Of all the books of the dead, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is remarkable as a picture of human life and death forming a continuum of learning experiences. In this picture, there are passageways which the Tibetans call bardos that take one to states of living while others correspond to doorways of states after death; this model looks at life and death as one continuous series of transitions (“death is in life, life is in death”). There was a comic strip in the newspaper, called B.C., in which a palmist, while looking at a client's palm, exclaims, “This is amazing! I have never seen a lifeline that formed a complete circle.” To which the client replies, “I'm into reincarnation.” He could also have said, “I'm into the Tibetan Book of the Dead.”
Before we go into a description of the bardos, a short discussion of Buddhist metaphysics is useful. Actually, the metaphysics is the same as that of monistic idealism, which we have already examined, but different names are used. Thus, consciousness as the ground of being is called Dharmakaya in Buddhism. The transcendent realm of archetypes is called Sambhogakaya. And finally, the manifest realm of experience is called Nirmanakaya.
The first bardo is birth; the second is one's lifetime from childhood through adulthood to the moment before death, which is the third bardo. The fourth bardo begins the journey in death; it is the beginning of a series of opportunities for the soul (the surviving “self”) that is departing the body.6 In the fourth bardo, the clear light of pure consciousness (Dharmakaya) appears. If the soul recognizes the clear light, it becomes free of the karmic wheel and needs no longer reincarnate. The fifth bardo in death parallels the second bardo in life; the soul here encounters first the peaceful gods and next the wrathful gods—the demons or asuras—the forms of the archetypal world (Sambhogakaya). The clear light is now seen as dull light, and recognition leads no longer to total freedom from the karmic wheel of samsara (the manifest world) but to a nirvanic path leading to liberation in the (nonmaterial) form of Sambhogakaya; failure to recognize the light leads to the sixth bardo, the samsaric path.
The sixth bardo is the bardo of reincarnation; the spirit has missed the opportunities afforded it to identify with pure consciousness or the archetypal transcendent world of Sambhogakaya. All that is left for it is the worldly path of rebirth. Depending on the karma, it is now reborn in one of six lokas (places) that include Heaven and Hell as well as Earth, until the karmic debt is paid or credit accrued. After the sixth bardo, the soul must be incarnated in physical form (Nirmanakaya) where only new karma can accrue.
Incidentally, the description of the after-death transition of the last two bardos is very similar in Hinduism, in which the two possibilities in the fifth bardo are referred to as devayana, the path to the gods (depicted as a path going up to the sky), and pitriyana, the path to the father (depicted as a path that turns like a bow toward the Earth).
I have, of course, grown up with these ideas, albeit in the Hindu context, although I encountered the Tibetan Book of the Dead much later in my life. These very picturesque descriptions always provoked a negative reaction in my rational scientific self, even in young adulthood. The very dualistic picture of a soul without a body roaming (where?) various paths of nowhere did not make sense to me. The fact that nobody could verify that there were such experiences if nobody could come back to life from death produced further discomfort.
It is interesting that modern science has a concept called the black hole—the state of a massive star that has collapsed under its own gravity, leaving a singular hole in space—which has a “horizon” beyond which everything can fall in and nothing can escape. Thus, nobody can come back from a black hole to tell us how it is in there, either, and yet it is not true that we cannot know what happens to something inside the horizon. We know because we have a very reliable theory, Einstein's general theory of relativity, to inform us.
I mention this because the power of theory is often underestimated in our culture, but in modern physics theoretical “things” that we cannot directly verify give us dependable predictions upon which successful technologies are built. (You can see this in the case of quantum mechanics; the theoretical idea of transcendent possibility waves in potentia led to the technology of transistors.) We also give these theories credibility because they are discovered through our creativity.
Returning to my prejudice against books of the dead, my uneasiness continued until May of 1994, more than a year after my friend Hugh Harrison came to study the new physics with me. I knew that Hugh and his late wife, Ruth, in the early 1980s, had built an exhibit named the Continuum Center in Bandon, Oregon, which basically promulgated the idea of death and life as a continuous journey. Occasionally, Hugh talked about it and about ideas of reincarnation; he contended that if there is life after death, as in Christianity, then, by symmetry, there must be life before life. Hugh was a sympathizer of the Theosophy movement in the West that Madame Helena Blavatsky started more than a hundred and twenty-five years ago. Theosophists consider reincarnation among the basic principles of reality (Blavatsky 1968; Judge 1973). Yet I was very noncommittal about those ideas.
