In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits.
~ Dr. John Cunningham Lilly (1915-01-06 2001-09-30 age:86)
Of all the strange features of the universe, none are stranger than these: time is transcended, laws are mutable and observer participancy matters.
~ John Wheeler (1911-12-09 2008-04-13 age:96) Professor of Physics, Princeton University
What on earth has Quantum Physics got to do with miracles?
One way of looking at Quantum Mechanics is that there is a little slop in the gears of life. When ball A hits ball B it veers off at a precise angle, all mathematically calculable, but not quite. Quantum freedom allows the ball to veer off at any angle it feels like, so long as it is sufficiently close to the precise angle. What I am talking about is something deeper than the slop you would expect because the ball isn’t quite round, the table not quite flat etc. At a fundamental level, atomic particles have choice, within limits, to do what they damn well please. It is called Heisenberg uncertainty. Please excuse the simplistic anthropomorphising; I am trying to reach a non-technical audience too.
Wheeler’s Many Worlds Hypothesis is the mathematically simplest way of resolving Bell’s Theorem. Bell’s Theorem is a mathematical proof derived from physics demonstrating that whenever two particles interact, they are thereafter connected in a mysterious faster-than-light way that doesn’t diminish with time or distance and can’t be shielded. Also known as the mechanism of non-locality. There are other explanations besides the Many-Worlds Hypothesis, but, historically, the mathematically simplest explanations tend to win out in the long run.
The Many Worlds Hypothesis states that the universe continuously branches into multiple parallel worlds — creating all possibilities allowed by quantum randomness / uncertainty / indefiniteness (which is a far cry from all possibilities conceivable!). You might imagine the tree of life with incredibly luxuriant lush branching. Because all possibilities, even the almost impossible ones, manifest, the many worlds hypothesis explains why we live in such an improbable universe. We humans just don’t exist in most of the probable universes — just in the improbable ones we inhabit.
The most recent work in Quantum Mechanics says that, in some way, various unlikely possibilities cancel each other out, so that in practice, in general, we manifest an orderly predicable universe.
In some sense, everything possible, past and future is pre-existing.
There exist all possible worlds, not all conceivable worlds.
recommend book⇒Quantum Reality — Beyond the New Physics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
by | Nick Herbert | 978-0-385-23569-3 | paperback | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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publisher | Anchor | 978-0-385-18704-6 | hardcover | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
published | 1987-02-20 | 978-0-307-80674-1 | eBook | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
B005KDDTXM | kindle | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A layman’s introduction to quantum physics avoiding math. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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recommend book⇒The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
by | Fritjof Capra | 978-1-57062-519-0 | paperback | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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birth | 1939-02-01 age:79 | 978-0-7045-0142-3 | hardcover | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
publisher | Shambhala | 978-1-55927-999-4 | audio | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
published | 2000-01-04 | B00BBXJHCW | kindle | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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recommend book⇒The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
by | Gary Zukav, David Finkelstein | 978-0-553-26382-4 | paperback | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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birth | 1942-10-17 age:75 | 978-0-681-18965-2 | hardcover | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
publisher | Bantam | 978-0-06-192638-9 | eBook | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
published | 1984-09-01 | 978-1-55927-643-6 | audio | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
B002Q1YCW8 | kindle | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Don’t let the flaky title put you off. This is the best book I found on this fuzzy area between science and spirituality. It is on the airy fairy side. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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If you want something little meatier try The Everett Many World Hypothesis FAQ. Many Worlds is not some flake theory. Even Stephen Hawking thinks it is likely true.
A monk was chased by a pair of tigers. The monk found himself cornered at the edge of a cliff. He let himself down on a vine over the cliff. The tigers were pawing at the ground digging at the roots of the vine. Two mice started gnawing at the vine. It would be only minutes before he plunged to his death. Just then, the monk noticed a perfect, ripe stawberry growing out of the cliff and enjoyed the best tasting strawberry of his life.
The late Ken Keyes used to tell this story often. I use the term strawberry for those things in life we enjoy.Now comes the speculative part. If there are all these parallel worlds branching like mad, how come you only see one of them at a time and what determines which one you see? All the branches are in some sense pre-existing. Reality is a giant park you can explore by following its many meandering paths. How do you choose which path to follow in your exploration?
