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1.
Cosmic Mind
A ll the choir of heaven and furniture of earth, in a word all those bodies which compose
the mighty frame of the world, have not any substance without the mind . . . . so long as they are
not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind, or that of any other created spirit, they
must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit.
- Bishop Berkeley
Science an d EgoAs scientific instruments have probed farther into the reaches of space and time, and
deeper into sensory realms beyond the p un y range of hum an experience, hum anity has
gradu ally receded from their view. Where our un aided eyes perceive hum ans as the
center of existence, telescopes and microscopes reveal no special role for their inven tors
in the grand scheme of things. So vast is the universe we see with our instrum ents, and
so small is humankind , we are forced to conclud e that the earth could explode
tomorrow and the rest of the un iverse wou ld hard ly take note.
The insignificance of hum anity is almost imp ossible for m ost hu mans to accept.
It was bad enou gh when, in the sixteenth centu ry, Copern icus suggested that the earth
may not be the center of the un iverse. It became worse wh en, in the nineteenth
centu ry, Darw in proposed that w e are an accidental mamm alian species and n ot some
un ique creation of God. And th is painful message was only reinforced when, in the
twentieth centu ry, astronomers d eclared that the sun is but one of ten billion trillion
stars in a universe at least a hundred billion trillion kilometers in extent, and geologists
showed that recorded history is but a blink of time: a microsecond in the second of
earth’s existence.
The most economical conclusion to be d raw n from th e comp lete library of
scientific data is that we are material beings comp osed of atoms an d molecules, ordered
by th e largely-chance processes of self-organization and evolution to become capable of
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the comp lex behavior associated with the notions of life and mind . The data provid e us
with no reason to postulate und etectable vital or spiritual, transcendent forces. Matter
is sufficient to explain everything discovered thus far by the most powerful scientificinstruments.
But w hat about you and m e? Simple, everyday observation tells us that we are
individu ally mortal and that ou r bod ies must somed ay lose their abilities to move, act,
and think as we dissolve back into the earth from w hich w e arose. Still, we find it very
difficult to accept inside, what the data outside say about our individual selfhood . The
message of our senses and instru ments conflicts too profound ly with wh at our inner
voices insist.
Hum ans, for evolutionary reasons, or no reason at all, possess egos that listen
largely to their own counsel, most often ignoring other conflicting messages. These
egos are so massive that they are the foci toward w hich all other bodies gravitate. The
ego can hard ly conceive of a un iverse in which it is not an active par ticipan t. Ask
yourself: Can you im agine a un iverse withou t you? As mu ch as I try to be objective, to
accept the judgment of reason, I still find it very difficult to develop that image.
From the time of its first m urmu rs, science’s message of hu man ity’s
insignificance has been resisted by powerful forces within Chu rch and State. Religion is
always read y to affirm th e inner message and p rovide comforting prom ises of sub-
godh ood and immortality. And the State has always found religion useful in keeping
the p opu lace in line, to provid e divine justification for its actions.
And so, while science may have triumph ed in some intellectual circles, and while
few d eny science’s remarkable power and u tility, most mod ern hu man s simp ly ignore
the un welcome imp lications of scientific d iscovery. The alternative, soothing m essage
of the feel-good religions of tod ay, from m odern evangelical Christianity to the cults of
the New Age, is far more app ealing: You are the image of God, if not God himself. You are
one with the entirety of existence. Your physical death means nothing! You will live on beyond
death, as an in separable component of the essence of existence.
Still, some other sense, a spark of reason, hints that th is may be a hop eless
delusion. It seems that the objective outer message of our senses cannot bu t conflict
with the subjective inner message of ego. They cannot both be correct. How can we
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decide between the two? Can the two views be made comp atible?
Ego has shown n o signs of changing for thousand s of years, while science is
characterized by progress, flexibility, and the continual discarding of old ideas to makeroom for new d iscoveries. Scientists readily adm it that their conclusions are tenta tive.
Wouldn’t it be wond erful if science could only finally confirm w hat ou r inner voices
have been telling u s all along - that we really are imm ortal personalities with a
mean ingful, if not lead ing role in the cosmos?
A host of recent authors have p roclaimed that th is revolution in scientific
thought has in fact occurred , that the new p hysics of the twentieth centu ry has
discovered that hu man consciousness, not matter, is the fun damenta l substance of the
un iverse. This notion has struck a responsive chord. But is that chord being played on
the fine strings of a heavenly h arp , or is it simp ly the stroking of the last bits of straw
grasped at by an ego incapable of accepting reality?
Convergence?
For more than a decade now, gurus of the New Age and preachers of the New
Christianity have been telling us that d evelopm ents in twentieth century p hysics and
astronom y - quan tum mechanics, big bang cosmology, the so-called “an throp ic”
coincidences, and the new sciences of chaos and comp lexity - are leading toward a
convergence of the d iffering views of the u niverse provid ed by th e outer voices of
science and the inner voices of ego. They proclaim th at the d iscoveries of mod ern
physics imply a central role for hum an consciousness, and for a un iverse created w ith
them in mind. In their view, hum an beings are not tiny, negligible points in space and
time but an integrated part of a greater, cosmic whole - elements of an infinite field that
spread s through out all of space and time.
In some N ew Age writings, our bodies are said to exist in sym biotic relation to
Gaia, godd ess earth, and through Gaia to the rest of the un iverse. And , our m inds are
said to be tuned into a greater cosmic mind that r eaches inside to the smallest par ticle,
outside to the farthest galaxy, back to an infinite past, and ahead to an eternal futu re.
In New Christian thou ght, our sp irits tune into the cosmic mind of Jesus. The
ph rase “mind of God” has become fashionable in books and m agazine articles that
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attemp t to link mod ern science to religion, as science is interpreted as the process of
discovering the laws that God laid d own in creating the universe. A huge literature has
been generated, as modern Christian writers and the secular media attemp t to reconcilescience and religion.
In reality, most of the argum ents being heard are not new. They encompass
elements that are as old as history, and p robably pre-history. They hark back to the
idealistic ph ilosophy of ancient Ind ia, to Plato and Pythagoras, and to the d eism of the
Enlightenment. But tod ay’s cosmic mind has been re-packaged by an app eal to
twentieth centu ry science for its au thority.
The new w rinkle on venerable Eastern and Platonic/ Christian m ysticism exploits
certain interpretations of quantu m m echan ics, the revolutionary theory of physics that
was developed early in this century. Traditional religious myths, East and West, call on
scripture or the utteran ces of charismatic leaders as their author ities. By contrast, the
new m ythology is sup posedly grounded on up-to-da te scientific know ledge. Since the
seventeenth century, a materialistic, redu ctionist view of the universe had formed th e
found ation of the scientific revolution. Now th is is to be cast aside by a new spiritual,
holistic science.
The Developm ent of Qu antum Mechanics
Quantum m echanics was developed early in the tw entieth century to explain certain
anomalous phenomena associated w ith light and atom s. By the 1930s, its mathem atical
structure had evolved almost to the point w here it exists today as the major theoretical
tool of physics and chemistry. Calculations using the m athematical formalism of
quantum mechanics have been tested against countless laboratory measurements for
almost a century, w ithout a single failure.
Quantum m echanics is often associated with “uncertainty.” Nevertheless, it is
capable of calculations to a high d egree of precision. For examp le, the magnetic
mom ent of an electron, w hich measu res the stren gth of the electron’s magnetic field, is
calculated in qu antu m electrodynam ics, an extension of quan tum mechanics, to be
1.00115965246. Its measured value at th is writ ing is 1.001159652193 ± 0.0000000010.
Thus, the calculation is correct to at least one par t in ten billion. We have neither
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measured nor calculated the earth’s magnetic field with anything app roaching th is
accuracy.