In the first week of May 1994, however, something unexpected took place, unexpected and unforgettable. I was swamped with work that consisted mostly of polishing up old ideas for publication, writing rebuttals, etc. Creativity was not active in my life, and life seemed to have lost its rudder once again. This put me in a state of rare heaviness one night. I watched the TV show Picket Fences, an episode that focused on some of the ethical problems of death. I went to sleep with a heaviness of heart that I had almost forgotten, but in the morning, in a reverie state of half-dream/half-wakefulness, I felt very light, and the first inkling that the Tibetan Book of the Dead was correct and useful began to form in my dreamy mind's sky. Actually, it was more than an inkling; it was an admonition that I clearly heard: “The Tibetan Book of the Dead is correct; it's your job to prove it.” Since it was a Saturday, I was able to stay in a creative haze most of the day, during which time some new ideas about death and reincarnation as a theory of science began to take shape. What provided the light with which to look were the ideas of quantum physics. The fundamental idea that turned me on the most was quantum nonlocality.
Objects, according to quantum physics, are possibility waves, technically called wave functions. If you insert a two-slitted screen in the path of the electron, as in the famous double-slit experiment (fig. 2.1), which slit will the electron pass through? Both slits simultaneously. Do you have trouble visualizing this? Relax. This happens pre-actuality, in possibility only. The electron passes simultaneously 50 percent through one slit and 50 percent through the other, but in possibility.
Fig. 2.1 The double-slit experiment.
How do we know this? Because the two possibility waves from the two slits spread and interfere with one another. They add to one another in such a way as to reinforce the wave in some places and to destroy it in between those places (fig. 2.2). In effect, this allows the electrons to arrive at many places beyond the two-slitted screen where they could not have gone had they traveled via a single slit as marbles do. If you shoot marbles through a two-slitted screen, marbles will land only behind the slits. But when a beam of electrons passes through a double-slitted screen before falling on a fluorescent plate, it forms a pattern of light and dark bands (fig. 2.3), not just two blobs behind the two slits. The light bands are the places where the wave is reinforced, that is, where the probability for the electrons to arrive is high. In between the light bands, the probability of arrival is low, and we get no electrons; hence the dark band.
Fig. 2.2 Waves arriving at the fluorescent screen in phase reinforce each other (constructive interference); waves arriving at a point out of phase cancel each other out.
Fig. 2.3 The resulting interference pattern of alternate bright and dark fringes.
But then, if electrons travel as possibility waves, what brings actuality out of the possibilities? Undeniably, whenever we observe, whenever we measure, we see a unique actuality. After all, when we look at the fluorescent plate in the above double-slit experiment, each electron arrives at a single spot, not spread out all over. The succinct answer that has surfaced in recent years is that an observer's looking creates a unique actuality from the sprawling possibility wave—that is, conscious looking manifests the actual event from all the possible ones.7
A comedian in Calcutta once went to a sweet shop. He saw some rasagullas (balls of milk curd and sugar) in the showcase and wanted some. But when the shopkeeper began to bring out the rasagullas from the showcase, the comedian objected. “I don't want those. Bring me some from your reserves.” The shopkeeper was surprised. “But these are from the same fresh batch I made this morning,” he protested. “But people have been looking at the ones in the showcase,” objected the comedian.
It is debatable whether looking changes things in a showcase, but the effect of looking in the world of quantum physics is undeniable and drastic—it collapses possibility into actuality. Note the special use of the word “collapse.” Physicists are attached to this word to denote quantum measurement because of the image of spread-out waves suddenly collapsing to a localized particle, which is the appropriate image when we are measuring electrons (fig. 2.4). Accordingly, we will use this word even when we speak of quantum possibilities in the brain out of which consciousness chooses the actuality that we experience.
Fig. 2.4. When we look, we collapse the electron's wave to localize at one place. But between our observations, an electron spreads out as a wave of possibility in transcendent potentia.
Note, however, that the waves of possibility do not travel in space and time, because if they did, the waves could not have collapsed instantly to a particle. (In space and time, all things take a finite speed to move. The maximum speed limit was discovered by Einstein; it is the speed of light.) Quantum waves are possibility waves in transcendent potentia, and it takes consciousness to collapse possibility into actuality, which it does by exercising its freedom of choice, the previously mentioned power of downward causation.
