Thesis: There are practices, documented by the wisdom traditions and today's progressive scientists, as well as implemented by current communities, that can be used to work with all dimensions of this volution process (beyond only the part of the spectrum that most of us can analyze).

“The developing perspective about the cosmic hologram and the fundamental nature of consciousness is finally offering a theoretical context, a ‘plausible mechanism’ within which to place and perhaps explain supernormal capabilities and occurrences.”

— Currivan 2017, 200

There is a strong case to be made that working more consciously with information through a volutionary lens is the direction that humanity and life on Earth is headed. In their book The Sixth Kondratieff, Leo and Simone Nefiodow (2014) point to the evidence that the sixth long wave in the global economy (named Kondratieff waves after Nikolai Kondratieff who first published about these cycles) will be primarily driven by “information flow in and among human beings - physical, psychological, mental, pyscho-mental and social health” as well as “information flow between human beings, the environment and transcendence - ecological and spiritual health” (31). The reason for this they say is that increasing health problems in individuals and conflict in the social sphere are limiting economic potential and will only continue to do so. In order to deal with the challenges ahead, “psychosocial health” will be critical: “the social importance of psychosocial health results from its problem-solving potential” (61).

This final section focuses on practices, documented by the wisdom traditions and today's progressive scientists, as well as implemented by current communities, that can be used to work with all dimensions of the volution process, using information to increase psychosocial health. In order to engage in the phases of the volutionary process beyond the central ones in which things manifest in the relative reality that we are used to seeing around us, we have to develop awareness of and practices for engaging the informational fields and dynamics of energy that make up the other phases of volution. In this way people become more fully conscious co-creators of life and take into account more of reality when thinking and acting.

Three Perspectives

From a volutionary perspective, between the undifferentiated oneness and the personified I-ness, or the wholeness and the “partness” of a system, there is a large range of dynamics that go on in the relative space. People use many different languages to describe the work they do and the theories that underpin it. To help clarify the relationships between these different practices and frameworks, I will refer to three main perspectives that end up creating different languages and cultures in this area, so we have a code for deciphering the various ways of describing the same context. These perspectives are based on the three persons - 1st person, 2nd person and 3rd person. The 1st person is the “I” and is the subjective experience and perspective. The 2nd person I will refer to as “We” (in the tradition of Ken Wilber 1995), because it is really about the interaction between “I” and “You” in a “We” space. The 3rd person is the “It” and the apparently objective perspective on something.

Here are some examples of the way these show up in theories and practices around energy and information. In a third person perspective one would talk about energetic functions, the way information and energy works, similar to the way I have described volution above. It is all seen as a system with different elements and processes that interconnect. Richard Leviton (2005, 2007) describes the various functions that he encounters at specific physical sites on the planet - such as connecting different sites and functions to each other, channelling information into matter, protecting certain areas, providing access to certain informational realms. Hans Andeweg (2009, 2011) describes specific parameters of a system, such as orgone (life energy), oranur (stressed energy), dor (blocked energy) - these last three coming from the work of Wilhelm Reich - grounding, bovis (integration of concept and realization) and POA (Percentage of Organization and Adaptation). In Andeweg’s ECOintention practice, these parameters are measured and used to influence the kind interventions that are made. The third person perspective tends to focus on making pro-active interventions - such as healing a place in Leviton’s work or balancing an organization in Andeweg’s work.

In a second person perspective, one would talk not about functions but about other entities or beings that one interacts with - nature spirits, angels and devas, for example. Leviton (2005, 2007) links the functions he describes to certain entities, such as gnomes, angels and dragons which you engage with when looking to activate certain functions (Merry 2011b). Small Wright (1997) describes ways to work with devas, nature spirits and angels to help co-create a reality that connects your intentions with what is best for life as a whole. She also assigns certain functions to the different entities. The second person perspective tends to focus more on co-creativity with other beings and aspects of life.

In a first person perspective one would talk more about the inner experience one is having. This is seen more often in receptive practices where the task is to pick up information intuitively from various channels. In Leviton’s workshops, for example, he has people focus on certain locations and report what they feel. Although people may use slightly different language, there is usually a common theme. Gnomes for example create quite a different felt experience than fairies or sylphs. Andeweg also has people feel different energetic qualities and then compare notes inter-subjectively, as part of his four year vocational training in ECOintention. The first person perspective tends to focus more on receptive practices.