Among its many ap plications, quan tum mechanical calculations have mad epossible lasers, transistors, computer chips, superconductors, plastics, thousands of new
chemicals, and n uclear pow er. Today 's high speed compu ters are prod ucts of quan tum
mechan ics. Qu antu m mechanics lies at the heart of physics, chemistry, biology, and life
itself. It may p rovide the key to un derstand ing the origin of the un iverse, showing
how everything can hav e come from nothing.
While the methods of quantu m m echan ics have proven their utility, no
consensus exists even to this day on what quan tum m echanics “really means.” Some
argue that the qu estion itself is meaningless, that the math ematics speaks for itself.
Descriptions of quan tum mechanics are conventionally cast in term s of the
Copenhagen interpretation. This interp retation was p rimarily the offspring of Niels Bohr
and Werner Heisenberg wh o, along w ith Erwin Schrödinger (who d id not sup port
Copenhagen), were the revered primary inventors of quantu m mechanics. Today an
evolved Copenhagen rem ains the consensus view among most p hysicists, who see no
reason to change a theory that has worked w ell over a great period of time and has
never been d emonstrated to be incorrect - by either experimenta l facts or mathem atical
proof.
As we will see, how ever, the Copenh agen interpretation contains more than the
minimum nu mber of assumptions that is needed to provide a found ation for quantu m
mechanics as it is actually practiced by scientists. Copenhagen includ es the add ed
assertion that qu antu m m echanics is complete; Bohr and his colleagues of the
Copenhagen school claimed that no theoretical structure can be found that is capable of
making p redictions about observable phenomena that d oes not fit w ithin the
framework of quantu m m echanics. This was not meant to imply that quantum
mechanics can now explain everything; just that any new th eories mu st not contain
elements that violate the basic precepts of quan tum mechanics.
This assertion is dispu ted by the proponents of so-called hidden variables theories.
They seek a deep er theory that lies beyond conventional quantu m m echan ics. We will
be investigating th ese issues in g reat d etail in th is book.
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On the Fringes
While the mathem atical formu lation and method s for the practical app lication of
quan tum mechanics have remained largely unchanged an d u nchallenged for six
decades, the deeper philosophical significance of quantum mechanics has continued to
be debated . On the fringes of this debate we find num erous popu lar articles and books
that promote a stupend ous notion: Our egos could be right after all. Hu mans and
hu man consciousness may indeed constitute the fun dam ental essence of reality. If you
were to jud ge by the space occupied by th is genre on the shelves of pop ular book
stores, you w ould conclude that it has become mainstream science.
On the contrary, the pragmatic, mainstream ph ysicist’s attitud e toward the new
quan tum metaphysics has generally been to ignore it, figuring it will simp ly die away
like any other popu lar fad . Most physicists prefer to leave deliberations on the “deeper
significance” of quantu m mechanics to the ph ilosophers w ho m ake their livings
discoursing on the m eanings of word s, and n ever seem to settle anything anyw ay.
Physicists like to think of themselves as people of action, not words.
Unfortunately, arguments over word s have a much greater imp act on hu man
life than m ost physicists prefer were the case. Word s are not benign. Word s generate
action. Word s sell products, inspire devotion, incite riots, and start wars.
Words also help p hysicists get the large sums of money n eeded to build their
action-toys. As a practicing researcher in high energy par ticle ph ysics and astrop hysics
for over thirty years, I spend mu ch of my time w riting p roposals, progress reports,
technical notes, and scientific papers. I attend several intern ational conferences each
year wh ere I listen to speakers, present my own work, and exchange ideas in hallway
and dining table conversations - all utilizing the medium of word s. Often these
discourses are philosoph ical in nature, addressing the meaning of the research being
condu cted and its value to science and society.
The jargon of qu antu m m echanics has inspired som e peop le to extract mystical
messages that were never intended to be there. In particular, deep m eaning has been
found in the un fortunate w ay ph ysicists often d escribe the process of measu rement.
Sometimes they make it sound as thou gh th e conscious act of observation, by itself,
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creates the quan tity that is being measured .
You w ill frequen tly read th e statement that physical objects do not p ossess a
certain prop erty until that prop erty is measured : An electron in an atom has noposition un til that position is determ ined by measurem ent; a photon has no
polarization u ntil it passes though the polarizing sheet that is used to measure
polarization.
The source of this strange assertion is the practical fact that p hysical notions, such
as position and polarization, are operationally defined in terms of the app aratus that
makes the measurement of the associated qu antity. These measurements are
performed accord ing to a well-prescribed procedu re that can then be repeated
independently by someone else. This is what gives science its claim on objectivity.
Thus distance (the quantity of space) is what you (or anyone else) measure with
a meter stick. Time is what you (or anyon e else) measure with a clock. Polarization is
what you (or anyone else) measure with a polarimeter. All these operational quantities
were defined by hum an beings. Is there any reason to assum e that any has an intrinsic
reality that exists in the absence of its measurement? As we will see, there is amp le
reason to assum e at least some aspect of reality when th e results obtained are
pred ictable and rep eatable.
The idea th at p roperties are brough t into being by the act of their measurement
clashes with our intuitive notion that the u niverse possesses an objective reality
indep enden t of the observer. Surely, as Einstein insisted, the moon is still there wh en
no on e is looking.
But m any au thors have construed qu antu m m echanics, with its strict use of
operational terms, to imp ly a central role for the h um an m ind in a ffecting the very
nature of reality itself. Let me give a sampling of some of the expressions of this
viewpoint.
Physician Robert Lanza has w ritten that, according to the current quan tum
mechanical view of reality, “We are all the eph emeral forms of a consciousness greater
than ou rselves.” The mind of each hum an being on earth is instantaneou sly connected
to each other - past, present and future - as “a par t of every mind existing in space and
time.” In Lanza’s view, quantu m mechanics tells us that all hum an m inds are u nited in
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one m ind and “the entities of the universe - electrons, ph otons, galaxies, and the like -
are floating in a field of mind that cannot be limited w ithin a restricted sp ace or p eriod .
. .”1
Physicist Fritjof Capra has long been an influen tial prop onen t of mystical
interp retations of quantu m mechanics. He first expressed his ideas in 1975 in The Tao of
Physics, which drew strained parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism.2
Quantum mechanics, in Cap ra’s view “reveals the basic oneness of the u niverse” in a
mann er that harmonizes with the Hind u notion of Brahmin, the “unifying thread in the
cosmic web, the ultimate ground of being: ‘He on wh om the sky, the earth, and the
atmosp here are woven (Mondaka Up anishad , 2.2.5)’ ”
Capra’s film Mindwalk , which show ed in m ajor theaters in 1992 and is available in
video stores, gives considerable insight into his hop es for the potential social and
philosophical impact of this new p erspective. So let me take some space to review it.
Mindwalk , written by Capra an d d irected by his brother Bernt, was based on The Tao of
Physics and a later book, The Turning Point .3
In the film, an Am erican politician, played by the fine actor Sam Waterston ,
comes to France after losing h is bid to be President. There, he and his friend, an
expatriate poet played by John Heard, w and er into the spectacular fortress of Mont St.
Michel in the English Channel. Soon they m eet a disillusioned p hysicist, played by Liv
Ullman, and for the rest of the film the tw o men roam aroun d th e fortress, slack-jawed
with astonishment at the profound ideas Ullman pours forth: The world is in trouble
from overpop ulation and pollution. Americans eat too mu ch red meat. Wow! The
presidential cand idate had not heard about this before.