But this solution of quantum collapse by consciousness, originally suggested by the mathematician John von Neumann (1955), is rejected by many quantum scientists, because they picture consciousness as a dual separate world interacting with this material world in the fashion that Descartes asserted long ago, and that picture is laden with difficult questions. What would mediate the interaction of consciousness with the material world? How would consciousness interact with the material world without violating the law of physics that energy is conserved for the physical world?
In order to make sense of consciousness collapsing quantum possibility into actuality, this Cartesian legacy of dualistic thinking about consciousness must give way to a monistic idealist thinking. In monistic idealist thinking, consciousness is all there is; it is the one ground of all being, the only ultimate reality. Consciousness can collapse material possibilities because it transcends the material universe; it is beyond the jurisdiction of quantum mechanics. All possibilities are within consciousness. When it chooses, it simply recognizes one of the possibilities, and no mediation by a third substance, no dualistic energy exchange is involved.
Study the gestalt picture (fig. 2.5) in which the same lines represent two superimposed pictures, one of a young woman, the other of an old woman. The artist called the picture “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law.” When we perceive the young woman (or the old), we are not doing anything to the picture. We are just recognizing and choosing among the possibilities that are already present. The process of conscious collapse is like this.
Fig. 2.5 A gestalt picture, “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law,” by W. E. Hill. If you are seeing the mother-in-law, in order to see the wife you don't do anything to the picture; all you do is change your perspective of looking. The possibilities of both wife and the mother-in-law are within your consciousness; all you do is recognize one possibility or the other.
Conventionalists also object against consciousness converting the quantum possibilities into certain actuality on the ground that people may choose differently from their individual consciousness. What if two people are simultaneously choosing the same event—what then? If they choose different, contradictory actualities, would that not generate pandemonium? If only one choice prevails, then whose choice? For example, suppose you and I arrive from perpendicular directions at a streetlight operated by a quantum device and we both want a green light. Who gets to go first, whose choice counts? The monistic idealist answer is, there is only one chooser, consciousness is one. You and I have individual thoughts, feelings, dreams, etc., but we don't have consciousness, let alone separate ones; we are consciousness. And it is the same consciousness for all of us (Goswami 1993). (See also Blood 1993.)8
So we choose, but in the nonordinary state of consciousness in which you and I are one, our choices don't conflict. The monistic idealist interpretation of quantum measurement has another important facet (Goswami 1993). Consciousness is the ground of being; we cannot turn it off. So does consciousness choose always whenever an ambiguity arises? But then there would be no double-slit interference pattern because consciousness would already have chosen which slit the electron would pass through before the electron has a chance to interfere with its alter ego.
The answer to this puzzle is to realize that every quantum measurement needs a sentient observer. Note also that when we observe an external object, in response to the stimulus, our brain produces a number of macroscopically distinguishable possibilities; this is the brain's possibility wave. Therefore, in an act of observation, a quantum measurement, consciousness not only collapses the possibility wave of the object, but also the possibility wave of the brain. The quantum measurement in our brains sets up our self-reference—a cognitive distinction between us, subjects, and the field of awareness of objects we experience (fig. 2.6). Think of a rose-patterned carpet which you see as a single object lying on the floor. Now imagine that you see the roses and the background pattern of leaves as separate objects. But this is an appearance; there is only the fabric, and the roses and the leaves have no separate existence apart from the fabric. Similarly, the distinction of self and object, upon quantum measurement, is only appearance.
What makes the brain so special that self-reference, the ability to refer to itself, happens? Consider the circular logic inherent here:
Fig. 2.6 Collapse of the quantum possibility wave in the observer's brain leads to self-reference—a split of consciousness into subject and object(s).
There is no collapse without the brain; but there is no brain, only possibilities, unless there is collapse.
Such circular logic (a familiar example is the chicken or the egg—which comes first?) is called a tangled hierarchy. The quantum measurement in the brain is a tangled hierarchy, and this gives rise to our self-reference—the apparent subject-object split nature of experience. (See chapter 7 for further details.)
There is a price for experience. Experiences produce memories which condition our self-referential system—our brain. The influence of conditioning on quantum measurement is what gives the appearance that our actions arise from an ego/I acting on the basis of its past experiences, its character. But it is an assumed identity that the free-willing consciousness dons in the interest of having a reference point. Our ordinary states of consciousness are clouded by this ego-identity. (More on this in chapter 7.)
