If you’re experienced in work with Law of Attraction, you’ll know that the ideas that are put forward in books like The Secret are nothing new.

They have been around since the dawn of time. But recently the Law of Attraction has been brought to our attention by writers such as Deepak Chopra and Rhonda Byrne. They’ve introduced the concepts of the Law of Attraction and the Power of Intention.

Books like The Secret have recounted stories of the experiences and testimonials of highly successful individuals. But anecdotes are one thing. It’s also true that a lot of people still need a scientific explanation make them believe in the reality of manifestation through the Law of Attraction.

Unfortunately a lot of writers who know nothing about quantum physics have dipped into the pool of knowledge available and selected nuggets which seem to suit their purpose.

So we’re told, without any real scientific evidence, that “thoughts impact the cosmic energy field”, that “everything in the universe is energy and our brains can affect it”, and “the act of observation changes physical processes at the atomic level”.

But the problem is that you can’t relate principles of quantum physics, even if they are factual, to the process of manifestation.

The reason for this is that manifestation is a spiritual process.

And anyhow, the Law of Attraction is not really a “law” in the sense that physics tends to use that word. If you talk about the law of gravity, you’re talking about something which has been proven through repeated experimentation to act in the same way every time.

As for manifestation – well, it’s quite obvious that people’s success rate using the law of attraction to manifest their desires is quite low. So in that sense our “Law” of Attraction is not really a law, it’s more of a principle.

But the real reason people want physical proof is that they don’t believe in spiritual phenomena. How odd, when we don’t even really know what spiritual phenomena are! Touching the energy of God, for example, is at its most basic, after all, an act of faith. And so it is with manifestation.

No wonder people doubt…… 

What we do know is that people who have experienced the magic of manifestation, or indeed the mystical feeling of a spiritual experience, have no doubt that our ability to connect to the universal energy field is a reality.

Sidebar: The skepticism of people who seek to disprove the Law of Attraction is often couched in self-justifying and strident tones.

They denounce the Law Of Attraction, and write about it in a way that is so irrationally energized that it seems very likely they have a kind of hidden agenda. Why otherwise would they be triggered so strongly when people talk about the manifestation and the Law of Attraction?

Anyhow, although that’s an interesting question, I’m not going to spend more time defending what I know to be a reality. (Knowledge gained through personal experience, I might add.)

What I’d like to do now is offer some scientific observations based in reality about one small aspect of the Law of Attraction. That is, in understanding  the connections between us. This in turn might be significant in understanding at least some aspects of the process of manifestation.

Recent neuroscience has demonstrated the presence of what are called “mirror neurons” in the brain.

In essence these neurons seem to be about our ability to empathize, to understand the experience of others. They are neurons that fire in your brain in response to the behavior of someone who you are observing.

In other words when you watch somebody doing something, the pattern of brain activation which accompanies their activity also occurs in your brain in the mirror neurons within your brain.

It’s almost as though you’re doing the same thing as the person you’re watching.

Now this is fascinating, because there is no obvious reason why this should happen.

Why would the brain of one person mirror the brain of another person? Why would the actions of one person cause what have been called “action-representations” in the brain of another person?

Well, in short, we don’t know. But what we do know is that action representation is not the only form of mirroring that takes place within the brain. Emotions are mirrored as well.

When you think about it, all of this seems as if it could be closely related to various aspects of Law of Attraction principles.

Think of how emotions seem to spread around a group in a way that goes beyond the outwardly shared experience.

For example, have you ever seen the way in which fear seems to spread mysteriously from one person to another within a group?

One of the reasons for this seems to be mirroring within the brain of the observers.

Another interwsting finding is that although we don’t quite know what’s going on here, we do know that brain regions involved in setting an intention are very closely linked to those involved in causing an action.

And that means that when you set an intention, you often start to experience neural activity within your brain’s action centres.

Therefore, at least in some sense, there’s a certain amount of scientific backup for the principle of “ask and it shall be given unto you”.

Because, when you set an intention, you start firing up the action centres within your brain.

So all these phenomena – empathy through mirror neurons, the mirroring of brain activity of somebody carrying out an action, and the firing up of your own action centres in your brain in response to intention, are all observable phenomena which look like they are about connection.

Sure, this isn’t a scientific explanation of how Law of Attraction operates.

But together these observations do offer people who want some kind of physical reality check (let’s call it a genuine scientific basis) an explanation for for various aspects of the connection which can occur between individuals. 

And what lies behind the Law of Attraction? The concept of connection.