Consciousness in the Reenchanted Reality

US Astronaut Edgar Mitchell wrote an article entitled "Consciousness in the Reenchanted Reality" which appeared in Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos by Ervin Laszlo. Dr Mitchell's writes, "The attributes of quantum mechanics that set it apart from Newtonian mechanics are entanglement, quantum correlation, coherence, and non-locality". This observation is very similar to the writings of Dr. Amit Goswami, a theorectical nuclear physicist, whose work was mentioned in an earlier blog.

The idea of quantum correlation is worth discussing in the current time, since recently I have received emails on writings which seem to be struggling with this concept. At the most basic level quantum correlation describes a situation where two extremely small components of matter, for instance photons-although atoms have been experimentally correlated, are linked together, entangled, in such a manner so they share information. Experimentally it has been shown that once they are correlated they are able to be moved apart to distances that exceed the ability of the speed of light, the basic upper limit of rate of travel in the existing material universe, to transfer information.

Information transference becomes important because at this level the correlated items maintain the existing relationship and properties until one of them is changed, and then the other item seems to know about the change because it reflects the appropriate information. For instance, Dr. Goswami (The Self-aware universe, p. 120.) discusses collapsing the wave function of 2 correlated photons via use of a polarization filter. When the first wave collapses via observation through a particular filter the second photon responds to the filter used on the first photon. Physicist Dr. Mani Bhaumik (Code name God, p. 172. ) describes a similar situation with entangled or correlated photons which have no unique properties because they are correlated. When one of the photons is queried about its condition the other photon responds with the complementary property. In both situations the photons respond instantly regardless of distance or time apart. These aspects have been called "quantum wierdness" because they are at odds with our normal everyday experiences of the macro- or Newtonian -world.

What this means to faith appears to be, that faith which links us all together and exists as a function of our being sentient knows no time or distance either. What are the implications if faith is also a wave in the sense of material objects possessing a wave function like the photons above? Because we are all linked we must be able to share each others observations and experiences of the world, given the correct situation. Sometimes this happens through inadvertent circumstances, like a heavy emotional experience, or at other times purposefully like entering an altered state of consciousness through hypnosis or meditation or prayer. Perhaps it is this ability to contact a common experience and sense of the world that allows for creating a global community. Maybe there is only one faith, but many ways to understand it?

Beginning of divisiveness in religious thinking

One of my favorite contemporary songs is Dido's, and it's called White Flag. What brings it to mind is, although it talks about human love it is also appropriate for anyone wanting to talk about a greater love. By this I do not mean to denigrate human love, but rather want to ask a question; What is it that you believe so strongly that you would "go down with the ship" and that there would be "no white flag of surrender over your door"? For me it is the idea of a single faith appearing to us as a number of different religions.

Specifically I think the idea of a special religion begins to appear with the acculturation process. About the age of six people have the ability to operationalize their world and this allows for moving beyond living in a world driven by experience into a world driven by representations of the world. Joseph Chilton Pearce writing in Crack in the Cosmic Egg stated: "We interacted with the real world in our first six years or so through transactive movement of the primary processing. Culture, however, is a set of imaginative expectancies. To interact with the world of our culture we had to create the necessary concepts. Cultureal concepts are abstract creations" (p. 29)

Thus, it is the cultural interpretation of how the world acts that allows us to move one step beyond our basic level of interacting with the world and into a world where reality is a consequence of not what really exists, but what we have learned to interpret as real. The sad part of this, as Pearce goes on to demonstrate, is that we are not even aware of our not being in touch with reality, or even ourselves. The concepts we have developed become the vehicle we use to discuss reality with others, and so over time, they also become the vehicles we use to discuss what is real with ourselves. It becomes so strongly rooted that we are unable to distinguish that we are living based on a construct, an abstract concept, rather than what is actual.

The consequence of this for the western minded has become, to paraphrase Karl Jung, we are sick because we have developed a veneer that keeps us from ourselves, from the real root of our sickness. The thicker the veneer, the more distant we are from ourselves. For us this cure must be the movement of the person back to the self, back to communications with the primary processing capability that began to disappear around six years of age. To do this we employ all sorts of intervention techniques: therapy, regressions, psychedelic drugs, etc. In fact, many people have become quite wealthy leading others on journeys aimed at removing the veneer.