The problem, accord ing to Ullman, is a crisis in persp ective. Hum anity still
follows the m echanistic redu ctionism of Descartes and Newton, viewing th e wor ld as
being like the old clock in the fortress tower. However, a new , holistic ph ysics called
systems theory, in w hich the un iverse is seen as one interconnected w hole, has now
overthrow n evil redu ctionism. If hu man ity will only adop t this revolutionary
persp ective and realize that w e are all one with each other, the earth , and th e cosmos,
then the p lanet will be saved from self-destru ction. What a magnificent thou ght, the
politician gu shes. Why d on’t you come back to America with me, Professor, and join
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my staff? Let’s put these new id eas to work for hu man ity.
Finally, outside th e fortress on the spit of land that joins it to the mainland ,
Ullman is asked to explain life. She says, “Life is self-organization.” Poet Heard is sooverwhelmed by this deep concept that he flops dow n in the sand, repeating the line
over and over: “Life is self-organ ization, life is self-organ ization. . .”
Unfortunately, this is the only hint of the m ost far-reaching idea that ap pears in
Capra’s The Turning Point . There he suggested that all material systems, from hum ans
to animals, plants, the earth , and the cosmos itself, are part of one gigantic mind .
Holistic physics provided h im w ith a model for the vague notion of cosmic
consciousness: We are all one with th e cosmos, speaking to each others’ mind s with
extrasensory perception (ESP), able to break d own th e barriers of space and time and
the laws of ph ysics. We can achieve anyth ing, perform m iracles, if we just think we can.
Capra’s ideas have taken hold w ithin the New Age movement in America.
Marilyn Ferguson in her 1980 New Age bible, The Aquarian Conspiracy , said th at new
scientific knowledge has revised “the very d ata base on w hich we have built our
assump tions, institutions, our lives.” Promising far more than “the old redu ctionist
view,” the new scientific perspective “reveals a rich, creative, dynam ic, interconnected
reality.”4
Capra h as not been alone in claiming parallels between the new physics and
Eastern mysticism. In The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav says ph ysicists “are
dan cing w ith Kali, the Divine Mother of Hindu myth ology.” Zukav sees the new
ph ysics as suggesting that “ there really may be no su ch thing as ‘separate p arts’ in our
world.”5
In a chapter called “The Dancing Moo-Shoo Masters” from h is recent book The
God Particle, Nobel prize-winning p hysicist Leon Lederm an has spoofed the notion that
ph ysics has any connection with the ph ilosophies of the ancient Orient. He calls Capra’s
and Zukav’s conclusions “bizarre.”6
The idea of a cosmic field of mind merging physics with Hindu mysticism has
also been prom oted by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcenden tal Meditation (TM)
movem ent. Trained at one point as a physicist, the Maharishi also claims m odern
physics as his authority. In newspaper ad s placed around the coun try in the 1980s, the
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Maharishi very specifically associated h is version of cosmic consciousness w ith the GUT
(Grand Unified Theory) field of particle ph ysics that was in fashion at that time.
Unfortu nately, reality intervened. Theoretical particle ph ysicists, applying thesimplest version of GUT, mad e a very firm, testable prediction tha t the p roton w as
un stable with a very long bu t measu rable lifetime. After a series of accura te, multi-
million dollar experiments, proton d ecay was not found at the expected level.7
As a
result of this and other p recision tests, Grand Unified Theories have fallen out of fashion
and the Mah arishi’s association of the GUT field with the cosmic mind has been
discarded.8
At this writing, GUT has been rep laced as the Maharishi’s cosmic field by th e
currently more trend y superstrings If sup erstring theory is found wanting, as I susp ect
it will, I am su re the Yogi will find some other p hysics fashion to exploit. He can always
claim, like another Yogi named Berra, that he never said half the things he said .
One of the Maharishi’s d isciples, Dr. Deepak Chop ra, is perhap s the m ost
successful of a growing group of authors w ho have app ropriated the quantu m as the
found ation for alternative, non-med ical method s of healing based on the belief that
mind can overcome the limitations set by the laws of ph ysics and b iology. Chopra’s
1989 book was entitled Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.9
His latest best-seller is called, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum A lternative to
Growing Old .10
Placing the word “quantu m” in th e title of a book may not guaran tee it
for the best seller list, but it’s worth a try.
In Spring, 1994, Chopra visited Hon olulu to give all-day seminars on “Quantum
Healing.” At the time, an English dep artment colleague of mine assured me that
Chopra has “helped a lot of peop le” with his holistic method s.11
Of course, prom ising a halt to aging is a dan gerous thing. Let’s see what Chop ra
looks like in ten years. He already looks older in the photograph on the du st jacket of
the latest book comp ared to the earlier one. Hopefully Chopra w ill not suffer the fate
of Dr. Stuart M. Berger, au thor of Forever Young, who d ied at age 40 weighing 365
pou nd s after falling off his diet of steamed broccoli.12
In a similar vein, Johns Hop kins University psychiatrist Patricia Newton uses the
quan tum as basis for what she says is an Afrocentric approach to healing. In a talk
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presented before a med ical conference in 1993, Newton said th at trad itional healers
“are able to tap that other realm of negative entropy - that superqu antum velocity and
frequency of electromagnetic energy and bring them as conduits dow n to our level. It’snot magic. It’s not mu mbo jumbo. You w ill see the daw n of the 21st centu ry, the new
med ical quantu m p hysics really distributing these energies and what they are doing.”13
Shirley MacLaine could not have put it better.
I do not d eny a certain limited value in the trad itional healing m ethods from
man y cultures. Surely, over the ages, useful treatments for a host of aches and pains
were d iscovered by trial-and -error. It appears that m any of these methods trigger the
well-established placebo effect and p erhaps other mechanisms by w hich the human
body heals itself. No doubt Western med icine can impr ove its methods for treating the
“whole person.” I simply wond er what it all has to with the quantu m.
In The Tao of Physics, Fritjov Capra also mad e a strong association between the
un broken wholeness he saw in Eastern p hilosophy and a similar-soun ding theory of
ph ysics that also was once quite the vogue, but has now d ropped from sight. Few of
today’s grad uate stud ents in physics wou ld even recognize the nam e of this faded
concept: bootstrap theory .
Dating from the 1960s, wh en Cap ra w orked as a theoretical ph ysicist in Berkeley,
bootstrap theory speculated that all the prop erties of physical systems could be d erived
from a set of equations wh ose inp ut assum ptions were little more than some general
ru les of mathem atical smoothness (“analyticity”) and self-consistency.
While this was a nice thought, and it once gave Capra a vagu e basis for his
speculations, bootstrap theory simply did not w ork. It failed to describe the data wh ile
the conventionally reductionist theories of quarks and leptons, now referred to as the
Standard M odel, eventually did . For that purely pragmatic reason, not for any lack of
pop ular or aesthetic app eal, bootstrap th eory no longer app ears in physics textbooks.
Being a failure, bootstrap th eory d oes not pr ovide a very convincing m odel for
Capra’s holistic un iverse. By its vividly-contrasting success, the quark-lepton m odel
provides every reason to continu e to look to reductionist ideas to provide the
framew ork for und erstanding the physical world. How ever, let me caution the reader
against m aking the connection between redu ctionism and New tonian determinism that
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is found in so mu ch New Age literatu re. A non-deterministic but still reductionistic
un iverse is perfectly possible.
