The Science Behind Manifestation
Is manifestation real or a hoax? Let's explore what science says about creating the life of our dreams.
Manifestation has been a buzz word since the last few years. Believers swear by it while others call it a hoax. What’s your view?
How about we bring in science and logic and see what it has to say about manifestation?
I highly recommend reading The Truth about our Reality before reading this post. This is the foundation upon which we will explore the "how" of manifestation both from a spiritual and science-based perspective.
Let's connect the dots and see what we find. Let's dive in...
Truth About Our Reality
Over the last few years, there has been an explosion of talk and buzz around manifestation and how it's a way to get what you want in life.
What does manifestation mean?
Manifestation is the process of creating your desired reality through your thoughts, beliefs, and actions.
I think we all have had experience of our beliefs and mindset helping us achieve challenging goals.
You may have heard the saying by Henry Ford:
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't—you're right
So is manifestation a spiritual process or a more so a mindset shift?
A spiritual process or a mindset shift
While I have always believed in "you can do anything you set your mind to" mindset, in recent times, I have pivoted to thinking manifestation does involve a higher intelligence or power source.
Where one rests all the power in oneself, the other surrenders the power to the universe. (Since we are universal consciousness, perhaps both of these are the same thing.)
At the end of the day, both are powerful belief systems and can drive actions towards your desired reality.
"I can do it" Mindset
Dr. Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University, writes in her bestselling book Mindset that our beliefs about our capabilities can significantly influence outcomes.
If you have a fixed mindset, as she says, you may think that your intelligence and capabilities are fixed and unchangeable. This means you may avoid challenges, give up easily, and feel threatened by others' success.
On the other hand, if you have a growth mindset, you believe that through effort and perseverance you can change your abilities. This means you embrace challenges, persist through obstacles, and view effort as a path to mastery.
Your future path depends on what you believe about yourself. You make your reality happen through perseverance and growth.
This is one way to manifest your desires into form.
Miracle Mindset
What about a situation where things happen to you naturally to get you what you desire?
Let's switch gears to the miracle mindset - "the universe helps me achieve my dreams."
Gabrielle Bernstein is a renowned spiritual teacher, motivational speaker, and #1 New York Times bestselling author. Her work has been transformational for me.
She says that releasing fear, negativity, lack, and other negative emotions can help you align with the energy for the universe.
When you feel joy and when you feel as though you are experiencing the outcome, your life begins to "flow" and you experience miracles. Things start happening around you to achieve that desired outcome.
It's important to note that while you are experiencing feelings of already having achieved the outcome, you aren't obsessing on when you'll get there. Rather, you feel joy, peace, and love in the present moment and have your intuition or the universe guide you.
If you have ever watched the documentary The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, a renowned Australian author and producer, you know that this aligns with the law of attraction.
This is a good segue into understanding what the law of attraction is and how manifestation works.
How does manifestation work
Brief recap: We are all made of energy and reality is not a fixed truth that we once believed. This has been scientifically proven with experiments such as the double-slit experiments. While spirituals leaders have been saying this all along, quantum physics has been catching up on this concept with experimental proof.
More on this in this post…
So if we are all made of energy and what you desire is also made of energy, then manifestation is aligning your energy with the things you desire.
And because what we observe, measure, or believe changes reality, you can actually build your own reality.
That's absolutely wild.
Reality is no longer a fixed world where we are learning how things work in order to get them. (By the way, it is like this if you believe that.)
The narrative is now flipped. We can create our own reality with our thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and actions - essentially our energetic interactions with the universe's energy.
Tying this back to quantum physics
Quantum Physics is the science of the smallest particles that make up this universe. And through scientific experimentation (like the double-slit experiment), it is proven that these particles behave as if they are in a cloud of possibilities until "observed" or measured.
Once observed, the cloud of possibilities "collapses" into an outcome. (This term comes from the mathematical wave function collapse theory in quantum physics.)
Let's simplify this...Imagine that you and your friend are playing a game with a magic dice, and you roll the dice and it falls under the table where the outcome is not visible.
Until you bend over and observe what the dice says, the dice is actively living all 1-6 number possibilities (of course there might be more combinations possible but for the purpose of this explanation, we'll stick to 1-6 face values of the dice.)
You may think that whether you see the dice or not, it would have always had the outcome that you eventually observed. That's not what this theory is saying...
The magic dice has not assumed an outcome until you observe it. Until then, the magic dice lives in a flux of possibilities all at once.
The dice is an analogy for subatomic and other small particles that make us up and make the universe up. Everything is in a cloud of possibility until observed.
What's as mind-boggling as this is the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. This concept says that if two of these small particles become interconnected in a special way where if you measure the state of one particle, it immediately influences the state of the other regardless of the distance between the two!
These two particles could be on two different planets - if you measure particle 1, the other particle on the other side of the universe knows that you have measured particle 1 and chooses to become a different state instantaneously! How does it know? How did this information travel faster than the speed of light?
This suggests that there is a mysterious interconnectedness in this universe that is beyond time and space as we know it.
Dare I call it consciousness?
All this seems to suggest that the universe is more mysterious, less fixed than we know it.
So, is manifestation real?
Here is what I can deduce based on what science and spirituality say:
We are all one energy. If we are all energy, physical forms are an illusion – a very real illusion as that is how we perceive reality, live and die... but an illusion none the less. In fact, what you desire also exists as energy.
We create the world. Quantum physics and Dr. Lanza's Biocentrism says that at the smallest level, particles that make up the universe exist as cloud of possibilities until measured by a conscious observer (aka us).
Reality is not fixed - it is mysterious and filled with possibility (looking at quantum physics' superposition theory). Perhaps, multiple realities coexist at once (there is a theory on this called the Many-Worlds Interpretation).
This means that your beliefs, thoughts, actions, and emotions (energetic interactions with the universe) can make you align with a version of reality that you attract.
Specifically, feelings like love, gratitude, and joy correspond to higher vibrations or frequencies of energy vs. negative feelings like fear, anger, or sadness. These higher vibrational states are exactly what help attract and manifest your desires into form.
If you see opportunities instead of obstacles, your mind may "collapse reality" into one where success happens. If you focus on fear, you might unknowingly "tune into" realities where fear-based outcomes unfold.
If you have experienced synchronicities, opportunities, or miracles where things happen for you effortlessly, you are very possibly in a high vibrational state manifesting your desires into reality! This is how you know what you are manifesting is coming into form. More on this in another post...
What's your take on manifestation? Do you believe it's real?
Loved it! I totally believe in manifestation! We are what we think!