + ♦ ♦ ♦ m n / n. Here m represents a specific measurement. The letter n represents the number of measurements made of a prayed-for subject. With both Quality spiritual non goal-directed thought and non Quality volitional goal-directed thought, the effects from both these bifurcated mental powers are constant over the entire range of fields of identities, as long as that all the components prayed-for or focused on constitute "a conceptual whole."

When the individuals comprise the conceptual whole.

Praying for a patient as a conceptual whole "system" gives focus to prayer.

I understood the Klingbeils' Law of the Conceptual Whole. I also understood that the plant systems were the subjects or patients in the tests. I didn't understand what a "'system” was. I asked Bruce to describe a system. He said, "By a system we could mean the physiological body of a human being. We could mean a mathematical system produced by a computer. We could mean a soybean or some other kind of seed. We could mean a grouping of yeast cells. Wherever you have a system, there is an ordering-influence that defines that system.”

"A system by nature is patterned. We have found that some [prayer] thought is pattern related. It tends to produce order when it is associationally linked with a given system.” John said of such links to a system "The concept of the unconscious [forming associations] is a fundamental theoretical idea.... In the world of thought, correlation is through associations.” A pattern related healing prayer that links to a system "will produce a shift in conditions toward normalcy or greater good within the context of the existing circumstances and modify these circumstances in this direction [of order and healing].” Footnote 3

What are the Four Ratios of Consciousness?

Quoting The Spindrift Papers, "'The Klingbeils postulated that mental fields consist of relationships that could be represented mathematically. Spindrift presumed that the pattern-mending power or healing-power of thought varies with the Quality of thought...the quantity of thought, the degree that thought was linked with the organism being studied or prayed-for, and the resistance the organism was experiencing.

"This set of values gave Spindrift four ratios or equations: E = kQ, E = kq, E = ka, and E = kr. The letter ‘E' represents the measurable effect. Capital letter ‘Q' represents Quality of thought. Small case letter ‘q' represents quantity of thought. The letter ‘a' represents the degree of Associational Linkage to the organism. The letter ‘r' represents the degree of deviation from the norms of the organism. And the letter ‘k' represents the appropriate constant for an equation.

Tests previously done by parapsychologists in which healers prayed for seeds or plants began with a concept of thought as volitional. The assumption was that volitional thought would produce faster growth in the plants and that is what they found. (Although it must be added that this result could not always be easily reproduced).” Dr. Sandra Peterson, The Spindrift Papers, page H-2.

Spindrift proposed a bifurcation of thought. One way was volitional thought and one way was Quality thought that was order-referenced to norms that define healing.

What are the Four Ratios of Consciousness?

The following ratios mathematically represent elements of thought.

"Ratio One: The measurable effect of a patterning power is in proportion to resistance. This gives an equation of E = kr.

"Ratio Two: The measurable effect of the pattering power is in proportion to Associational Linkage of a healer's thought with the target system or patient. This gives an equation of E = ka.

"Ratio Three: The measurable effect is proportional to the quantity of holy or spiritual thought. This gives us an equation of E = kq (small case q).

"Ratio Four: The measurable effect is proportional to Quality of thought. This gives us an equation of E = kQ (capital Q).

"Spindrift hopes that its modest premise that the world of thought is a field that can be represented by equations will someday be considered. It may eventually be found that instead of being spun on the loom of a force field, the world is spun on the loom of a field of thought.” Dr. Sandra Peterson in The Spindrift Papers, page H-5.

Quality and Quantity  

Bruce and John talked about the need for thinking deeply about the philosophy of science. Bruce said, "'The conventional sciences deal entirely with quantity [measuring things]. The essence of science is to quantify relationships and then express them mathematically. Yet the bulk of our experience is with the quality of our perceptions.... Our experience is more than quantity; it's quality, too.... We think that the heart of our findings has been the discovery of a relationship between quality and quantity.

If this relationship turns out to be true, if the experiments continue to hold up as they have been, it will be something that unifies our experience.... Investigating the relationship between quality and quantity can help to unify the qualities of spirituality with the quantities of science.”

I asked Bruce, "'How can thoughts form into laws?” Bruce replied, "'We believe, to some extent, thought is lawful. Given prescribed variables of thought and acceptable experimental conditions, the quality of thought and the quantity of thought manifest into mathematical relationships. We feel that the quantification of quality thought has some relationship to order or disorder. Laws as ratios can be ascribed to thought, because we can monitor when our thoughts tend to contribute to order or disorder in a healing.” ...