ESP and Q uantu m Mechanics
Many au thors, includ ing Capra and the others mentioned above, have argued that so-
called psychic, or psi ph enomena provide an em pirical basis for a connection between
the hum an m ind and the cosmos. They refer to the num erous reports of experiences
that peop le label as psychic: prem onitions, out-of-body and near-death experiences,
miraculous cures, stigmata, poltergeists, “mystical” experiences, past-life regression,
ESP, remote viewing, and oth ers. These are taken, in sum, as a strong indication that
the mind is something beyond m atter, that it has the ability to overcome the laws that
ru le the behavior of norm al material objects.14
Einstein once said that he w ould not believe in ESP un less it was observed to fall
off with distance. This view was based on the well-established physical pr inciple of
energy conservation. If a mind is radiating some form of “psychic energy” in all
directions, then that energy should spread out over an area that increases with the
square of the d istance from the source.15
Since the 1930s, unsu ccessful attem pts h ave been mad e by p arapsychologists to
measu re a d istance effect for ESP.16 In most sciences, the failure of an experim ent to
confirm a theoretical prediction is taken as a strike against the theory. However, those
whose personal beliefs are unshakable by facts will always find a way to rationalize
such failures.
One way to explain the absence of an ESP distance effect is to argue that th e psi
signal is some type of encoded m essage akin to a rad io broadcast. Such m essages can
be transmitted without d egrada tion over large distances - though th ey still have a finite
range. This is not implau sible in itself. However, Einstein’s point was that the
observation of a distance effect wou ld have been a stron g point in favor of ESP and
perhaps converted h im into a believer. This did not happ en.
With the failure of distance experimen ts to prod uce an effect, some p si believers
began to develop the idea that ESP w as a non-physical phenomenon, u nbound by
limitations of space, time, or energy. Instead of interp reting the lack of a distan ce effect
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as a failure of the ESP hyp othesis, they took it as positive evidence that ESP is not a
ph enom enon akin to electromagnetic rad iation. If ESP violates conventional pr inciples
of physics, then perhaps it goes beyond conventional ph ysics toward a broader, all-encompassing theory of mind and the un iverse. Perhap s, but the absence of evidence
for ESP can p rove little one way or the oth er.
In 1974, American p hysicist Jack Sarfatti was working in Lond on w ith the
distinguished qu antum th eorist David Bohm. Before his death in 1992, Bohm was the
central figure in quantu m m ysticism. His nam e will app ear often on these pages, in
both th is later role and his earlier one as a major contribu tor to the d evelopmen t of
quantum physics.
Bohm, Sarfatti, and the pr ominent au thor Arthu r Koestler w ere among th ose
present on June 21, 1974 when the famous Israeli psychic, spoon -bender Uri Geller,
gave a demon stration of his powers in London . Geller succeeded in bend ing a metallic
disc and triggering a strong burst from a Geiger coun ter held in his hand .17
The next day, the performance with the Geiger counter was repeated before
Koestler and auth or Arthu r C. Clarke, amon g others. Accord ing to a press release pu t
out by Sarfatti that was widely distributed, Koestler w as “visibly shaken” and reported
a strong sensation simultaneou s with the burst. The previously skeptical Clark was
also impressed and challenged magicians to “pu t up or shut up ” in d up licating Geller’s
feat. At the time, Sarfatti said that Geller had dem onstrated “genuine psycho-energetic
ability” under “relatively well-controlled and repeatable experimental conditions.”
Both Koestler and Clarke became p rominen t in prom oting the possibility of
paranorm al ph enomena. Before he d ied, Koestler endowed a chair in parapsychology
at Edinbu rgh University. Clarke, who has been an influential science popu larizer and
science fiction writer for decades, has been surpr isingly un-skeptical of psychic
ph enom ena in a series of British TV program s that are occasionally replayed on U. S.
cable TV.
As for Geller’s London dem onstrations, plausible explanations can be found that
do not rely on the invocation of sup ernatu ral forces. Martin Gardner has pointed ou t
that Geller could have simply hidden a small amou nt of harm less rad ioactive substance,
such as a rad ium w atch dial, on his body to cause the Geiger counter to read a h igher
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level of rad iation.18
Geller’s performances are accomp anied by m uch w rithing and
twisting that offers him amp le opportu nity to pu t a magician skills to use.
Sarfatti tells me he no longer believes that Geller has the pow er to affect physicalobjects with his mind . App arently this happened after magician James Randi du plicated
Geller’s tricks for Sarfatti.19
For thousand s of years people have told stories and related personal anecdotes
that have convinced th em that the mind has special powers that reach beyond the
world of mat ter. Despite th is, science has yet to accept th e reality of psi as a fact.
Beyond anecdotal tales and magician’s tricks, which have little scientific value except as
data for studies of anecdotal tales and magician’s tricks, psychic phenom ena have a
history of scientific and semi-scientific investigations d ating back to the m id-nineteenth
centu ry. I have previously written about these stud ies, and th e claims mad e that they
sup port th e existence of psychic ph enomena, in my book Physics and Psychics: The
Search for a World Beyond the Senses. 20
My conclusion agrees with that of a 1987 inqu iry by the N ational Research
Coun cil (NRC) of the U. S. National Academ y of Sciences: After a centu ry and a half of
stud y, “the best scientific evidence does not justify the conclusion th at ESP - that is,
gathering information about objects or thou ghts w ithout the intervention of known
sensory m echanisms - exists.”21
Unsurprisingly, the parap sychological commun ity emphatically d isagrees with
this conclusion.22
They continu e to insist that the sum total of observations over these
years is a strong ind ication that “something mu st be there” beyond the reach of
conventional, materialist science. The subject refuses to d ie, as each discredited claim is
replaced by new ones from a d ifferent variation of psi experiment.
In one way, parap sychology d oes mimic conventional science: Most attention is
focussed on the latest fashions. One current parapsychological fashion in the ganzfeld
experiment in wh ich a subject in a sensory-deprived state attempts to read the mind of
another. Recently, strong positive, rep licable resu lts have been claimed .23
However,
leading experts still find these experiments flawed and no single experiment is by itself
convincing.24
Work is continuing, especially in Edinburgh where a major effort is
un derw ay to see if previous results can be replicated. It remains to be seen whether
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these and oth er ganzfeld experiments will yield resu lts any more reliable than th ose of
their pred ecessors in p si science, or simp ly follow precedent an d fade away as the next
psi fashion moves into their place.Significant results in recent years have also been claimed in exper iments that
stud y whether hum ans (and in some cases, animals and even cockroaches) can affect
the outpu t of rand om event generators (REG experiments, or sometimes RN G , for
rand om nu mber generator ). These touch especially on the subject of this book because
quantu m fluctuations are sometimes used to prod uce the random events that form the
data base. Thus any significant d eviation from expectations wou ld be d irect evidence
for a qu antum-mind connection, provided all experimental artifacts could be ruled ou t.
Although h und reds of REG experiments have been reported,25
the largest data
samp les have been collected by Helmut Schmidt26
and by the group h eaded by Robert
Jahn at the Princeton Engineering An omalies Research Center (PEAR).27
Both projects
claim significant d eviations from expectation at a level than cann ot be explained by
statistical fluctuations or experimental artifacts.
Still, the two sets of experiments d o not agree quantitatively, and so cannot claim
to independently replicate each other. In fact, you could even argu e that since they
quantitatively disagree, they thereby disconfirm each other. Schmidt rep orts that 0.5
percent of his hits are above expectations, wh ile the PEAR result is 0.02 percent high. In
either case, the effect claimed is small and becomes noticeable only after a huge number
of trials. Also, it is not clear whether PEAR even rep licates itself, because the size of the
effect from their early trials d isagrees with that of later trials.