Table 7: Three Core Perspectives — Table 7: *Three Core Perspectives*

Different people and different schools tend to have different preferences for the three perspectives. One will talk in more “objective” third person terms about the functions of an energetic system, and may get irritated by “new-age waffle” about angels and fairies. Others may feel more comfortable with a second person perspective in the realms of beings and entities, and find the third person too cool, heady and disconnected. Still others may say it’s all subjective anyway and you just have to feel it in your own body-mind, a first person perspective. More often than not, people and schools combine these perspectives to some extent, as we have seen in the examples above. However, it is important to be able to see them as different yet complementary perspectives on the same reality, and it is in that spirit that I will go into more detail on some practices below that are exploring how to access a fuller spectrum of the volutionary process.

The First Person “I” - Receptivity, deepening ourselves, acting on ourselves

“Can you coax your mind from its wandering / and keep to the original oneness?” the Tao te Ching asks (Lao Tzu, 1999). This points to the place of inner stillness from which we can access field intelligence. The field is a field of information and potential energy, as described in quantum physics. The moment that we observe this “quantum” field with our cognitive mind, the potential wave form becomes a coherent wave form, meaning that we can never actually access the quantum potential state with our cognition (Talbot 1991).

This is why we need to still our analytical mind and light up our more intuitive senses to be able to access this field (Andeweg 2009). When our attention is focused on the world of things around us, we are paying attention to the disorder and amplifying it in our experience. To generate more order in our experience we need to go inside and pay attention to the generative reality. Greater presence creates greater order, allowing life to close the loops of the cycles between order and disorder more quickly, integrating action and awareness, or doing and being, in more rapid feedback loops. The Tao te Ching is essentially a guide to accessing that inner state of being present.

This concept has been popularised in the world of organisational development in recent years by the work of Joseph Jaworski, Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer and Betty Sue Flowers, as what they call “presencing” (Senge et al, 2004). It is what Scharmer calls the “blind spot of leadership”, that ability to find inner stillness and deep knowing that guides us to take wise and better informed decisions.

In Ervin Laszlo’s understanding of what he calls the Akashic Field (Laszlo 2004), there is a field that holds all the information that has ever existed and information of the dynamic potentiality of future possibilities. We can access any knowledge we want by attuning ourselves to this field and asking clearly what we want to know. To do this however requires that we activate our intuitive dimension and quiet our rational mind.

The rational mind does have a role in working with information gathered from a field. Information from a field can come to us in many different forms. Sometimes in words, but also in images, feelings or other sensations. Each individual needs to work out what their intuitive language is, and what different sensations actually tell us. This is where the rational mind comes in. Energy has many different qualities and functions, and to be able to interpret, communicate about and work with energy, we need to be able to discern those diverse qualities. Working with a shared conceptual framework of energetic terms, such as that developed by Hans Andeweg in his ECOintention practice (Andeweg 2009), enables us to work together in the energetic domain, exchanging our experiences and drawing conclusions.

It is important first to access the sensation through intuition and only after that engage the analytical mind to discern, translate and communicate the experience. This was one of the main lessons learned by Dr Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne in their 28 years of Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (Jahn & Dunne 2005). They emphasised how important it was to apply their analytical filters only after all the subjective intuitive data had been completely relayed.

Radin (2013, 271) refers to the “inflow of information that we label psi perception, which includes clairvoyance, precognition, and telepathy”. Serena Roney-Dougal (2010) lists out the conditions she discovered in her research that enhanced people’s success in accessing this information. They include:

Relaxation
Quieting of the analytical mind
Grounding
Curiosity
Openness (don’t sensor any impression that comes in)

These are first-person qualities that create the conditions for someone to be able to receive information more accurately from the informational fields. There are many practices in the realm of personal development that help people to develop these qualities, most of which involve some level of directing your attention to your inner experience and noticing and accepting the busyness of the mind and the world outside while not getting caught up in it.

One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the existence of these abilities came from a report Commission by the Congress of the United States in the 1990s from the American Institutes for Research. While producing compelling evidence, the two primary reviewers couldn’t agree. Currivan (2017, 198) reports:

The conclusions by the two primary reviewers differed. One, who’d previously been open to the reality of remote viewing, was convinced by the evidence and in favor of then focusing on how such psi phenomena works. The other, previously skeptical, remained unpersuaded. The oversight panel then elaborated a consensus that, while agreeing there was a statistically significant demonstration of the ability to perceive on such a nonlocal basis, there was disagreement as to whether it could be unambiguously attributed to psi or some unconfirmed experimental bias. Without clearly establishing the cause of the proven evidence, the panel also considered that, even if it did exist, the experiments did not identify the origins or nature of the phenomenon.