"As our concepts percolate, people will begin to grasp how the holiness and compassion of an individual affects the order coming out of qualitative prayer. That we have a comparison between qualitative thought and human faith gives scientists, healers, and parapsychologists something in human consciousness to measure. ... Someday we'll win the Templeton Award for Progress in Religion. Or at least a footnote in the history of science.”

Human Faith Versus Holy Faith  

According to the Klingbeils the ratios of order which proportion the quality and the quantity of our thoughts reveal at least TWO INTENTIONS in everyone's consciousness. To understand these two intentions it's important to learn how the word faith is used by Spindrift.

The word faith has many meanings. Faith is an umbrella word that can indicate everything on a scale from weak to strong belief, through faith in God, to a mind full of holy consciousness. Spindrift uses the word faith TO INDICATE STRONG BELIEF OR HUMAN WILL DIRECTING THE RESULTS.

The following theories about achieving order describe the two intentions in consciousness that Bruce and John Klingbeil researched. (1) Human faith as strong human will is the firm belief in our consciousness that conjures up visualizations, opinions, and biases that forge ahead to do what faith wants to do during a healing (or to our life, to our goals, to our environment, or to our relationships, and so on). How human faith thought directs healing toward or away from a healthy condition is one focus of the Klingbeils' research. (2) Holy faith as the qualitative holiness in our consciousness brings forth healing (or order, beauty, novelty, and richness to situations in business, art, music, dance, architecture, and so on.) How holy qualitative thought directs healing toward a healthy condition is the other focus of the Klingbeils' research. The Klingbeils' concept is that healing is the restoration of order. Bruce stated, "'Our concept of a healing result is when there is more order present in the results than before.”

Simply put, our mental intentions (1 and 2 above) could be described in two ways: goal-directed prayer and non goal-directed prayer.

(1) Goal-directed prayer focuses human faith thought. Goal-directed prayer with its faith and strong belief frequently equals non qualitative thought.

Non qualitative thought is non quality thought. How is our directed human faith non qualitative thought? Because our human faith may direct our mind toward goals, goals which may not necessarily consider the potential highest quality results possible. Goal-directed prayer has goals and faith to achieve an end. It targets our "'wants.” Goal-directed prayer wills a result. Goal-directed thoughts and their results often don't consider the qualitative intention of "'What is the highest quality answer possible to my prayer for the situation?” There are exceptions in life, but as a general rule, our faith petitions as goals we set in our prayers are often motivated by our asking for unilateral good for ourselves. Our intention of unilateral good directs our petitions and our visualizations for our personal goals and wants. Often our petitions are not good for the other guy. We ask for what we want to happen. Such asking often does not consider the consequences of what we are asking for.

                            Circle of Prayer

The following are six examples of goal-directed prayers.

"'God, let my numbers win the lottery.”

"'Please, Lord, make the Chicago Bears beat the other football team.”

"'I ask that my prayer be answered my way.”

"'I know it's Your will that I have that man as my husband.”

"'I pray that all my friends and relatives pray and vote for the right candidate, the Republican (or the Democrat).”

This last prayer below has the right goal but the wrong motive, thereby depriving it of the quality of holiness.

"'I ask help for my friend to be healed because he owes me money.”

(2) Non goal-directed prayer focuses holy faith (qualitative) thought. Qualitative thought is quality thought. This non goal-directed quality produces order, blesses, and normalizes. It targets our "'needs.” Non goal-directed prayer has no particular goal in mind. If non goal-directed prayer has a goal, its goal or intention is for what is best.

Spindrift theorizes that non goal-directed prayer surrenders to a Higher Power. Some interpret that Higher Power to be the connecting tissue of existence, the collective unconscious, the nonlocal intelligence, the global mind, or the divine Mind, God, Love.

Why assert that it is better? Non goal-directed prayer is qualitatively better. Most directed prayer asks to get material things and for material appearances to change to what we want (and that goal could be okay sometimes). Quality can be intermixed with goals but apparently not often. Goal-directed prayer tends to be quantity oriented: it gets the quantities of things we want.

