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The Shermer argument is imo dismantled by Copra in this debate on the afterlife.
Shermer's argument seems to establish
the skeptics argument on a first reading by the unbiased observer. But true to the nature of the 'skeptical enquirers' in
general, the 'flaws;' in his arguments become exposed by Chopra's reply.
Tony B.
PS.: The excerpt below
exemplifies the debate for the ones not interested in the details.
"Finally, Shermer adopts a word like "soul"
in order to refute it when he doesn’t even understand or clarify what the soul is. Does the soul contain the total information
stored in our brains? Is it a personal localization in the quantum field? Is it our connection to the realm of archetypes
and myths? Information does persist, and so do archetypes. Without a doubt the electrical activity in the brain is a localization
of quantum probabilities. How, then, can these phenomena be objects of serious scientific study while Shermer feels nothing
but disdain for the soul? He simply assumes a Sunday School definition, and like his assumptions about God on his throne and
other childish notions, it’s no wonder his arguments against life after death are scientific non-starters."
The Great Afterlife Debate:
Michael Shermer v. Deepak ChopraThe following debate between Deepak Chopra and Michael
Shermer came about after the widely read and referenced debate the two had last year on the virtues and value of skepticism. Deepak has a new book out on the subject, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof (Harmony, 2006 ISBN 0307345785), and Michael has written extensively about claims of evidence for the afterlife, so the two
of them thought it would be stimulating to have a debate on the topic. Michael read Deepak’s book and goes first in
the debate, offering his assessment of the “proofs” presented in Deepak’s book, then Deepak responds. Shorter
blog-length versions are published on www.HuffingtonPost.com, with the longer versions presented here and on www.intentBlog.com.
Hope Springs Eternal
Science, the Afterlife & the Meaning of Life
by Michael Shermer
I once saw a bumper sticker that read:
Militant Agnostic: I Don’t Know and You Don’t Either.
This is my position on the
afterlife: I don’t know and you don’t either. If we knew for certain that there is an afterlife, we would not
fear death as we do, we would not mourn quite so agonizingly the death of loved ones, and there would be no need to engage
in debates on the subject. Because no one knows for sure what happens after we die, we deal with the topic in diverse
ways through religion, literature, poetry, science, and even humor. The perpetually anxious Woody Allen has this workaround:
“It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Steven Wright
thinks he’s figured out a solution: “I intend to live forever. So far, so good.” Humor aside, since
I am a scientist and claims are made that there is scientific evidence for life after death, let us analyze the data for that
doubtful future date, and consider what its possibility may mean for our present state.
21 Grams: The Nature of the Soul
What is it that supposedly survives the death of the physical body? The soul. There are about
as many different understandings of the nature of the soul as there are religions and spiritual movements. The general belief
is that the soul is a conscious ethereal substance that is the unique essence of a living being that survives its incarnation
in flesh. The ancient Hebrew word for soul is nephesh, or “life” or “vital breath”;
the Greek word for soul is psyche, or “mind”; and the Roman Latin word for soul is anima, or
“spirit” or “breath.” The soul is the essence that breathes life into flesh, animates us, gives us
our vital spirit. Given the lack of knowledge about the natural world at the time these concepts were first formed, it is
not surprising these ancient peoples reached for such ephemeral metaphors as mind, breath, and spirit. One moment a little
dog is barking, prancing, and wagging its tail, and in the next moment it is a lump of inert flesh. What happened in that
moment? In 1907 a Massachusetts physician named Duncan MacDougall tried to find out by weighing six dying patients before
and after their death. He reported in the medical journal American Medicine that there was a 21-gram difference.
Even though his measurements were crude and varying, and no one has been able to replicate his findings, it has nonetheless
grown to urban legendary status as the weight of the soul. The implication is that the soul is a thing that can be weighed.
Is it? In science we define our terms with semantic precision. I define the “soul” as the unique pattern
of information that represents the essence of a person. By this definition, unless there is some medium to retain the
pattern of our personal information after we die, our soul dies with us. Our bodies are made of proteins, coded by our DNA,
so with the disintegration of DNA our protein patterns are lost forever. Our memories and personality are stored in the patterns
of neurons firing in our brains, so when those neurons die it spells the death of our memories and personality, similar to
the ravages of stroke and Alzheimer’s disease, only final. Because the brain does not perceive itself, it imputes
mental activity to a separate source — hallucinations of preternatural entities such as ghosts, angels, and aliens are
perceived as actual beings; out-of-body and near-death experiences are sensed as external events instead of internal states.
Likewise, the neural pattern of information that is our memories and personality — our “self” — is
sensed as a soul. In this sense, the soul is an illusion.
Can Science Save Us?
There are many scientistic scenarios for how we might cheat death that I have evaluated in
my books and columns, but here I wish to focus on the latest claim for evidence of an afterlife presented in Deepak Chopra’s
2006 book, Life After Death: Burden of Proof. According to Chopra, there are six lines of evidence that convince him that the soul is real and eternal:
- Near-Death Experiences and Altered States of Consciousness. There are thousands of people who have been
pronounced dead, usually from heart attacks, who are subsequently resuscitated and report experiencing some aspect of the
afterlife — floating out of their bodies, passing through a tunnel or white light, and seeing loved ones or witnessing
God, Jesus, or some manifestation of the divine on the other side. If these patients were brain dead, then their conscious
“self,” their “soul,” must survive the death of the body.
- ESP and Evidence of Mind. Here Chopra relies on psi research in remote viewing and telepathy,
in which subjects locked in a room alone can apparently receive images from senders in another room without the use of the
five senses.
- Quantum Consciousness. The study of the actions of subatomic particles through quantum mechanics produces
what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” where the observation of a particle in one location instantaneously
effects a related particle at another location (which could theoretically be in another galaxy), in apparent violation of
Einstein’s upper limit of the speed of light. Chopra takes this to mean that the universe is one giant quantum field
in which everything (and everyone) is interconnected and can influence one another directly and instantly. Deepak and others
also apply quantum mechanics to the study of consciousness to explain how the brain represents the entire tangible world through
biochemical signals. Through quantum consciousness “we may find out how the brain might create subtler worlds, the kind
traditionally known as heaven. If the secret lies not in brain chemistry but in awareness itself, the afterlife may turn out
to be an extension of our present life, not a faraway mystical world.”
- Psychic Mediumship and Talking to the Dead. Deepak reviews the extensive studies on psychic mediums and
their apparent ability to communicate with the dead, and then reveals that he participated in an experiment in which contact
was apparently made with his father, whose recent death triggered his research and writing of this book.
- Prayer and Healing Studies. Chopra discusses research on distant intercessory prayer, in which patients
who are prayed for from a distance by strangers appear to get well faster and more often than non-prayed for patients. This
implies that action at a distance through thought alone — whether through the intervention of a deity or through some
cosmic force — is real, can be manifested, and connects us to the cosmos and everything in it.
- Information Fields, Morphic Resonance, and the Universal Life Force. Chopra claims that nature preserves
data in the form of information fields, and he cites experiments conducted by the Cambridge University-trained scientist Rupert
Sheldrake, who presents evidence that people can sense when someone is staring at the back of their head and neck, that dogs
know when their owners are coming home, that it is easier to complete the Sunday crossword puzzle later in the day because
others have already solved it, and that these and many other mysterious psychic phenomena can be explained by “morphic
resonance fields” that connect all living organisms to one another. Information cannot be created or destroyed, only
recombined into new patterns, so our personal patterns — our “souls” by my definition — are packages
of information that precede birth and survive death.
For Deepak Chopra, these six lines of scientific evidence point
to something already described thousands of years ago by the rishis, or sages of Vedic India, first spiritual leaders
of Hinduism. “The rishis believed that knowledge wasn’t external to the knower but woven inside consciousness.
Thus they had no need for an external God to solve the riddle of life and death,” Chopra explains. Our essence is what
the rishis called Atman, and what we call the soul. “Soul and Atman are a spark of the divine, the invisible
component that brings God’s presence into flesh and blood. The biggest difference between them is that in Vedanta the
soul isn’t separate from God. Unlike the Christian soul, Atman cannot come from God or return to him. There is unity
between the human and the divine.” I confess that my Western scientific worldview makes it exceedingly (and often
frustratingly) difficult for me to truly grasp what Deepak is talking about. I am quite sure that he will correct me on the
following summary, but near as I can figure this is what he is saying. The universe is one giant conscious information field
of timeless energy of which all of us are a part. Life is simply a temporary incarnation of this eternal field of consciousness,
whose properties, he says, include: “The field works as a whole. It correlates distant events instantly. It remembers
all events. It exists beyond time and space. It creates entirely within itself. Its creation grows and expands in an evolutionary
direction. It is conscious.” Chopra says that what the rishis discovered long ago is consistent with the findings of
modern science: “The field of consciousness is primary to every phenomenon in Nature because of the gap that exists
between every electron, every thought, every instant in time. The gap is the reference point, the stillness at the heart of
creation, where the universe correlates all events.” In Chopra’s theory of the afterlife, birth and death
are merely transitions to and from different manifestations of consciousness. “Without death there can be no present
moment, for the last moment has to die to make the next one possible.” Thus, he deduces, “We live in an endlessly
re-created universe.” There is no need to fear death, because “Death isn’t about what I possess but about
what I can become. Today I see myself as a child of time, but I may become a child of eternity.” Finally, Chopra concludes,
“We move from one world to another, we shed our old identity to experience ‘I am,’ the identity of the soul,
and we assemble the ingredients of a completely unique life in our next body.” Chicken soup for the New Age soul.
Reality Check: What Science Really Says
Okay, back to earth. Here is the reality. It has been estimated that in the last 50,000 years
about 106 billion humans were born. Of the 100 billion people born before the six billion living today, every one of them
has died and not one has returned to confirm for us beyond a reasonable doubt that there is life after death. This data set
does not bode well for promises of immortality and claims for an afterlife. But let’s review them one by one.
Near Death Experiences and
Altered States of Consciousness
Five centuries ago demons haunted our world, with incubi and succubi tormenting their victims
as they lay asleep in their beds. Two centuries ago spirits haunted our world, with ghosts and ghouls harassing their sufferers
all hours of the night. Last century aliens haunted our world, with grays and greens abducting captives out of their beds
and whisking them away for probing and prodding. Today people are experiencing near-death and out-of-body experiences, floating
above their bodies, out of their bedrooms, and even off the planet into space. What is going on here? Are these elusive
creatures and mysterious phenomena in our world or in our minds? New evidence indicates that they are, in fact, a product
of the brain. Neuroscientist Michael Persinger, in his laboratory at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada, for example,
can induce all of these experiences in subjects by subjecting their temporal lobes to patterns of magnetic fields. I tried
it and had a mild out-of-body experience. Similarly, the September 19, 2002 issue of Nature, reported that the
Swiss neuroscientist Olaf Blanke and his colleagues discovered that they could bring about out-of-body experiences (OBEs)
through electrical stimulation of the right angular gyrus in the temporal lobe of a 43-year old woman suffering from severe
epileptic seizures. In initial mild stimulations she reported “sinking into the bed” or “falling from a
height.” More intense stimulation led her to “see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and
lower trunk.” Another stimulation induced “an instantaneous feeling of ‘lightness’ and ‘floating’
about two meters above the bed, close to the ceiling.” In a related study reported in the 2001 book Why God
Won’t Go Away, researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili found that when Buddhist monks meditate and
Franciscan nuns pray their brain scans indicate strikingly low activity in the posterior superior parietal lobe, a region
of the brain the authors have dubbed the Orientation Association Area (OAA), whose job it is to orient the body in physical
space (people with damage to this area have a difficult time negotiating their way around a house). When the OAA is booted
up and running smoothly there is a sharp distinction between self and non-self. When OAA is in sleep mode — as in deep
meditation and prayer — that division breaks down, leading to a blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy, between
feeling in body and out of body. Perhaps this is what happens to monks who experience a sense of oneness with the universe,
or with nuns who feel the presence of God, or with alien abductees floating out of their beds up to the mother ship. Sometimes
trauma can trigger such experiences. The December 2001 issue of Lancet published a Dutch study in which of 344 cardiac
patients resuscitated from clinical death, 12 percent reported near-death experiences (NDEs), where they floated above their
bodies and saw a light at the end of a tunnel. Some even described speaking to dead relatives. The general explanation
for all of these phenomena is that since our normal experience is of stimuli coming into the brain from the outside, when
a part of the brain abnormally generates these illusions, another part of the brain interprets them as external events. Hence,
the abnormal is thought to be the paranormal. In reality, it is just brain chemistry. More specifically, NDEs and OBEs
have biochemical correlates. We know, for example, that the hallucination of flying is triggered by atropine and other belladonna
alkaloids, some of which are found in mandrake or jimson weed and were used by European witches and American Indian shamans.
