cosmic mind

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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



14

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



15

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.



16

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.



17

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



18

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



19

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 .



20

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



21

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?



22

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



23

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,



24

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



25

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.



26

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



27

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.

cosmic mind

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