Interview with Lynne McTaggart, author of "The Bond"
Lynne is also the architect of the Intention Experiments, the largest mind-over-matter experiments in history, and co-founder and editorial director of What Doctors Don’t Tell You (www.wddty.com). McTaggart, her book The Intention Experiment and the web-based experiment itself have been prominently featured in Dan Brown’s latest book The Lost Symbol, and in the recently released moving documentary, I Am. Lynne, who lives in London with her British husband and their two daughters, speaks before many diverse audiences around the world.
Visit Lynne at her latest website: www.thebond.net, at her main website: lynnemctaggart.com, at the site for her Intention Experiments, www.theintentionexperiment.com or at What Doctors
Don’t Tell You, which concerns conventional and alternative medicine: www.wddty.com.
Q: Welcome to The Writer's Life, Lynne. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how long you’ve been writing?
A: I’ve been publishing articles and books for 38 years. I began my career as a journalist and investigative reporter.
When researching my second magazine article I stumbled onto a major international baby selling ring after posing as an unwed mother and then a prospective adoptive parent. The story resulted in a major indictment of the parties involved, and I was called to Congress to testify about these kinds of questionable adoption practices. The article also won a prize. I then expanded the work, exposed a number of other lawyers involved in these kinds of questionable set-ups and expanded my research into book, called The Baby Brokers.
Q: Welcome to The Writer's Life, Lynne. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how long you’ve been writing?
A: I’ve been publishing articles and books for 38 years. I began my career as a journalist and investigative reporter.
When researching my second magazine article I stumbled onto a major international baby selling ring after posing as an unwed mother and then a prospective adoptive parent. The story resulted in a major indictment of the parties involved, and I was called to Congress to testify about these kinds of questionable adoption practices. The article also won a prize. I then expanded the work, exposed a number of other lawyers involved in these kinds of questionable set-ups and expanded my research into book, called The Baby Brokers.
After moving to the UK, I began writing about modern medicine for my popular newsletter What Doctors Don’t Tell you. In the course of this work I came across a number of scientific studies of spiritual healing. I realized that if it is true that a person can use his thoughts to get someone else better, then this undermines everything that we believe about how our universe works. A search for explanations led me to research cutting edge physics and interview many frontier scientists. This all led to my book The Field, which argues that everything in the universe is part of a vast quantum field and offers an explanation of much that remains unexplainable in our current scientific paradigm. I continued to explore our new scientific story and its implications in The Intention Experiment – which concerns the power of thought – and now The Bond, which examines whether we were made to be competitive and, if not, how nature has designed us to flourish only when we share, care and are fair.
I continue to be fascinated by the new paradigm emerging in science and how it is providing us with a new story to live by.
Q: Can you please tell us about your book and why you wrote it?
A: For centuries, Western culture has taught us to think of ourselves as individuals. Competition, assumed to be the most fundamental of human urges, forms the basis of our society, our economy, and most of our relationships.
But in my view we are living a lie. All the crises we face today, including the financial recession, have occurred precisely because the lives we’ve chosen to lead are based on competition and are not consistent with our truest nature as givers and sharers.
I pulled together a vast array of cutting edge scientific discovery, which demonstrates that we are in constant relationship with everything and everyone.
All living things succeed and prosper only when they see themselves as part of a greater whole and fully embrace the space between us. The relationship itself. The Bond.
In addition to providing a new narrative for our lives, I wanted to provide the first roadmap of how to live according to this new scientific story – a prescription for living based on cooperation and partnership.
Through many inspiring stories, I explain how to retrain ourselves to see the world from a more holistic perspective, to enjoy more cooperative relationships – even across the deepest divides – to enjoy more united social groups, and to discover a new and authentic purpose.
I hope to offer a message that is inspiring and empowering: by simple changes of perspective and action locally, each of us can become a major game changer, both to both transform our culture and to move out of crisis, individually and collectively.
Q: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced writing it?
A: The biggest challenge in my books, which offer a bridge between science and spirit, is pulling together a vast amount of scientific evidence and blending it into a readable narrative. I prefer narrative non-fiction – to tell stories – and to ‘sneak in’ the scientific data. That often presents structural challenges.
Q: Do you have a press kit and what do you include in it? Does this press kit appear online and, if so, can you provide a link to where we can see it?
A: My press kits are my web sites: www.lynnemctaggart.com or www.thebond.net and www.theintentionexperiment.com.
Q: Have you either spoken to groups of people about your book or appeared on radio or TV? What are your upcoming plans for doing so?
A: I’ve been on hundreds of radio shows in the past few months and have spoken before dozens of audiences in the last few months as I the US, the UK and Europe, speaking about my book The Bond. I have plans to appear in September and October in Colorado, New York, Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Charleston, SC., plus many parts of the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. In 2012, I’ll be in many other countries, too.
Q: Do you have an agent and, if so, would you mind sharing who he/is is? If not, have you ever had an agent or do you even feel it’s necessary to have one?
A: Russell Galen of Scovil Galen Ghosh. I’ve always had an agent since I began writing books in 1975. I wouldn’t be without one. A good agent is your constant gardener, handling countless issues that arise in the course of selling, writing and publishing books, and Russ has been mine for 25 years.
Q: Did you, your agent or publisher prepare a media blitz before the book came out and would you like to tell us about it?
A: My publisher hired a PR agent to plan a full mind-body-spirit radio and print tour, plus I hired someone to help with a physical tour of a number of cities. We also hired a blog tour host, which is happening at the moment.
Q: Do you plan subsequent books?
A: This is my sixth book, but I have many more planned. However, my books require so much research and narrative work that I usually need a rest between them. Before I tackle a new book, I will be designing a number of programs for people to ‘live’ what I discuss in The Bond, including ways to create Bond ‘pods’ – which are supportive and close neighborhoods to help communities out of crisis.
Q: Thank you for your interview, Lynne. Would you like to tell my readers where they can find you on the web and how everyone can buy your book?
A: Please visit my site: www.thebond.net and download my free copy of The Fairness Principles. My books are available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and all booksellers.
Leave a Comment