Category: Consciousness

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Conscious agents and the emergence of space-time

A proof of reality by reductio ad absurdum

Earlier on this website I wrote already about professor Donald Hoffman – cognitive psychologist – and about his book ‘The Case Against Reality. How evolution hid the truth from our eyes.‘ When reading that book for the first time, a few years ago, I had some objections to the way he came to the counterintuitive conclusion that reality is not what it seems and that our physical senses have not evolved to represent reality. This was because he arrived at his conclusion, by implementing the neo-Darwinist evolution theory of the survival of the DNA of the better fitted carrier thereof. And, as I have argued before, I am not a fan of this materialistic neo-Darwinist theory, although Hoffman’s final conclusion was in line with the conclusions I drew from quantum physics.

Reductio ad absurdum is the best proof there is and also the finest

But I was wrong. What I didn’t realize is that Hoffman shows that the neo-Darwinist hypothesis ultimately, through the application of game theories based on it, evolutionary games, ends up in a logical paradox. By performing a good many computer simulations, evolution games, based on the neo-darwinistic evolution theory, he showed experimentally that the neo-darwinistic hypothesis shoots itself ultimately in the foot. Evolution games, based on the reproduction of the fitter organism for survival, consistently delivered the result that evolution always chooses to adapt our sensory processing in a way that costs the least energy but is effective. A truthful internal representation of reality costs way more than a simple but effective representation that does not have to be truthful.

The delicious juicy apple you observe therefore does not have to be exactly that in reality. If your action – pick it and and eat it – is beneficial for your organism, that’s enough. So it is precisely the case that if neo-darwinism were correct, your image of reality would not. That’s pretty absurd, isn’t it?

Neurons are not the source of consciousness

Hoffman then goes further and says that the image we have formed of physical brains and neurons is also absolutely incorrect. His next step is then to reject the hypothesis that your neurons are the source of your consciousness. It cannot be because the image of material brains and neurons that our physical senses produce cannot correspond to reality. Furthermore, the real hard – and not even approximately solved – question is how physical neurons would produce consciousness. These physical neurons are only just there when we turn our attention to them.

Which is precisely what I conclude from the now well-known observer effect in quantum physics. When we see that the observer, simply by observing, can influence reality – think for instance of the experimentally confirmed changed behavior of the quantum wave if we can know the slit that the electron traverses. That change of the immaterial quantum wave cannot be accomplished by your supposedly physical neurons. Such an assumption would be a fairly absurd one. So Hoffman and I reach the same conclusion, but along different lines.

A network of ‘Conscious Agents’

Hoffman therefore assumes – just like me and many others – that consciousness must be primary. Together with his team he created an already fairly complete mathematical theory, describing a network of interacting consciousness units, Conscious Agents (CAs). His extensive article ‘Objects of consciousness’ of 2014 is easy to find on the internet. In it he shows mathematically, among other things, that several interacting CAs form together a larger and more complex CA. The mathematical description of the simplest CA appears – very surprising – to be identical to the quantum physical description of a free particle. So every conscious organism is a complex CA with several layers of complexity.

Each complex organism is then such a complex CA. Each multicellular organism is made up of billions of cells, where each of them in is a complex CA. And so on. At the very bottom we find particles acting as CAs.

A Virtual Reality game

The interaction of the entire network of interacting complex CAs then ultimately yields spacetime as we experience it. This spacetime is therefore an illusion that is experienced by those complex CAs. Hoffman often uses the virtual reality metaphor of a VR game in which the players present themselves as action figures, named avatars. He often makes the comparison of our senses – not only the eyes – with virtual reality goggles or glasses. What we experience as an object or person is, in that case, not very much different from a set of pixels generated by the VR system at the moment we look there. When we are not looking, those pixels do not have to be generated and are therefore not there.

This also explains the observer related elasticy of space and time as it emerges from special relativity. If space and time are a by a VR system generated experience, we can, in that case, understand that elasticy better.

Note: A pixel is the smallest unit of presentation in an image on a computer screen. Everything you see on a computer screen is made up of pixels.

Pixels – enlarged

What is not observed does not exist

Thus, Hoffmans idea fits seamlessly into the findings of quantum physics that the observed object does not exist before it is observed. The object – the set of pixels – is generated when we focus our attention on it and thus experience it. André Duqum’s interview with Donald Hoffman below – a full two hours – is very interesting and easy to follow because Hoffman explains very patiently. But be advised to take a quiet do-not-disturb moment for viewing the whole interview.

NB: The term ‘Markovian kernel’ is often mentioned in the interview. A Markovian kernel is a mathematical concept used in Hoffman’s CA model. Translate that, for an easy understanding of the concept, into the two-way filter that any communication combination of sense and expression capability actually is. It’s just a highly technical word for what is exchanged and what is suppressed in experiencing and responding.

So, we live in a VR Game. A rather absurd looking conclusion. But that’s no reason to take the game idea not seriously. Perhaps a good reason to just enjoy it without much fear but more in wonder and admiration of the presentations.