OBEs are easily induced by dissociative anesthetics such as the ketamines. DMT (dimethyl-tryptamin e) causes the feeling
of the world enlarging or shrinking. MDA (methylenedioxyamphetamine) stimulates the feeling of age regression where things
we have long forgotten are brought back to memory. And, of course, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) triggers visual and auditory
hallucinations and gives a feeling of oneness with the cosmos, among other effects. The fact that there are receptor sites
in the brain for such artificially processed chemicals, means that there are naturally produced chemicals in the brain which,
under certain conditions (the stress of trauma or an accident, for example) can induce any or all of the feelings typically
described in a NDE. Thus, NDEs and OBEs are forms of wild “trips” induced by the extreme trauma of almost dying.
Psychologist and paranormal researcher Susan Blackmore has taken the hallucination hypothesis one step further by demonstrating
why different people would experience similar effects, such as the tunnel. The visual cortex on the back of the brain is where
information from the retina is processed. Hallucinogenic drugs and lack of oxygen to the brain (such as sometimes occurs near
death) can interfere with the normal rate of firing by nerve cells in this area. When this occurs, “stripes” of
neuronal activity move across the visual cortex, which is interpreted by the brain as concentric rings or spirals. These spirals
may be “seen” as a tunnel. Similarly, in the OBE the experience of visualizing things from above is actually just
an extension of a normal process we all do called “decentering” — picture yourself sitting on the beach
or climbing a mountain and it will usually be from above looking down.
These studies are evidence that mind and brain
are one. All experience is mediated by the brain. Large brain areas like the cortex coordinate imputes from smaller brain
areas such as the temporal lobes, which themselves collate neural events from still smaller brain modules like the angular
gyrus. This reduction continues all the way down to the single neuron level, where highly-selective neurons, sometimes described
as “grandmother” neurons, fire only when subjects see someone they know. Caltech neuroscientists Christof Koch
and Gabriel Kreiman, in conjunction with UCLA neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried, have even found a single neuron that fires when the
subject is shown a photograph of Bill Clinton. The Monica neuron must be closely connected.
The search for the neural
correlates of consciousness begin at this fundamental level, and then we ratchet up from there, as we look for emergent properties
of complex systems of thought that arise from these simpler systems of neuronal connections. Of course, we are not aware of
the workings of our own electrochemical systems. What we actually experience is what philosophers call qualia, or
subjective states of thoughts and feelings that arise from a concatenation of neural events. But eventually even the grand
mystery of consciousness will be solved by the penetrating tools of science.
This is the fate of the paranormal and the
supernatural — to be subsumed into the normal and the natural. In fact, there is no paranormal or supernatural; there
is only the normal and the natural … and mysteries yet to be explained.
ESP and Evidence of Mind
For over a century claims have been made for the existence of psi, or psychic phenomena. In
the late 19th century, organizations like the Society for Psychical Research were founded to employ rigorous scientific methods
in the study of psi, and they had many world-class scientists in support. In the 20th century, psi periodically found its
way into serious academic research programs, from Joseph Rhine’s Duke University experiments in the 1920s to Daryl Bem’s
Cornell University research in the 1990s. In January 1994, for example, Bem and his late University of Edinburgh parapsychologist
colleague Charles Honorton published “Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer”
in the prestigious review journal Psychological Bulletin. Conducting a meta-analysis of 40 published experiments,
the authors concluded: “the replication rates and effect sizes achieved by one particular experimental method, the ganzfeld
procedure, are now sufficient to warrant bringing this body of data to the attention of the wider psychological community.”
(A meta-analysis is a statistical technique that combines the results from many studies to look for an overall effect, even
if the results from the individual studies were insignificant; the ganzfeld procedure places the “receiver” in
a sensory isolation room with ping pong ball halves covering the eyes, headphones playing white noise over the ears, and the
“sender” in another room psychically transmitting photographic or video images.)
Despite finding evidence
for psi (subjects had a hit rate of 35 percent when 25 percent was expected by chance), Bem and Honorton lamented: “Most
academic psychologists do not yet accept the existence of psi, anomalous processes of information or energy transfer (such
as telepathy or other forms of extrasensory perception) that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological
mechanisms.”
Why don’t scientists accept psi? Daryl Bem has a stellar reputation as a rigorous experimentalist
and he has presented us with statistically significant results. Aren’t scientists supposed to be open to changing their
minds when presented with new data and evidence? The reason for skepticism is that we need both replicable data and a viable
theory, both of which are missing in psi research.
Data. Both the meta-analysis and ganzfeld techniques
have been challenged. Ray Hyman from the University of Oregon found inconsistencies in the experimental procedures used in
different ganzfeld experiments (that were lumped together in Bem’s meta-analysis as if they used the same procedures),
and that the statistical test employed (Stouffer’s Z) was inappropriate for such a diverse data set. He also
found flaws in the target randomization process (the sequence the visual targets were sent to the receiver), resulting in
a target selection bias: “All of the significant hitting was done on the second or later appearance of a target. If
we examined the guesses against just the first occurrences of targets, the result is consistent with chance.” Richard
Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire conducted a meta-analysis of 30 more ganzfeld experiments and found no evidence
for psi, concluding that psi data are non-replicable. Bem countered with 10 additional ganzfeld experiments he claims are
significant, and he has additional research he plans to publish. And so it goes … with more to come in the data debate.
Theory. The deeper reason scientists remain skeptical of psi — and will even if more significant
data are published — is that there is no explanatory theory for how psi works. Until psi proponents can explain how
thoughts generated by neurons in the sender’s brain can pass through the skull and into the brain of the receiver, skepticism
is the appropriate response. If the data shows that there is such a phenomena as psi that needs explaining (and I am not convinced
that it does), then we still need a causal mechanism.
Quantum Consciousness
Deepak Chopra and others will counter that there is, in fact, a perfectly cogent theory of
psi, and that is quantum consciousness, which was recently featured in the wildly popular and improbably-named film, What
the #@*! Do We Know?! Artfully edited and featuring actress Marlee Matlin as a dreamy-eyed photographer trying to make
sense of an apparently senseless universe, the film’s central tenet is that we create our own reality through consciousness
and quantum mechanics. I met the producers of the film the weekend it opened when we were both on a Portland, Oregon television
show, so I got an early screening. I never imagined that a film on consciousness and quantum mechanics would succeed, but
it has grossed millions and a created cult following. The film’s avatars are scientists with strong New Age leanings,
whose jargon-laden sound bites amount to little more than what Caltech physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann once
described as “quantum flapdoodle.” University of Oregon quantum physicist Amit Goswami, for example, says: “The
material world around us is nothing but possible movements of consciousness. I am choosing moment by moment my experience.
Heisenberg said atoms are not things, only tendencies.” Okay, Amit, I challenge you to leap out of a 20-story building
and consciously choose the experience of passing safely through the ground’s tendencies.
The work of a Japanese
researcher Masura Emoto, author of The Message of Water, is featured to show how thoughts change the structure of
ice crystals — beautiful crystals form in a glass of water with the word “love” taped to it, whereas playing
Elvis’s “Heartbreak Hotel” causes a crystal to split into two. Would his “Burnin’ Love”
boil water?
The film’s nadir is an interview with “Ramtha,” a 35,000-year-old spirit channeled
by a 58-year-old woman named J. Z. Knight. I wondered where humans spoke English with an Indian accent 35,000 years ago. Many
of the films’ producers, writers, and actors are members of Ramtha’s “School of Enlightenment,” where
New Age pabulum is dispensed in costly weekend retreats.
The attempt to link the weirdness of the quantum world (such
as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that the more precisely you know a particle’s position, the
less precisely you know its speed, and vice versa) to mysteries of the macro world (such as consciousness) is not new. The
best candidate to connect the two comes from physicist Roger Penrose and physician Stuart Hameroff, whose theory of quantum
consciousness has generated much heat but little light in scientific circles.
Inside our neurons are tiny hollow microtubules
that act like structural scaffolding. The conjecture (and that’s all it is) is that something inside the microtubules
may initiate a wave function collapse that leads to the quantum coherence of atoms, causing neurotransmitters to be released
into the synapses between neurons and thus triggering them to fire in a uniform pattern, thereby creating thought and consciousness.
Since a wave function collapse can only come about when an atom is “observed” (i.e., affected in any way by something
else), neuroscientist Sir John Eccles, another proponent of the idea, even suggests that “mind” may be the observer
in a recursive loop from atoms to molecules to neurons to thought to consciousness to mind to atoms….
In reality,
the gap between sub-atomic quantum effects and large-scale macro systems is too large to bridge. In his book The Unconscious
Quantum, the University of Colorado particle physicist Victor Stenger demonstrates that for a system to be described
quantum mechanically the system’s typical mass m, speed v, and distance d must be on the
order of Planck’s constant h. “If mvd is much greater than h, then the system probably
can be treated classically.” Stenger computes that the mass of neural transmitter molecules, and their speed across
the distance of the synapse, are about three orders of magnitude too large for quantum effects to be influential. There is
no micro-macro connection. Subatomic particles may be altered when they are observed, but the moon is there even if no one
looks at it. So what the #$*! is going on here?
Physics envy. The history of science is littered with
the failed pipedreams of ever-alluring reductionist schemes to explain the inner workings of the mind — schemes increasingly
set forth in the ambitious wake of Descartes’ own famous attempt, some four centuries years ago, to reduce all mental
functioning to the actions of swirling vortices of atoms, supposedly dancing their way to consciousness. Such Cartesian dreams
provide a sense of certainty, but they quickly fade in the face of the complexities of biology. We should be exploring consciousness
at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization.
Biology envy.
Psychic Mediumship and Talking to the Dead
Deepak Chopra recounts his experience of participating in a university study of three psychics
who claimed that they could communicate with those who had already “passed over” to the other side. Even though
none of the psychics were told that Deepak was present, two of them identified him by name, two of them told him that he wanted
to contact his recently deceased father, and one knew his childhood nickname in Hindi. He declared it a genuine experience,
even while admitting that he had his doubts, especially since “My ‘father’ knew things I knew, but nothing
more.” That is more skepticism than most people muster, especially in emotion-laden readings that promise people
a connection to a lost loved one. How do psychics appear to talk to the dead? I have written about this extensively, but in
short, it’s a trick that involves utilizing two techniques:
- Cold Reading, where you literally “read” someone “cold,” knowing nothing about
them. You ask lots of questions and make numerous statements and see what sticks. “I’m getting a P name. Who is
this please?” “He’s showing me something red. What is this please?” And so on. Most statements are
wrong. But as B.F. Skinner showed in his experiments on superstitious behavior, subjects only need an occasional reinforcement
to be convinced there is a real pattern (slot machines need only pay off infrequently to keep people involved). In an exposé
I did on psychic medium John Edward for WABC New York, for example, we counted about one statement per second in the opening
minute, as he riffled through names, dates, colors, diseases, conditions, situations, relatives, keepsakes, and the like.
It goes so fast that you have to stop tape and go back to catch them all. His hit rate was below 10 percent, but those handful
of hits were all his subjects needed to feel that they had made contact with a loved one.
