OMG Where Do They Get These People (Sometimes a Blurb is Enough)

I subscribe to a number of book recommendation lists, which is how this book came to may attention: Mind to Matter: The Astonishing Science of How Your Brain Creates Material Reality by Dawson Church. Here’s the Amazon.com blurb: (Note: I am sorry it is so long but it is also effing priceless.)

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I am not, repeat NOT, recommending this book.

Best Health Book of 2018 – American Book Fest.
Best Science Books of 2018 – Bookbub.

Every creation begins as a thought, from a symphony to a marriage to an ice cream cone to a rocket launch. When we have an intention, a complex chain of events begins in our brains. Thoughts travel as electrical impulses along neural pathways. When neurons fire together they wire together, creating electromagnetic fields. These fields are invisible energy, yet they influence the molecules of matter around us the way a magnet organizes iron filings.

In Mind to Matter, award-winning researcher Dawson Church explains the science showing how our minds create matter. Different intentions produce different fields and different material creations. The thoughts and energy fields we cultivate in our minds condition the atoms and molecules around us. We can now trace the science behind each link in chain from thought to thing, showing the surprising ways in which our intentions create the material world.

The science in the book is illustrated by many authentic case histories of people who harnessed the extraordinary power of the mind to create. They include:

• Adeline, whose Stage 4 cancer disappeared after she imagined “healing stars”
  • Raymond Aaron and two of his clients, each of whom manifested $1 million in the same week
  • Elon Musk, who bounced back from devastating tragedy to found Tesla and SpaceX
  • Graham Phillips, who grew the emotional regulation part of his brain by 22.8% in two months
  • Jennifer Graf, whose grandfather’s long-dead radio came to life to play love songs the day of her wedding
  • Harold, whose 80% hearing loss reversed in an hour
  • Joe Marana, whose deceased sister comforted him from beyond the grave
  • Rick Geggie, whose clogged arteries cleared up the night before cardiac surgery
  • Matthias Rust, a teen whose “airplane flight for peace” changed the fate of superpowers
  • Wanda Burch, whose dream about cancer told the surgeon exactly where to look for it
  • An MIT freshman student who can precipitate sodium crystals with his mind
  • John, who found himself floating out of his body and returned to find his AIDS healed
  • Dean, whose cortisol levels dropped by 48% in a single hour

In Mind to Matter, Dawson Church shows that these outcomes aren’t a lucky accident only a few people experience. Neuroscientists have measured a specific brain wave formula that is linked to manifestation. This “flow state” can be learned and applied by anyone. New discoveries in epigenetics, neuroscience, electromagnetism, psychology, vibration, and quantum physics connect each step in the process by which mind creates matter. They show that the whole universe is self-organizing, and when our minds are in a state of flow, they coordinate with nature’s emergent intelligence to produce synchronous outcomes. The book contained over 150 photos and illustrations that explain the process, while an “Extended Play” section at the end of each chapter provides additional resources. As Mind to Matter drops each piece of the scientific puzzle into place, it leaves us with a profound understanding of the enormous creative potential of our minds. It also gives us a road map to cultivating these remarkable brain states in our daily lives.

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This is what happens when you blend a few facts with a few opinions. It has been discovered in the past years that we do not interact directly with “reality.” To be able to keep track of reality, we create a simulacrum of it in our minds and interact through it. This gives us quite a number of benefits. For one the simulacrum requires less detail and so a lot of the information streaming into our sensory organs can just be jettisoned, unless it has a significant effect upon your ability to survive. Consider that right now you have this truly immense sensory organ, your skin, which is sending sensory information to your brain for . . . what? Storage? Processing? What was the side of your thigh feeling 20 minutes ago? That didn’t get stored, eh? What happens to sensory information that gets sent to the brain and doesn’t get storied? (Hint: Bye-bye, useless info.) Another benefit is we can experiment with things in our imagination without the consequences of trying them out in reality, e.g. I shoulda punched that guy in the nose!.

Okay, so you take this evolutionary feature and you combine with the opinion, say, “everything happens for a reason.” What do you get? You get the nonsense of this book. A massive testament to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (the Latin means: “after this, therefore because of this”) and is an informal fallacy that claims that since event B followed event A, event B must have been caused by event A. It is often shortened simply to post hoc fallacy.

So, someone prays for their illness to be cured and voila, their illness is cured and they believe their prayer was answered. The doctors, nurses, hospitals, antibiotics, all of that stuff . . . is irrelevant.

Since “we create our own reality,” in our minds we actually create physical reality. WTF? This phrase (“we create our own reality”) has been used a lot in the personal development community, but it is a metaphor, not a physical claim. To claim that it is physical is a little like saying I made this painting of the tree outside my window . . . therefore it is the tree outside my window. Hello? We are creating a virtual map/simulation of reality in our heads. That is not the same as creating the reality outside our heads.

Can you imagine if this “version” of reality were actually the case. We would have dueling realities on display currently. “I want the #23 bus to come now!” versus “No, I want the #35 bus first!” “I want my mother to dies soon so I can have my inheritance” versus “Oh god, I don’t want to die yet, I want to see my latest grandchild first.”

Do we get banjo music in the background as these duels of will take place? Or does each reality get expressed separately? Talk about a multiverse! We would be up to our asses with realities. where would we put them all?

And the dishonesty in the phrasing of things! Consider “• Graham Phillips, who grew the emotional regulation part of his brain by 22.8% in two months.“ The way this was worded, it sounds as if this guy did the deed himself. If so, how did he do this? Was it through telepathy, mental manipulation of existing matter or the creation ex nihilo of new matter? If he could do it at all, why did it take two months. Were drugs being used? Were transfusions of stem cells involved? I guess you have to buy the book to find out. And don’t get me started on “• Elon Musk, who bounced back from devastating tragedy to found Tesla and SpaceX.” Gosh, a human being bouncing back from tragedy and doing something significant. Now that almost never happens! Must have been the magical creation of reality, I am sure.

Charlatans to the right of me, charlatans to the left of me, into the Valley of Ignorance I rode!

Addendum The opinion “Every creation begins as a thought.” may just be true, but what about all of the thoughts that are not creations, e.g. I think I will have a beer and a sandwich? How come I have to go to the store, buy the ingredients and make my own damned sandwich? How come my mind can’t create one on demand? What is it about physical reality that these people just can’t live with?! Inquiring minds want to know!