For as long as I can remember, I have innately known that thoughts can have the power of manifesting in matter. When I was only five or six I used my mind to guide me to lost items like some sort of compass. I would close my eyes and follow the unspoken voice within as it guided my footsteps. At about the age of 11 or 12, I well remember thinking that I needed glasses but since my father unsympathetically referred to men who wore glasses as 4 eyes and I feared disappointing him. I just imagined passing the school eye test over and over again. My eyes didn’t improve, but when it came my turn to take the eye test the doctor looked at me and said, “You can see the 20-20 line can’t you?” I answered, “Sure.” That was the test, so it was a few more years before I would put glasses on.
When I was fourteen or so, I imagined becoming 6 foot tall. That was taller than anyone in my family. I would go to sleep at night imaging myself as 6 foot tall and I did this repeatedly over the summer of the year between 8th and 9th grade. When I returned to school I was 6 foot tall, and at that time 6 feet was tall! I towered over almost everyone in my school. (Today we think of this sort of thing as possible through epigenetics, the influence of our minds on genes). It was at about this time that I began imagining myself as a successful author and again I would fall to sleep at night visualizing myself signing books, lecturing and the like. Today I have more than 400 titles published in print, and audio or video media, and many of these titles have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Now all of this visualization that I have just discussed, together with much more, took place over fifty years ago, long before the Secret or the law of attraction were published. How I knew this about the power of thought is not what this piece is about. No—what I really want to address today is how well documented the idea that ‘thoughts are things’ has become in scientific circles.