- Warm Reading utilizes known principles of psychology that apply to nearly everyone. The British mentalist
and magician Ian Rowland’s insightful and encyclopedic book on how to do psychic readings, The Full Facts Book of
Cold Reading, provides a list of high probability guesses, including identifying such items found in most homes that
are sure to convince the mark that their loved one is in the room: A box of old photographs, some in albums, most not in albums;
old medicine or medical supplies out of date; toys, books, mementoes from childhood; jewelry from a deceased family member;
pack of cards, maybe a card missing; electronic gadget that no longer works; notepad or message board with missing matching
pen; out of date note on fridge or near the phone; books about a hobby no longer pursued; out of date calendar; drawer that
is stuck or doesn’t slide properly; keys that you can’t remember what they go to; watch or clock that no longer
works. Here are some common peculiarities about people that are bound to give the impression that something paranormal is
at work: Scar on knee; the number 2 in the home address; childhood accident involving water; clothing never worn; photos of
loved ones in wallet or purse; wore hair long as a child, then shorter haircut; one earring with a missing match, and so forth.
Mediums such as James Van Praagh, Sylvia Browne, Rosemary Altea and others on whom I have conducted extensive investigations
are also facile at determining the cause of death by focusing either on the chest or head areas, and then exploring whether
it was a slow or sudden end. They work their way through the half dozen major causes of death in rapid-fire manner. “He’s
telling me there was a pain in the chest.” If they get a positive nod, they continue. “Did he have cancer, please?
Because I’m seeing a slow death here.” If they get the nod, they take credit for the hit. If the subject hesitates,
they will quickly shift to heart attack. If it is the head, they go for stroke or head injury from an automobile accident
or fall.
I played a psychic for a day for a television special and found it remarkably easy to convince my subjects
that I was really talking to the dead. Of course, anyone can talk to the dead. The hard part is getting the dead to talk back.
Psychic mediums use trickery to give the illusion that the dead are communicating with us, and because people who come to
mediums for help are emotionally fragile, they are also vulnerable to such effectual methods.
Prayer and Healing Studies
In April, 2006, The American Heart Journal published the most comprehensive study
ever conducted on the effects of intercessory prayer on the health and recovery of patients. Directed by Harvard University
Medical School cardiologist Herbert Benson, a long-time proponent of the salubrious effects of prayer, and partially funded
by the Templeton Foundation, known for its support of research linking science and religion, the findings were eagerly awaited
by members of both communities. There were a total of 1,802 patients from six U.S. hospitals that were randomly assigned to
1 of 3 groups: 604 received intercessory prayer and were told that they may or may not receive prayer; 597 did not receive
intercessory prayer and were also told that they may or may not receive prayer; and 601 received intercessory prayer and were
told they would receive prayer. Prayers began the night before the surgery and continued daily for two weeks after. The prayers
were allowed to pray in the manner of their choice, but they were instructed to ask “for a successful surgery with a
quick, healthy recovery and no complications.” The results were unequivocal: there were no statistically significant
differences between any of the groups. Prayer did not work. Worse, there were slight elevated complications (although not
statistically significant) for the patients in the group who knew that they were being prayed for — a “nocebo”
effect. Case closed.
As for previous studies in which the positive effects of prayer were claimed, there were numerous
methodological problems with all of them, including:
- Lack of Controls. Many of these studies failed to control for such intervening variables as age, sex,
education, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, marital standing, degree of religiosity, and the fact that most religions have
sanctions against such insalubrious behaviors as sexual promiscuity, alcohol and drug abuse, and smoking. When such variables
are controlled for, the formerly significant results disappear. One study on recovery from hip surgery in elderly women failed
to control for age; another study on church attendance and illness recovery did not consider that people in poorer health
are less likely to attend church; a related study failed to control for levels of exercise.
- Outcome differences. In one of the most highly publicized studies of cardiac patients prayed for by born-again
Christians, 29 outcome variables were measured but on only six did the prayed-for group show improvement. In related studies,
different outcome measures were significant. To be meaningful, the same measures need to be significant across studies, because
if enough outcomes are measured some will show significant correlations by chance.
- File-drawer problem. In several studies on the relationship between religiosity and mortality (religious
people allegedly live longer), a number of religious variables were used, but only those with significant correlations were
reported. Meanwhile, other studies using the same religiosity variables found different correlations and, of course, only
reported those. The rest were filed away in the drawer of non-significant findings. When all variables are factored in together,
religiosity and mortality show no relationship.
- Operational definitions. When experimenting on the effects of prayer, what, precisely, is being studied?
For example, what type of prayer is being employed? (Are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, and Shaman prayers equal?)
Who or what is being prayed to? (Are God, Jesus, and a universal life force equivalent?) What is the length and frequency
of the prayer? (Are two 10-minute prayers equal to one 20-minute prayer?) How many people are praying and does their status
in the religion matter? (Is one priestly prayer identical to ten parishioner prayers?) Most prayer studies either lack such
operational definitions, or there is no consistency across studies in such definitions.
- Theological difficulties. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He should not need to be reminded or inveigled
that someone needs healing. And what about all those patients who were prayed for and died? Scientific prayer makes God a
celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion.
Information Fields, Morphic Resonance,
and the Universal Life Force
Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to do a newspaper crossword puzzle later in the
day? Me neither. But according to Rupert Sheldrake it is because the collective wisdom of the morning successes resonates
throughout the cultural morphic field. In Sheldrake’s theory of “morphic resonance,” similar forms (morphs,
or “fields of information”) reverberate and exchange information within a universal life force. “As time
goes on, each type of organism forms a special kind of cumulative collective memory,” Sheldrake writes in his 1981 book
A New Science of Life. “The regularities of nature are therefore habitual. Things are as they are because they
were as they were.” Morphic resonance, says Sheldrake, is “the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections
between organisms and of collective memories within species,” and explains phantom limbs, homing pigeons, how dogs know
when their owners are coming home, and such psychic phenomena as how people know when someone is staring at them. “Vision
may involve a two-way process, an inward movement of light and an outward projection of mental images,” Sheldrake explains.
Thousands of trials conducted by anyone who downloaded the experimental protocol from Sheldrake’s Web page “have
given positive, repeatable, and highly significant results, implying that there is indeed a widespread sensitivity to being
stared at from behind.”
Let’s examine this claim more closely. First, science is not normally conducted by
strangers who happen upon a Web page protocol, so we have no way of knowing if these amateurs controlled for intervening variables
and experimenter biases. Second, psychologists dismiss anecdotal accounts of this sense to a reverse self-fulfilling effect:
a person suspects being stared at and turns to check; such head movement catches the eyes of would-be starers, who then turn
to look at the staree, who thereby confirms the feeling of being stared at. Third, in 2000 John Colwell from Middlesex University,
London, conducted a formal test utilizing Sheldrake’s suggested experimental protocol, with 12 volunteers who participated
in 12 sequences of 20 stare or no-stare trials each, with accuracy feedback provided for the final nine sessions. Results:
subjects were able to detect being stared at only when accuracy feedback was provided, which Colwell attributed to the subjects
learning what was, in fact, a nonrandom presentation of the experimental trials. When the University of Hertfordshire psychologist
Richard Wiseman also attempted to replicate Sheldrake’s research, he found that subjects detected stares at rates no
better than chance. Fourth, there is an experimenter bias problem. Institute of Noetic Sciences’ researcher Marilyn
Schlitz (a believer in psi) collaborated with Wiseman (a skeptic of psi) in replicating Sheldrake’s research, and discovered
that when they did the staring Schlitz found statistically significant results, whereas Wiseman found chance results.
Sheldrake responds that skeptics dampen the morphic field’s subtle power, whereas believers enhance it. Of Wiseman,
Sheldrake remarked: “Perhaps his negative expectations consciously or unconsciously influenced the way he looked at
the subjects.”
Perhaps, but how can we tell the difference between negative-psi and non-psi? As it is said, the
invisible and the nonexistent look the same.
Middle Land
So where does this leave us? I am, by temperament, a sanguine person, so I really hate to douse
the flame of that doubtful future date with the cold water of skepticism in this present state. But I care what is actually
true even more than what I hope is true, and these are the facts as I understand them to be. I want to believe Messrs.
Chopra, Bem, Goswami, Sheldrake, and the others. Really I do. I gave up on religion in graduate school, but I often catch
myself slipping back into my former evangelical fervor now directed toward the wonders of science and nature. But this is
precisely why I am skeptical. What they offer is too much like religion: it promises everything, delivers nothing (but hope),
and is almost entirely based on faith, the very antithesis of science.
I am especially skeptical whenever people argue
that the Next Big Thing will save us, in our lifetime, and fulfills our deepest emotional needs. Evangelicals never claim
that the Second Coming is going to happen in the next generation (or that they will be “left behind”
while others are saved). Likewise, secular doomsayers typically predict the demise of civilization within their allotted time
(and, of course, that they will be part of the small surviving enclave). In parallel, prognosticators of both religious and
secular utopias always include themselves as members of the chosen few, and paradise is always within reach.
Where is
paradise? It is here. It is now. It is within us and without us. It is in our thoughts and in our actions. It is in our lives
and in our loves. It is in our families and in our friends. It is in our communities and in our world. It is in the courage
of our convictions and in the character of our souls.
Hope springs eternal, even if life is not.
Taking the Afterlife Seriously
by Deepak Chopra
“The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the power
of all true science.”
–Albert Einstein
I. Thanks for Coming — or Did You Even Show Up?
I have put Michael Shermer at a disadvantage
by writing a book that bases the afterlife on the survival of consciousness. He has little interest in consciousness compared
to his interest in laboratory-induced hallucinations and altered states. It’s a shame that he doesn’t grasp that
the afterlife is about nothing but consciousness. (I don’t offhand know anyone who took their bodies with them.) Shermer’s
focus on God is irrelevant to the argument. I give seven versions of life after death in my book, collected from every religious
and philosophical tradition. He fails to address them or to realize that certain traditions (Platonism, Buddhism, Taoism,
Vedanta) do not posit a personal God. Shermer’s retelling of the flaws in prayer studies is germane to my argument
but only to a small degree — it by no means forms a sixth of my book, more like three pages. I must point out, however,
that the 2006 Benson-Harvard refutation of prayer is far from being authoritative. Critics have found methodological flaws
in it, and there are 19 other studies in the field that arrive at differing results, 11 of them showing that “prayer
works.” Now to the holes in Shermer’s own approach. It may be curious that stimulating some area of the brain
can induce out-of-body experiences or the feeling of sinking into a bed, or that Buddhist monks have low activity in their
Orientation Association Area (OAA), as cited by Shermer. Unfortunately, these experiments have little bearing on the afterlife.
Induced states are quite feeble as science. I can put a tourniquet on a person’s arm, depriving the nerves of blood
flow, and thereby eliminate the sensation of touch. This doesn’t prove that quadriplegics with paralyzed limbs aren’t
having a real experience. I can induce happiness by giving someone a glass of wine and having a pretty girl flirt with him.
That doesn’t prove that happiness without alcohol isn’t real. The point is that a simulation isn’t the real
thing or a credible stand-in for it. Shermer doesn’t adhere to the scientific impartiality he so vocally espouses.
Loading the dice turns out to be fairly standard for him. For example, he cites the December 2001 issue of Lancet
that published a Dutch study in which, out of 344 cardiac patients resuscitated from clinical death, 12 percent reported near-death
experiences. (The actual figure was 18 percent, by the way.) Immediately he skips on to say that near-death experiences can
be induced in the laboratory. Hold on a minute. Did Shermer miss the point entirely? The patients in the Dutch study, who
suffered massive heart attacks in the hospital, had their near-death experiences when there was no measurable activity
in the brain, when they were in fact brain dead. Did he quote the astonishment of Dr. Pin van Lommel, the Dutch cardiologist
who observed this effect? No. Did he go into the baffling issue of why the vast majority of resuscitated patients (over 80
percent) don’t report near-death experiences? That’s pretty important if you are claiming that all this
near-death hokum can be induced in the lab with a few electrodes. Leaving out the heart of the matter, as Shermer does,
smacks of unfairness, for I rely on this same Dutch study and give all the particulars. Skepticism is only credible when it’s
not being devious. But Shermer often deliberately misses the point. I cite a University of Virginia study that to date has
found over 2,000 children who vividly remember their past lives. In many cases they can name places and dates. The facts they
relate have been verified in many cases. Even more astonishing, over 200 of these children exhibit birthmarks that resemble
the way they remember dying in their most recent lifetime. (One boy, for example, recalled being killed with a shotgun, and
his chest exhibited a scatter-shot of red birthmarks). Unable to refute this phenomenon or imagine a counter-study, Shermer
fails to mention it. He snipes at the easy targets to bolster his blanket skepticism. I wish Shermer realized that true skepticism
suspends both belief and disbelief. Being a debunker of curiosity is something science doesn’t need. This
points to a broader problem with his arguments: the problem of dueling results. Let’s say a skeptic offers in evidence
a study that asks five children to describe a previous incarnation, and let’s say that only those who are coached, either
by parents or researchers, come up with such stories. Has skepticism refuted the original research? Of course it hasn’t.
