A comic said, "The nice thing about meditation is that it makes doing nothing quite respectable." Bruce and John Klingbeil asked, "Is prayer doing nothing? Does prayer reach beyond the mind? Failures of prayer appear evident. Are successes of prayer evident? When does prayer benefit? When does prayer harm? Can sense be made of psychic experiences that appear to be nonsense to the modern world?" The Klingbeils researched these questions to find links between science and religion.

In 1969 outside Chicago, Bruce and John Klingbeil performed experiments to test the positive, biased, and negative effects of intention, prayer, and placebo effects. The father and son were Christian Science practitioners that started Spindrift to support research and education in the fields that studied consciousness, prayer, the placebo effect, and spirituality.

Bruce and John thought optimistically that their research would be met with openness from both the religious and scientific communities. After a few years of pursuing their work, it became clear this optimism had been misplaced, and in 1983 their church leaders punished them by removing Bruce as a practitioner. Bruce said, "Spiritual progress is made drip by drip."

Undeterred, the two moved to Salem, Oregon, where they continued their research for ten years. The toll of being expelled from their church, the continual harassment from the spiritual and scientific communities, the loss of income, and potential law suits tied to Spindrift led to dramatic choices by the researchers before their work was recognized as groundbreaking research that illustrates that the intention of quality prayer is to direct disorder toward order.

We present the Klingbeils' work for your consideration so you can judge the work for yourself.