Non goal-directed thought and prayer supports and affirms the identity and purpose behind the material appearances of the object of prayer. Non goal-directed prayer adds to our awareness of higher Quality for the object of prayer. We hope the receiver of prayer responds to this insight we send, which is to bring out the spiritual qualities and true worth of the identity of a person or situation.

No matter how well intentioned, we human beings can't always know what is in the very best interest of a person or situation. Surrendering one's goals and ideas to a Higher Power may open up the situation to better ideas and new approaches about what is important and appropriate as a result of prayer. The Klingbeils' idea was that holy qualitative prayers are detached from goals.

I heard a radio preacher say "Prayer is a therapy that sends the burdens from your shoulders to God. In return God sends you a new perspective.” This new perspective learned from prayer prepares a person to align with the Divine Will. Aligning human consciousness with the Divine Will brings movement between Spirit and the physical realm which includes goals that are appropriate for the circumstances.

The following are six examples of non goal-directed prayers.

"Not my will, but Thine be done.”

"Lord, I'm willing to have order in my day that's not on my list.”

"God, let me see my brother man the way You see him.”

Who would think that Alcoholics Anonymous has given Spindrift a superb example of a non goal-directed prayer. The prayer goes like this:

"Oh God, nothing has gone my way today. It's been a good day."

Mary Baker Eddy wrote a daily non goal-directed prayer. The prayer prepares people's attitudes for the day's tasks. It reads:

"Thy kingdom come;' let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love be established in me, and rule out of me all sin; and may Thy Word enrich the affections of all mankind, and govern them!"

For Britain's millennium celebration a "millennium prayer” was produced. This inoffensive, unbiased prayer shows it is a non goal-directed prayer. It reads:

"Let there be respect for the Earth, peace for its people, love in our lives, delight in the good, forgiveness for past wrongs, and from now on a new start."

I asked Bruce for a sound bite answer for people who were interested in how they could learn for themselves the important motive behind praying non goal-directed thoughts versus directing their thoughts on their personal goals. Bruce said something like, "The effect of non goal-directed prayer is not about being the best, it's about being your best.”

The question arises, Can a non goal-directed prayer focus directed love and compassion and still remain non goal-directed? Yes. You don't consciously decide what is best for the healee. As a Spindrifter said, "You can love the person, but you don't decide what is best for him.”

Mrs. Eddy gives advice that fits this focusing of goals in prayer in a non particle or material way. "What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds." (Science and Health, page 4.)

Dr. Albert Einstein 

The two results of intention by goal-directed and non goal-directed thoughts fit in with Einstein's description of psychic phenomena as "'spooky action at-a-distance.” Bruce said, "Maybe we can make psychic thought less spooky. I hope we can do this clarification for the public through our experimental examples of faith driven thought and qualitative holy thought. If we can show the patterning power of prayer, we can lessen fear.” ...

"This distinction that we make between goal-directed thought and pattern related thought [which produces a patterned order versus a willed order] is something which is basic to our experimental inquiry. ... We feel that our tests help healers learn what their faith as belief patterns elicit during healing and what their qualitative effect patterns elicit during healing.” The Klingbeils tested individuals, not groups giving their shared attention.

Bruce Klingbeil glimpsed the seed of the theory of at least two distinct intentions as different agendas in everyone's prayerful thoughts when he read a sentence in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 82, line 32. Mrs. Eddy writes, "...it is wise earnestly to consider whether it is the human mind or the divine Mind which is influencing one.” Both intentions drive our thoughts. It's a matter of learning to decipher which intention was dominate in a test result. Then it was a matter of learning which intention was to become our spiritual choice or primary motive in our thoughts.

The Klingbeils felt that the holier intention or more spiritual intention of thought is the non goal-directed intention. Why? Because the result of holy prayer was a return to normal or a close approximation of normal. Closest to normal represented the best order for the subject of a test. This better healing result was seen as a return to a better order or a correspondence with normalcy for the organism or situation prayed for.

In comparison the results of goal-directed prayer sometimes returned an organism to normal, but much more often the specific goals and petitions in our thoughts directed the results in ways we wanted them to go. Specific goals that our thoughts wanted to achieve often produced results that deviated from what was normal, natural, and best for the situation prayed for. A nonlocal effect of goal-directed prayer did occur, but the achieved effect or result was not always in the best interest of the situation.