The first study stands on its own, by sheer force of numbers, demanding explanation. But by Shermer’s logic if some
children don’t remember a past lifetime, those who do must be categorically dismissed. By analogy, if I study twenty
mothers who smile when shown their baby’s picture, anyone can find twenty others (suffering from post-partum depression,
for example) who don’t. But that doesn’t prove that mothers don’t love their babies. The second experiment
is an anomaly. No doubt Shermer will want to lecture me on the need for replication in science. Yet this is the very thing
he conveniently ignores. Studies on near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, memories of past lifetimes, remote viewing,
and so forth — all crucial to the reality of life after death — have been well replicated. Shermer finds one study
that induces similar states (“similar” being a very tricky word here) and he walks away satisfied. He already
knows a priori that “paranormal” findings must be false, so why bother to engage them seriously? Extending
our understanding of normal doesn’t interest him. The focus of science should be on the survival of consciousness
after death, not on the sideshow of fraud, pseudoscience, religious dogma, and the other straw men Shermer knocks down. For
example, I rely a great deal on the possibility that mind extends outside the body. This is obviously crucial, since with
the death of the brain, our minds can only survive if they don’t depend on the brain. There are astonishing results
in this area. One of the most famous, performed at the engineering department at Princeton and validated many times over,
asked ordinary people to sit in the room with a random number generator. As the machine printed out a random series of 0s
and 1s, the subjects were instructed to try to make it produce more zeroes. They didn’t touch the machine but only willed
it to deviate from randomness. Did they succeed? Absolutely. Did other identical or similar experiments succeed? Over and
over. Does Shermer even touch on this matter, so crucial to my argument? No. He displays an amazing ability to avoid the
important stuff. He writes, for example, “The ultimate fallacy of all such prayer and healing research is theological:
If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He should not need to be reminded or inveigled that someone needs healing.” This
is simplistic theology at best second-guessing an omniscient and omnipresent God is a tautology by definition, since such
a God, being everywhere and performing all acts, makes no choices at all. Such a consciousness encompasses good and bad, disease
and health, equally. (As much as possible I avoid using a personal pronoun for God, but it’s awkward since “It”
doesn’t work in English. I am referring to a God that is closer to a universal field than anything else we can imagine.)
Does an omnipotent God even need a creation to begin with? The question is logically unanswerable. Fortunately, Shermer’s
Sunday School God, a patriarch with a white beard sitting above the clouds, plays no role in my argument — or in the
traditions of Buddhism, Vedanta, etc. mentioned at the outset. Did my book defend the Judeo-Christian God? Did it argue for
a physical place called heaven (or hell)? Did I praise the joys of the hereafter in order to denigrate life here on earth?
Not for a moment. I specifically rooted the afterlife in ordinary states of consciousness that no one doubts, such as dream,
imagination, projection, myth, metaphor, meditation, and other aspects of awareness that give us clues about the workings
of the mind overall. Shermer doesn’t engage those connections, either. Since he often lumps me in with other authors
whom he disdains and treats cavalierly, I can only assume that he uses the same slipshod reasoning on them, too. I certainly
know for a fact that Shermer misrepresents and distorts the groundbreaking work of Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist who graduated
with first-class honors from Cambridge and whose curriculum vitae (not to mention acumen, curiosity, and intelligence)
a gaggle of skeptics can only envy. But let’s concede that Shermer knows he’s preaching to the choir and can
afford all this rhetorical by-your-leave. His review hasn’t actually offered anything beyond a self-indulgent expansion
on his first sentence, borrowed from a bumper sticker: I DON’T KNOW AND YOU DON’T EITHER. He takes this to be
humorous; in fact it is distressingly dogmatic. Is he so proud of his skepticism that literally he can tell what someone else
doesn’t know? Without dragging him into philosophical deep waters, I must point out that dismissing opposing
views even before they are stated seems like fairly spooky solipsism. In the end, debating tactics offer entertainment
value but are a dubious way to get at truth. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that the true test of any scientific or philosophical
system is how much it can explain. I believe that Shermer sincerely agrees with this, despite his often unfair tactics and
his condescension to spirituality in general. The old-fashioned materialism that underlies his opinions stands in stark contrast
to quantum physics, which long ago opened up an unseen world where linear cause-and-effect no longer operates, where intuition
has made more breakthroughs than logic. Virtual reality, populated with virtual photons and subatomic interactions that operate
beyond the speed of light — a realm where events are instantaneously coordinated across billions of light years —
is the foundation of our physical world. Pace Shermer, the possibility of intelligence and consciousness in the universe
is completely viable; we must arrive at new theories to account for life after death (among many other mysteries) by opening
ourselves to the origins of our own consciousness. It’s all very well to watch various parts of the brain light up on
an MRI, but to claim that this is true knowledge of the mind is like putting a stethoscope to the roof of the Astrodome and
claiming that you understand the rules of football. If Shermer wants to have a serious debate about the persistence of
consciousness after physical death, I eagerly invite it. But I must in all candor ask him to look at consciousness first.
He hasn’t made the slightest effort so far, and yet that was the entire subject of my book.
II. Science and the Afterlife
To catalog how much Shermer gets wrong isn’t the same as proving that the afterlife is
real. But the proofs that it isn’t are not very sound. Hamlet refers to death as “the undiscovered country from
whose bourne no traveler returns.” For all intents and purposes, this argument has sufficed for materialists ever since.
But people do cross the boundary between life and death only to return — the number of near-death experiences is many
thousands by now. (For anyone who wants an in-depth exposure to the phenomenon, see www.near-death.com. Contrary to what Shermer claims, these aren’t artifacts of an oxygen-deprived brain; they are meaningful experiences
full of detail and coherence, and often they appear after the brain ceases all activity. The existence of studies in which
people do not have such experiences seems irrelevant. I can offer experiments where people can’t identify the notes
of the musical scale, but that doesn’t mean perfect pitch is an illusion. I was particularly interested in the resemblance
between modern near-death experiences and those reported for hundreds of years in Tibet. People who return from the dead in
that culture are known as delogs, and what they experience isn’t a Christian heaven or hell — in this country
90 percent of near-death experiences, by the way, are positive — but the complex layers of the Buddhist Bardo. In our
society heaven is generally reported by those who have near-death experiences as being like green pastures or blue skies;
children tend to report a child’s heaven populated by scampering lambs and other baby animals. This made me realize
that Hamlet was right to call death an undiscovered country, not because the living cannot reach it but because heaven’s
geography keeps shifting. If we look at how various cultures perceive the afterlife, there are roughly seven categories:
- Paradise: Your soul finds itself in a perfected world surrounding God. You go to Paradise as a reward
and never leave. (If you are bad, you go to Satan’s home and never leave it.)
- The Godhead: Your soul returns to God, but not in any particular place. You discover the location of
God as a timeless state infused with his presence
- The Spirit World: Your soul rests in a realm of departed spirits. You are drawn back to those you loved
in this life. Or you rejoin your ancestors, who are gathered with the great Spirit.
- Transcendence: Your soul performs a vanishing act in which a person dissolves, either quickly or gradually.
The pure soul rejoins the sea of consciousness from which it was born.
- Transmigration (or Metempsychosis): Your soul is caught in the cycle of rebirth. Depending on one’s
karma, each soul rises or falls from lower to higher life forms — and even may be reborn in objects. The cycle continues
eternally until your soul escapes through higher realization.
- Awakening: Your soul arrives in the light. You see with complete clarity for the first time, realizing
the truth of existence that was masked by being in a physical body.
- Dissolution: Eternity is nothingness. As the chemical components of your body return to basic atoms and
molecules, the consciousness created by the brain disappears completely. You are no more.
There is no common denominator
here except one: consciousness itself. We have to shift our notion of the afterlife from being a place to being a state of
awareness. Once we do that, life after death becomes much more plausible. Instead of arguing over religious beliefs, we can
ask rational questions:
- Can consciousness survive the body’s death?
- Is there mind outside the brain?
- Can we know the states of consciousness that belong to the afterlife without dying?
- Does consciousness have a basis outside time and space?
To me these are rational questions, and we can devise
experiments to answer them. But before going into that, the issue most people want to settle is “What happens after
we die?” Since this remains such a pressing question, let me offer the evidence that surfaced when I looked at cultures
East and West. Leaving aside the place a person might go to (my position is that there is no “where” after death;
everything is projected in consciousness, including heaven and hell), the afterlife appears to unfold in the following stages:
- The physical body stops functioning. The dying person may not be aware of this but eventually knows that it has occurred.
- The physical world vanishes. This can happen by degrees; there can be a sense of floating upward or of looking down on
familiar places as they recede.
- The dying person feels lighter, suddenly freed of limitation.
- The mind and sometimes the senses continue to operate. Gradually, however, what is perceived is non-physical.
- A presence grows that is felt to be divine. This presence can be clothed in a light or in the body of angels or gods.
The presence can communicate to the dying person.
- Personality and memory begin to fade, but the sense of “I” remains.
- This “I” has an overwhelming sense of moving on to another phase of existence.
As much as possible
I have eliminated religious wording here because the persistence of consciousness has to be universal. It can’t depend
on specific beliefs, which change over time and from place to place. (When he dies, Michael Shermer will be relieved to survive,
but perhaps he will be disappointed that his long service to fundamental Christianity in youth, followed by long service to
skepticism, won’t give him a special place in heaven. Nor will it lock the gates against him.) Right now there are
many reasons why science is reluctant to test any of these propositions about the survival of consciousness. First and foremost
is the ideology of materialism. Shermer stands in for thousands of actual scientists who see the world entirely in material
terms. For them, consciousness is as alien as the soul. Both are invisible, immaterial, and unmeasurable and therefore ipso
facto unreal. By these standards virtual photons should also be unreal, but they aren’t (not that Shermer has bothered
to become conversant with quantum physics). Other reasons include peer pressure — i.e., ridicule — even when a
researcher is brilliant and scrupulous to the nth degree. Lack of funding is a problem, naturally, and above all
there is the time-honored antithesis between science and religion. In an either/or world, it’s hard to convince the
religionists that rationality has a spiritual place or the scientists that your research isn’t just a stalking horse
for the Bible — see the recent social debate over Intelligent Design where neither side was willing to see the slightest
merit in the other. None of these obstacles, however, has proven insurmountable. Let me offer some highlights in the research
devoted to answering the most crucial questions about the possibility of life after death:
Mind Over Matter
My core argument is based on consciousness being a field, like matter and energy fields, that
we are all imbedded in, whether here and now or after death. It would help us greatly if our minds could alter the field.
Then we would have a link between the two models of mind and matter. Such a link was provided by Helmut Schmidt, a researcher
working for Boeing’s aerospace laboratory in Seattle. Beginning in the mid-Sixties, Schmidt set out to construct a series
of “quantum machines” that could emit random signals, with the aim of seeing if ordinary people could alter those
signals using nothing more than their minds. The first machine detected radioactive decay from Strontium-90; each electron
that was given off lit up either a red, blue, yellow, or green light. Schmidt asked ordinary people to predict, with the press
of a button, which light would be illuminated next. At first no one performed better than random, or 25 percent, in picking
one of the four lights. Then Schmidt it on the idea of using psychics instead, and his first results were encouraging: they
guessed the correct light 27 percent of the time. But he didn’t know if this was a matter of clairvoyance — seeing
the result before it happened — or something more active, actually changing the random pattern of electrons being emitted.