I discussed th e status of the REG experiments throu gh 1990 in Physics and
Psychics.28
At that time, critics had found a number of deficiencies in the experimental
protocols and n oted th at m ost of the PEAR effect was essentially du e to a single
operator, who just happ ened to be th e first subject as w ell as a primary member of the
research team.29
The PEAR group remains very active and claims to have answ ered its critics.
However, its mem bers continue to report results in a cum ulative fashion and it is not
clear from their p apers that these are not affected by biases that may h ave been
introdu ced in the early, developm ental phases of the experiment.
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History is full of reports of exciting new results obtained in the p reliminary
stages of scientific experiments, only to see the effects go away as the experiments are
improved . Two examp les that come immediately to mind are the ESP work by JosephBanks Rhine at Du ke University in the 1930s and the recent repor ts on Cold Fusion.
One severe criticism of the PEAR protocols is that experimenters also act as
operators and th eir results are includ ed anonymou sly in the cum ulative data sample.
While the experimenter-opera tors are subjected to the sam e controls as the others, this
still strikes most observers as an unw ise procedu re that leaves them op en to the
susp icion, how ever unfair, that they have somehow “cooked u p” the effect. Indeed , as
ment ioned, the results are less significant w hen th e experimenter data are removed ,
thou gh they are still claimed to be significant.
This is not to say that any cheating h as occur red, bu t given the history of ESP
research, this mu st remain an economical explanation un til it ruled ou t to the highest
degree. Normal scientific protocols in w hich the experimen ters are kept from having
any influence on the specific outcome of an exper iment are strongly called for in this
case. The researchers can still serve as subjects to test out the equ ipm ent and
experimental procedu res, but their data run s should be exclud ed from the samp les used
to test for an effect.
Even if the PEAR experimental p rotocols are assum ed to be adequate, the
significance of the result remains argu able. Using standard (“classical”) statistical tests,
probabilities of the order of 10-4
for the result being simply d ue to statistical error have
been reported.30
As well as I can tell from reading th e pap ers, this is intend ed to mean
that only one experiment in ten thousand similar ones would h ave given the same
deviation, or a greater one, as the result of norm al statistical fluctuations.
This type of measure of significance, called the significance level, is widely
used , includ ing within my own field of particle physics. However, statistics experts
argue that it is not always approp riate, dep end ing as it does on hyp othetical, non-
existent experiments. Some recommend that other techniques, includ ing but not
limited to those referred to as Bayesian , should be used to determine the level of
significance of an experimental resu lt.31
In a Bayesian analysis, d ifferent a
priori hyp otheses are tested against the data.
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A Bayesian analysis of the PEAR data has been d one by PEAR researcher York
Dobyns. The result was a range of significance, dep end ing on assum ptions, that
includ ed “no-effect” as a strong p ossibility.
32
Dobyns used this result to argue that theclassical (significance-level) method shou ld be taken as more reliable in this situation
than the Bayesian m ethod, because it is insensitive to assum ptions.
However, astronom er William Jefferys has respond ed th at the classical method
involves hidd en and less well-formu lated assump tions, and that Bayesian m ethods at
least p ut their’s up-front.33
The Bayesian analysis of PEAR data suggest that the
classical result is too optimistic by a factor of at least ten and perhap s hu nd reds. A
significance level of 10-4
merits attention, although any effect must certainly be
indep enden tly confirmed w hen one is claiming an imp ortant new result. Any lower
significance level, say 10-3 , should n ot create a stir. In the hu nd reds of experiments
done yearly, statistical fluctuations will produce many artifactual effects at the 0.1
percent significance level.
I conclud e that, as with the ganzfeld experiments, we are forced by scientific
method to adop t a skeptical, wait-and-see attitud e toward the rand om event generator
experiments. Und er normal stand ard s, no one has a right to claim evidence for a
quantu m-mind connection based on these results, though this has been d one34
. Even
weak claims w ill be blown ou t of prop ortion in the public media. Experiments of such
mom entous imp lication mu st be ind epend ently replicated at the same quantitative
level, with believable statistics and far tighter experimental procedures, before they can
be used to sup port th e mystical belief in a cosmic mind .
Most pa rapsychologists believe the evidence for p si is strong enough to conclud e
that the phenomena are real. I think they are dead w rong. In my mind, all these years
of searching w ith no convincing evidence should be taken as a clear ind ication that p si
does not exist. So parap sychologists and I disagree on this. Nevertheless, no
conscientious p arapsychologist can d eny that a broad scientific consensus h as yet to be
assembled in support of their position.
Still, the average p erson is likely to wond er how so many observations of
mysterious p henomena reported in thousand s of books, articles, and newspap er stories
over man y years could be wron g. Movies and TV continue to exploit the public’s thirst
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for such tales, with p rogram mers p aying token lip-service, at best, to the very r eal
doubts that exist in every case wh ere evidence for psychic forces is claimed .
Many of the stories used h ave already been proven to be h oaxes or dow nrightfabrications. But they are rarely reported as such in the pop ular med ia, in what can
only be described as scand alous behavior on the part of the authors and produ cers of
these fables.
Und oubtedly, some narratives are honest reports of unu sual happ enings and
simply misinterp reted as requ iring the intervention of magical forces beyond th e
familiar world of matter. People tend to look for mysterious explanations when the
improbable occurs; they are more interesting; more comforting than th e mun dane. But
with billions of people in the world , imp robable events occur som ewhere on a d aily
basis. When the critical, skeptical method s of conven tional science are applied to the
observations labelled as psychic, and when those data are sufficiently clear to form a
jud gment, more econom ical explana tions not involving extraord inary new hyp otheses
have so far always been found .
The average person is not scientifically trained an d generally u naw are of a
pr imary ru le of scientific d iscovery: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
To demonstrate an extraordinary claim, like the miracle of ESP, extraord inary evidence
mu st be obtained. Only after every alternate, mu nd ane explanation has been ruled out
with the highest degree of certainty can one begin to entertain hyp otheses that
introduce new elements that go beyond curr ent science. So far, the evidence for psi
ph enomena has been ordinary at best.
Still people continu e trying to make someth ing of noth ing. In recent years,
some proponents of psi phenomena have interpreted qu antum mechanics as providing
a basis for instantaneous (“nonlocal”) psychic communication across the universe. As
physicist Amit Goswam i has pu t it:
“The farther away the point, the less intense is the signal reaching it. In contrast,
non local commun ication exhibits no such attenu ation. Since the evidence
indicates that there is no d istance attenuation of distant viewing , distant viewing
mu st be nonlocal.35
Thus it is logical to conclude that p sychic phenomena, such as
distant viewing an d out-of-body experiences, are examp les of the non local
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operation of consciousness.
“Any attempt to d ismiss a phenomenon th at is not und erstood
merely by explaining it as h allucination becomes irrelevant w hen acoherent scientific theory can be app lied. Quantum m echanics undergirds
such a th eory by p roviding crucial sup port for the case of nonlocality of
consciousn ess; it provides an em pirical challenge to the d ogma of locality
as a u niversal limiting p rinciple.”36
In this book, I take up Gosw ami’s challenge.
As w e see from this quotation, qu antu m mechanics offers believers in ESP a
hyp othetical basis for their continued insistence that something m ust exist beyond the
world of conventional physics. That something is usually associated with human
consciousness, which is assumed to possess qualities than cannot be explained from
purely material, physical considerations.