So, to summarize, what does it take for us to recognize our power of downward causation? It takes the nonordinary state of consciousness in which we experience our oneness beyond our individuality and our cocreatorship of the subject-object split world.
All this I knew from my previous work (Goswami 1993). I also knew that in spite of the ego-development, all is not lost. Some experiences involve the kind of nonordinary state of consciousness referred to above that helps us penetrate this cloud of conditioning. When we are creative, when we experience ESP, when we love, in those moments we rise above the conditioning, and we act in full knowledge of our oneness and our co-creatorship, as we collapse the available possibilities with full freedom of choice. Perhaps this also happens when we die. In the moments preceding death, we become privy to one consciousness, and through it, nonlocality.
For materialists, there is only the material world, only things moving in time and space; there is no conceptual base for another world. When you think questions like, What happens to me after death? you think dualistically. You think that the surviving part of you, your soul, goes to another world, a dual world. But the logic of the scientist thwarts you. How does the dual world interact with this space-time one? And if it doesn't, there is no sense worrying about it, because you aren't going to know. Quantum physics gives us an alternative—consciousness can mediate the interaction between two disparate bodies. Let me elaborate.
In quantum mechanics, we can correlate objects so that they remain interconnected (phase entangled) even when separated by vast distances (fig. 2.7). When we observe, the correlated quantum objects collapse into actualities, into separateness, but the entangled nature of their collapse shows without doubt that they were correlated. How was the correlation preserved over a long distance, and manifested taking no time, without an exchange of signals? Clearly, the correlation and its collapse are nonlocal, involving a domain of interconnectedness that transcends the immanent space-time domain of reality where things are seen as independent and separate.
Fig. 2.7. Once two quantum objects are correlated via interaction, the correlation remains even if the objects are separated by vast distances.
Our understanding and acceptance of a transcendent realm of interconnectedness has taken a quantum leap as a result of an experiment in quantum physics conducted in 1982 by a group of French physicists led by Alain Aspect (Aspect, Dalibard, and Roger 1982). This is an experiment in which two correlated photons influence one another at a distance without exchanging signals. It's as if you are dancing in Los Angeles and your partner is dancing in New York but you are both coordinated in the same dance steps without the aid of television or any other signal processing device.
A little detail will help to clarify further the nonlocality of the quantum measurement process. Recall that in quantum physics, objects are waves of possibilities before we observe them. Thus, a quantum of light (photon) has no attribute until a measurement is done on it. Aspect's experiment concentrated on a two-valued attribute of the photon called polarization along or perpendicular to some axis (something that a Polaroid sunglass measures; the two-valuedness is clear when you realize that no light photon can pass through two perpendicularly crossed Polaroids, one with axis vertical, the other horizontal; see figure 2.8).
Fig. 2.8 The two-valuedness of light's polarization is revealed by looking at light through crossed Polaroids; you don't see anything.
In Aspect's experiment, an atom emits a pair of photons so correlated that if one is polarized along a certain axis, the other should be polarized along the same axis. But quantum objects are only possibilities, so photons do not start with any set polarization axis; only our observation can fix a polarization axis for them. And if we observe one correlated photon, thereby giving it a designated polarization, the other photon's polarization is also immediately designated, no matter how far it is from the first photon. If the two photons are so far apart that when we measure one that not even light (which travels with the fastest speed in nature) can mediate its influence on the other, we must conclude that the influence is nonlocal, taking place without the intermediary of local signals. This is what Aspect and his collaborators found experimentally.
How are the two photons connected, if not through signals going through space taking time? They are connected through a nonlocal domain of consciousness that transcends space and time. It also follows that consciousness, acting nonlocally, simultaneously collapses the states of two correlated quantum objects.
Translated in terms of people, if two people are correlated and then move to opposite ends of the Earth, if one of them sees a light flash, the other one may see the flash as well even without an actual stimulus (fig. 2.9). Does this sound preposterous? In truth, such nonlocal mutual influence and communication between humans has been known for millennia in the domain of mental thought. It's called telepathy.
Fig. 2.9. The miracle of nonlocal correlations. Once correlated at some origin, if one subject sees a light flash, the other sees it, too. Is this just a metaphor?
Recently, telepathy has been demonstrated in scientifically controlled experiments. In experiments called distant or remote viewing, one psychic views an object selected arbitrarily by a computer while his partner in the lab draws a picture of the object viewed under the supervision of the experimenter. The picture is then matched by computer with the original object viewed (Jahn 1982).