So he built a second machine that generated only two signals, call them plus and minus. A circle of lights was set up,
and if the machine generated a plus, a light would come on in the clockwise direction while a minus would make one light up
in the counter-clockwise direction. Left to itself, the machine would light up an equal number of pluses and minuses; what
Schmidt wanted his subjects to do was to will the lights to move clockwise only. He found two subjects who had remarkable
success. One could get the lights to move clockwise 52.5 percent of the time. An increase of 2.5 percent over randomness doesn’t
sound dramatic, but Schmidt calculated that the odds were 10 million to one against the same thing occurring by chance. The
other subject was just as successful, but oddly enough, he couldn’t make the lights move clockwise. Hard as he tried,
they moved counter-clockwise, yet with the same deviation from randomness. Later experiments with new subjects raised the
success rate to 54 percent, although the strange anomaly that the machine would go in the wrong direction, often persisted.
(No explanation was ever found for this.) In effect, Schmidt was proving that an observer can change activity in the quantum
field using the mind alone. In an earlier part of this article I refer to replications of these experiments at Princeton
and other laboratories. After 12 years of study, it was found that about two-thirds of ordinary people could influence the
outcome of the machine, unlike in Schmidt’s study, where only talented psychics were used. After examining the results
in detail in her excellent book, The Field, writer Lynne McTaggart sees a complete revolution in consciousness: “On
the most profound level, the [Princeton] studies also suggest that reality is created by each of us only by our attention.
At the lowest level of mind and matter, each of us creates the world.”
Remote Viewing
If someone could alter the field simply by looking at it, that would come even closer to the
premise that each of us is imbedded in the field. An intriguing proof of this was provided by a machine built by physicists
at Stanford called a SQUID, or superconducting quantum interference device. It’s enough for us to know that this device,
which measures the possible activity of subatomic particles, specifically quarks, is very well shielded from all outside magnetic
forces. This shielding begins with layers of copper and aluminum, but to insure that no outside force can affect the mechanism,
exotic metals like niobium and “mu metal” wrap the inner core. In 1972 a SQUID was installed in the basement
of a laboratory at Stanford, apparently doing nothing except tracing out the same hill-and-valley S-curve on a length of graph
paper. This curve represented the constant magnetic field of the earth; if a quark passed through the field the machine would
register it by changes in the pattern being drawn. A young laser physicist named Hal Puthoff (later to become a noted quantum
theorist) decided that aside from its main use, the SQUID would make a perfect test of psychic powers. Very few people, including
the scientists at Sanford, knew the exact inner construction of the machine. A letter Puthoff wrote in search of a psychic
who would take up the challenge was responded to by Ingo Swann, a New York artist with psychic abilities. Swann was flown
to California without being told in advance about either the test or the SQUID. When he first saw it, he seemed a bit distracted
and baffled. But he agree to “look” inside the machine, and as he did, the S-curve on the graph paper changed
pattern — something it almost never did — only to go back to its normal functioning as soon as Swann stopped paying
attention to it. A startled Puthoff asked him to repeat this, so for 45 seconds Swann concentrated upon seeing the inside
of the machine, and for exactly that interval the recoding device drew a new pattern, a long plateau on the paper instead
of hills and valleys. Swann then drew a sketch of what he saw as the inner workings of the SQUID, and when these were checked
with an expert, they perfectly matched the actual construction. Swann was vague about whether he had changed the magnetic
input that the machine was built to measure; he offered that he thought he was affecting its niobium core. But it also turned
out that if he merely thought about the SQUID, not trying to change it at all, the recording device showed alterations in
the surrounding magnetic field. In the years since 1972, many other experiments in remote viewing have successfully taken
place.
Intelligence in Nature
If we survive death in our consciousness, we’d like to take human qualities with us,
such as intelligence. Is there proof that intelligence is innate in nature? I will skip over the argument by design since
it isn’t logically irrefutable and give an amusing practical example. Many dog owners will attest to the ability of
a dog or cat to know what the owner is thinking. A few minutes before going on a walk, a dog gets excited and restless; on
the day when a cat is going to be taken to the vet, it disappears and is nowhere to be found. These casual observations led
the ingenious British researcher Rupert Sheldrake, a trained biologist now turned speculative thinker, to conduct a few controlled
studies. He wanted to know if dogs and cats can actually read their owners’ minds. One study was very simple: Sheldrake
phoned up 65 vets in the London area and asked them if it was common for cat owners to cancel appointments because their cats
had disappeared that day. Sixty-four vets responded that it was very common, and the sixty-fifth had given up making appointments
for cats because too many couldn’t be located when they were supposed to come in. Sheldrake decided to perform an
experiment using dogs. The fact that a dog gets excited when the time comes for going on a walk means little if the walk is
routinely scheduled for the same time very day, or if the dog gets visual cues from its owner that he is preparing to go out.
Therefore Sheldrake placed dogs in outbuildings completely isolated from their owners; he then asked the owner, at randomly
selected times, to think about walking the dog five minutes before going to fetch them. In the meantime the dog was constantly
videotaped in its isolated location. Sheldrake found that more than half the dogs ran to the door, waging their tails, circling
restlessly, or otherwise showing anticipation of going for a walk, and they kept up this behavior until their owners appeared.
No dog showed anticipatory behavior, however, when their owners were not thinking about taking them for a walk. So far,
this suggests something intriguing, that the bond between a pet and its owner could result in a subtle connection at the level
of thought. Polls show that about 60 percent of Americans believe they have had a telepathic experience, so this result is
not completely startling. The next leap is quite startling, however. After writing up his results with telepathic pets, Sheldrake
received an email from a woman in New York City who said that her African grey parrot not only read her thoughts but responded
to them with speech. The woman and her husband might be sitting in another room, out of sight from the bird, whose name is
N’kisi, and if they were feeling hungry, N’kisi would suddenly say, “You want some yummy.” If the
owner and her husband were thinking about going out, N’kisi might say, “You gotta go out, see ya later.”
Greatly intrigued, Sheldrake contacted the owner, an artist named Aimee Morgana. The situation he found was remarkable
even without telepathy. African gray parrots are among the most linguistically talented of all birds, and N’kisi had
a huge vocabulary of over 700 words. More remarkable still, he used them like human speech, not “parroting” a
word mindlessly but applying it where appropriate; if he saw something that was red, he said “red,” and if the
object was another color, he said that color. A decade ago this talent would have been unbelievable, until a researcher named
Dr. Irene Pepperberg, after twenty years of work with her own African gray, had proved beyond a doubt that it could use language
meaningfully. Now associated with MIT, Pepperberg made a breakthrough, not just in our understanding of animal intelligence,
but in the possibility that mind exists outside the brain. It was this possibility, which Sheldrake and others call “extended
mind,” that N’kisi seemed to prove. Aimee had some astonishing anecdotes to relate. When she was watching a Jackie
Chan movie on television, one shot showed Chan perilously perched on a girder. When the shot came on, N’kisi said, “Don’t
fall down,” even though his cage was behind the television with no line of sight to the picture. When an automobile
commercial came on next, N’kisi said, “That’s my car.” Another time Aimee was reading a book that
had the lines, “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice,” and simultaneously from another room the bird said,
“The color is black.” Sheldrake wanted to confirm all of this for himself. On his first visit, Aimee gave
him a taste of N’kisi’s telepathy: she looked at a picture of a girl from a magazine, and with remarkable clarity
from the adjoining room the parrot said, “That’s a girl.” The next step was a formal experiment. If N’kisi
could understand words and also had telepathic abilities, could the two be tested together? The experiment Sheldrake devised
was quite strange if he hadn’t already seen what N’kisi could do — he proposed that Aimee would look at
pictures that corresponded to words her parrot already knew. Aimee would sit in one room while N’kisi remained isolated
in another. The bird would have two minutes to utter a “key word” that matched the picture. If he said the word
in that time, it would count as a hit. If he didn’t say the word, or if he said it after the two minutes were up, it
counted as a miss. To insure neutrality, someone besides Aimee chose both the pictures and the key words that matched
each one. (This proved unfair to the bird, actually, since the neutral chooser picked a word like “TV” that N’kisi
had only said once or twice before; it didn’t utter these words at the right time during the experiment, nor did he
say them at all.) After all the trials were over, the tapes of what N’kisi had said were played for three judges, who
wrote down what they heard; unless N’kisi distinctly said the right word, as transcribed by all three judges, a hit
wouldn’t count. The results were beyond ordinary comprehension. For example, when Aimee looked at a picture showing
scantily clad bathers on a beach, N’kisi mumbled for a bit, then all three judges heard him say, “Look at my pretty
naked body.” He didn’t say other, irrelevant key words; in between saying the right words twice, the bird only
whistled and made vocal tones. When Aimee looked at a picture of someone talking on the telephone, N’kisi said, “What’cha
doin’ on the phone?” Perhaps the most intriguing response was when Aimee concentrated on a picture of flowers.
Instead of simply uttering the key word “flower,” N’kisi said, “That’s a pic of flowers.”
How did he do overall? Out of 71 trails, N’kisi got 23 hits, as compared to the 7.4 hits that would have been expected
if the results were random. Sheldrake points out that this is quite a significant outcome, all the more because N’kisi
wasn’t aware that he was being tested and often said the right key word after the allotted time was up. In a small Manhattan
apartment another bit of proof added to mounting evidence that the mind isn’t solely human property and in fact might
exist outside the brain. Communication between the animal kingdom and us has an eerie ring, but pets can’t cheat and
they have no ulterior motive for proving that they are special in their abilities. India’s Vedic rishis long ago asserted
that the entire universe is intelligent, because it is permeated by consciousness.
The Mind Field
If consciousness is an aspect of the field, then our brains should operate along the lines
of a field. This seems to be true. For one thing, it’s impossible to explain how the brain coordinates millions of separate
events simultaneously unless something like a mind field is present. Take a compass out of your pocket anywhere on earth,
shake it, and a few seconds later the wobbly needle will always settle pointing north. If every person on the planet did this
at exactly twelve midnight, billions of compasses would be doing the same thing simultaneously, a fact that doesn’t
surprise us because we know that the Earth’s magnetic field is responsible. It would be absurd to claim that each compass
decided randomly to pick north. Yet we say that about the brain. For you to think the word “rhinoceros” and
see a mental image of that animal, millions of brain cells have to act simultaneously. (We will leave aside the more difficult
question of why you picked “rhinoceros” out of all the words you could have chosen, since that choice can be based
on reason, emotion, nonsense, or private associations in memory. A computer can be taught to select any given word using an
pre-set algorithm, but it has no ability to decide on what personal, emotional, or imaginative basis to pick words —
you do.) The neurons involved in word choice don’t jumble through the alphabet to find one letter at a time; they don’t
sound out an array of words one syllable at a time; nor do they leaf through a photo archive to match the right word to the
right animal. Instead, the correct brain activity arises simultaneously. Neurologists can watch various portions of the
brain light up at the same time, but this is one area where subjective experience is stronger, since we all know first hand
that we can utter words in any order and call up any image in our imagination. The brain is acting holistically like a field,
coordinating different events at the same time, except that we know the brain isn’t literally a field. It’s an
object. Fields are invisible, and their basic components are energy and information. Which sounds much more like a mind than
a physical organ, however complex. You would think that since the brain depends on electrical signals, it would be affected
by the soup of radio, television, microwave, and many other electromagnetic emissions that surround us. Apparently this isn’t
so, and psychic researchers have gone so far as to isolate subjects in Faraday cages that block all electromagnetic energy
without altering their abilities to see at a distance or exhibit other psychic phenomena. It will be fascinating to explore
the field phenomena that are subtler than electromagnetism — the afterlife could well be one of them. Can it be
that the universe is organic, holistic, and aware? I am perfectly willing to accept Shermer’s declaration that the burden
of proof lies with those who claim this rather than with skeptics. But logically that’s not actually true. We cannot
prove that the universe doesn’t have a mind, because we aren’t mindless. Even when we declare that atoms
and molecules act mindlessly, that is a mental statement. Nobody has ever experienced mindlessness; therefore we have nothing
to base it on, just as a fish has nothing but wetness to base its reality on — dryness is a theological fancy under
the sea. In the end, I realize that Shermer and I are speaking two different languages. He makes no reference to consciousness,
the field, quantum mechanics, advanced neurology, or philosophy. I’d like to hear arguments from someone more up to
date in these fields. It’s a strange feeling when somebody in a Model A Ford challenges you to a race when you are in
a Lexus, but even stranger when he thinks he’s going to win. Finally, Shermer adopts a word like “soul”
in order to refute it when he doesn’t even understand or clarify what the soul is. Does the soul contain the total information
stored in our brains? Is it a personal localization in the quantum field? Is it our connection to the realm of archetypes
and myths? Information does persist, and so do archetypes. Without a doubt the electrical activity in the brain is a localization
of quantum probabilities. How, then, can these phenomena be objects of serious scientific study while Shermer feels nothing
but disdain for the soul? He simply assumes a Sunday School definition, and like his assumptions about God on his throne and
other childish notions, it’s no wonder his arguments against life after death are scientific non-starters.