Proof That Reality Is An ILLUSION: The Mystery Beyond Space-Time – Donald Hoffman
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Consciousness, the next dimension?

Consciousness is becoming a hot topic in the media

In the quantum physics and awareness courses that I give regularly, I show my audience that primary consciousness holds the best cards for an explanation of the ‘weird’ effects in quantum physics, like the observer effect and entanglement. No hard evidence, of course, but we will never get that in our laboratories. Hard evidence is only applicable for mathematical theorems. We also have no hard evidence for the Big Bang and yet it seems generally accepted as an acceptable scientific explanation for the universe we are currently observing. It suits the current paradigm.

That many people just refuse to even consider primary consciousness was showed excellently by a student who argued on the subject of the near-death experience (NDE) with me on the last day of the course. I support the view that the NDE shows that the mind survives death. Any reported NDE can be explained excellently with the assumption of primary consciousness. The same assumption explains also any quantum phenomenon, like the observer effect, very well. So, it explains effects in entirely different domains, which makes the idea of primary consciousness much stronger. Primary means that consciousness cannot be a product of that bundle of neurons in your skull. Well, according to this student, it was proven sufficiently that the NDE would be a neurological phenomenon. He could, very understandable, not provide the evidence so readily, but nevertheless he remained adamant. In the end, we agreed we disagreed friendly. In any case, the phenomenon of consciousness creates a lot of discussion these days. Even in the regular media appear nowadays articles on consciousness.

So, consciousness seems to enter these days into the spotlights. Especially in combination with AI. If physical neurons can become aware, transistors probably can too. So, what if such a collection of transistors becomes conscious, will we have then created a slave? A conscious aware slave who will eventually rebel against his masters? Not my idea, nor my fear.

The last guest in a podcast series on consciousness broadcasted by the NRC, one of the more important and rather science oriented Dutch papers, was cognitive neuroscientist Jacob Jolij, a fervent reseacher of consciousness. After having abandoned the idea of the neural source of consciousness, he brought his most recent idea forward in the podcast that consciousness is just another dimension. We have three dimensions of space and one for time. Consciousness should, according to him, be the next dimension. As far as I am concerned, this proposal is still the idea of a material thinker. I will explain this further.

What is consciousness actually? A tantalizing search from neurobiology to parapsychology. Dutch edition only.

So, at the present stage of his research, Jacob Jolij has arrived at the conclusion that consciousness is not a product of your neurons – I agree totally there – but that it is probably a dimension such as time and space. I disagree there. All things considered, that is of course far from being an explanation. You will not begin to understand consciousness more by putting a new label on it. It seems even a step back to Descartes’ ‘Res Cogitans’. According to Descartes there exists matter – in the familiar three dimensions – and there exists consciousness, two substances that cannot be traced back to each other. One is physical, the other is definitely not. They exist in fundamentally different domains. Such an idea of separate domains is plain dualism. The main objection to Descartes’ idea is that the interaction between those two domains (dimensions?) cannot be explained physically. For physical interaction you need the transportation of energy, which is in the same domain as matter. So, interaction between the two domains is impossible. This objection is based on the – unproven, rather dogmatic – assumption that every physical action always has a physical cause. Forget the Big Bang for a moment.

Dimension as label for unexplained phenomena

As far as Jacob Jolij is concerned, the question of consciousness is then solved with the word dimension, satisfying because consciousness becomes – seen that way – an element of the physical world, just as time and space are. Then perhaps the interaction between matter and energy on the one hand and non-material consciousness can become understandable. This solution to the hard problem of consciousness reminds me somewhat of the ether, the element that was supposed to act as a transporting medium for electromagnetic waves because waves as we know them need a transporting and coherent medium. The ether was already in the 19th century proved to be unsustainable.

So, it is actually a play of words that is done here. Replace Descartes’ ‘Res Cogitans’ with a word from the conceptual framework of physics and you seem to have found an explanation. Watch your way of thinking carefully! You are avoiding acknowledging the mystery.

Are dimensions fundamental?

I would also like to point out that time is not a fundamental dimension of nature. Einstein already showed that clock time also depends on the observer’s situation. Space too, because space and time are one weave. What is experienced as time for one observer can be experienced as space by another. In quantum physics, time and space appear in the becoming aware of an observation of the appearance of a material object. That’s the so-called quantum collapse, the reduction of the quantum wave happening on our observation. The collapse is the name physicists use for the disappearance of the non-material quantum wave and the simultaneous appearance of the object upon observation. The object is manifested including its history, which is therefore also retroactively recorded with the act of observation, and thus becomes ‘true’. Before that, the object did not exist materially, there was only an intangible wave of potentiality. This is the so-called observer effect. An effect that caused and still causes headaches for a lot of materialistic thinking physicists, which is reflected in rather unsatisfactory and vague explanations of the quantum collapse in – in a lot of other ways excellent – books on quantum physics.

Let’s not make it harder than it is.

A dimension is not some fundamental physical element, it is a concept, something that therefore belongs in the same category as a thought. As a result, a dimension is not something that contains the mind, it is clearly the other way around. Attaching the label dimension to the mind doesn’t add anything to our understanding. It obfuscates only the mystery.

