Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, “But how can it be like that?” because you will go “down the drain” into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped.

Quantum mechanics describes the tiny world of the atom and its constituents, and their behavior, with stunning if probabilistic accuracy. It is used to design and build much of the technology that drives modern society, such as lasers and advanced computers. But quantum mechanics in many ways threatens not only our essential and absolute notions of space and time but all Newtonian-type conceptions of order and secure prediction.

It is worthwhile to consider here the old maxim of Sherlock Holmes, that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” In this chapter, we will sift through the evidence of quantum theory as deliberately as Holmes might without being thrown off the trail by the prejudices of three hundred years of science. The reason scientists go “down the drain into a blind alley,” is that they refuse to accept the immediate and obvious implications of the experiments. Biocentrism is the only humanly comprehensible explanation for how the world can be like that, and we are unlikely to shed any tears when we leave the conventional ways of thinking. As Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg put it, “It’s an unpleasant thing to bring people into the basic laws of physics.”

In order to account for why space and time are relative to the observer, Einstein assigned tortuous mathematical properties to the changing warpages of space-time, an invisible, intangible entity that cannot be seen or touched. Although this was indeed successful in showing how objects move, especially in extreme conditions of strong gravity or fast motion, it resulted in many people assuming that space-time is an actual entity, like cheddar cheese, rather than a mathematical figment that serves the specific purpose of letting us calculate motion. Space-time, of course, was hardly the first time that mathematical tools have been confused with tangible reality: the square root of minus one and the symbol for infinity are just two of the many mathematically indispensable entities that exist only conceptually—neither has an analog in the physical universe.

This dichotomy between conceptual and physical reality continued with a vengeance with the advent of quantum mechanics. Despite the central role of the observer in this theory—extending it from space and time to the very properties of matter itself—some scientists still dismiss the observer as an inconvenience, a non-entity.

In the quantum world, even Einstein’s updated version of Newton’s clock—the solar system as predictable if complex timekeeper—fails to work. The very concept that independent events can happen in separate non-linked locations—a cherished notion often called locality—fails to hold at the atomic level and below, and there’s increasing evidence it extends fully into the macroscopic as well. In Einstein’s theory, events in space-time can be measured in relation to each other, but quantum mechanics calls greater attention to the nature of measurement itself, one that threatens the very bedrock of objectivity.

When studying subatomic particles, the observer appears to alter and determine what is perceived. The presence and methodology of the experimenter is hopelessly entangled with whatever he is attempting to observe and what results he gets. An electron turns out to be both a particle and a wave, but how and, more importantly, where such a particle will be located remains dependent upon the very act of observation.

This was new indeed. Pre-quantum physicists, reasonably assuming an external, objective universe, expected to be able to determine the trajectory and position of individual particles with certainty—the way we do with planets. They assumed the behavior of particles would be completely predictable if everything was known at the outset—that there was no limit to the accuracy with which they could measure the physical properties of an object of any size, given adequate technology.

In addition to quantum uncertainty, another aspect of modern physics also strikes at the core of Einstein’s concept of discrete entities and space-time. Einstein held that the speed of light is constant and that events in one place cannot influence events in another place simultaneously. In the relativity theories, the speed of light has to be taken into account for information to travel from one particle to another. This has been demonstrated to be true for nearly a century, even when it comes to gravity spreading its influence. In a vacuum, 186,282.4 miles per second was the law. However, recent experiments have shown that this is not the case with every kind of information propagation.

Perhaps the true weirdness started in 1935 when physicists Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen dealt with the strange quantum curiosity of particle entanglement, in a paper so famous that the phenomenon is still often called an “EPR correlation.” The trio dismissed quantum theory’s prediction that a particle can somehow “know” what another one that is thoroughly separated in space is doing, and attributed any observations along such lines to some as-yet-unidentified local contamination rather than to what Einstein derisively called “spooky action at a distance.”