Here is how you steer your way around the tree of the many world possibilities.
recommend book⇒In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
by | John Gribbin | 978-0-553-34253-6 | paperback | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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birth | 1946 age:71 | 978-0-553-34103-4 | hardcover | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
publisher | Bantam | 978-0-307-79044-6 | eBook | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
published | 1984-08-01 | B004JN1CIS | kindle | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
covers this is a more technical way. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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recommend book⇒Alternate Realities: The Search for the Full Human Being | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
by | Lawrence Leshan | 978-0-345-34924-8 | paperback | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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birth | 1920 age:97 | 978-0-87131-217-4 | hardcover | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
publisher | Ballantine | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
published | 1987-11-12 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Einstein wrote extensively on the connections between science and religion. Most other scientists believe this confluence of religion and science is too flaky for objective research.
recommend book⇒Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
by | Thaddeus Golas | 978-0-553-26358-9 | paperback | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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birth | 1924-06-15 age:93 | 978-1-58685-190-3 | hardcover | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
publisher | Bantam | 978-0-940687-44-8 | audio | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
published | 1983-07-01 | B003XU7HM8 | kindle | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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These ideas may sound too wildly flaky to even consider — sort of a rewarmed Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment.
recommend book⇒This Season’s People | ||||
by | Stephen Gaskin | 978-0-913990-05-6 | paperback | |
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birth | 1935-02-16 2014-07-01 age:79 | |||
publisher | Book | |||
published | 1976 | |||
It is a beautifully ethical book and reassuring to anyone terrified by these strange experiences. I’ve met Stephen several times. I am quite convinced he lives in a slightly different reality from most of us, where little miracles happen. My copy of this book has totally fallen to pieces I have read it so often. Stephen is a hippie guru. He argues strenuously for both inner and outer honesty and taking responsibility for the care of the entire planet. I have read my copy of This Season’s People so many times it has literally fallen apart. He founded a community called The Farm in Tennessee. He ran for US president in 2000. I met him several times when he came to visit Vancouver. Reality bends a little in his presence. | ||||
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I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
~ J.B.S. Haldane (1892-11-05 1964-12-01 age:72)
The practical advice may still be useful even if my model of the universe to explain it is all wet. Nothing at all may be happening to the physical universe — just the way we look at it and model it internally.
On the other hand the Volvo effect may be all there is to it. When you buy a new Volvo suddenly you start noticing hundreds of other Volvos on the road. Subjectively it may seem there are suddenly more Volvos in the universe. Similarly, people fool themselves thinking that prayer or steering works simply because they become more aware of when the universe does go the way they want.
Perhaps all I am giving you is a Dumbo magic flying feather, just something that gives you a little faith to use the talents you had all along.
The effects I discovered may be totally mental — they modify the mental map you create of the universe, how you process and display information to yourself, but have no direct effect on the outside world. See the essay Experience Is A Hallucination.
The best model may be mass hypnosis.
Perhaps the whole thing can be explained by selective attention and selective memory. You remember that which fits with your current model and conveniently forget anything that does not.
As an experiment, make a list of all the unexplained little mysteries in your personal life. As you write it, likely even more memories will come back. The list of things most of us sweep under the carpet as not worthy of investigation is surprisingly long. This is your personal equivalent to the insignificant black body problem that Newtonian physicists tried to sweep under the rug. When they finally tackled it, they discovered relativity and quantum mechanics.
Yet another take is that I have given you a recipe for inducing psychosis, entering a dream world and leaving reality behind.
This could be a hoax. I could be stark raving bonkers.
I don’t know the answer yet. All I know is that following those bizarre instructions generates the perception of improbable events. Why, I leave up to people smarter than I.
Holy people from all cultures report an experience where there are no boundaries, where we are all one. A tiny glimpse of this consciousness is considered the pearl of great price worth any effort to achieve it. Even though the majority of mankind has spent a few seconds in this consciousness, only a handful of saints manage to hang out in it for any extended period of time.
This experience has happened to me on a number of occasions. It is the purest delight and has had profound after effects. If we are all one, amassing wealth makes no sense; poverty makes no sense; war makes absolutely no sense. Taking advantage of others is not wicked, just silly, like cutting off your left arm in a vain attempt to improve the strength of your right arm.
I think this way of looking at the world can become much more common if we take cosmic consciousness off its pedestal and have a look at what it is scientifically. It turns out all you are doing is temporarily shutting down the part of your brain that constantly computes where you are, what is you and what is not you.
Most modern people imagine their consciousness resides right behind the eyes. This may sound very strange to you, but medieval people experienced their consciousness as residing near the heart. If you walk through a forest with your eyes closed in bare feet, you will discover that the subjective place where your consciousness lives will tend to drift down to your feet.
Using a computer analogy, consciousness is like the CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) screen that shows a few interesting details of what the program (subconscious mind) is doing. Exactly what is shown on the screen is rather arbitrary and need have only a tenuous relationship to immense complexity going on in the CPU (Central Processing Unit) (brain).
There is a huge wealth of information — gleaned from many senses percolating in your mind. This information goes to update an unconscious internal model of reality. The model is formed primarily of relationships and analogies. The conscious mind taps information from key points in this model. There is no direct link between sensory neurons and consciousness. Thus there is little problem in having information gleaned primarily via hearing be displayed to the conscious mind as a visual image or even an odour. Information gleaned primarily from past experiences will look to the conscious mind almost indistinguishable to current sensory information. All the information goes into the big model where we tend to lose track of its original source.