In other words, while the evidence was there, the members still disputed its validity, regardless of the lack of any proof of error or bias; they couldn’t, in any case, understand how it could work.

The Second Person “We” - Co-creativity, en-acting with others

Working with attention and intention is one of the main ways people can co-create with life. The first part of this section explores how that can look when working with other people, and the second explores more examples of co-creating with other entities.

The formative force of life, the force that shapes our material reality, comes out of a process of giving something attention from the heart and bringing in creative intention from the higher mind (Andeweg 2009). If a leader is sensing well from the field, then they have an intuition about which general direction the community is destined to go in its journey to contributing the piece of the puzzle that it holds. With that general direction in mind, it is possible to co-create with life to bring it into form, through the conscious use of intention. In this sense, “leadership” is very much grounded in a perspective of co-creation, a continual cycle of sensing and acting.

In his most recent work, The Universe Loves a Happy Ending (Andeweg 2016, 207-215), Hans Andeweg names ten principles for leading an organisation or looking after a piece of land in resonance with the energetic architecture of that system:

1. Check whether your conviction is free and independent - are you really the steward of the entity you lead or are you dependent on others?

2. Develop inner tranquility

3. Become conscious of the whole – having your awareness on all the different parts of the system that you are leading

4. Have a sense of what is happening – a heart-felt connection to the experiences of the people and other life forms in your system

5. Put your wheel in the spotlight and practice Tonglen – a practice of holding your system in the light of love in your heart, including any pain that may be present

6. Affirm and visualise your goals – paying regular attention to your goals, and visualising their realisation

7. Use knowledge and expertise – knowing about the content of what is being worked on in your system

8. Go with the flow – understanding and working with energetic time (such as that described in sacred calendars like that of the Maya, or other fractal systems such as the Elliott timewave)

9. Transform your burdened past – being aware of what traumas from the past may be holding the system back from manifesting its purpose and releasing the energy that is held there

10. Be here now, consciously and with joy – don’t take yourself too seriously…

An important area to explore in the co-creative qualities is that of working with tensions and seeming polarities. The information fields often show themselves to us through creative tensions. As the intention that we hold as leaders for our system meets the current reality, tensions emerge that invite us towards greater wholeness and coherence. Those tensions can be in the field of relationships between the people in our systems, or around material issues. I like to think of these three architectures in our living systems:

Figure 41: Three Architectures for Natural Design (Center for Human Emergence Netherlands 2011) — Figure 41: *Three Architectures for Natural Design* (Center for Human Emergence Netherlands 2011)

As we start to align ourselves with the informational and energetic fields, our relational and material architectures are called to come into resonance with them. That is likely to create tensions in our organisational systems which we need to learn to work creatively with. Practices such as Holacracy’s Integrative Decision Making (Robertson 2015) is one example of how people in organisations can treat tensions as information from the field, and work with that information in such a way that it can be of greatest service to the organisational entity that they are leading. The ability for a leader and community to be able to work creatively with tensions is critical, particularly in the increasingly complex and challenging times we live in. In holding a tension open, we keep the probability waves open, and invite in information and insights from the informational fields to literally in-form how we transcend them.

Figure 42. The Involution / Evolution Coning Dynamic. Small Wright (1997, 11)

The remainder of this section of the second person “We” looks at co-creation with non-human elements of life. The best example I have encountered of this is Machaelle Small Wright’s work on “Co-creative Science” (Small Wright 1997). Small Wright has developed a practice that she trialled with a garden, inspired by work at the Findhorn eco-village in Scotland, that involves explicit collaboration with entities in the angelic, devic and nature spirit realms.

Figure 43. The balanced four-point coning. Small Wright (1997, 13)

I described the Perelandra process in the previous Section. In the co-creative process, different players have different roles. The humans set the intention and vision. This is related to the longer-term human transformation processthat is held by an angelic family she calls the White Brotherhood. Together, the humans and the White Brotherhood are focused on holding an intention for the future so that life moves in that general direction, the e-volutionary process. On the other hand, there are the devas who hold the blueprint of how to implement such an intention in this reality for the greatest benefit of all life, and Pan and the nature spirits who are responsible for pulling all the pieces together - the in-volutionary process. Small Wright developed a set of protocols for interacting with these partners to help develop a physical garden or an organisational project (a “soil-less garden”), as well as to support healing processes (the Medical Assistance Program).