In another kind of experiment showing nonlocal interconnectedness, a subject is watched from a remote distance via closed circuit television without her knowledge. Even so, her behavior is affected by being watched (Andrews 1990, 1994).
The experiment by the University of Mexico neurophysiologist Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum and his collaborators (1994) supports the idea of nonlocality in human brains even more objectively—this experiment for brains is the equivalent of the objective Aspect experiment for photons. Two subjects are instructed to meditate together for a period of twenty minutes in order to establish a “direct communication”; then they enter separate faraday chambers (metallic enclosures that block all electromagnetic signals) while maintaining their direct communication for the duration of the experiment. One of the subjects is now shown a series of light flashes that produce an evoked potential, a unique electrophysiological response of the brain to a sensory stimulus, which is measured by an EEG machine (fig. 2.10, upper).
Fig. 2.10. In Grinberg-Zylberbaum's experiment, if two subjects are correlated and one of them is shown a light flash that produces a distinct evoked potential in the EEG attached to his scalp, a transferred potential of comparable strength and phase (70% overlap) appears in the nonstimulated partner's EEG. Note the difference of scale of the ordinate in the two figures. (Courtesy Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum)
Amazingly, in about one in four cases, the unstimulated brain also shows an electrical activity, a “transferred” potential quite similar in shape and strength to the evoked potential (fig. 2.10, middle and bottom). Control subjects who are not correlated and experimental subjects who, by their own reports, do not achieve or maintain direct communication never show any transferred potential (fig. 2.11). The straightforward explanation is quantum nonlocality—the two brains act as a nonlocally correlated quantum system. In response to a stimulus to only one of the correlated brains, consciousness collapses similar states in the two brains, hence the similarity of the brain potentials. Grinberg-Zylberbaum's experimental results and conclusions have now been replicated (for auditory stimuli) in London by the neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick (1999).
Admittedly, in these experiments, the correlated unstimulated subject does not actually experience the stimulus experienced by his or her partner; that will probably take another leap in the purity of intention. Nevertheless, that one subject's brain waves can be communicated to another subject without local signal transfer is truly remarkable.
The striking similarity between the correlated brains and the correlated photons is clear, but there is also a striking difference. The similarity is that in both cases the initial correlation is produced by some “interaction.” In the case of the photons, the interaction is purely physical. But in the case of the correlated brains, consciousness is involved. For correlated photons, as soon as the possibility wave of one is collapsed by measurement, the objects become uncorrelated. But in the case of correlated brains, consciousness not only establishes correlation initially, but also maintains the correlation over the duration of the experiment through intentionality.
Fig. 2.11. A control subject without correlation, even when there is a distinct evoked potential in the stimulated subject's EEG, shows no transferred potential. Note scale. (Courtesy Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum)
To get a clear evoked potential, experimenters typically use an averaging procedure over one-hundred or so light flashes in order to eliminate the “noise.” But the brains do not become uncorrelated as soon as one observer sees a light flash. The only conclusion is that consciousness reestablishes the correlation every time it is broken. This is why it is crucial that the subjects maintain their meditative intention of direct communication throughout the entire duration of the experiment.
This difference between nonlocally connected correlated photons and correlated brains is highly significant. The nonlocality of correlated photons, although striking in terms of demonstrating the radicalness of quantum physics, cannot be used to transfer information, according to a theorem attributed to physicist Philippe Eberhard. But in the case of the correlated brains, since consciousness is involved in establishing and maintaining the correlation, Eberhard's theorem does not apply, and message transfer is not forbidden. When one subject sees a light flash, consciousness collapses a similar event out of the possibilities in the other subject's brain (fig. 2.12).
Fig. 2.12 Consciousness mediates the transfer of electric potential from one correlated brain to another.
It was this last realization that led me to think that perhaps one can make a realistic model of reincarnation, and yes, even of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. What is one of the most striking piece of datum in reincarnation studies? A child recalling past-life memory triggered by seeing his or her house (or some such thing) in a previous life. Suppose the memory was caused via the nonlocal transfer of the relevant information from the child's previous incarnation! This is further elaborated in the following two chapters.