People fortunate enough to have experienced perfect hallucinations — in every respect totally indistinguishable from reality realise how hallucinatory normal reality actually is. You cannot experience reality directly — only your own internal model. I strongly suspect that people’s subjective experience of what the universe is like are so different that if you were, through some electronic miracle, to become conscious of another person’s internal model, you would not recognize the subjective experience of it as reality at all. However, once you got to understand it, you would see that it was reasonably homeomorphic to your own.
A very simple example may suffice. Presume that since birth your conscious mind reversed the subjective experiences of red and green from the way most people experience them. There is no experiment you could perform to detect that this was indeed the case. In fact you could even reverse up and down subjectively and still function perfectly and never know it.
What is in this internal model? There is your body (which most of the time can send you sensory data) and other stuff (which you can hear, see and taste, but not feel). All this stuff is in your model; all of it is in your head. If your leg goes to sleep and stops sending you tactile information, you still tend intellectually to regard it as part of yourself even though it feels like part of the other stuff.
Is the saliva in your mouth you or not you? Is your stomach contents you or not you? Is your hair you or not you?
My point is that what you consider part of you and not part of you is in a way somewhat arbitrary since in actuality all of the mental model (the only thing you can be directly conscious of) is inside you.
With a computer drafting program, you can ask the computer to examine its internal model to draw how a building would look from any perspective. You can do exactly the same thing with your consciousness. You can use your internal model to look at the world from any point of view within it.
Since it’s all in there, you can see why looking at the world from any viewpoint should not be too difficult. It is not too hard to imagine how the room would appear looking down from the ceiling. You can even do this modeling so strongly that your consciousness is dominated by it. Normally, of course, you are performing exactly the same sorts of computations to model how the world would look from just behind your eyes and allowing this hallucination to dominate your consciousness. If you do not find it too frightening, you can ask your conscious mind to look at the model from the ceiling. If you succeed in doing just that, you might be tempted to call it an out of body experience, but nothing nearly so fancy need occur.
In addition, you can diffuse your consciousness over a wider and wider part of the model. Cosmic consciousness is just a very diffuse consciousness where you are experiencing the world from many points of view in your internal model simultaneously. Your consciousness taps the internal model from points representing places both within your body and without.
Playing with your consciousness is one of the most fun things you can do, but I warn you, if you go at it too vigorously you can scare yourself silly. Most people live out their whole lives hiding their consciousness just behind their eyes — just out of habit. There is a huge world in there. We each have a model of the entire universe in our skulls and most are too timid to get out and look it over.
Most people continously berate themselves with a vicious inner dialog: You pig, you lazy slob! They would never dream of treating another person so rudely and tactlessly. From the point of view of cosmic consciousness, there is no difference between you and others, therefore, bullying yourself is just as reprehensible as bullying another. Further, your subconscious takes this abuse as commands on how to behave. Give a dog a bad name… Be as polite, encouraging, tactful and gentle with yourself as you would with anyone else.
Traditionally, karma is thought of in terms of reward and punishment for good and bad behaviour, but what is actually happening is you are punished for your sins in the same sense you are punished when you hit your thumb with a hammer. Your lack of skill causes you to do a stupid painful thing.
From the point of view of cosmic consciousness, when you are nasty to anyone, you are being nasty to yourself, so, of course, it hurts! It is not wicked, just stupid, like poking an ice pick up your nostril.
You don’t necessarily feel the pain immediately. There are hysteresis effects. It will just make us both dizzy if I try to explain all the ramifications of this, but they are fairly obvious if you think it through using that simple CC model.
When you mess around with Quantum miracles, you are playing with higher stakes. With Quantum miracles, karmic effects are magnified and react faster.
I hope it is now clear to you why Quantum miracles are for ethical use only. This is a safety tip, not a moral chastisement.
The Ken Keyes Living Love Methods and the Science of Happiness are a spiritual path for atheists and scientists. They are the are based on common sense requiring absolutely no faith. They won’t rip you off or have you selling flowers on the street. They will, however, teach you how to be happier.
What I described are my own weird beliefs — nothing whatever to do with what Ken teaches.
I go through phases of my life where these quantum effects seem totally neglible and other times where it seems every casual thought manifests in reality reminiscent of the sorceror’s apprentice or King Midas. If I want them to work faster, I focus on how fast they are. If I want them to work slower (the more usual case), I notice how slow they are compared with how fast they could be. When this stuff starts percolating it is downright scary. Don’t push it too hard.
There is a ton more to tell you. Much of it is scattered all over this website, some of it as parable and metaphor. Warning! Quantum miracles are for ethical use only!
As the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead said Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
This is all so outrageously flaky, you would be insane to take my word for it. Perform your own experiments and come to your own conclusions.
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