Roney-Dougal (2010, 170-199) also provides a grounded review of the various elemental nature spirits and the roles they take on. Spangler (2010) devotes his book Subtle Worlds to working with the different entities in the subtle realms. He identifies four main ways “that subtle beings can and do help us” (26-28): 1. “by intervening to handle anything we can't handle ourselves yet”, such as energetic cleansing and transformation; 2. “by seeding the realms of thought and feeling with ideas and qualities that human beings can pick up on and be inspired by”; 3. “by directly offering guidance and instruction to those who can receive it”; 4. “blending of the presence and energies of the subtle being with those of the incarnate human being in a manner that creates a larger and more potent field than either could manage on his or her own”. He also describes how he was given four key practices for working with entities in the subtle realms by his main subtle contact, John: “attunement to self, attunement to sacredness, attunement to the subtle environment in the physical world around me, and blessing” (37).

An important point he makes from his experience is how communication with the subtle realms works more at a poetic level that needs to be unpacked by your conceptual imagination before your cognitive mind can engage with it (43). Spangler describes the subtle realms as “not so much in the physical sense but conditions and states of consciousness… locations within the vast, universal spectrum of life and sentencing. … they are like notes on a guitar string. The plucking of the string creates and sustains the note” (61).

The Third Person “It” - Active, acting on third-party systems

“A miracle does not happen in contradiction to nature, but in contradiction to that which is known to us of nature.”

— Saint Augustine, in Radin (2013, 46)

This third-person perspective is maybe the one most popularised due to people’s natural tendency in the scientific-rational mindset to orient through the third person. Although the framing of the examples of practices below is in the third person, they include first person and second person practices. Radin (2013, 271) refers to it as the “outflow of information, which includes psychokinesis and distant healing”.

Abram (1996) quotes from anthropological research into the Navajo’s view of what we would call “the future”. They see it as:

a stock of possibilities, of incompletely realised events and circumstances. They are still most of all ‘becoming’ (rather than being) and involved in the process of ‘manifesting’ themselves. The human being can, through his thoughts and desire, exert an influence on these ‘possibles’. (192-3)

Hardy (2008) describes how traditional perspectives on quantum physics have polarised into two camps - the indeterministic where it is all random, as postulated by Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr and the Copenhagen school, and the deterministic where “hidden variables” or an “implicate order” determine manifestation on the material or “explicate” dimension (postulated by Einstein and David Bohm). She suggests that the underlying reality is closer to the “synchronistic acausal events” proposed by Jung and Pauli where intention and meaning play a role through what she calls “syg-energy (semantic energy)” (322-323).

The practice that I am most familiar with which reflects this perspective is that of ECOintention, developed by Hans Andeweg and Rijk Bols (Andeweg 2009, 2016). This practice was originally known as ECOtherapy and grew out of resonance therapy, which itself emerged from radionics, that was developed in the 1920s at Stanford University in California. All three methods use treatments (or “balancing”) at a distance through a map or photograph. I choose this one to focus on not only due to my experience of it, but also due to the 20 years of application and the related research they have done around it. From the various practices I am aware of, it is one of the most developed and researched in terms of impact on larger scale systems such as natural parks and organizations. Towards the end of the section I will mention some other practices in this area.

ECOintention

The different methods that developed into ECOintention have become increasingly less technical with each step. In radionics only radionic equipment was used. In resonance therapy symbols and fractals (mathematical images and formulae) were added. An ECOintention Practitioner doesn’t use radionic equipment at all, but has a self-assembled energetic toolkit with colours, crystals, homeopathic treatments, Bach flower remedies, symbols and an orgone beamer. What is also important in ECOintention is that the owner, manager or guardian of the project is intensely involved in the balancing process. That is neither the case in radionics nor in resonance therapy.

Before proceeding it is important to define certain terms used here. In ECOintention, the “Guardian” is the person who is ultimately responsible for a certain entity. That could be the warden of a piece of land or the head of a business unit or organization. It could also be more than one person if a group is collectively accountable. The Guardian(s) may not always be the people one would expect and are checked in the initial informational scan by the ECOintention Practitioner. The “Practitioner” is the ECOintention-trained person who is carrying out the work at a distance on the project. The “coach” is the person who is working directly with the “Guardian”, helping them to steward their project in the context of the informational data they are receiving. The coach role could be played by the same person who is performing the Practitioner role. The “Client” is often the Guardian, the person who contracts the ECOintention Practitioner and coach to carry out the work.

Below is a short description of the different steps that an ECOintention project goes through, taken from an adapted translation that I made of material from the Dutch ECOintention website. The ECOintention process is essentially creating a non-physical attractor that increases the probability of a project achieving its goals and fulfilling its purpose.