Arthur Koestler once remarked that “the ap parent absurd ities of quantu m
physics . . . make the ap parent absurdities of parapsychology a little less preposterous
and more d igestible.”37
Again, quan tum m echanics provid es the metaphor. A
“quan tum mechanics of consciousness” has been prop osed in wh ich consciousness is
represented by the qu antum mechanical wave fun ction.38
Recently, quantum p hysicist Henry Stapp has written a paper, pu blished in the
prestigious journ al Physical Review, suggesting that a new version of quantum
mechanics can account for the REG results through an interaction between
consciousness and the quantu m w ave function.39
I will come back to this, and m any
other claims, later in this book.
The quantum-consciousness connection, and its association with mystical notions
of wholeness, provide a metap hor th at believers in the existence of psychic powers use
to lay a veneer of scientific respectability over ideas that require a drastic revision in our
existing m odels of reality.40 However, as w e will see, that veneer is so thin as to be
invisible. Quan tum physics is sup ported by solid experimental evidence, but psi
phenom ena are not and the adm itted absurdities of parap sychology remain absurd .
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Aether and Sp irit
The cosmic mind , viewed from the paranorm al perspective, is some sort of invisible
field that pervad es the un iverse. Hum an mind s are sup posedly linked to this field, able
to excite it and receive excitations from it. This is far from a new id ea. In fact, a very
similar notion developed in the nineteenth centu ry, for mu ch the same purpose.
As science gradually became established, peop le sough t ways that it might be
reconciled with their trad itional beliefs, or even used to buttress those beliefs. In the
nineteenth century, some scientists associated spiritual or psychic forces with the aether
that w as though t to fill all space and p rovide the medium for the transmission of light
from distant stars. Going beyond p hysics, these scientists suggested that th e aether
provided the mechanism by w hich hu mans connected to a imagined w orld beyond
matter - the world of the spirit.
The belief in a universal, cosmic fluid p ervad ing space has even older roots. To
the ancient Greeks, aether was the rarified air breathed by the god s on Olympus.
Aristotle used this term for the celestial element, the stuff of the heavens, and said it
was subject to different tend encies than the stuff of earth. That is, aether was not
bound by the same laws as ordinary matter.
When N ewton w as promp ted to explain the nature of gravity, he replied that
gravity might be transmitted by the invisible aether.41 He further suggested that the
aether also may be responsible for electricity, magnetism, light, radiant heat, and the
motion of living things that he, like his contemporaries, thou ght was the consequence
of some sour ce beyond inanimate matter.
Today, with kn owledge not available to Newton, we can accoun t for life as a
pu rely material ph enomenon with no need to invoke any special life-force. Despite
this, and the comp lete absence of scientific sup por t for the existence of imm aterial, vital
forces, we still hear of ch’i, ki, prana, and psychic energy - usually in association with
alternative healing. Again the ego is doing the thinking, assum ing that something
special mu st accoun t for the w onder of its own existence.
Newton had envisioned matter and light as particulate in nature, though they
app ear continuous to the hu man eye. Gravity, however, seemed to be something else,
acting invisibly - holistically - over the entire universe. (It should be noted , though, that
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the gravitational force falls off inversely with the squ are of distance, un like the
imagined psychic fields. )
In the m id-nineteenth centu ry, the mathematical concept of the field w asdeveloped to describe the app arent continu ity of matter, light, and gravity. A field has
a value at each p oint in space, in contrast to the properties of a particle which are
localized to an infinitesimal region of space.
Pressure and density in a fluid are tw o examples of how the field concept is
successfully app lied in practice. Although matter is d iscontinu ous at the atomic and
molecular level, these “matter fields” p rovide for an accurate description of the
behavior of solids, liquid s, and gases because, on the everyd ay scale, matter appears
continuous to a very good ap proximation.
As the phen omena of electricity and m agnetism became better und erstood, they
also were d escribed in terms of fields. Then, in 1867, James Clerk Maxwell had one of
those rare insights that p un ctuate the history of science. He discovered that the
equations uniting electricity w ith magnetism called for the p ropagation of
electromagnetic waves in a vacuum , Furth ermore, these waves moved at the speed of
light.
Waves were already very familiar ph enomena in ph ysics. In (app arently)
continuou s media such as air, pressure and density propagate as sound waves wh en the
med ia are excited . For Maxwell’s electrom agnetic waves, the question arose: What’s
doing the waving? The analogy was d rawn that all of space out to the most distant
stars was filled w ith an elastic medium - the aether - whose excitation p rodu ced the
ph enomenon of light.
Electromagnetic waves beyond the nar row spectrum of visible light w ere
pred icted, soon observed , and put to use in “wireless telegraphy.” One of the early
workers was th e English physicist Oliver Lodge. While making major contributions to
ph ysics and engineering, Lodge joined William Crookes, Alfred Russel Wallace (co-
discoverer of evolution) and other notable nineteenth century scientists in extending
their horizons to search for phenom ena that transcend ed the w orld of matter.
If wireless telegraphy was possible, why not wireless telepath y? If electrical
circuits could generate and d etect ethereal waves, why not the hu man brain?
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Coincidentally, certain p eople wh o claimed to possess the ability to commu nicate with
other mind s, living and dead , had just appeared on the scene. They were called
spiritualist mediums a century ago; today th eir spiritualist descendan ts are known aspsychics or chann ellers.
Unfortunately, most scientists lack the specific skills need ed to d istingu ish fact
from illusion in the world of magic. The universe does not lie; peop le lie. And so Lodge
and other nineteenth century psychical researchers unw ittingly allowed themselves to
be fooled by the tricks of professional fortune-tellers and sleight-of-hand artists posing
as spiritualists. They perm itted their wishes and dreams to govern their senses and
reason. Lodge, desperately wanting to believe in life after death, had written
passionately about imagined comm un ications with h is son Raymond , killed in Flanders
in 1915. Sad ly, he accepted the wildest claims of med iums and skilled stage
magicians.42
Spiritualism offered scientists like Lodge a w ay to reconcile science with a belief
in imm ortality. The resurrection of the comp lete body had always been the primary
tenet of Christianity. If only Jesus’s soul had gone to heaven, wh y would h is body have
been missing from th e tomb? The Catholic Chu rch has insisted that the Virgin Mary’s
body also ascend ed, atom by atom, to heaven . As for the rest of hu man ity, our bod ies
had to await the Day of Jud gmen t for our comp lete resurrection.
By the nineteenth centu ry, however, it had become clear that it was absurd to
think of all the atoms of a hu man bod y reassembling on Jud gment Day. Our atoms are
being replaced mom ent-by-mom ent anyw ay. So the idea of a “spiritual body,”
separate and d istinct from m atter, was developed.43
Lodge p roposed that th e aether
was the substance of spirit. As he put it:
“The body of matter w hich we see and hand le is in no case the whole body; it
mu st have an etheric coun terpart to h old it together, and it is this etheric
coun terpart w hich in the case of living bodies is, I suspect, truly animated. In my
view, life and mind are never d irectly associated w ith matter; and they are only
indirectly enabled to act up on it throu gh their more d irect connection with an
etheric vehicle which constitutes their real instrum ent, an ether bod y w hich does
not interact w ith them and does not operate on m atter. . . .An etheric body w e
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possess now, independent of accidents that may happ en to its sensory aggregate
of associated m atter, and that etheric body we shall continue to possess, long
after the mater ial por tion is discard ed. The only difficulty of realizing this isbecause nothing etheric affects ou r p resent senses.”