Hello to all, I hope you enjoy reading this (undated) article as much
as I did.
Ripples
Thanks
for a wonderful essay Ripples. I have taken the liberty of sharing it around.
Tony B.: excerpt further
down:
WIE: To be honest, when I first saw the subtitle of your book I
assumed you
were speaking metaphorically. But after reading the book,
and speaking with you about it now, I am definitely getting
the sense
that you mean it much more literally than I had thought. One thing in
your book that really stopped me in
my tracks was your statement
that, according to your interpretation, the entire physical universe
only
existed in a realm of countless evolving possibilities until at
one point, the possibility of a conscious, sentient being
arose and
that, at that point, instantaneously, the entire known universe came
into being, including the fifteen billion
years of history leading up
to that point.
Do you really mean that?
AG: I mean that
literally. This is what quantum physics demands. In
fact, in quantum physics this is called "delayed choice." And I have
added to this concept the concept of "self-reference." Actually the
concept of delayed choice is very old. It
is due to a very famous
physicist named John Wheeler, but Wheeler did not see the entire
thing correctly, in my opinion.
He left out self-reference. The
question always arises, "The universe is supposed to have existed for
fifteen billion
years, so if it takes consciousness to convert
possibility into actuality, then how could the universe be around for
so
long?" Because there was no consciousness, no sentient being,
biological being, carbonbased being, in that primordial
fireball
which is supposed to have created the universe, the big bang.
Tony B. commentary:
Precisely and this self-referential point can be determined as a very special coordinate in ANY spacetime as the X=0.618033...
dimensionality of the void.
This has been publisized many times in the forums
and was expounded upon just recently on the discourse between Hans Dieter Franke and myself wrt the Elliott waves.
In my model then, all spacetimes are 'frozen' until a self-reference in consciousness is made to 'unthaw' such a spacetime.
This act of consciousness application then, will define the universal wavefunction in retrorespect in a NOW-cycletime mapping
its linear probability extension, which is gaussian. So the selfreferential 'linear time' begins at an arbitrary point in
spacetime (Quantum relativity defines this at a MAT=MeanAlignmentTime, dated locally say as midnight, November 4th, 1996,
Canberra, ACT, Australia time.
This then defines a selfconscious universe foci-invariant about a major axis as say a geometric prolate ellipsoid,
but focally tracing a 'pointcircle' about any arbitrary minor axis rotation to form an oblate ellipsoid.
Then let us say some other self-conscious observer 'thaws'
hisher spacetime, defined by the major axis prolateness at the X-coordinate as a minor axis phaseshifted universe. Then
another and another...; all such phaseshifted universes describing phaseshifts of the invariant protouniverse as selfconscious
universe say.
Any
two of the latter become a multiverse and all multiverses form an omniverse of the unity of all ossible selfconscious
universes from the proto spacetime as defined by mathematical science.
But I rest my case and hope that at least some readers can witness themselves or even better remember themselves through
the scenario described.
Tony B.
.
An Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami, a professor of physics at the
University
of Oregon and a member of its' Institute of Theoretical
Science, [Abridged], by Craig Hamilton for, `What is Enlightment?'
Forward:
Dr. Goswami is convinced, along with a number of others who
subscribe to the same view, that the universe, in order to
exist,
requires a conscious sentient being to be aware of it. Without an
observer, he claims, it only exists as a
possibility. And as they say
in the world of science, Goswami has done his math. Marshalling
evidence from recent
research in cognitive psychology, biology,
parapsychology and quantum physics, and leaning heavily on the
ancient
mystical traditions of the world, Goswami is building a case
for a new paradigm that he calls "monistic idealism," the
view that
consciousness, not matter, is the foundation of everything that is.
A professor of physics at the University
of Oregon and a member of
its Institute of Theoretical Science, Dr. Goswami is part of a
growing body of renegade
scientists who in recent years have ventured
into the domain of the spiritual in an attempt both to interpret the
seemingly
inexplicable findings of their experiments and to validate
their intuitions about the existence of a spiritual dimension
of
life. The culmination of Goswami's own work is his book, `The Self-
Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the
Material World.' Rooted
in an interpretation of the experimental data of quantum physics (the
physics of elementary
particles), the book weaves together a myriad
of findings and theories in fields from artificial intelligence to
astronomy
to Hindu mysticism in an attempt to show that the
discoveries of modern science are in perfect accord with the deepest
mystical truths.
Quantum physics, as well as a number of other modern sciences, he
feels, is demonstrating
that the essential unity underlying all of
reality is a fact which can be experimentally verified. Because of
the
enormous implications he sees in this scientific confirmation of
the spiritual, Goswami is ardently devoted to explaining
his theory
to as many people as possible in order to help bring about what he
feels is a much needed paradigm shift.
He feels that because science
is now capable of validating mysticism, much that before required a
leap of faith can
now be empirically proven and, hence, the
materialist paradigm which has dominated scientific and philosophical
thought
for over two hundred years can finally be called into
question.
Interviewing Amit Goswami was a mind-bending and
concept-challenging
experience. Listening to him explain many ideas with which he seemed
perfectly at home, required,
for me, such a suspension of disbelief
that I at times found myself having to stretch far beyond anything I
had previously
considered. (Goswami is also a great fan of science
fiction whose first book, The Cosmic Dancers, was a look at science
fiction through the eyes of a physicist.)
But whether or not one ultimately accepts some of his more esoteric
theories,
one has to respect the creativity and passion with which he
is willing to inquire. Goswami is clearly willing to take
risks with
his ideas and is fervently dedicated to sharing his investigation
with audiences around the world. He speaks
widely at conferences and
other forums about the exciting discoveries of the new science and
their significance, not
only for the way science is done, but for
society as a whole. In India, the country of his birth, he is
actively involved
in a growing organized movement to bridge the gap
between science and spirituality, through which he is helping to
pioneer
a graduate institute in "consciousness studies" based on the
premise that consciousness is the ground of all being.
Goswami
is considered by some to be a pioneer in his field. By
attempting to bring material realism to its' knees and to integrate
all fields of knowledge in a single unified paradigm, he hopes to
pave the way for a new holistic worldview in which
spirit is put
first. In fact, as far as we know, he is the only new paradigm
scientist who is taking a clear stand
against the relativism so
popular among new age thinkers. At a time when the decay of human
values and the erosion
of any sense of meaning has reached epidemic
scale, it is hard to imagine what could be more important than this.
And
yet, for all the important and valuable work he seems to be
doing, in the end we are left with serious reservations as
to whether
Goswami's approach will ultimately lead to the kind of transformation
he hopes for. Thinkers such as Huston
Smith and E. F. Schumacher have
pointed to what they feel is an arrogance, or at least, a kind of
naiveté, on the
part of scientists who believe they can expand the
reach of their discipline to somehow include or explain the spiritual
dimension of life. Such critics suggest that the very attempt to
scientifically validate the spiritual is itself a
product of the same
materialistic impulses it intends to uproot and, because of this, is
ultimately only capable of
reducing spirit, God and the transcendent
to mere objects of scientific fascination.
Is science capable of proving
the reality of the transcendent
dimension of life? Or would science better serve the spiritual
potential of the human
race by acknowledging the inherent limits of
its domain? The following interview confronts us with these questions.
----------------------------------------------------------
The
Interview -- The Self-Aware Universe
An Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami, [Abridged], by Craig Hamilton
for `What
Is Enlightment?' (WIE)
WIE: In your book The Self-Aware Universe you speak about the need
for a paradigm shift.
Could you talk a bit about how you conceive of
that shift? From what to what?
Amit Goswami: The current worldview
has it that everything is made of
matter, and everything can be reduced to the elementary particles of
matter, the
basic constituents—building blocks—of matter.
And cause arises from the interactions of these basic building
blocks
or elementary particles; elementary particles make atoms, atoms make
molecules, molecules make cells, and cells
make brain. But all the
way, the ultimate cause is always the interactions between the
elementary particles.
This
is the belief—all cause moves from the elementary particles.
This is what we call "upward causation." So in this
view, what human
beings—you and I—think of as our free will does not really exist. It
is only an epiphenomenon
or secondary phenomenon, secondary to the
causal power of matter. And any causal power that we seem to be able
to
exert on matter is just an illusion. This is the current paradigm.
Now, the opposite view is that everything starts
with
consciousness.That is, consciousness is the ground of all being. In
this view, consciousness imposes "downward
causation." In other
words, our free will is real. When we act in the world we really are
acting with causal power.
This view does not deny that matter also
has causal potency—it does not deny that there is causal power from
elementary
particles upward, so there is upward causation—but in
addition it insists that there is also downward causation.
It shows
up in our creativity and acts of free will, or when we make moral
decisions. In those occasions we are actually
witnessing downward
causation by consciousness.
WIE: In your book you refer to this new paradigm as "monistic
idealism." And you also suggest that science seems to be verifying
what a lot of mystics have said throughout history—that
science's
current findings seem to be parallel to the essence of the perennial
spiritual teaching.
AG: It
is the spiritual teaching. It is not just parallel. The idea
that consciousness is the ground of being is the basis of
all
spiritual traditions, as it is for the philosophy of monistic
idealism—although I have given it a somewhat
new name. The reason for
my choice of the name is that, in the West, there is a philosophy
called "idealism" which
is opposed to the philosophy of "material
realism," which holds that only matter is real. Idealism says no,
consciousness
is the only real thing. But in the West that kind of
idealism has usually meant something that is really dualism—that
is,
consciousness and matter are separate. So, by monistic idealism, I
made it clear that, no, I don't mean that dualistic
kind of Western
idealism, but really a monistic idealism, which has existed in the
West, but only in the esoteric
spiritual traditions. Whereas in the
East this is the mainstream philosophy. In Buddhism, or in Hinduism
where it
is called Vedanta, or in Taoism, this is the philosophy of
everyone. But in the West this is a very esoteric tradition,
only
known and adhered to by very astute philosophers, the people who have
really delved deeply into the nature of
reality.
WIE: What you are saying is that modern science, from a completely
different angle—not assuming
anything about the existence of a
spiritual dimension of life—has somehow come back around, and is
finding itself
in agreement with that view as a result of its own
discoveries.
AG: That's right. And this is not entirely unexpected.
Starting from
the beginning of quantum physics, which began in the year 1900 and
then became full-fledged in 1925
when the equations of quantum
mechanics were discovered, quantum physics has given us indications
that the worldview
might change. Staunch materialist physicists have
loved to compare the classical worldview and the quantum worldview.
Of course, they wouldn't go so far as to abandon the idea that there
is only upward causation and that matter is supreme,
but the fact
remains that they saw in quantum physics some great paradigm changing
potential. And then what happened
was that, starting in 1982, results
started coming in from laboratory experiments in physics. That is the
year when,
in France, Alain Aspect and his collaborators performed
the great experiment that conclusively established the veracity
of
the spiritual notions, and particularly the notion of transcendence.
Should I go into a little bit of detail about
Aspect's experiment?
WIE: Yes, please do.
AG: To give a little background, what had been happening was that
for
many years quantum physics had been giving indications that there are
levels of reality other than the material
level. How it started
happening first was that quantum objects—objects in quantum physics—
began to be
looked upon as waves of possibility. Now, initially
people thought, "Oh, they are just like regular waves." But very soon
it was found out that, no, they are not waves in space and time. They
cannot be called waves in space and time at
all—they have properties
which do not jibe with those of ordinary waves. So they began to be
recognized as waves
in potential, waves of possibility, and the
potential was recognized as transcendent, beyond matter somehow.