An ECOintention project varies from 7 to12 months depending on the size and complexity of the project. How long the energy stays at its target levels, as defined by the ECOintention practice, depends on the attention and intention of the Guardian.

ECOintention uses a set of parameters to measure the informational and energetic data of a system. The vitality of a living system is measured by:

how grounded it is (%age grounding)
how adequately its own information field is integrated (Bovis scale)
how fit it is with its context (%age organisation and adaptation - POA)
how much life energy is present (%age orgone)
how much blocked and stressed energy is present (%age dor & oranur)

These parameters are measured by the Practitioner dowsing (more below). There are specific target values for each of these parameters that over the years have proven to be the key parameters for a well-balanced informational energetic architecture.

Before any intervention, the Guardian needs to have clearly identified the scope of the project; what are the goals, exactly which entity within what timeframe. The clearer and more focused this is, the more chance there is of success. It is like pulling back the string on the bow–the tighter and steady it is, sure it will fly. From a scientific perspective, Laszlo and Currivan (2008, 61) describe how the greater the initial level of order in a system (and therefore the lower its initial informational entropy), the more propulsion the system has with greater opportunity for additional informational entropy (differentiation and interconnection) and manifestation. Therefore the clearer the identity and boundaries of the project at the outset the more effective an ECOintention intervention is likely to be and the greater the possibilities of success for the project itself.

Energetic Scan

After the first meeting between the ECOintention Practitioner and the Client, the Practitioner completes an energetic scan of the organization or ecosystem. This will reveal the vitality of the project, whether the Guardian’s goals are achievable and how much time it will take to get the project aligned energetically. For this scan (and the balancing interventions later on) the ECOintention Practitioner uses a map, a floor plan or the name of the project as what is called a “resonator”, through which they are able to establish an intuitive connection with the morphic field of the project. This field contains the project’s blueprint. This is also accessed during family and organizational constellations. The researcher Rupert Sheldrake describes morphic fields in his books (Sheldrake 1981). He provides a scientific explanation for family constellations and the ability to work with information and energy at a distance via a map. At this stage the Practitioner is using receptive competencies to read the information in the membrane (informational field) of the organism.

The initial scan takes place at three levels:

Concept level: This is the level where the vision, mission, resulting goals and the strategy of the organization are determined. It is from this level that the organization is lead. You can see this as the organization’s head where the thinking is based. From a volutionary perspective this is related to the seed and potential.
Realization level: This is the workplace or the operational level. This is the place of action and turnover. At this level words are turned into deeds. Here ideas are implemented and transformed into products and services. It is similar to the stomach. In an ecosystem it is the location where the life processes take place. This is the central part of the volutionary process where the information is most expressed as energy and matter.
Middle level: This is the level where internal and external communication happens, the interaction inside the organization as well as with other organizations and its operating environment. It can be compared to the heart, to feeling. It is also about branding and public relations. Blockages or low-energy at this level can often lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding. This is the field just outside the central systems of the volutionary process, where the system is resonating both inside and outside.

2. Conversations between the Client and the Practitioner

Graphics with the energetic data from the scan provide information about blockages, stress, healthy life energy and the self-organization of the project. The data is compared to the target values of a healthy and self-organizing organization or ecosystem. In this way the Client gets an immediate insight into the state of the whole system. The scan also shows to what extent their goals can be achieved using ECOintention. The next step is a proposal and an outline of the costs. Once agreement is reached with the Client the balancing project can start.

3. Making a holon

Before the ECOintention Practitioner can test for a balancing, they shrink the project map and create a holon around it - represented by an unbroken circular line. A holon is an energetic resonance box. It is how the project’s healthy vibration can be optimized. It connects the volutionary seed to the potential so that all the information related to the system is available.

4. Testing for a balancing

Using the holon and their intuition, the ECOintention Practitioner establishes contact with the project. They “ask” the project what it needs to strengthen its own healthy vibration. Everything is energy and everything has its own unique vibration. The ECOintention Practitioner strengthens the unique vibration of the project using things that have a similar vibration. The Practitioner offers a number of different things from their energetic toolkit such as colors, crystals, music, mandalas, symbols, Bach flower remedies, homeopathy etc. In this way they can remove blockages, harmonize stress, add healthy life energy and increase the project’s self-organizing capacity. Here the Practitioner is using receptive skills to pick up information from the organism’s membrane.