One more comment: The conscious intention and the agreement of the two subjects are crucial for the success of any telepathic communication. However, the intention is not an egoic one; simple thinking and willing will not do. Instead, it is a letting go to a state of consciousness beyond ego, where the two are one. Jesus knew about this since he said, “If two of you agree down here on Earth concerning anything you ask for, My Father in Heaven will do it for you.” Significantly, the Greek word for the verb “to agree” is symphonein, which is the etymological root of the word “symphony.” To agree is to vibrate in phase, in quantum correlation. Isn't this what we are seeing in the coherence of the brainwave data of figures 2.10 and 2.11?
Materialist scientists sometimes complain that they more often than not fail to replicate experiments on telepathy, even with well-known psychics. I think they are missing one of the key ingredients in such experiments: conscious intention. Consciousness is one. Perhaps closed-minded skepticism of the experimenter interferes with conscious intention so that consciousness neither correlates the psychics nor collapses (nearly) identical possibilities in their brains in the presence of such hostility.9
What is interesting is that quantum nonlocality extends not only over space but also over time. Are you sufficiently intrigued to consider the delayed-choice experiment, which leads to this conclusion (Wheeler 1983)?
A light beam is split into two beams of equal intensity by using a half-silvered mirror M1; these two beams are then reflected by two regular mirrors A and B to a crossing point P on the right (figure 2.13, where we may or may not put another half-silvered mirror). Originally, the experiment was designed to demonstrate wave-particle complementarity: in one experimental setting a quantum object shows as wavelike, being two places at the same time (the double-slit arrangement considered earlier is also such an arrangement); in another setting, we detect the particle, localized at one place at a time (as when we detect a radioactive emanation with a Geiger counter). If we choose to detect the particle mode of light, we put detectors or counters past the point of crossing P, as shown in the lower right in figure 2.13. One or the other counter will tick, defining the localized path of the object, to show its particle aspect.
Fig. 2.13. The delayed-choice experiment. The arrangements for seeing the wave nature (interference, the signal is cancelled out at one of the detectors) and the particle nature (no interference, both detectors tick) of light is shown in the lower left and the lower right figures, respectively.
To detect the wave aspect of the object we take advantage of the phenomenon of wave addition, as in the double-slit case, by putting a second half-silvered mirror M2 at P (fig. 2.13, bottom left). The two waves created by beam splitting at M1 will be forced by M2 to add constructively on one side of P, where the counter ticks, and destructively on the other side, where now the counter never ticks. But notice that when we are detecting the wave mode of light, we must agree that each light quantum is traveling by both routes A and B; otherwise, how can there be addition of waves?
But the subtlest aspect of the experiment is yet to come. In the delayed-choice experiment, the experimenter decides at the very last moment, in the very last pico (10-12) second, whether or not to insert the half-silvered mirror at P, whether or not to measure the wave aspect (the decision is manifested by mechanical means, of course). In effect, this means that the light quanta have already traveled past the point of splitting M1 if you think of them as ordinary Newtonian objects. Even so, inserting the mirror at P always shows the wave aspect and not inserting the mirror shows the particle aspect. Was each quantum of light moving in one path or two? The light quanta seem to respond to even our delayed choice instantly and retroactively. (Incidentally, this shows that the photon itself cannot collapse its own possibility wave, if you have wondered about that, for how else would it respond to our delayed choice?)
A quantum object travels one path or both paths, exactly in harmony with our choice. How is this possible? Because the paths of the objects are only possible paths, the objects are only waves of possibilities before we manifest them by observation. No path is laid out in concrete; possibility becomes actuality in what seems a retroactive manner, in what seems to be backward causation.
One aside: There is no manifest quantum object until we see it, even if the object is the entire cosmos. There is no manifest cosmos—only possibilities—until the first sentient being (presumably, the first living cell) observes the universe. The observation collapses the universe, along with the entire causal pathway that led to that first sentience, retroactively. And the observation is self-referential—the sentience of the first living cell is co-created along with the universe.
So if we have objects correlated not only across space but also across time, conscious choice and collapse of the causal pathway at any point of time will precipitate the entire pathway. The point to realize is that in quantum physics there is neither space nor time until consciousness has chosen to collapse an event. Conventional thinking about time has to accommodate this quantum weirdness.
An incident happening now may be correlated with an incident then (or in the future), which can account for all kinds of events that Carl Jung called examples of synchronicity—acausal but meaningful coincidences (Jung and Pauli 1955). One of my first attempts at understanding reincarnation was through the use of the concept of quantum nonlocality in time (see chapters 3 and 4).
Incidentally, the delayed-choice experiment was verified in the laboratory in the mid-1980s (Hellmuth, Zajonc, and Walther 1986). It even made the pages of Newsweek in its June 19, 1995, issue.