This was a great one-liner, right up there with the small handful of sayings the great physicist had popularized, such as “God does not play dice.” It was yet another jab at quantum theory, this time at its growing insistence that some things only existed as probabilities, not as actual objects in real locations. This phrase, “spooky action at a distance,” was repeated in physics classrooms for decades. It helped keep the true weirdnesses of quantum theory buried below the public consciousness. Given that experimental apparatuses were still relatively crude, who dared to say that Einstein was wrong?

But Einstein was wrong. In 1964, Irish physicist John Bell proposed an experiment that could show if separate particles can influence each other instantaneously over great distances. First, it is necessary to create two bits of matter or light that share the same wave-function (recalling that even solid particles have an energy- wave nature). With light, this is easily done by sending light into a special kind of crystal; two photons of light then emerge, each with half the energy (twice the wavelength) of the one that went in, so there is no violation of the conservation of energy. The same amount of total power goes out as went in.

Now, because quantum theory tells us that everything in nature has a particle nature and a wave nature, and that the object’s behavior exists only as probabilities, no small object actually assumes a particular place or motion until its wave-function collapses. What accomplishes this collapse? Messing with it in any way. Hitting it with a bit of light in order to “take its picture” would instantly do the job. But it became increasingly clear that any possible way the experimenter could take a look at the object would collapse the wave-function. At first, this look was assumed to be the need to, say, shoot a photon at an electron in order to measure where it is, and the realization that the resulting interaction between the two would naturally collapse the wave-function. In a sense, the experiment had been contaminated. But as more sophisticated experiments were devised (see the next chapter), it became obvious that mere knowledge in the experimenter’s mind is sufficient to cause the wave-function to collapse.

That was freaky, but it got worse. When entangled particles are created, the pair share a wave-function. When one member’s wave-function collapses, so will the other’s—even if they are separated by the width of the universe. This means that if one particle is observed to have an “up spin,” the other instantly goes from being a mere probability wave to an actual particle with the opposite spin. They are intimately linked, and in a way that acts as if there’s no space between them, and no time influencing their behavior.

Experiments from 1997 to 2007 have shown that this is indeed the case, as if tiny objects created together are endowed with a kind of ESP. If a particle is observed to make a random choice to go one way instead of another, its twin will always exhibit the same behavior (actually the complementary action) at the same moment—even if the pair are widely separated.

In 1997, Swiss researcher Nicholas Gisin truly started the ball rolling down this peculiar bowling lane by concocting a particularly startling demonstration. His team created entangled photons or bits of light and sent them flying seven miles apart along optical fibers. One encountered an interferometer where it could take one of two paths, always chosen randomly. Gisin found that whichever option a photon took, its twin would always make the other choice instantaneously.

The momentous adjective here is instantaneous. The second photon’s reaction was not even delayed by the time light could have traversed those seven miles (about twenty-six milliseconds) but instead occurred less than three ten-billionths of a second later, the limit of the testing apparatus’s accuracy. The behavior is presumed to be simultaneous.

Although predicted by quantum mechanics, the results continue to astonish even the very physicists doing the experiments. It substantiates the startling theory that an entangled twin should instantly echo the action or state of the other, even if separated by any distance whatsoever, no matter how great.

This is so outrageous that some have sought an escape clause. A prominent candidate has been the “detector deficiency loophole,” the argument that experiments to date had not caught sufficient numbers of photon-twins. Too small a percentage had been observed by the equipment, critics suggested, somehow preferentially revealing just those twins that behaved in synch. But a newer experiment in 2002 effectively closed that loophole. In a paper published in Nature by a team of researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology led by Dr. David Wineland, entangled pairs of beryllium ions and a high-efficiency detector proved that, yes, each really does simultaneously echo the actions of its twin.

Few believe that some new, unknown force or interaction is being transmitted with zero travel time from one particle to its twin. Rather, Wineland told one of the authors, “There is some spooky action at a distance.” Of course, he knew that this is no explanation at all.