5. Balancing

A balancing consists of a number of steps that are carried out several times per week. Depending on the results of the latest scan, colors, mandalas, music, symbols, Bach flower remedies or other energetic interventions are used. The ECOintention Practitioner places each energetic item in a specific position on the holon. This takes practice and experience. This is how they connect the project’s energetic fields and the specific energetic intervention with each other. At that moment the transfer of energy and information takes place. The ECOintention Practitioner improves the vitality of the project with their balancing. During the balancing the Guardian concentrates on their affirmations. In this way they give the energy direction. This unique collaboration improves the speed and quality of the developments. Here the Practitioner is using active skills to interact with the organism. See below for a list of conditions for successful active practice.

6. Project support

Every 9 to 14 days the project is tested for new balancing with an energetic scan. The scan shows whether the energetic values are increasing and the project improving. The results of the new scan are presented in a chart and sent with a report to the Guardian.The ECOintention Coach visits the project every 4 to 6 weeks. A meeting to assess progress is held with the Guardian and energetic check-ups are carried out. Where necessary the affirmations are amended and heavily stressed areas can receive healing on location. The Guardian is coached using the resonant leadership principles so that once the process is completed they can manage the energy themselves. This is important for bringing the Guardian’s energy more into resonance with a volutionary perspective, so that they can lead the system from a more informed place.

7. ECOintention in 3 phases

i. Balancing

After 4 to 8 months the energetic target values of a healthy organization are reached. The time needed is dependent on the size and complexity of the project. This is the end of the balancing phase. This phase is essentially working in the fields outside of the central volutionary system.

ii. Stabilising

The stabilizing phase comes next. The energy of the project is maintained at the target levels. In this way all the parts of the project get the time they need to absorb and integrate the energy. A lot of changes can happen in the project during this phase. It is important that the ECOintention Practitioner stays in touch with the project and the Guardian. In this phase the new information is finding ways to express itself in energy and matter concretely in the project.

iii. Continuation

After 3 to 6 months the stabilization phase moves into the continuation phase. The energy is now well anchored throughout the whole project. All elements are well aligned. The ECOintention Practitioner steps back and the Client takes over full stewardship of the project. After a while they can request an energetic check-up scan. Where necessary some short balancing interventions can be carried out.

8. ECOintention results

The Client’s goals determine the ECOintention results. In most of the projects the goals are realized. Due to a broad diversity of goals many different results are achieved.

Results that have been achieved include:

• Increasing assignments and revenue

• Improved organization and collaboration

• Higher profit and better financial results

• More free time and inner relaxation for the Guardian

• Healthier staff, animals, trees and plants

• Better harvest and quality of product

• Increased biodiversity

Research results after 4 years research

Managers and guardians have more time to themselves, are more relaxed and more effective at realizing their goals. There’s improved organization, communication, productivity and finances in organizations. This is what a four-year research project showed about the effects of ECOintention. The research was carried out in 2014, 2008, 2007 and 2005 in projects run by the third and fourth year trainees in the vocational program to become an ECOintention Practitioner.

Healthy finances

In order to research the impact of ECOintention the Guardians were given a questionnaire with 11 statements about their well-being and the condition of their organization or project, at the start of the project, and after 4, 8 and 12 months. For example: “I have time for myself”, “I achieve my goals”, “My organization’s finances are healthy”. The Guardians assigned each statement a score of 1 to 7 depending on to what extent they agreed with the statement. In this way their opinions at the start and at the end of the project could be compared.

Significant results

The 2014 research showed that for all statements the score increased compared to the beginning of the ECOintention project. For 67% of the statements the increase was statistically significant. In 2005, 2007 and 2008 there were similar results. The 4-year research shows that managers and Guardians experience improvements in a large number of areas for themselves and their organizations / ecosystems at the end of an ECOintention process. They have more time to themselves, are more relaxed, have greater self-confidence, feel healthier and are better at achieving their goals. In their organization or project, they experience improved organizational coherence and communication. Productivity increases and finances improve.