But
the fact that there is transcendent potential was not very clear
for a long time. Then Aspect's experiment verified that
this is not
just theory, there really is transcendent potential, objects really
do have connections outside of space
and time—outside of space and
time! What happens in this experiment is that an atom emits two
quanta of light,
called photons, going opposite ways, and somehow
these photons affect one another's behavior at a distance, without
exchanging
any signals through space. Notice that: without exchanging
any signals through space but instantly affecting each other.
Instantaneously.
Now Einstein showed long ago that two objects can never affect each
other instantly in space
and time because everything must travel with
a maximum speed limit, and that speed limit is the speed of light. So
any
influence must travel, if it travels through space, taking a
finite time. This is called the idea of "locality." Every
signal is
supposed to be local in the sense that it must take a finite time to
travel through space. And yet, Aspect's
photons—the photons emitted
by the atom in Aspect's experiment—influence one another, at a
distance, without
exchanging signals because they are doing it
instantaneously—they are doing it faster than the speed of light.
And
therefore it follows that the influence could not have traveled
through space. Instead the influence must belong
to a domain of
reality that we must recognize as the transcendent domain of reality.
WIE: That's fascinating.
Would most physicists agree with that
interpretation of his experiment?
AG: Well, physicists must agree with this
interpretation of this
experiment. Many times of course, physicists will take the following
point of view: they will
say, "Well, yeah sure, experiments. But this
relationship between particles really isn't important. We mustn't
look
into any of the consequences of this transcendent domain—if it
can even be interpreted that way." In other words,
they try to
minimize the impact of this and still try to hold on to the idea that
matter is supreme.
But in
their heart they know, as is very evidenced. In 1984 or '85,
at the American Physical Society meeting at which I was present,
it
is said that one physicist was heard saying to another physicist
that, after Aspect's experiment, anyone who does
not believe that
something is really strange about the world must have rocks in his
head.
WIE: So what you
are saying is that from your point of view, which a
number of others share, it is somehow obvious that one would have
to
bring in the idea of a transcendent dimension to really understand
this.
AG: Yes, it is. Henry Stapp, who
is a physicist at the University of
California at Berkeley, says this quite explicitly in one of his
papers written
in 1977, that things outside of space and time affect
things inside space and time. There's just no question that that
happens in the realm of quantum physics when you are dealing with
quantum objects. Now of course, the crux of the
matter is, the
surprising thing is, that we are always dealing with quantum objects
because it turns out that quantum
physics is the physics of every
object. Whether it's submicroscopic or it's macroscopic, quantum
physics is the only
physics we've got. So although it's more apparent
for photons, for electrons, for the submicroscopic objects, our
belief
is that all reality,all manifest reality, all matter, is
governed by the same laws. And if that is so, then this experiment
is
telling us that we should change our worldview because we, too, are
quantum objects.
WIE: These are fascinating
discoveries which have inspired a lot of
people. A number of books have already attempted to make the link
between
physics and mysticism. Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics and
Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters have both reached
many, many
people. In your book, though, you mention that there was something
that you felt had not yet been covered
which you feel is your unique
contribution to all this. Could you say something about what you are
doing that is different
from what has been done before in this area?
AG: I'm glad that you asked that question. This should be clarified
and
I will try to explicate it as clearly as I can. The early work,
like The Tao of Physics, has been very important for the
history of
science. However, these early works, in spite of supporting the
spiritual aspect of human beings, all basically
held on to the
material view of the world nevertheless. In other words, they did not
challenge the material realists'
view that everything is made up of
matter. That view was never put to any challenge by any of these
early books. In
fact, my book was the first one which challenged it
squarely and which was still based on a rigorous explication in
scientific
terms. In other words, the idea that consciousness is the
ground of being, of course, has existed in psychology, as
transpersonal
psychology, but outside of transpersonal psychology no
tradition of science and no scientist has seen it so clearly.
It
was my good fortune to recognize it within quantum physics, to
recognize that all the paradoxes of quantum physics can
be solved if
we accept consciousness as the ground of being. So that was my unique
contribution and, of course, this
has paradigm-shifting potential
because now we can truly integrate science and spirituality. In other
words, with
Capra and Zukav—although their books are very good—
because they held on to a fundamentally materialist paradigm,
the
paradigm is not shifting, nor is there any real reconciliation
between spirituality and science. Because if everything
is ultimately
material, all causal efficacy must come from matter. So consciousness
is recognized, spirituality is
recognized, but only as causal
epiphenomena, or secondary phenomena. And an epiphenomenal
consciousness is not very
good. I mean, it's not doing anything. So,
although these books acknowledge our spirituality, the spirituality
is
ultimately coming from some sort of material interaction.
But that's not the spirituality that Jesus talked about.
That's not
the spirituality that Eastern mystics were so ecstatic about. That's
not the spirituality where a mystic
recognizes and says, "I now know
what reality is like, and this takes away all the unhappiness that
one ever had.
This is infinite, this is joy, this is consciousness."
This kind of exuberant statement that mystics make could not
be made
on the basis of epiphenomenal consciousness. It can be made only when
one recognizes the ground of being itself,
when one cognizes directly
that One is All.
Now, an epiphenomenal human being would not have any such cognition.
It would not make any sense to cognize that you are All. So that is
what I am saying. So long as science remains on
the basis of the
materialist worldview, however much you try to accommodate spiritual
experiences in terms of parallels
or in terms of chemicals in the
brain or what have you, you are not really giving up the old
paradigm. You are giving
up the old paradigm and fully reconciling
with spirituality only when you establish science on the basis of the
fundamental
spiritual notion that consciousness is the ground of all
being. That is what I have done in my book, and that is the
beginning.
But already there are some other books that are
recognizing this too.
WIE: So there are people corroborating your
ideas?
AG: There are people who are now coming out and recognizing the same
thing, that this view is the correct
way to go to explain quantum
physics and also to develop science in the future. In other words,
the present science
has shown not only quantum paradoxes but also has
shown real incompetence in explaining paradoxical and anomalous
phenomena,
such as parapsychology, the paranormal—even creativity.
And even traditional subjects, like perception or biological
evolution, have much to explain that these materialist theories don't
explain. To give you one example, in biology
there is what is called
the theory of punctuated equilibrium. What that means is that
evolution is not only slow,
as Darwin perceived, but there are also
rapid epochs of evolution, which are called "punctuation marks." But
traditional
biology has no explanation for this.
However, if we do science on the basis of consciousness, on the
primacy of
consciousness, then we can see in this phenomenon
creativity, real creativity of consciousness. In other words, we can
truly see that consciousness is operating creatively even in biology,
even in the evolution of species. And so we
can now fill up these
gaps that conventional biology cannot explain with ideas which are
essentially spiritual ideas,
such as consciousness as the creator of
the world.
WIE: This brings to mind the subtitle of your book, How Consciousness
Creates the Material World. This is obviously quite a radical idea.
Could you explain a bit more concretely how this
actually happens in
your opinion?
AG: Actually, it's the easiest thing to explain, because in quantum
physics,
as I said earlier, objects are not seen as definite things,
as we are used to seeing them. Newton taught us that objects
are
definite things, they can be seen all the time, moving in definite
trajectories. Quantum physics doesn't depict
objects that way at
all.In quantum physics, objects are seen as possibilities,
possibility waves.
Right? So
then the question arises, what converts possibility into
actuality?Because, when we see, we only see actual events. That's
starting with us. When you see a chair, you see an actual chair, you
don't see a possible chair.
WIE: Right—I
hope so.
AG: We all hope so. Now this is called the "quantum measurement
paradox." It is a paradox because who
are we to do this conversion?
Because after all, in the materialist paradigm we don't have any
causal efficacy. We
are nothing but the brain, which is made up of
atoms and elementary particles.
So how can a brain which is made
up of atoms and elementary particles
convert a possibility wave that it itself is? It itself is made up of
the possibility
waves of atoms and elementary particles, so it cannot
convert its own possibility wave into actuality. This is called
a
paradox. Now in the new view, consciousness is the ground of being.
So who converts possibility into actuality?
Consciousness does,
because consciousness does not obey quantum physics. Consciousness is
not made of material. Consciousness
is transcendent. Do you see the
paradigm-changing view right here—how consciousness can be said to
create the
material world?The material world of quantum physics is
just possibility. It is consciousness, through the conversion
of
possibility into actuality, that creates what we see manifest. In
other words, consciousness creates the manifest
world.
WIE: To be honest, when I first saw the subtitle of your book I
assumed you were speaking metaphorically.
But after reading the book,
and speaking with you about it now, I am definitely getting the sense
that you mean it
much more literally than I had thought. One thing in
your book that really stopped me in my tracks was your statement
that, according to your interpretation, the entire physical universe
only existed in a realm of countless evolving
possibilities until at
one point, the possibility of a conscious, sentient being arose and
that, at that point, instantaneously,
the entire known universe came
into being, including the fifteen billion years of history leading up
to that point.
Do you really mean that?
AG: I mean that literally. This is what quantum physics demands. In
fact, in
quantum physics this is called "delayed choice." And I have
added to this concept the concept of "self-reference."
Actually the
concept of delayed choice is very old. It is due to a very famous
physicist named John Wheeler, but Wheeler
did not see the entire
thing correctly, in my opinion. He left out self-reference. The
question always arises, "The
universe is supposed to have existed for
fifteen billion years, so if it takes consciousness to convert
possibility
into actuality, then how could the universe be around for
so long?" Because there was no consciousness, no sentient being,
biological being, carbonbased being, in that primordial fireball
which is supposed to have created the universe, the
big bang.But this
other way of looking at things says that the universe remained in
possibility until there was self-referential
quantum measurement—so
that is the new concept. An observer's looking is essential in order
to manifest possibility
into actuality, and so only when the observer
looks, only then does the entire thing become manifest—including
time.
So all of past time, in that respect, becomes manifest right at
that moment when the first sentient being looks.
It
turns out that this idea, in a very clever, very subtle way, has
been around in cosmology and astronomy under the guise
of a principle
called the "anthropic principle." That is, the idea has been growing
among astronomers—cosmologists
anyway—that the universe has a
purpose. It is so fine-tuned, there are so many coincidences, that it
seems very
likely that the universe is doing something purposive, as
if the universe is growing in such a way that a sentient being
will
arise at some point.
WIE: So you feel there's a kind of purposiveness to the way the
universe is evolving;
that, in a sense, it reaches its fruition in
us, in human beings?
AG: Well, human beings may not be the end of
it, but certainly they
are the first fruition, because here is then the possibility of
manifest creativity, creativity
in the sentient being itself. The
animals are certainly sentient, but they are not creative in the
sense that we are.
So human beings certainly right now seem to be an
epitome, but this may not be the final epitome. I think we have a
long
way to go and there is a long evolution to occur yet.
WIE: In your book you even go so far as to suggest that the
cosmos
was created for our sake.
AG: Absolutely. But it means sentient beings, for the sake of all
sentient
beings. And the universe is us. That's very clear.The
universe is self-aware, but it is self-aware through us. We are
the
meaning of the universe. We are not the geographical center of the
universe—Copernicus was right about that—but
we are the meaning
center of the universe.
WIE: Through us the universe finds its meaning?
AG: Through
sentient beings. And that doesn't have to be
anthropocentric in the sense of only earthlings. There could be
beings,
sentient beings on other planets, in other stars—in fact I am
convinced that there are—and that's completely
consonant with this
theory.
WIE: This human-centered—or even sentient-being-centered—stance
seems
quite radical at a time when so much of modern progressive thought,
across disciplines from ecology to feminism
to systems theory, is
going in the opposite direction. These perspectives point more toward
interconnectedness or
interrelatedness, in which the significance of
any one part of the whole—including one species, such as the human
species—is being de-emphasized. Your view seems to hark back to a
more traditional, almost biblical kind of
idea. How would you respond
to proponents of the prevailing "nonhierarchical" paradigm?
AG: It's the difference
between the perennial philosophy that we are
talking about, monistic idealism, and what is called a kind of
pantheism.