Most physicists argue that relativity’s insuperable lightspeed limit is not being violated because nobody can use EPR correlations to send information because the behavior of the sending particle is always random. Current research is directed toward practical rather than philosophical concerns: the aim is to harness this bizarre behavior to create new ultra-powerful quantum computers that, as Wineland put it, “carry all the weird baggage that comes with quantum mechanics.”

Through it all, the experiments of the past decade truly seem to prove that Einstein’s insistence on “locality”—meaning that nothing can influence anything else at superluminal speeds—is wrong. Rather, the entities we observe are floating in a field—a field of mind, biocentrism maintains—that is not limited by the external space-time Einstein theorized a century ago.

No one should imagine that when biocentrism points to quantum theory as one major area of support, it is just a single aspect of quantum phenomena. Bell’s Theorem of 1964, shown experimentally to be true over and over in the intervening years, does more than merely demolish all vestiges of Einstein’s (and others’) hopes that locality can be maintained.

Before Bell, it was still considered possible (though increasingly iffy) that local realism—an objective independent universe—could be the truth. Before Bell, many still clung to the millennia-old assumption that physical states exist before they are measured. Before Bell, it was still widely believed that particles have definite attributes and values independent of the act of measuring. And, finally, thanks to Einstein’s demonstrations that no information can travel faster than light, it was assumed that if observers are sufficiently far apart, a measurement by one has no effect on the measurement by the other.

In addition to the above, three separate major areas of quantum theory make sense biocentrically but are bewildering otherwise. We’ll discuss much of this at greater length in a moment, but let’s begin simply by listing them. The first is the entanglement just cited, which is a connectedness between two objects so intimate that they behave as one, instantaneously and forever, even if they are separated by the width of galaxies. Its spookiness becomes clearer in the classical two-slit experiment.

The second is complementarity. This means that small objects can display themselves in one way or another but not both, depending on what the observer does; indeed, the object doesn’t have an existence in a specific location and with a particular motion. Only the observer’s knowledge and actions cause it to come into existence in some place or with some particular animation. Many pairs of such complementary attributes exist. An object can be a wave or a particle but not both, it can inhabit a specific position or display motion but not both, and so on. Its reality depends solely on the observer and his experiment.

The third quantum theory attribute that supports biocentrism is wave-function collapse, that is, the idea that a physical particle or bit of light only exists in a blurry state of possibility until its wave-function collapses at the time of observation, and only then actually assumes a definite existence. This is the standard understanding of what goes on in quantum theory experiments according to the Copenhagen interpretation, although competing ideas still exist, as we’ll see shortly.

The experiments of Heisenberg, Bell, Gisin, and Wineland, fortunately, call us back to experience itself, the immediacy of the here and now. Before matter can peep forth—as a pebble, a snowflake, or even a subatomic particle—it has to be observed by a living creature.

This “act of observation” becomes vivid in the famous two-hole experiment, which in turn goes straight to the core of quantum physics. It’s been performed so many times, with so many variations, it’s conclusively proven that if one watches a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through slits on a barrier, it behaves like a particle, and creates solid-looking bam-bam-bam hits behind the individual slits on the final barrier that measures the impacts. Like a tiny bullet, it logically passes through one or the other hole. But if the scientists do not observe the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of waves that retain the right to exhibit all possibilities, including somehow passing through both holes at the same time (even though it cannot split itself up)—and then creating the kind of rippling pattern that only waves produce.

Dubbed quantum weirdness, this wave-particle duality has befuddled scientists for decades. Some of the greatest physicists have described it as impossible to intuit, impossible to formulate into words, impossible to visualize, and as invalidating common sense and ordinary perception. Science has essentially conceded that quantum physics is incomprehensible outside of complex mathematics. How can quantum physics be so impervious to metaphor, visualization, and language?

Amazingly, if we accept a life-created reality at face value, it all becomes simple and straightforward to understand. The key question is “waves of what?” Back in 1926, German physicist Max Born demonstrated that quantum waves are waves of probability, not waves of material, as his colleague Schrödinger had theorized. They are statistical predictions. Thus, a wave of probability is nothing but a likely outcome. In fact, outside of that idea, the wave is not there! It’s intangible. As Nobel physicist John Wheeler once said, “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.”

