If you are like most people, you learned quite a few things in school that you will probably never use in your life. Things like how to dissect a frog, the amount of rainfall during summer in the Amazon jungle, and plenty of weird equations required to solve algebraic problems.

Unfortunately I do not foresee what we are taught in schools changing anytime soon.

However, I do know that there is a tremendous amount of very useful information available in all of the millions of books that have been written over the course of a very long time.

So if you happen to have children or influence over motivated young individuals, one of the best habits which you can instill in them is to read books regularly.

“The history of the universe is, in effect, a huge and ongoing quantum computation. The universe is a quantum computer. ” – Seth Lloyd, MIT professor and designer of the first feasible quantum computer

We live our lives based in what we believe. When we think about the truth of this statement, we immediately recognize a startling reality: Beyond anything else that we may actually do in our lives, the beliefs that precede our actions are the foundation of all that we cherish, dream, become, and accomplish.

To give a flavor for how the power of intention is being studied in the laboratory, let’s briefly consider two experiments recently conducted at IONS. The first explored the quantum observer effect – modern physics’ “skeleton in the closet” suggesting that consciousness is inextricably wound into the fabric of reality.

Experienced meditators and nonmeditators were asked to imagine that they could intuitively perceive a low-intensity laser beam in a distant, shielded Michelson interferometer. If such nonlocal observation were possible, it would theoretically “collapse” the photons’ quantum wave-functions and change the pattern of light produced by the interferometer.