However counterintuitive it may seem to you, quantum possibilities do not become actuality until we, sentient beings, look at them and choose—this is the message of the delayed-choice experiment. A recent experiment by parapsychologist Helmut Schimdt has further confirmed this message.
Schmidt has done pioneering research on psychokinesis for many years. In his experiments, psychics try to move a physical object or try to influence a physical outcome via conscious intention as opposed to mental telepathy in which the outcome of influence involves internal thoughts only.
In one series of experiments, psychics try to influence random-number generation, sequences of positive and negative random numbers. Psychics try to bias the random-number generator in favor of positive numbers, for example.
In a typical experiment, the random number generator produces a sequence of one hundred binary events (with outcome 0 or 1) that are displayed as a sequence of 100 red (for a 0-bit) and green (for a 1-bit) light flashes, and the psychic is instructed to mentally enforce more red than green (or vice versa). The sequence of red and green flashes is recorded and printed at the end of the run.
A radioactive sample giving out its decay products, such as electrons, is a very good random-number generator since radioactive decay, being a quantum process, being probabilistic, is entirely random for a large number of events. Yet, Schmidt's subjects have been known to influence random radioactive decay by a small but statistically significant amount, signifying the effectiveness of psychokinesis (Schmidt 1976).
But Schmidt's 1993 experiment is a milestone (subject to replication by other experimenters, of course) because here he has introduced a new element in the experiment. The experiment still uses radioactive random-number generators, except that the radioactive decay, the detection of the product by electronic counters, the recording of the information on floppy disks, the computer generation of random number sequence, are all carried out days, even months, ahead of time without anyone seeing the information at any time. The computer even makes a printout of the scores and, with utmost care that nobody sees them, the printout is sealed and sent to independent observers.
The independent observer, in turn, leaves the seals intact and randomly specifies whether the psychic subject should go for more red or more green. In the subsequent session, the psychic follows the independent observer's randomly chosen assignment and does his or her intentional influencing of more red (or green) as he or she looks at the data stored in the computer. The independent observer now opens the sealed printout and directly verifies if there is a deviation of the printouts in his/her own chosen direction. And indeed, a statistically significant effect is found—the odds would be 8000 to 1 against such an outcome (Schmidt 1993).
How should we interpret the experiment? The straightforward interpretation is that the radioactive decay, the detection of the product, the computer record and printout, all remained in potentia as possibilities until an observation was made (by the psychic). Because they were only possibilities when the psychic was looking at the data, he/she was able to influence the outcome with his/her intention. Nothing became actuality until conscious observation was made.
If this interpretation is correct, then preinspection of the data should inhibit subsequent effort at psychokinesis. This is indeed found to be the case if the preinspection is thorough (Schmidt 1993).
Schmidt has repeated his measurement several times with different independent observers. Although individual experiments have not always produced an unambiguous conclusion, his experiments show (with the assurance of three standard deviations, which, though not outstanding using standards of physics experiments, are certainly compatible with that achieved in psychological experiments) that psychics are able to influence random radioactive events even when looking at the data on a delayed basis, and, therefore, that possibility waves do not collapse until a sentient observer looks.
Let's go back again to the question of why we don't seem to be cognizant that we are creating our own reality. In truth, we rarely are in the state of consciousness that chooses freely. It happens when we are creative, for example, when we experience deep compassion for another being, when we get moral insights, or when we are in communion with nature. Spiritual traditions call such exalted self-experiences by names like Atman (in Hinduism), the Holy Spirit (in Christianity), and so forth. I call it the quantum self because of its connection with complete freedom of choice in quantum measurement. The self in these experiences is universal, transpersonal, unitive. In contrast, our ordinary experiences are dominated by our egos, very personal and conditioned (hardly any creativity there), in which quantum freedom gives way to almost 100 percent conditioning via many reflections in the mirror of memory of past experiences (Mitchell and Goswami 1992). Indeed, neurophysiologists find that there is a time lag of half a second between a subject's receiving a stimulus and verbally reporting the experience (Libet et al. 1979). The half-second is the time we use for multiple reflection of the stimulus in the mirror of memory. As a result, the primary experience or even secondary experiences with some freedom of choice becomes preconscious when we identify with our memory, our ego.