That is, these views—which I call "ecological worldviews"
and which Ken Wilber calls the same thing—are actually
denigrating
God by seeing God as limited to the immanent reality. On the face of
it, this sounds good because everything
becomes divine—the rocks, the
trees, all the way to human beings, and they are all equal and they
are all divinity—it
sounds fine, but it certainly does not adhere to
what the spiritual teachers knew. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says
to Arjuna, "All these things are in me, but I am not in them." What
does he mean by that? What he means is that "I
am not exclusively in
them."
So there is evolution, in other words, in the manifest reality.
Evolution happens.
That means that the amoeba is, of course, a
manifestation of consciousness, and so is the human being. But they
are
not in the same stage. Evolutionarily, yes, we are ahead of the
amoeba. And these theories, these ecological-worldview
people, they
don't see that. They don't rightly understand what evolution is
because they are ignoring the transcendent
dimension, they are
ignoring the purposiveness of the universe, the creative play. Ken
Wilber makes this point very,
very well in his book Sex, Ecology,
Spirituality.
WIE: So you would say they have part of the picture but that
without
this other aspect that you are bringing in, their view is very—
AG: It's very limited. And that's
why pantheism is very limited. When
Westerners started going to India, they thought it was pantheistic
because it
has many, many gods. Indian philosophy tends to see God in
nature, in many things—they worship rocks sometimes,
that kind of
thing—so they thought it was pantheistic and only somewhat later did
they realize that there is
a transcendent dimension. In fact, the
transcendent dimension is developed extremely well in Indian
philosophy, whereas
the transcendent dimension in the West is hidden
in the cave of a very few esoteric systems such as the Gnostics and a
few great masters like Meister Eckhart. In Jesus' teachings you can
see it in the Gospel according to Thomas. But
you have to really dig
deep to find that thread in the West. In India, in the Upanishads and
the Vedanta and the Bhagavad
Gita, it is very much explicit. Now,
pantheism sounds very good. But it's only part of the story. It's a
good way
to worship, it's a good way to bring spirituality into your
daily life, because it is good to acknowledge that there is
spirit in
everything. But if we just see the diversity, see the God in
everything, but don't see the God which is
beyond every particular
thing, then we are not realizing our potential. We are not realizing
our Self. And so, truly,
Self-realization involves seeing this
pantheistic aspect of reality, but also seeing the transcendent
aspect of reality.
WIE: In addition to being a scientist, you are also a spiritual
practitioner. Could you talk a little bit about
what brought you to
spirituality?
AG: Well, I'm afraid that is a pretty usual, almost classic, case.
The ideal
classic case, of course, is the famous case of the Buddha,
who recognized at the age of twenty-nine that all of his pleasure
as
a prince was really a waste of time because there is suffering in the
world. For me it was not that drastic, but
when I was about thirty-
seven the world started to fall apart on me. I lost my research
grant, I had a divorce and
I was very lonely. And the professional
pleasure that I used to get by writing physics papers stopped being
pleasure.
But in that era, around thirty-seven, that particular world—where God
didn't exist and where the meaning
of life came just from brain-
pursuits of glory in a profession—just did not satisfy me and did not
bring happiness.
In fact it was full of suffering. So I came to
meditation. I wanted to see if there was any way of at least finding
some
solace, if not happiness. And eventually great joy came out of
it, but that took time. And also, I must mention that I
got married
too, and the challenge of love was a very important one. In other
words, I very soon discovered after
I got married for the second time
that love is very different than what I thought it was. So I
discovered with my
wife the meaning of love, and that was a big
contribution also to my own spirituality.
WIE: It's interesting that,
while you turned to spirituality because
you felt that science wasn't really satisfying your own search for
truth,
you have nevertheless remained a scientist throughout.
AG: That's true. It's just that my way of doing science changed.
What
happened to me, the reason that I lost the joy of science, was
because I had made it into a professional trip.
I lost the ideal way
of doing science, which is the spirit of discovery, the curiosity,
the spirit of knowing truth.
So I was not searching for truth anymore
through science, and therefore I had to discover meditation, where I
was
searching for truth again, truth of reality. What is the nature
of reality after all? You see the first tendency was nihilism,
nothing exists; I was completely desperate. But meditation very soon
told me that no, it's not that desperate. I had
an experience. I had
a glimpse that reality really does exist.
Whatever it was I didn't know, but something exists.
So that gave me
the prerogative to go back to science and see if I could now do
science with new energy and new direction
and really investigate
truth instead of investigating because of professional glory.
WIE: How then did your newly
revived interest in truth, this
spiritual core to your life, inform your practice of science?
AG: What happened
was that I was not doing science anymore for the
purpose of just publishing papers and doing problems which enabled
you
to publish papers and get grants. Instead, I was doing the really
important problems. And the really important problems
of today are
very paradoxical and very anomalous. Well, I'm not saying that
traditional scientists don't have a few
important problems.
There are a few important problems there too. But one of the problems
I discovered very quickly
that would lead me, I just intuited, to
questions of reality was the quantum measurement problem.
You see, the
quantum measurement problem is supposed to be a problem
which forever derails people from any professional achievement
because it's a very difficult problem. People have tried it for
decades and have not been able to solve it. But I
thought, "I have
nothing to lose and I am going to investigate only truth, so why not
see?" Quantum physics was something
I knew very well. I had
researched quantum physics all my life, so why not do the quantum
measurement problem? So
that's how I came to ask this question, "What
agency converts possibility into actuality?" And it still took me
from
1975 to 1985 until, through a mystical breakthrough, I came to
recognize this.
WIE: Could you describe that breakthrough?
AG: Yes, I'd love to. It's so vivid in my mind. You see, the wisdom
was in those days—and this was in every
sort of book, The Tao of
Physics, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Fred Alan Wolf's Taking the
Quantum Leap, and some other
books too—everywhere the wisdom was that
consciousness must be an emergent phenomenon of the brain. And
despite
the fact that some of these people, to their credit, were
giving consciousness causal efficacy, no one could explain how
it
happened. That was the mystery because, after all, if it's an
emergent phenomenon of the brain, then all causal
efficacy must
ultimately come from the material elementary particles. So this was a
puzzle to me. This was a puzzle
to everybody. And I just couldn't
find any way to solve it. David Bohm talked about hidden variables,
so I toyed with
his ideas of an explicate order and an implicate
order, that kind of thing—but this wasn't satisfactory because
in
Bohm's theory, again, there is no causal efficacy that is given to
consciousness. It is all a realist theory. In
other words, it is a
theory on which everything can be explained through mathematical
equations. There is no freedom
of choice, in other words, in reality.
So I was just struggling and struggling because I was convinced that
there
is real freedom of choice.
So then one time—and this is where the breakthrough happened—my wife
and I
were in Ventura, California and a mystic friend, Joel Morwood,
came down from Los Angeles, and we all went to hear Krishnamurti.
And
Krishnamurti, of course, is extremely impressive, a very great
mystic. So we heard him and then we came back home.
We had dinner and
we were talking, and I was giving Joel a spiel about my latest ideas
of the quantum theory of consciousness
and Joel just challenged me.
He said, "Can consciousness be explained?" And I tried to wriggle my
way through that
but he wouldn't listen.
He said, "You are putting on scientific blinders. You don't realize
that consciousness
is the ground of all being." He didn't use that
particular word, but he said something like, "There is nothing but
God."
And something flipped inside of me which I cannot quite
explain. This is the ultimate cognition, that I had at that very
moment. There was a complete about-turn in my psyche and I just
realized that consciousness is the ground of all being.
I remember
staying up that night, looking at the sky and having a real mystical
feeling about what the world is, and
the complete conviction that
this is the way the world is, this is the way that reality is, and
one can do science.
You see, the prevalent notion—even among people
like David Bohm—was, "How can you ever do science without
assuming
that there is reality and material and all this? How can you do
science if you let consciousness do things
which are `arbitrary'?"
But I became completely convinced—there has not been a shred of doubt
ever since—that
one can do science on this basis. Not only that, one
can solve the problems of today's science. And that is what is
turning
out. Of course all the problems did not get solved right on
that night. That night was the beginning of a new way of doing
science.
WIE: That's interesting. So that night something really did shift for
you in your whole approach.
And everything was different after that?
AG: Everything was different.
WIE: Did you then find, in working
out the details of what it would
mean to do science in this context, that you were able to penetrate
much more deeply
or that your own scientific thinking was transformed
in some way by this experience?
AG: Right. Exactly. What
happened was very interesting. I was stuck,
as I said, I was stuck with this idea before: "How can consciousness
have
causal efficacy?" And now that I recognized that consciousness
was the ground of being, within months all the problems
of quantum
measurement theory, the measurement paradoxes, just melted away. I
wrote my first paper which was published
in 1989, but that was just
refinement of the ideas and working out details. The net upshot was
that the creativity,
which got a second wind on that night in 1985,
took about another three years before it started fully expressing
itself.
But ever since I have been just blessed with ideas after
ideas, and lots of problems have been solved—the problem
of
cognition, perception, biological evolution, mind-body healing. My
latest book is called, `Physics of the Soul.'
This is a theory of
reincarnation, all fully worked out. It has been just a wonderful
adventure in creativity.
WIE:
So it sounds pretty clear that taking an interest in the
spiritual, in your case, had a significant effect on your ability
to
do science. Looking through the opposite end of the lens, how would
you say that being a scientist has affected
your spiritual evolution?
AG: Well, I stopped seeing them as separate, so this identification,
this wholeness,
the integration of the spiritual and the scientific,
was very important for me. Mystics often warn people, "Look, don't
divide your life into this and that." For me it came naturally
because I discovered the new way of doing science when
I discovered
spirit. Spirit was the natural basis of my being, so after that,
whatever I do, I don't separate them
very much.
WIE: You mentioned a shift in your motivation for doing science—how
what was driving you started
to turn at a certain point. That's one
thing that we've been thinking about a lot as we've been looking into
this
issue: What is it that really motivates science? And how is that
different from what motivates spiritual pursuit? Particularly,
there
have been some people we have discussed—thinkers like E. F.
Schumacher or Huston Smith, for example—who
feel that ever since the
scientific revolution, when Descartes's and Newton's ideas took hold,
the whole approach
of science has been to try to dominate or control
nature or the world. Such critics question whether science could ever
be a genuine vehicle for discovering the deepest truths, because they
feel that science is rooted in a desire to know
for the wrong
reasons. Obviously, in your work you have been very immersed in the
scientific world—you know
a lot of scientists, you go to conferences,
you're surrounded by all of that and also, perhaps, you struggle with
that
motivation in yourself. Could you speak a little more about your
experience of that?
AG: Yes, this is a very,
very good question; we have to understand it
very deeply. The problem is that in this pursuit, this particular
pursuit
of science, including the books that we mentioned earlier,
The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu Li Masters, even when
spirituality is recognized within the materialist worldview, God is
seen only in the immanent aspect of divinity.
What that means is: you
have said that there is only one reality. By saying that there is
only one reality—material
reality—even when you imbue matter with
spirituality, because you are still dealing with only one level, you
are
ignoring the transcendent level. And therefore you are only
looking at half of the pie; you are ignoring the other half.
Ken
Wilber makes this point very, very well. So what has to be done of
course—and that's when the stigma of
science disappears—is to include
the other half into science.
Now, before my work, I think it was very obscure
how this inclusion
has to be done. Although people like Teilhard de Chardin, Aurobindo
or Madame Blavatsky, the founder
of the Theosophy movement,
recognized that such a science could have come, very few could
actually see it.
So
what I have done is to give actual flesh to all these visions that
took place early in the century.
And when you
do that, when you recognize that science can be based on
the primacy of consciousness, then this deficiency isn't there
anymore. In other words then, the stigma that science is only
separateness goes away. The materialist science is a
separatist
science. The new science, though, says that the material part of the
world does exist, the separative movement
is part of reality also,
but it is not the only part of reality. There is separation, and then
there is integration.
So in my book, The Self-Aware Universe, I talk
about the hero's journey for the entire scientific endeavor. I said
that,
well, four hundred years ago, with Galileo, Copernicus, Newton
and others, we started the separatist sail and we went
on a separate
journey of separateness, but that's only the first part of the hero's
journey. Then the hero discovers
and the hero returns. It is the
hero's return that we are now witnessing through this new paradigm
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