I was in the home of the cofounders of Spindrift.  Walking into Bruce and John Klingbeils’ prayer laboratory was a surprise.  The laboratory filled the kitchen and extended over to the dining room.  In time virtually all the Klingbeils’ living space became part of their spiritual and scientific endeavors.  Bruce and John felt their research scientifically explored how prayer worked, how it interacted with the world.  Bruce and John were father and son.  They worked as healers (known as 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, prayer and healing could be tested by science.  So many answers to prayer could be explained by chance, coincidence, or the placebo effect that the Klingbeils felt the necessity to do research on prayer.  Bruce and John had the curiosity to explore how their thoughts and prayers operated in a controlled laboratory environment. Bruce reasoned that “In a modern world, you need modern levels of evidence.”  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.

      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 corresponded to prayer's effect on a group of living yeast cells, for example.  These graphed waves were the results of a paranormal happening, a healing-effect on the yeast.
      I asked Bruce, “Could you help me explain to other people what Spindrift is doing by monitoring thought and prayer through healing?”  Bruce 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.”
      I asked Bruce, “How do we see invisible spiritual power?”
      Bruce said, “By the impact it has on the physical world.”  He added that spiritual power impacts the world through healing-effects as ordering-effects.  The Klingbeils were used to seeing these healing-effects bringing order to things.  To me these healing-effects in the laboratory were what I would call an episode I saw on The X Files.
     These ordering-effects of prayer were a thrill to see.  To me, it also felt eerie.
I remember saying to myself, “What's going on here?  Does what I'm seeing mean my thought from my own consciousness actually affects this living group of yeast cells?”  Then I said aloud to Bruce and John, “Well, I guess these mental phenomena are what I've always been interested in, but I can hardly believe what I'm seeing.”
     Bruce smiled and said, “I know.  It's startling for the human mind to see such things for the first time.”  Bruce added that seeing a healing was the best way to teach about the tests.
     John remarked, “It causes you to change and none of us like to change too much.”
     I later heard it said that “When prayers are answered, there is nothing scarier.”  That held true for any paranormal phenomena in life.  If one could witness a paranormal event almost instantly, that would be scary.  Because the onus is no longer “Hey, I believe in psychic phenomena.”  It's now, “My gosh.  What does this power mean about how I think about my own mind, environment, and world?  Even if subtly, I, each person, has some degree of mental input into our world.  How scary!”
     John turned from his computer screen and said to me, “I know why it's frightening to you.  You have an awakened responsibility that comes with
new knowledge.  To see your consciousness expressing part of itself as qualitative effects and faith effects on a graph is a shock.  You see qualities
of consciousness modify what the cells do.  I think it's cool!  It's a frozen moment in time of the quality of your healing-intentions.  We feel our yeast test has the capacity to read our healing-thoughts going to a target and changing the target.”
     I repeated, “That's definitely scary.”  I found out it related to a question Bruce asked, “Is the spiritual universe comprehensible?”  I would learn that by isolating two healing effects which are, goal-ended faith effects, and open-ended
quality effects, comprehension began to be possible.  Additionally I learned that “Prayer is a corridor to unseen solutions.”

      A test became fun to do, expressing one's thoughts to a quantity of yeast and then seeing lines pop up on a graph.  The test showed three results.  Sometimes prayer results didn't make the grade.  They weren't any different than a low wave seen on a control group graph of yeast.  Other times results were projected on the graph one didn't expect--kind of a misfire--called a human faith effect.  Still this effect showed the mind was at work in the yeast results.  Sometimes, when inspiration was right, a correct healing-result spread waves across the computer screen.  Eyes were fixed on the screen as waves rose high and low scientifically measuring that prayer was the form of attentive consciousness which was the mending-force behind the healing of the yeast.

WIRELESS COMMUNICATION

      A ham radio operator friend witnessed the yeast test followed by the results, waves emerging on a graph.  My friend commented that the yeast test was like wireless communication.
      He said of the graph, “That looks like a waveform of voltage or watts being measured.”
      I said pointing to the graph, “Then that represents mental power?”
      My friend replied, “I don't know what else to call it.”
      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.”  Bruce added, “Prayer is an abundant reservoir of testable thought.”
      The theory of ‘nonlocality,’ the term physicists would use to describe distant actions brought on 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 “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 tests were blasphemous.)

