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QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS you turn the corner, materialising your house for you, has been gen- Yet Newtonian science was first knocked off its perch 70 years erated by all conscious beings throughout all time. Short of some ago. With the birth of quantum mechanics, the view that our physi- unforeseen calamity, your house is still standing there much as you cal world is solid, fixed and independent of mind was shown to be _left it. untenable. For example, the famous wave-particle experiment Yet consider for a moment those rare and unforeseen happenings demonstrated that when a beam of light is shone through a single we call miracles. Since the wave function contains (in potentium) narrow slit, subatomic packets of light, called quanta, strike the all that exists throughout all of time, there is in principle no limit to detector screen like miniature bullets. Change the apparatus to two what is possible. A mind of unique power can collapse the wave parallel slits, and the light passing through generates a wave inter- uniquely, in one famous instance turning water into wine. ference pattern, like ripples crossing when two stones are dropped Quantum effects show up most readily at the subatomic level, but side by side into a pond. Particles become waves, and waves research into large-scale systems (Schmidt, 1987) has revealed that become particles. Both 'realities' have equal validity and cannot be random number generators will, over thousands of trials, show a divorced from the observer/participant. Behind wave-particle dual- trend towards high or low, correlating with the mental intention of ity doubtless lies the realm of the wavicle. This is just the start, for the experimenter. These studies have been replicated, so we can superstring theory suggests that there are many more dimensions say with certainty that mind affects matter. It has also has been than our local space-time can accommodate. demonstrated that experimental subjects who are emotionally Electrons are no longer conceptualised as particles spinning attuned can synchronise their brain waves at a distance from each around the atom like a miniature solar system. Instead, the electron other (Targ and Puthoff, 1974). Mind therefore influences mind at is smeared throughout the whole of space as a quantum wave, a distance, be it near or far. which only collapses as a particle into our physical space-time During the 1970s and 1980s, remote viewing experiments funded when a conscious observer makes a measurement. Nor can the by the US military at Stanford Research Institute yielded ‘hit’ rates velocity and position of the electron ever both be known at the of more than a billion billion to one against chance (May 1988). same time, for when the quantum wave The mind can 'travel' to distant target collapses, there is only a statistical sites and report accurately what is to be probability that the electron will umn up ... the electron is smeared found there. Precognition has now where it is expected. It may just materi- been firmly established on an empirical alise hundreds, thousands or even mil- throughout the whole of space basis (Radin, 1997). The mind there- lions of miles away. When it does so, it asa quantum wave, which only fore operates not only beyond space arrives at that place in zero time. Both / . but also beyond time. space and time are bypassed. Here are collapses asa particle into our The efficacy of prayer has been quotes from three eminent physicists: physical space-time whena researched (Byrd, 1988), as have more * "The fundamental process of nature . b k than 150 controlled studies on healing lies outside space-time but generates conscious observer makes with humans and plant life (Benor, events that can be located in space- a measurement. 1992, 2001). The remote intention of time" (Stapp, 1977:202). one mind at a distance can promote * "Ultimately, the entire universe healing and health in another. (with all its particles, including those con- But there are negative implications to stituting human beings, their laboratories, observing instruments, be considered. One military operative in the previously cited etc.) has to be understood as a single undivided whole, in which remote viewing program blew the whistle on the project when he analysis into separately and independently existent parts has no was coerced into taking part in remote influencing experiments fundamental status" (Bohm, 1983:174). (Morehouse, 2000). It follows that sorcery and witchcraft can no * "The universe exists as formless potentia in myriad possible longer be dismissed as working merely through the mechanism of branches in the transcendent domain and becomes manifest only suggestibility. when observed by conscious beings" (Goswami, 1993:141). The quantum realm and the physical universe, which arises out ~©MULTIDIMENSIONAL AWARENESS of it, is all one undivided, unitary whole. More extraordinary still, The direct cognisance of other-dimensional realities is, of course, it would seem to be our conscious participation that brings the clothed with the projections of the human mind, as the extensive physical world into being. literature on the near-death experience shows (Fenwick, 1995). Yet When consciousness collapses the wave function into three- to attribute everything to projection would be to make the same dimensional space-time, mind and matter arise simultaneously, like kind of mistake as did the pre-Copernican astronomers, who were two sides of one coin. The result is what we call reality, in both the convinced that the Sun must surely circle the Earth. personal and collective sense. Each one of us is self-aware, since Our problem is that we cannot see the big picture—just like the we are connected with the total field of consciousness, and from _ story of the fish, with which I started. Many of us take it on trust this individual vantage point we bring about repeated further col- that the ultimate consciousness we call God knows what is going lapse of the wave function. The process can be compared with how on better than we do; at least we are aware of a reality greater than the individual frames of a film flow together to create movement. ourselves, unlike the ant that goes about its business oblivious of In this way, we are continually generating what we take to be reali- being watched by the likes of us—or so we think! ty, which we experience both as an internal mental space and all What does all this suggest for the practising psychiatrist or around us in the form of the external, phenomenal world. psychotherapist? It is not that the neurosciences are invalid, or that The external world is remarkably stable, which gives the impres- developmental psychology has got it wrong. We just have to take sion that it exists quite independently of us. When you return home care not to mistake the part for the whole. The linear timeline that after a day's work, your house has not gone missing. This is marks us out from birth to death is but one axis in a multi-axial because the probability wave that your consciousness collapses as cosmos. The limits of perception, sight, sound, touch, smell and ... the electron is smeared throughout the whole of space as a quantum wave, which only collapses as a particle into our physical space-time when a conscious observer makes MULTIDIMENSIONAL AWARENESS The direct cognisance of other-dimensional realities is, of course, clothed with the projections of the human mind, as the extensive literature on the near-death experience shows (Fenwick, 1995). Yet to attribute everything to projection would be to make the same kind of mistake as did the pre-Copernican astronomers, who were convinced that the Sun must surely circle the Earth. Our problem is that we cannot see the big picture—just like the story of the fish, with which I started. Many of us take it on trust that the ultimate consciousness we call God knows what is going on better than we do; at least we are aware of a reality greater than ourselves, unlike the ant that goes about its business oblivious of being watched by the likes of us—or so we think! What does all this suggest for the practising psychiatrist or psychotherapist? It is not that the neurosciences are invalid, or that developmental psychology has got it wrong. We just have to take care not to mistake the part for the whole. The linear timeline that marks us out from birth to death is but one axis in a multi-axial cosmos. The limits of perception, sight, sound, touch, smell and 56 ¢ NEXUS APRIL — MAY 2002 a measurement. WWW.NeXU smagazi ne.com