Table 7 with ECOintention results in 2014: there were 31 Guardians who completed the questionnaire at all four moments in the process. Green means a higher and red means a lower score than the initial measurement. Figures in bold represent a statist… — Table 7 with ECOintention results in 2014: there were 31 Guardians who completed the questionnaire at all four moments in the process. Green means a higher and red means a lower score than the initial measurement. Figures in bold represent a statistically significant change. The scale was 1 (poor) to 7 (very good). *(Source:* *http://www.ecointention.com/bedrijven_natuurgebieden/resultaten/resultaten_e.htm; Center for ECOintention (2014)*

Broad diversity of projects

There were 57 Guardians involved in the 2014 research (e.g. managers, leaders of organizations, wardens of land). They represented 49 very different projects, for example an energy company, a research Institute, a bank, a political party, a magazine, a publisher, a camping site, a beekeeper, educational institutions, agricultural organizations, natural areas, estates and public parks.The third and fourth year trainees practised ECOintention on the project for a year. They made energetic interventions on average three times a week, on their own or together with another trainee. In order to bring the energy and flow back into their projects they used the resonance of different energetic items. Every 6 to 8 weeks they visited their projects to check up on the energy on location and to have a coaching conversation with the Guardian about the project’s development. Center for ECOintention supervised all the projects.

From a volutionary perspective we can conclude that the ECOintention process is informationally entropic for the system it works with - creating greater differentiation and interconnectedness at the same time, increasing its fit with its context and purpose.

It is important to note that in the ECOintention practice developed by Andeweg and colleagues, he talks primarily about energy, whereas from a volutionary perspective it is more accurate to think of it as information expressed as energy. Energy is information that is still dynamic, is moving, whereas manifest matter is information that has been fixed in standing waves.

Further Examples of the Third Person Perspective in Action

The third person perspective is important as it identifies the entity that one is working with, clarifying the boundaries. Given that information is stored in the membrane of an entity, being clear on the boundaries of what we are working with is essential. Energy needs a defined boundary to be able to work. As Currivan says (2005, 90):

Where waves our free to move, they will do so until their energy eventually dissipates. But where waves are generated for example, in a closed space or by stroking the strings of a musical instrument whose ends are fixed, the waves are not free to travel and instead setup standing patterns of vibration.

Being clear on what “closed space” or identity we are engaging with, and seeing it as such outside of ourselves, is an important aspect of setting up the We relationship. There needs to be clarity of both the I and the It to establish the most free and effective interaction. Given that many entities have stressed or blocked energy in them, it is important as an energetic Practitioner to create clear boundaries between oneself and the entity, to prevent the energy from jumping over into your system. This does not mean that there is no first or second person resonance, as we shall see, but that there is clarity about what energy belongs to what entity and its particular journey.

In CosMos, Laszlo and Currivan (2008) describe a number of experiments that seemed to demonstrate the power of intention. For example the work of William Turner and and a group of experienced meditators:

Over a number of years, they have successfully imprinted intentions to either increase or decrease the acidity of purified water above or below its previous predicted level. In other tests, they printed the intention to alter the speed of development of fruit-fly larvae. In every case and over many different experiments, the results have been replicated and have shown significant variations from the norm– always in the direction of the given intention. (196)

Currivan devotes much time in The Wave (2005, 123-157) to documenting the research into the effectiveness of energetic and PSI interventions, as does Dean Radin in Supernormal (2013, 130-275). The impact of transcendental meditation on violent crime rates is one of the most well known - with a maximum of 23.3% decrease as compared to the same period in previous years, and odds against this being chance of 500 million to 1 (Radin 2013, 204).

Both Currivan and Radin link the external impact to internal states of the practitioners. Roney-Dougal (2010) summarises the qualities required for effective active energetic interventions that her research turned up:

Focus on the end-result, not on the process of how it is achieved
Don’t be too serious; light-heartedness and fun work best
Impact seems to happen after one has finished trying, release-of-effort effect, mischievous
Group work can help get round any disbelief that you are making it happen

After documenting much of the research Laszlo and Currivan (2008) conclude that “All these results support the view that the effects of nonlocal influence relate to the intensity of the intention, the level of mental and emotional coherence of group, and its size” (92). Radin and Dunne (2015) note that “reports from our operators suggested that successful results also required that they establish an emotional connection with the tasks at hand, a relationship we have come to refer to as ‘resonance’” (106).

And we often noted that when the dynamic interaction among the PEAR staff members was at its warmest and most collaborative, experimental results appear to reflect this residence with stronger and more consistent results. (107)

There is one final important point to make about our ability to (co-creatively) impact reality through our work with the informational and energetic dimensions. Ken Wilber (1995) describes twenty tenets of holons (the parts and wholes of all life). Tenet number six is “The lower sets the possibilities of the higher; a higher sets the probabilities of the lower”. The lower levels of a holon are closer to matter, and the higher levels get increasingly subtle. The implications of this are that the more physical reality will ultimately determine the parallel possibilities in the more subtle dimensions, whereas the subtle dimensions can only increase probabilities in the material world.