Pearce makes the point however, that any attempt we make to modify the acculturated learnings merely impacts another layer of the culture and re-energizes the system. Cosequently, we are not able to change the system by these various attempts that bring us back to the culture and this is what started me thinking about Dido's song. Perhaps if we can identify something in our lives that we hold to be so valuable that we will not surrender it, we can begin the process of cracking the egg of culture. Once the crack has appeared we can slowly widen the crack and see the world for what it is, a culture with specific values and limits, and the impact of the transgressor on the culture.

What is it that you believe so strongly that there will be no white flag above your grave, that is so important to you that you will go down with the ship? For me it is the awareness that faith in something greater than the self drives the crack in the egg, not the interpretation of the various religions.

Consciousness, cells, and wave collapse as faith outcomes.

Earlier today I was thinking about the links and relationship of quantum physics and the macro-world. According to Dr. Goswami, there are three aspects of quantum that do not work well in the macro world of Newtonian physics: discontinuity, non-locality, and tangled hierarchy. The idea of tangled hierarchy is the most difficult to conceptualize and still develop some meaningful examples for non-physicists like myself.

As I understand the tangled hierarchy concept, there is no distinction between subject and object. This is exemplified in the observation (and requirement?) that there must be an observer present to collapse the possibility wave into material phenomena. A tremendous amount of research exists to support this concept and the observations which generate the data appear consistently from experiment to experiment. This much is relatively clear for me and I think I “get it” when it comes to the big picture.

As challenges go my most difficult to understand is how the set of possibilities collapse to form the universe we live in. If there is a relationship between the quantum aspects of our universe and the macro-world which is built on the foundation of the quantum materials then what or when or how or whatever happened to collapse the universe into what we know today? How could the possibilities collapse without someone to cause the collapse while the observer could not exist until after the collapse occurred? How could the universe collapse without having an observer present to cause the collapse? So no matter what happens there is an antecedent occurrence which makes the outcome possible, but the antecedent is a consequence of the prior event so it is always a matter of a never ending hierarchy just like the chicken and egg problem.

Dr. Goswami explains as best I understand it, that the observer is the first complex cell that developed and had a consciousness. This part that a cell had consciousness, is not difficult to understand given the work of Dr. Bruce Lipton and his research on cell membranes and consciousness. They fit together well. However, I’m hung up in between the collapsing of the possibilities and the creation of the cell. Still this is where consciousness as the underlying structure of the universe began to make itself felt. So when the cell developed and stabilized it was possible for consciousness to impact the universe in a material form into specific outcomes. This caused the infinite number of possibilities to manifest as a single form that we have as the universe today.

We know, according to this model, that consciousness is the underlying and causal property of the universe. Evidence, anecdotal and inferential, indicates consciousness has not stopped interacting with the consciousness that we bring to the events of our lives. Consequently, our activity in describing a limited number of the infinite potential outcomes represents faith which drives the collapse of the possibilities. To describe specific results amidst the vast number of potential outcomes is the expression of having faith that someone can change his or her world in a particular direction.

Each of our religions attempts to help us get to the point that we can exercise faith and describe a limited outcome to the future events. Ideally if we all worked together we could collapse the possibility waves into one where peace and love are the outcomes. The challenge for us is to not specify how that outcome has to happen – just that it will happen.

Familiarity of Faith

Amazing isn’t it. How when you’re going to write about something for your next entry and someone sends you a note and suddenly your focus for the entry changes. This is exactly what happened today. I thought I wanted to talk about faith (duh, what’s the name of the website) but also a specific aspect of faith—pausing before responding to another person’s comments and how this demonstrates faith. But the exchange told me that what I really wanted to present for consideration was familiarity of faith.

By familiarity of faith I mean the perception that we have faith in something simply because we expect it to be a particular way since it has always been that way. Think about the sun rising in the morning. In all of our collective experiences it has always happened. Collectively we all agree that it will happen again when morning arrives. But that’s the circular reasoning since morning is when the sun rises and that’s how we define morning. There is a danger here of missing the focus. It is not really faith in the sun rising tomorrow. It is the expectation we hold that it will happen: assumed, assured, and predictable. Where is the faith?