I asked Bruce, "'Do John and you feel bad because the influence of your research is more felt than seen, and that qualitative thought research is the odd man out and gets little credit?” Bruce responded, "The research is influencing collective thought. We hope more people will become consciously aware of it.” Why become more aware of the higher quality in our consciousness? So we can investigate and cultivate our quality thoughts that contribute to healing. Without quality thought and a sense of unconditional Love, people may find they use prayer to manipulate situations to their personal liking.

"Our research suggests to people that they become more consciously aware of how the tenor and qualities of their unconscious thoughts affect how they pray [how unconscious quality thoughts affect their prayers]. That the awareness of the inherent quality or holiness in their consciousness relates to bringing forward evidence of order and healing.”

"It's one thing to say to people that thought affects things. It's another thing to say that thought has a healing-effect on things. It's yet another thing to say that spiritual healing follows in reference to order, to what is best for the context. That's what we're saying.” Order follows quality prayer because order references quality. This order implies an ordering-force. Bruce postulated, "There is a loving and information based healing ordering-mechanism operating in consciousness.” Loving qualities are information. This information brings nonlocal healing and order. A healer affirms these qualities to empower the healee to swing free to meet his need. Here is an example of an affirmative prayer. "The Matrix doesn't have power over me. The Life, Truth, and Love of God has power over me."

Some tidbits that were recalled  

Several times there were odd stories that were hard to forget. Here are some examples.

Bruce told me that his cousin went to a union meeting in Chicago. When the meeting began, the treasurer announced that a Federal Judge ordered that he read the financial record book to the membership, so the members knew how the union bosses spent their money. The treasurer said he would comply with the order. As the treasurer opened the book and started to speak, the lights went out, there was a flash seen and a gunshot heard, then the lights came on again. The treasurer was dead and the financial record book was gone.

The Christian Science Monitor newspaper wrote at least fourteen articles about studies of psychic phenomena. During the 1980s, one article took the position that there was no evidence for psychic phenomena. Bruce called several Spindrifters in dismay and wondered how could they do that? How could the newspaper print such a position? Bruce pointed out that the article was ironic since the Christian religion that published the newspaper claimed paranormal healings and related unusual phenomena in its religious publications. Later, there were other articles in the Monitor that took a closer look at the experimental evidence and wrote that there was some scientific evidence.

On occasion Bruce would mention his fascination from childhood with gyroscopes. He thought gyroscopes were the coolest devices and lots of innovations would come from gyros.

Bruce said that he wanted to become a forest ranger, a research scientist, or a Christian Science practitioner.

Paranoid Watch. Bruce and John Klingbeil often spoke about the technological replacements for God and prayer. John wrote a science fiction book called Richard Garrett that proposed a secret small group of monks had the spirituality to counter some types of computer and technological inventions that became the masters of society and tools of politictians to control information and rid the world of a of belief in God as being taken seriously. The monks applied their rare power of thought, namely a developed qualitative thought, as passwords to open computers. That is, the passwords were qualitative prayers. People with no quality or Christ in their thoughts could not open the computers. The monks guarded national security secrets because the computers the monks used could not be opened or hacked without qualitative thought to open or hack them. In A Journey Into Prayer, pages 124 - 128, consider that the original Matrix movie is a lesson on how we human beings are trapped in a data created technological world we believe is solid reality. The Matrix locks us in so human beings are without any awareness of a more real underlying natural realilty that the physical senses can't perceive.

The Spindrift Founders believed that many claims of the paranormal, from telepathy to spiritual healing, would find an equal developed by science. People will be educated to think, "Who needs God and psychic powers anymore? We human beings can create our own spiritiual and psychic powers." Thus, there would be no reason to think about purely psychic and spiritual powers anymore because science had its own versions of them for people. The Klingbeils' guess about the future is coming true. Here is one example of neuroscience essentially replicating telepathy. http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/28/17123686-two-rats-thousands-of-miles-apart-cooperate-telepathically-via-brain-implant?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=6

The Klingbeils agreed with this quote. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.” -- George Bernard Shaw

Here is what Bruce and John accomplished.   

Here is a review of the Klingbeils' contributions to consciousness science and distinguishing spirituality.