The kind of work described above can therefore never guarantee impact in the physical world, however it can increase the probability of a certain outcome manifesting - as Jahn and Dunne (2015) conclude after their 28 years of research at Princeton University, “the accumulation of small effects can compound to significant shift in the mean of the statistical distribution of random events” (119). Laszlo & Currivan (2008, 65) describe how different types of entities have a “biofield” that determines the range of possibilities that it can draw from (e.g. the heights of people). Within that field of possibilities, working in information and energy fields can increase the probabilities of a certain possibility manifesting. This perspective enables us to connect the concepts of predestination and free will.

Spangler (2010) describes this relationship from his more second person perspective:

All things being equal, if a physical person has a strong intention to do something and is using his or her will to see that it's done, he or she will exert a much more powerful influence within the physical world than a comparable nonphysical being trying to will this person to stop and not do that thing. The physical person is in resonance with physical activity and energy, whereas the subtle being is not.… It can [only] attempt to influence the fields of subtle energy within a particular physical environment to influence probabilities. (25)

Integrating the Three Perspectives

The very idea of matter as an expression of consciousness, which these kind of approaches reflect, has been embraced by top physicists. Max Planck was clear: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness” (quoted in Currivan 2017). Currivanherself (2005) emphasises the need for “coherent intensity” to increase influence (132), linking the impact of any intervention we make to our interior states. She goes on to describe it in this way:

In scientific terms, the resonance of our attention and intention causes the quantum field of free-wave possibilities to harmonize into the coherent standing waves of realized materiality.

[…] The higher our vibrational awareness, the more focused our attention and the more coherent our intention, the greater our empowerment to consciously co-create sustained health and well-being. (133)

Linking a third person perspective to a first and second person perspective, she notes:

For a holographic projection to create a three-dimensional hologram, the light source needs to be coherent. And for the holographic principle to create the physical world, the coherent intention of higher consciousness is required. (287)

The implications of this through a holographic perspective are that if you change something in one place it impacts everything. As Braden (2007, 109) says, “Just as a hologram contains the original image in all of its many parts, any change made to just one of those segments becomes reflected everywhere throughout the pattern”.

Other practices with similar intentions are well documented by Currivan (2005, 2017), Currivan & Laszlo (2008), Hardy (2008), Radin (2013), Roney-Dougal (2010) and Talbot (1991). Radin (2013, 89) for example documents the research that shows how people who believe in their ability to do something perform better than those who don’t - the first person beliefs influencing the third person behaviour. As Wolfgang Pauli noted, “It is my personal opinion that in the science of the future, reality will neither be ‘psychic’ nor ‘physical’ but somehow both and somehow neither” (Radin 2013, 311).

The entanglement of the observer and observed has not only been the domain of quantum physics, but also of philosophy, with Merleau-Ponty’s work suggesting that “participation is a defining attribute of perception itself”:

By asserting that perception, phenomenologically considered, is inherently participatory, we mean that perception always involves, at its most intimate level, the experience of the active interplay, or coupling, between the perceiving body and that which it perceives. (Abram 1996, 57).

That leads Abram to the statement: “we are all animists”. He goes on to describe how the Uto-Aztecan and Athapaskan language groups don’t have a clear distinction between space and time but rather “a subtle differentiation between manifest and unmanifest spatiality – that is, a sense of space as a continual emergence from implicit to explicit existence, and human intention as participant with this encompassing emergence” (193). It is indeed in the present moment that all the perspectives are united:

That which has been and that which is to come are not elsewhere–they are not autonomous dimensions independent of the encompassing present in which we dwell. They are, rather, the very depths of this living place–hidden depths of its distances and a concealed depth on which we stand. (216)

Invitation

Bob Jahn (2005), at the very end of the DVD reporting on their 28 years of inquiry into these matters at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research project, concluded by saying that they had proven beyond statistical doubt that human intention impacts the world around us, and that it was now up to us to work out the implications. In the context of seeing life through the lens of volution, we see how important this ability is in influencing formative phases of the life process that have until now generally remained outside of our awareness. The pioneers in this area, only a handful of which I have been able to describe in this section, have given us much to work with. The opportunity now exists to build on this experience, work more consciously with the whole volutionary process and bring this awareness and practice into the mainstream. As Talbot (1991) put it:

“As we become more adept at tinkering with what Jahn and Dunne call the interface between consciousness and its environment, is it possible for us to experience reality that is once again malleable? If this is true, we will need to learn much more than we presently know to manipulate such a plastic environment safely, and perhaps that is one purpose of the evolutionary processes that seem to be unfolding in our midst.” (300)