There is no faith involved in this aspect of our perception. It is an assumption existing independently of our actual faith activities and adventures. Perhaps as children we questioned our parents or teachers about the sun rising in the morning and were told to have faith and it will happen. At what point did we cease having faith in the sun rising and it became a banal statement of expectation? How did we move from expectancy and involvement of faith into a world where personal involvement was not necessary and we still called it faith?

The major religions of the world, or some call them faiths, teach an interesting formula of involvement and detachment for faith to occur. Faith requires the looking forward to possible outcomes and the perception that the specifics have already occurred. This allows for both detachment and involvement but they are used to moderate each other, not to define them. This is where the problem with familiarity of faith occurs. The detachment exists, but it is not truly detachment it is rather a type of unrecognized boredom that has no content of interaction with the future. The involvement that brings my expectation of outcomes is not part of the process. The future is perceived as the status quo moving forward in time just as each day moves forward, but there is no expectancy of different possible outcomes.

As a result, mountains remain where they are. Students of religion and disciples of dogma doubt the reality of the miracles occurring in other faiths; unfortunately this perception contaminates even their own.

Adding a couple of days to the faith

Sharing my challenges as I go through this recovery period is proving more interesting and challenging than I had thought it would be. My guess was that I'd have some pain and discomfort for a few days and then a couple of weeks of healing while gradually returning to my normal activities, minus riding my motorcycle. Unfortunately this is not how it's been going. I had a follow-up visit, unscheduled, today because of an unexplained swelling in my neck.

In terms of tearing into my faith about recovery, the "we don't know what this is, but need to watch it for a few days" is more destructive than "we need to get you into surgery right now" which declares knowledge and approach leading to cure. It honestly is the not knowing what is happening versus what should be happening, since I went through this once before with flying colors that causes discomfiture. Seems to me the point of faith, that we all share, is that knowing reduces discontinuity or conflict within ourselves. Knowing what to do and what the outcome could be puts pieces of a puzzle in place. This allows us to construct scenarios around resolving our fears, at least for me it seems to.

And ultimately this is the problem, or challenge, or hope that each of us has to live with -- that the possibilities of outcome can be substantially limited and thereby allowing us to address the issue at hand, recovery. One of the issues that this scenario drives for me is the question of faith in god for salvation. Certainly accepting that whatever I'm doing will result in salvation, or immortality of soul, reduces my inner conflict and provides a vehicle where I can objectivize my behavior against an external standard and proclaim, "See I earned it. It's mine by right and privilege".

In my current situation, I can not point to some objective activity and say, I've earned this healing which I am due, since I did not do anything except to let the possibilities of healing within the natural universe take charge as they should, therefore I have no obligation due me. If I had fervently prayed for healing, or meditated to a healing program, or even just sat quietly and let divine energy flow over me, this would have been something. Yet I did none of these because my faith said it will work according to God’s plan.

And that’s the bummer. I gave it up to God’s plan, to the consciousness of the universe for an outcome that I held to be favorable. Only now that something I did not expect to be present has happened, what justification for MY desired outcome is there? The universe is filled with an infinite multitude of possible outcomes for my situation. Faith is my ability to see that despite this impossible number of outcomes, those that will develop are those that will allow me to continue along this mortal path until the next situation triggers my wonderment and caution about how to employ my faith for something other than fear of an unknown outcome.

When Faith is the same for us all

Over the last 20 years I have been involved with 5 Motor Vehicle Accidents that did a tremendous amount of damage. In addition I was also involved in an earthquake injury that created more problems related to head trauma and loss of personal awareness. Each of these insults to the brain produced aspects of personality shifts which had to be corrected before I could return to my business work. Fortunately for me when the disruptions occurred, I had enough mental health resources and knowing how the system worked to request the help I needed.

