If there could be a single book that comes close to explaining all of life’s mysteries – this would be it.  Readers of all stripes, scientists, New Agers, armchair philosophers, will want to grab onto this one – there is something for everybody, and indeed, the line between all these interests blurs the more you read. 

Lynne McTaggart has done a tremendous job of gathering the latest cutting edge science and presenting it in the most fascinating manner.  The Field is based on extensive interviews with scientists and readings of their published research.  Actually, to say that this material is “cutting edge” may not go far enough to describe what she has gathered: this is revolutionary stuff – the stuff of sedition to the staid, conservative world of traditional science.  In fact, many of the brave researchers here have been mocked, marginalized, had their funding yanked and so on, as they persisted in their work.

The Field is about energy – and yes, it is about quantum physics, but before you yawn and get turned off, read on!  This is quantum physics as you have never seen it before – as a life force that connects you, me, the planets and the past and the future… it doesn’t get much better than this!  These scientists are making incredible discoveries that may link and explain such phenomena as remote viewing, distant healing, ESP, the role of intention in influencing outcomes, how homeopathy works and more.  The link is The Field, short for the Zero Point Field, a known quantum entity that most scientists have been ignoring for years.  In fact, they have been subtracting it out of their work and their formulas – treating it as “white noise” that disturbs their hypothesis.

But not the scientists in McTaggart’s book, who decided to pursue what was right in front of them.  And there are some big names here – Bill Church, Hal Puthoff, Karl Pribram, Ed Mitchell, Robert Jahn, Rupert Sheldrake and others.  Each has investigated different areas, different questions, and they have all arrived at the same conclusion: The Field.  This is a quantum area of no space, or all space, and no time or all times – and it seems to be where waves of energy and information get exchanged.

What does this mean?  It may mean what the mystics of all persuasions have been saying for thousands of years – that we are all connected – not just to each other, but to the trees, to places and to everything that has ever happened in our universe.  This is Jung’s collective conscious and then some.  Taggart calls the Zero Point Field “…a kind of shadow of the universe for all time, a mirror image and record of everything that ever was.”  This may be the most hopeful idea to come across in years, and it is backed by some impressive research coming in from all corners of the world.

It is to McTaggart’s credit that this book reads so easily and is so much fun.  It seems that she truly entered into the “spirit” of the subject – going from one scientist to another, drawing conclusions from one person’s work and leading us to how this might overlap with another’s. It seems that “synchronicities” abounded here, not just for the author, but for each of these scientists who would meet the right person, get the funding or the next piece of the puzzle that they needed and so forth.  Of course, The Field would be the cause of these happy occurrences.

Readers are going to finish this book wanting more – it is so good, and so thought provoking that the only thing that could top it would be The Field – Part Two!