44
Few of the faithful today realize that the notion of a separate “spirit” and “body” was a
fairly recent d evelopm ent in Christian th inking, though it goes back ages in Ind ia and
Greece. That is not to say that the id ea of a spirit or soul is new to Christianity, but
simply that the sharp d istinction between body and sp irit, or body and mind , now
commonp lace in Christian thinking was a mod ern innovation that cannot be found in
the scriptu res or early teachings of the Church.
Relativity and Qu antum Mechanics
Near th e turn of the centu ry, Michelson and Morley sough t to find experimental
evidence for the electromagnetic, or “lum iniferous,” aether and succeeded in show ing
instead th at it d id not ap pear to exist. Short ly thereafter, in 1905, Einstein developed h is
theory of relativity which dem onstrated that the concept of an aether w as
mathematically and logically inconsistent with Maxwell’s equations of
electromagnetism. Einstein conclud ed that electromagnetic waves, includ ing light,
could not be the vibrations of an aether. Still, Oliver Lodge remained firm in his belief
that a u niversal cosmic fluid existed that could be excited by the hu man mind . To
Lodge, the aether was a necessity, the cosmic glue without w hich “th ere can hard ly be a
material universe at all.”45
Lodge was similarly unh app y with what he was hearing quan tum physicists, like
Planck and Bohr, say about th e fund amentally discrete, quantized, natu re of all
phenom ena. He d eplored “th e modern tend ency . . . to emph asize the discontinuous or
atomic character of everything.”46
But p rogress passed h im by, as evidence
accum ulated that m atter is composed of discrete atoms, that electricity is the flow of
electrons, and that light is a current of particles called ph otons.
By the time Oliver Lodge d ied in 1940, both the luminiferous aether and material
continuity were already long in their graves. Today the electromagnetic aether is no
longer a cand idate for the stuff of spirit. The aether simp ly does not exist. In its place,
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even more ephemeral aether fields have been imagined as sou rces for spiritual
quintessence - the field of the quantu m w ave function, the “quantu m p otential,” or
perhaps, as Danah Zohar suggests, the vacuu m itself.
47
Like Lodge, Ernst Mach, and man y other capable physicists of the early century,
Einstein was uncomfortable with quan tum mechanics, calling it “spooky.” In 1935, he
and two collaborators, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, wrote a pap er argu ing that
quan tum mechanics was incomp lete because it does not provide for a description of
what th ey called “physical reality.”48
Einstein and his collaborators pointed out that, following conventional quan tum
mechanics, an experiment p erformed at one point in space seems to immediately
determine the ou tcome of another experiment performed at a d ifferent p oint, even
when the separation between th ese points is such as to require a signal moving faster
than light to carry information from one to the other in the elapsed time interval. In
fact, a signal must m ove at infinite speed to connect two simultaneou s events separated
any d istance, even one as small as an atom ic diameter. This d istance could also be
billions of light years, if all events past and futu re are to be connected.
Yet quan tum mechanics seems to allow for just su ch an instantan eous correlation
between separated events. This has provided a scientific basis, at least in some m inds,
for the notion that the u niverse is one simultaneously-connected w hole. Einstein
referred to this quantu m connectivity as a “sp ooky action at a distance,” noting th at it
was incompatible with h is claim that n o signals can m ove faster than light.
Like so many of the strange effects of quantu m m echan ics, this apparent
parad ox, which we w ill be examining in great d etail, is a consequence of the wave-
particle duality in w hich physical systems seem to behave either like waves or p articles,
dep end ing on which type of prop erty you are trying to measure. Again the distinction
is between the discrete, localized properties of a particle and the continuous, distributed
prop erties of a wave field.
Now it is not common ly appreciated that instantaneous correlations between
separated events w ere already p resent in pr e-relativistic, pre-quan tum ph ysics. Prior to
Einstein, no limit existed on the speeds of bod ies. Furth ermore, classical waves, even
those moving at finite speed that you stimulate by tossing a p ebble in a lake, can
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prod uce correlations between separated p henom ena. You can imagine such a wave
carrying information in the m odu lation of its amplitude or frequency, just as w ith
sound and radio waves.As a radio wave propagates outward , all the information carried by the
waveform spreads throu gh space. At any given time, two separated receivers on the
wave front obtain that identical information; they simultaneou sly hear the same
progr am. The two receivers can be said to be correlated, but that relationship is not a
causal one in which an action at the p lace of one receiver generates a result at the p lace
of the other receiver. Observers at the receiver positions cannot instantaneou sly signal
each other un less that signal can move at infinite speed.
So, ind epend ent of quantu m m echanics, observations at separated points in
space can still be correlated . This correlation, how ever, does not imply sup erlum inal
signalling nor any other m iracle; no physical law is violated. Two points in space can
receive the same information wh en that information originates from the same point.
Quan tum mechanics, on the other hand, has suggested to some that
measu rements m ade at one point in space can instantan eously affect the outcome of
measurements at another point. This notion, which was expressed in the Goswami
quotation above, is termed nonlocality. It implies some sort of sup erluminal
signalling, in violation of Einstein’s assertion that noth ng can go faster than light. As
we will see in the following chapters, the consequences of nonlocal commu nication are
so profound as to turn most of our concepts of space and time on their heads. Indeed ,
the realization by Einstein that motions at infinite speed m ade it impossible to assign
points in space and time a unique reality led him to assert that a maximum speed, the
speed of light, exists.
In 1964 John S. Bell, stimu lated by the ideas of David Bohm , showed h ow it was
possible to experimentally test the spooky w ay quantu m m echan ics seemed to allow
for superlum inal action at a distance.49 Bohm , following a largely forgotten su ggestion
of de Broglie a quarter century earlier, had proposed an alternative interpretation of
quan tum mechanics in which yet-un detected entities were responsible for the w ave-like
behav ior of particles.50
Following convention, I w ill call these entities hidd en variables,
though the term is not particularly enlightening.
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Bell showed th e way to experimentally decide between th e most important class
of hidden variables, those that a re both “local” and “real” as are the var iables of
classical physics, and the conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics. Localvariables do not v iolate Einstein’s relativity and involve no superlu minal signalling.
Real variables, in th is context, are like the familiar variables of classical physics, being
simultaneously measurable and behaving in pred ictable ways.
Now, after a series of precise experiments, the issue h as been d ecided: Hidden
variables that are both local and real are ruled ou t.51
Real, nonlocal hidden variables,
such as those introd uced by de Broglie and Bohm, remain possible alternatives to the
conventional interpretation of quan tum mechanics.
But nonlocality implies sup erlum inal connections at some level, and at least an
app arent violation of relativity. Since experiment has yet show n an y such violation, a
more economical interpretation of the results on experimental tests of Bell’s theorem is
simply that no hidd en variables exist. Popu lar literature, how ever, wou ld lead you to
think that nonlocality is a demon strated fact of natu re. As I will explain in great detail in
these pages, nonlocality exists only in theory. No superluminal motion or
comm un ication has ever been observed.
Experiment, not theory, will decide whether n onlocality is indeed a fact of
natu re. So far, it is not know n to be a fact. Those quantu m interp retations that
incorporate nonlocality claim, with a certain illogic, that th e superlum inal transfer of
informat ion is still imp ossible. However, I fail to see how nonlocality can imply
anyth ing meaningful other than commu nication, or other motion, faster than th e speed
of light .
The New Holism
With experiment ruling out local hidd en variables, a new holism has begu n to develop.