The physicians I requested hfelp from included: Psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health counselors, neuro-psychologists, primary care physician. Additional people I had to include were the Washington State organization for on the job accidents, my private insurance company, and the insurance company of the other people involved in the claim. In each situation the problem became more difficult because who is responsible for what portion of the claim is very ambiguous with pre-existing injuries. As an example, with the first head injury there was little problem attributing the injury to that driver at a 100% likelihood that she created the problem with residual effects that I had.

The second accident I was 85% recovered from the first accident. Now the doctor’s had to split the cause of the injury from his car to my car and body and subtract out the amount of damage that was related to the previous accident and re-aggravated by the second accident. On top of this the doctors had to guess how long the injuries would last and the probability of getting well from these new injuries and associated prior existing injuries. Ultimately no one can do this so it becomes a matter of the hierarchical structuring of the most talented physician and the physicians discipline that adds or deletes authority to the inquiry.

Having been through multiple iterations of these little operas and dramas, I have pretty well left the legal issues in my attorney’s hands and try to continue to work, which means that I couldn’t have been hurt seriously because if I were hurt seriously I could not be working. On the other side of the issue, is that to take time off from work means that you a not really injured that badly, only that you are trying to fluff up the claim to get more money. Anecdotally I’m sure some of this must go on. However, most of the studies which I had researched until a few years earlier showed quite the opposites.

Fifteen years earlier I went through a similar, but more technically challenging surgery, as the one I had on 9/8. Despite all my good intentions and expected outcomes, based on previous history, I can’t get from hurting to healing. I’m hold up in my house with little I can do to relieve the stress or the boredom. Since it is neck surgery the doc said it will be three months before I can ride my motorcycle again. I made plans to spend a lot of time reading, but with shooting pains interrupting my thinking that is not working either.

I wanted to share my experience in this matter, since it is only my faith that is getting me through this crazy-making time. And I suspect that I am not the only one involved in this circle of life that has given over everything to their faith.

Would be interested in hearing how you have applied you faith to a real world dilemma.

Faith makes tumor go away on camera

The link presented provides a discussion of tumors disappearing from various people. Additionally it shows the sonographic disappearance of a tumor that responds in a matter of minutes to the administration of healing energy. It is the consequence of someone having faith in the cure. However, the faith is not from the person with the cancer, but rather from the practitioners of the medicineless healing: Chi-lel Qigong. (More information can be gathered at http://www.chilel.com/ )

This real time experience from 1995 shows the importance of faith in the healing process. (The video shows this happening in about 1 to 1/2 minutes. The actual video available at the website listed in above shows this happening in about 3 minutes because it shows more of the opening activity and some additional details of the tumor starting to shrink.) When I share this with my world religions students they do not know how to respond. The first thing that want to know is if it is fake. After some discussion they realize that it is not fake, although certainly some would argue that it must be since this is not supposed to happen. According to the students' perspective, representing most of the world religions, miraculous healing does not occur. If it does it does not take place in a few minutes time. If it does it is not supposed to be studied and visible on electronic equipment. They can not understand how this process works. In their favor I must add, that most of them want to believe but they have been persuaded that this is not possible by other people.

Once the class settles down to the discussion at hand; what does this say about faith, they seriously begin to question the meaning of faith. They want to know what happened to the woman in the video that she gained enough faith to have the tumor disappear. Automatically they assume that it is the faith of the person with the disability that provides the healing. Although we are discussing world religions, they forget in the moment, that most of the major world religions offers stories of people being healed through someone's faith. To them initially this is a story of an isolated person who believes so strongly that her faith allows the medicineless approach to work. (Not too different from Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, etc stories of saints and prophets.)

Still in the video the tumor going away is not the result of the faith of the woman, but of the healers who are practicing their energy work on her. They are using their energy to impact her weakened system. Thus, the question is who's faith led to the cure, the woman's or the healing team. This is the same questions that religions have been asking, and not successfully answering, for thousands of years.

Perhaps the answer is that collective faith allowed the healing because we are all part of the same faith development and enhancement system. Perhaps we participate in the healing as others carry us when our faith is weak, just like we carry them when their faith is weak. Perhaps there is something to this idea that we all help and support each other through faith in whatever higher power is acknowledged.