But whenever we escape the ego-identity, whenever we are able to delve into the preconscious, the possibility of freedom appears. I am convinced that there is a stage in the dying process at which the ego-identity fades substantially. Thus, death affords all of us, if we can remain conscious in dying, the opportunity to see ourselves as the creator of the world—as God.
I was talking to a class of high school students about science and ethics in Deary, Idaho, and, naturally, the question of God came up. Now I am quite aware of the fact that you cannot talk about God in the classroom—this is such a taboo that even The Wall Street Journal did an article on it. (In my university class on the philosophy of physics, we referred to God as the G-word.) When I asked how many students believed in the existence of God, only a handful of students raised their hands. But when I asked how many believed that there may be an organizing principle, a causally potent creative principle beyond matter, almost all the students raised their hands.
So this is one of the ways our thinking about God is changing. Although the traditional image of God is that of an emperor sitting on a throne in the sky and dishing out reward and punishment for our good and bad deeds, this is now minority thinking since hierarchies have been under attack by the advance of democracy, movements for racial equality, gender equality, and so forth. In general, at least, most of us think of God as the creative principle behind the world, and it is this idea that science within consciousness upholds.
But there are some subtleties. For example, take consciousness. Is consciousness synonymous with God? No, consciousness is the ground of being; it's what is called the Godhead in Christianity and Yahweh (YHWH) in Judaism, and the ineffable, absolute Tao in Taoism. God comes into the picture when consciousness creates the manifest world via quantum measurement. Think of God as the creative principle, the chooser of actuality from quantum possibility in all creative acts of manifestation.
In every creative act that we participate in, we encounter the God within that is us. In this limited sense we are God. But we as individuals cannot fathom the movement of consciousness that is engaged in all creation via all sentient beings. In that sense we are not God. So it boils down to a paradox—we are both God and not God. As a quantum connoisseur, that does not surprise you, does it?
One way to resolve the paradox is to say that in a creative act we become the quantum self, that we recognize our God-potency through the universal, quantum self-identity. The creative and spiritual journeys of humans can be looked upon as, in the philosopher Martin Buber's words, I-thou relationships (I prefer the word “encounter” instead of relationship) immortalized by Michelangelo's mural, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, of Adam and God reaching out to each other.
The materialist deification of matter partly grew out of the reaction to the Old Testament God as the emperor of Heaven. That God indeed is not needed in our science. But God is needed in science as a creative principle not only to resolve the quantum measurement paradox, but also as the explanatory principle for creativity in biological evolution (Goswami 1997), in mind-body healing (Chopra 1989), and so forth. Thus, the new view of God is the way out of both dogmas, religious and scientific.
Does collapse of quantum possibilities occur only in conjunction with the human brain? How about animals with brains, or even without brains? It seems reasonable to postulate that self-referential quantum measurement begins with and defines life in a single living cell. A living cell is autonomous and has self-integrity; it perceives itself as distinct and separate from its environment. It makes sense to say that quantum measurements inside the living cell create the distinction of life from its environment (fig. 2.14). Before quantum measurement, there is only consciousness and its possibilities; afterwards there is separation—life and environment.
Fig. 2.14 Self-reference arising from quantum measurement in the living cell leads to the living cell's cognitive distinction between life and environment.
This division of one consciousness into two separate beings becomes more and more sophisticated as cells make conglomerates. Eventually, with the development of the brain, we see the world as mental subjects separate from meaningful objects.
A science based on consciousness thus gives us a clear definition of life. Surely, you see the possibility that such a science can resolve some of the recalcitrant problems of materialist models that cannot answer the simple question “what is life?”10 By defining life, the science within consciousness gives a clear definition of death also; death occurs when consciousness withdraws its self-referential supervention (transcendent intervention) from living matter.
6There is a problem here. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is written in the second person; it is addressed to the person who is dying. Thus, strictly speaking, there is no reference to a soul. However, the context makes it clear that in a third-person translation of the message of the book, the use of the imagery of the soul (for the surviving self) is appropriate.
7Strictly speaking, this is a matter of interpretation. However, as shown in Goswami 1993, this is the only paradox-free interpretation.
8The Australian physicist Ludwig Bass (1971) had independently arrived at the same conclusion much earlier.
9One of the pioneers of controlled distant-viewing experiments, physicist Russell Targ, with whom I have had many discussions on the subject, feels the same way as I do.
10With one exception. The biologist Humberto Maturana has defined life as the ability to cognize (as in subject-object split), but this is far from being the consensus among biologists.