For examp le, Bohm ’s nonlocal quantum potential, which we will describe later, seems to
imply an interconnectedness between separated ph enomen a that does not exist in
redu ctionist physics. In the new holism, a revised qu antu m m echanics provid es the
mechanism by which signals can move faster than light, making possible the
instantaneous connections across the u niverse.52
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However, the nonlocality of hidd en variables, or other va riations on nonlocal,
causal mechanisms underlying quantum mechanics, is a nonlocality within that specific
interpretation and not necessarily within quantu m m echan ics itself as a theory thatdescribes the results of observations.
If the ap parent em pirical violation of Bell’s theorem is to be construed as
evidence for nonlocality in natu re, which is by no mean s demonstrated , then that
nonlocality is contained in hidden variables or other structures that play no role in
quan tum mechanics as it is currently practiced. Any theory of hidden variables is thus a
new th eory, a sub-quantum theory that must lie deeper than quan tum theory.
This has not d iscouraged m any au thors from find ing other mystical messages
within the conventional Copenhagen interpretation of quantu m mechanics. They
conclude that we can never adequately describe, in scientific terms, the “irreducible
whole.” This obscure concept h as been related to the “being-in-itself” of that m aster of
obscurity, ph ilosopher Mar tin Heidigger.
For example, in their book The Conscious Universe, astroph ysicist Menas Kafatos
and ph ilosopher Robert Nad eau associate being-in-itself with the quan tum wave
function:
“If the u niverse were, for examp le, completely described by the w ave function . .
. . One could then conclude that Being, in its physical analogue at least, had been
‘revealed’ in the wave fun ction. We could th en assume that any sense we have
of profound un ity with the cosmos or any sense of mystical oneness with the
cosmos, has a d irect analogue in p hysical reality. In other words, this experience
of unity with th e cosmos could be presu med to correlate with the action of the
determ inistic wave function w hich determines not on ly the locations of quan ta
on our brain but also the direction in which they are moving.”53
However, let me ad d a cautionary note. The vision of the new h olists is not so
app ealing as it may first appear. The field of cosmic mind , whether aether, wave
function, or quan tum potential, is comp letely deterministic. In wh atever manifestation,
holistic ph ysics possesses the very N ewtonian, mechanistic character that is so decried
by New Age authors.
In the view of quantu m holism, though w e hum ans are proscribed by the
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un certainty p rinciple from ever being able to pred ict the exact outcome of events, those
events are pred etermined n evertheless. In a holistic un iverse, everything is intimately
and instantaneously connected to every event past and future, here on earth and farout in space, with no room for chance or choice.
I ask myself: Do I really w ant to be one w ith the u niverse, so intimately
intertwined w ith all of existence that my ind ividual existence is mean ingless? I find I
mu ch prefer the notion that I am a temp orary bit of organized matter. At least I am
my ow n bit of matter. Every thought an d action that results from the remarkable
interactions of my p ersonal bag of atoms belongs to me alone. And so these thou ghts
and actions carry far greater value than if they belonged to some cosmic mind th at I
cannot even d imly perceive.
The mystical holist trades the real, pulsating life of the outer w orld for w hat h e
perceives as an inner world of peace. But that peace is the peace of a prison. Science
has always provid ed the means for breaking us free from the pr isons of ignorance and
sup erstition. I hope to convince you that science has not sudd enly reversed its course
and become yet another set of shackles for hum anity to carry. On the contrar y, science
continues to provide the key that u nlocks all of our chains so that our bodies and m inds
are free to roam the u niverse.
Notes
1. Lanza1992, pp. 24-26. For my response, see Stenger 1993.
2. Capra 1975.
3. Capra 1982.
4. Fergu son 1980, p . 145.
5. Zu kav 1979, p . 314.
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6. Lederman 1993.
7. GUT predicted that the average proton lifetime was of the order of 1032
years.
The cur rent experimental limit is greater than 1033
years.
8. Technically, only one particular GUT was falsified so all possible GUTs are not
ruled ou t. But w hen the simplest mod el failed, theorists started looking
elsewhere.
9. Chopra 1989.
10. Chop ra 1993.
11. For a critical review of Chopra’s ideas, see Butler 1992, pp. 110-118.
12. Newsweek, March 23, 1994, p. 81.
13. Patricia Newton, talk before the 98th Annual Meeting of the National Medical
Association, San Antonio, Texas, 1993. Qu otation provided by Bernard Or tiz de
Montellano (private communication).
14. Palm er 1986.
15. A focussed beam w ill fall off less rapidly, but still will be expected to decrease in
intensity as one moves away from the source. The more focussed, the lower the
decrease, but also the less likely that the beam w ill intercept a receiver. For adiscussion of Einstein’s view on ESP, see Gardner 1981, pp . 151-157.
16. Rhine 1954. For a more recent attemp t, see Dunne 1992.
17. See Science News 106, July 20, 1974, p. 8. See also Gard ner 1981, p. 94, for his
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recounting of the events. In a private comm un ication with m e, Sarfatti has
confirmed the accuracy of these reports.
18. Gardner 1981, p . 94.
19. See Randi 1973, 1985 and Gardn er 1981, note 7, p. 104.
20. St enger 199 0. Uri Geller f i led t hree lawsuit s against me in 19 92 over
t his book. All were set t led in my favor.
2 1. Druckman 1 98 7.
22. See, for example, Palmer 1989 , p. 10.
23. Bem 1994.
24. Blackmore1994, Hyman 1994.
25. Druckm an 1987 , p. 185.
26. Schmidt 1969, 1992 , 1993 .
27. Jahn 1986, 1987, 1991, 1992; Dunne 1992.
28. St enger 1990 , pp. 18 0-18 4. Ot her crit iques can be found in Hansel
19 89 , Druckman 198 7 pp. 184-190 , and Alcock 19 90 .
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29. Alcock 1990 , pp. 6 , 107.
30. Dunne 1992.
31. For a nice int roduct ion to Bayesian met hods of inference, and its
connect ion t o Occam’s razor, see Jeff erys 19 92 a.
3 2. Dobyns 1 99 2.
33. Jef ferys 1 99 2b.
34. Jahn 1986 , Stapp 1994.
35. Dist ant viewing, or remote viewing, is a formerly f ashionable version of
ESP. Like all ot her prev ious ESP fashions, it has been t horoughly
debunked.
36 . Goswami 1993, p. 136 .
37. See, for example, Ot eri 197 5. The Koestler quot at ion can be found on
p. 268 . See also, Puharich, 1979.
38. Jahn 1981, 1986; Schmidt 1969, 1993.
39. St app 1994.
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40. For a review of t he early hist ory of quant um t heory and ESP, see
Gardner, 1981 . This art icle originally appeared in t he New York Review
of Books, May 17, 1 97 9. The reprint also contains let t ers react ing t o
t he review and Gardner’s response t o t hese. Also, see St enger, 1990 ,
pp. 24 6-2 50 f or my review of Evan Harris Walker’s quant um t heory of
psychokinesis given in Puharich 1979.
41. For a hist ory of t he idea of t he aether, see Cushing 19 89 , pp. 27 2-311.
42. For furt her discussion and references, see St enger 19 90 , Chapt er 7.
43. Lamont 1990.
4 4. Lodge 1 92 9, p. 1 4.
45. Lodge 1920.
4 6. Lodge 1 91 4, p. 2 1.
4 7. Zohar 1 99 0, p. 2 25 .
4 8. Einst ein 1 9 35 .
49. Bell 1964.
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50. Bohm 1952.
51. Aspect 1 982.
52. See, for example, Talbot 1991.
5 3. Kaf at o s 1 9 90 , p. 1 2 4.