Note that we are talking about discrete objects like photons or electrons, rather than collections of myriad objects, such as, say, a train. Obviously, we can get a schedule and arrive to pick up a friend at a station and be fairly confident that his train actually existed during our absence, even if we did not personally observe it. (One reason for this is that as the considered object gets bigger, its wavelength gets smaller. Once we get into the macroscopic realm, the waves are too close together to be noticed or measured. They are still there, however.)

With small discrete particles, however, if they are not being observed, they cannot be thought of as having any real existence—either duration or a position in space. Until the mind sets the scaffolding of an object in place, until it actually lays down the threads (somewhere in the haze of probabilities that represent the object’s range of possible values), it cannot be thought of as being either here or there. Thus, quantum waves merely define the potential location a particle can occupy. When a scientist observes a particle, it will be found within the statistical probability for that event to occur. That’s what the wave defines. A wave of probability isn’t an event or a phenomenon, it is a description of the likelihood of an event or phenomenon occurring. Nothing happens until the event is actually observed.

In our double-slit experiment, it is easy to insist that each photon or electron—because both these objects are indivisible—must go through one slit or the other and ask, which way does a particular photon really go? Many brilliant physicists have devised experiments that proposed to measure the “which-way” information of a particle’s path on its route to contributing to an interference pattern. They all arrived at the astonishing conclusion, however, that it is not possible to observe both which-way information and the interference pattern. One can set up a measurement to watch which slit a photon goes through, and find that the photon goes through one slit and not the other. However, once this is kind of measurement is set up, the photons instead strike the screen in one spot, and totally lack the ripple-interference design; in short, they will demonstrate themselves to be particles, not waves. The entire double-slit experiment and all its true amazing weirdness will be laid out with illustrations in the next chapter.

Apparently, watching it go through the barrier makes the wave-function collapse then and there, and the particle loses its freedom to probabilistically take both choices available to it instead of having to choose one or the other.

And it still gets screwier. Once we accept that it is not possible to gain both the which-way information and the interference pattern, we might take it even further. Let’s say we now work with sets of photons that are entangled. They can travel far from each other, but their behavior will never lose their correlation.

So now we let the two photons, call them y and z, go off in two different directions, and we’ll set up the double-slit experiment again. We already know that photon y will mysteriously pass through both slits and create an interference pattern if we measure nothing about it before it reaches the detection screen. Except, in our new setup, we’ve created an apparatus that lets us measure the which-way path of its twin, photon z, miles away. Bingo: As soon as we activate this apparatus for measuring its twin, photon y instantly “knows” that we can deduce its own path (because it will always do the opposite or complementary thing as its twin). Photon y suddenly stops showing an interference pattern the instant we turn on the measuring apparatus for far-away photon z, even though we didn’t bother y in the least. And this would be true—instantly, in real time—even if y and z lay on opposite sides of the galaxy.

And, though it doesn’t seem possible, it gets spookier still. If we now let photon y hit the slits and the measuring screen first, and a split second later measure its twin far away, we should have fooled the quantum laws. The first photon already ran its course before we troubled its distant twin. We should therefore be able to learn both photons’ polarization and been treated to an interference pattern. Right? Wrong. When this experiment is performed, we get a non-interference pattern. The y-photon stops taking paths through both slits retroactively; the interference is gone. Apparently, photon y somehow knew that we would eventually find out its polarization, even though its twin had not yet encountered our polarization-detection apparatus.

What gives? What does this say about time, about any real existence of sequence, about present and future? What does it say about space and separation? What must we conclude about our own roles and how our knowledge influences actual events miles away, without any passage of time? How can these bits of light know what will happen in their future? How can they communicate instantaneously, faster than light? Obviously, the twins are connected in a special way that doesn’t break no matter how far apart they are, and in a way that is independent of time, space, or even causality. And, more to our point, what does this say about observation and the “field of mind” in which all these experiments occur?

Meaning . . . ?