     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.
In computer terms John described the prayer research 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 so-called miracle healings], once having seen controlled tests of thought and prayer, society might start thinking of reasons to test prayer on healing.”
     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.”
     Bruce told me that, in the 1960’s, 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 it to test one's consciousness, one's prayer agendas of the mind, and spiritual healing.
         I asked Bruce, “How would you and John explain your purpose for testing prayer to someone in science?”  Bruce said, “We live in a mental world with laws and rules.  We're at the beginning of discovering 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 and takes away the punch bowl.”
     From the time I met Bruce in 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 said that the church punished him for his research, but when prestigious scientists outside the church do 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.  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.”

     The Klingbeils discovered “four laws of consciousness” to help explain how thought works in healing stress in a plant for example.  Three of these laws are the laws of Cumulative Effect, of Holiness and Measurable Effect, and of Human Intent and Measurable Effect. ¹  The fourth law relates to a question I asked John.  “John, how can we pray for thousands of grass seeds or a bunch of beans or especially many yeast 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.” ²   Prayer stabilizes the norms of a system as
the whole patient.

     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].” ³

     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.”

     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.  Pertaining to its tests, 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.
     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 in a situation.
     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.
     No matter how well intentioned, we human beings can't always know what is in the very best interest of the 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.
     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 which prepares
people for each day's task.  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!

     As part of Britain's millennium celebration, a “millennium prayer” was produced.  This inoffensive, unbiased prayer shows by its intention it's 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 type answer to give to 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.”

     The two results of intention produced 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 the individual, 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 or situation of the 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.

     The unique angle is that prayer is not guided by intention alone.  The quality of prayer determines its effectiveness.  Bruce and John taught that “Holy prayer is an ordering-power.”  Holy prayer promotes quality thought, love, compassion, and order which support the results appropriate for the circumstances.  Quality prayer nudges a situation toward what is normal and best.  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.”  [So they can investigate and cultivate quality thought.]
     “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 [that their unconscious 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 and quality prayer references order.  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.

WHAT THE KLINGBEILS ACCOMPLISHED

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

     (1) Evidence that some experiments are meaningful
          links between science, theology, and medicine.
            A  Qualitative thought is organizing thought that deploys
                 quality as "ordering-effects" that are quantifiable.
                 Qualitative thought organizes healing in reference to
                 order.  Order refers to the norms that define a normal
                 pattern for the person, place, or thing prayed for.
            B  Quality thought draws a pattern of healing which is
                 closest to normal for the circumstances.
            C  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.”
           A  The ordering-force is called upon by non goal-directed
                thought in human consciousness.
           B  The ordering-force identifies the norms, the normal
                healthy state, of the object of prayer.
           C  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.
            A  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.
            B  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.
            C  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.
            D  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.  Our own minds
           prevent us from finding out about our scary
           nonlocal abilities.
             A  First, a proactive perceptive psychic force in our mind
                  goes to work that we may notice.
             B  Second, an antagonistic defense mechanism in our
                  mind goes to work to hide what happened from us.
                    1)  A series of defense mechanisms in the mind block
                         off or inhibit expressions of psychic activity.
                         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.”
                         If a psychic experience is remembered, defense
                         mechanisms downplay it.
                    2)  Human beings are prevented from learning that
                         they have an active psychic consciousness which
                         interacts with the world.
                    3)  Spiritual and psychic experiences disappear.
                         This disappearance from awareness amounts to
                         being separated from one's nonlocal nature.  Our view
                         of life is limited and choreographed as subjective by
                         our own mental mechanisms.  As the Talmud says, “We
                         don’t see things as they are.  We see them as we are.” ⁴

                RESEARCH AHEAD OF ITS TIME

     I contend that the Klingbeils’ theories of how to tap 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 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.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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

---

      1)  Identity Field Theory, by John Klingbeil, 1983, p. 64.

      2)  The Quiet Revolution, by John Klingbeil, 1980, p. 5.

      3)  Ibid., p. 76-78.

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

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