1. Evidence that some experiments are meaningful links between science, theology, and medicine.
   1. Qualitative thought is holy thought and mending thought. Qulatative thought is organizing thought that deploys quality as ordering-effects that are sometimes quantifiable effects. Qualitative thought organizes healing in reference to a proper order. Order refers to the norms that define a normal pattern for the person, place, or thing prayed for.
   2. Quality thought draws a pattern of healing which is closest to normal for the circumstances.
   3. A relationship between quality and quantity emerges when this quality deploys a pattern.
2. Evidence of a nonlocal spiritual information base the Klingbeils called the "'ordering-force.”
   1. The ordering-force is called upon by non goal-directed thought in human consciousness.
   2. The ordering-force identifies the norms, the normal healthy state, of the object of prayer.
   3. The ordering-force promotes the norms that are best for each person, place, or thing prayed for. (The ordering-force references a context beyond the viewpoint a person views.)
3. Evidence that both goal-directed thought and non goal-directed thought exist in consciousness.
   1. The strength of our focus is proportional to our "'associational linkages” to what is prayed for.
      Unconscious associations are linkages that pave paths to a situation prayed for.
   2. The prayer's non goal-directed strength of holiness is proportional to the degree of qualitative compassion and love it conveys. Quality is not primarily intention; quality is holy consciousness that supports order. Compassionate qualities can be cultivated.
   3. The prayer's goal-directed strength of human faith usually produces more size. More size means bigger results, and "bigger is presumed better" versus producing an effective match to the needs of the situation. The Klingbeils concluded that our human faith produces exaggerated size effects because we are culturally conditioned to believe bigger is better.
   4. The Spindrift research was first to introduce tests showing that people have an unconscious or conscious preference for either goal-directed or non goal-directed thought.
4. Evidence and theory to help explain how our spiritual and psychic experiences soon disappear
   from our conscious awareness. Through the defense mechanisms or DMs, our own minds prevent us from finding out about our scary nonlocal abilities.
   1. First, a proactive perceptive psychic force in our mind goes to work that we may notice.
   2. Second, an antagonistic defense mechanism, a DM, in our mind goes to work to hide the psychic event from us.
      1. A series of defense mechanisms in the mind block off or inhibit expressions of psychic activity and spiritual experiences. Defense mechanisms may see their job as keeping psychic occurrences way in the background, so life appears to a human being as "'business as usual.”
      2. DMs help spiritual and psychic experiences disappear. This disappearance from our conscious awareness amounts to being separated from one's nonlocal nature. Our view of life is kept limited and choreographed as subjective by our own mental mechanisms.
      3. If a psychic experience is remembered, defense mechanisms downplay it and may even work on us to feel foolish to accept it as a real happening. If we persist remembering a psychic experience, the DMs change the script enough so our story becomes an inaccurate account of what happened.
      4. The result is that human beings are prevented from learning that they have an active psychic consciousness which interacts with the world. As the Talmud says, "'We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are.” Footnote ₄

Research Ahead of its Time

I contend that the Klingbeils' theories of how to tap some of the psychic and holy aspects of one's consciousness, if found to be plausible, would stir as much fear and concern for some, as it would cause delight for others.

Bruce and John illustrated how natural science could have a spiritual premise and how some order-promoting spiritual effects could be measured by natural science.

History may recall Bruce and John Klingbeil as experimenters who struggled for a greater openness to study prayer research. It's hard telling what is more attention getting: the healing work with prayer the Klingbeils did in the laboratory or the outlandish reactions against testing prayer. As time has shown, both the importance of Spindrift's research and the spikes of scorn for the Klingbeils' research compete for attention.

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"If prayer is effective in the sick room, is it not then also effective in the science room? Or, conversely, if prayer is effective in the science room, is it not also effective in the sick room?" -- Bruce Klingbeil, Founder and Researcher

"Spindrift's experiments could be said to describe an aspect of the incarnation--the interrelationship of spiritual power and material conditions--the finger of God in human experience--however unexpected the form of it may seem to be." -- John Klingbeil, Founder and Researcher

FOOTNOTES

1) Identity Field Theory, by John Klingbeil, 1983, p. 64. 2) The Quiet Revolution, by John Klingbeil, 1980, p. 5.

2) Ibid., p. 76-78.

3) Identity Field Theory, The Quiet Revolution, The Healer, Cathedral of the Mind, The Spindrift Tests, and The Spindrift Papers go in-depth on these effects of human consciousness and the evidence for psychic forces of thought.

4) For more information on our own minds interfering with our perceptions of the psychic and spiritual phenomena around us, go to the Theory page.