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Quantum Physics and PSI

Quantum physics and psi may sound like a strange combination at first hearing. But on closer inspection, the connection is even obvious, however in an indirect way. The quantum collapse, the collapse of the intangible state wave and the manifestation of the object upon observation, is an experimentally confirmed fact. However, as long as you refuse to give up the material vision of the world – that there is only matter and energy and nothing more – you will not be able to understand the world as quantum physics reveals to us. You can, probably, perform mathematical calculations, and with great predictive success, but that is not the same as understanding.

“What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school…
It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it.
You see, my physics students don’t understand it…
That is because I don’t understand it.
Nobody does.”  

Richard Feynman in a lecture on quantum physics.

Science fiction as a metaphor and prediction

However, if we are willing to accept that the world is showing itself to us because we observe it and that we are therefore an intrinsic and necessary part of the world, not only quantum physics becomes understandable, but also psi because in that vision the world is primarily mental. Above that, quantum entanglement tells us also that everything is connected. It would perhaps be better to avoid the word connected because that implies separation, even when that is a separation in which everything is connected. The world is ultimately one. Even a quantum physicist like Heinrich Päs eventually comes to that conclusion in his book The One. I wrote about his book in a previous blog. Think also of David Bohm’s Implicit Order, which is only another name for the single source from which everything, the explicit order, unfolds.

In this way, when the mind is needed for material manifestation and thus precedes matter as it presents itself to us in place and time, psi becomes a very acceptable and even predictable possibility. If we do create the world by observation, it is very understandable that we also influence it with intention. Numerous experiments, where quantum generators are influenced by intention, have shown that psi is a real effect. Knowing that we also create time through observation, the idea of viewing in the future, something that belongs to the psi phenomena, won’t be very surprising. The quantum wave, as it follows from the Schrödinger equation, extends endless into the future without bounds. Its end, the quantum collapse, is the result of observation, an action that cannot be captured in the equation. This means that the future cannot be fixed since there are many observers. So viewing the future clairvoyantly is merely looking at a possible future, at something that will happen if we don’t take action to prevent it.

The main character - the hero of the story - Jason dinAlt, has a psychic gift with which he provides for his somewhat irregular but profitable existence by significantly enhancing his chances of winning in casinos. He becomes involuntarily  involved in the struggle for existence waged in a human mining colony on the planet Pyrrus. He wins a fortune in a big casino on an urgent assignment, almost  on the point of their gun, for a group of settlers from the planet Pyrrus. In itself an exciting scene that would do well in a Hollywood movie. The settlers have a great need for money to continue their deadly struggle with the planet. That battle is one against a nature that attacks the settlers with claw and teeth. Going out on the streets of the only settlement is already extremely dangerous and a sure death for the unprepared. The flora and fauna are lightning fast and extremely deadly. Children are already in kindergarten trained violently in survival tactics. Jason is ashamed to have a toddler as a protector and instructor because that's vital for his street survival.
Jason, meanwhile, learns that there are also descendants of runaway settlers who, without advanced technology, succeed in surviving and seem even to be thriving in that hostile nature. The relationship between the settlers and the runaways is not cordial, on the contrary. He makes contact with these runaways by actually making a narrow escape from the settlement. Landed outside the settlement, he notices that all nature on Pyrrus is psychic and that all this psychic "energy" is directed against the small settlement. In fact, the planet is working very hard to remove a persistent irritant from its surface. This psychic energy is apparently able to produce increasingly hostile mutations in the flora and fauna in an asthonishing rate. He finds that the settlers once evoked that reaction of the planet through destructive behavior towards the native flora and fauna, the runaways tell him this. Jason initiates contact between the settlers in the settlement and the hated runaways. The planet is appeased when man shows respect for nature. The settlers and the runawayse are reconciled. All's well that ends well.

You can find many examples where science fiction made a prediction that came true or very near to it. Is that perhaps also the case in Death Planet? Well, it is becoming increasingly recognized that mutations are not the result of just chance. They are intelligent adaptations to challenging circumstances. Is psi perhaps involved in evolution? Secondly, are you not seriously reminded by this story of the direction in which humanity is going on earth? I am. Earth is starting to protest against our presence. Deadly viruses, earth quakes, hurricanes, floods and more. Harrison apparently saw it coming in 1960. Psi and science fiction are a good combination. A pretty good one. The warning is that we have to make peace with and show respect for nature, else …

By the way, my new book 'Quantum Physics & the Mind, a Crash Course' is out.
Click on the image for more information
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Quantum Consciousness Falsified?

Underground test of gravity-related wave function collapse falsifies quantum consciousness

On 26 Nov 2021 a physics research team published the result and conclusion of their tests at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory of the Diósi-Penrose model of the gravity induced collapse of the quantum wave . Gravity induced collapse is a basic element of the Penrose-Hameroff hypothesis of quantum consciousness. The conclusion of the Gran Sasso team is that there is no gravity induced quantum collapse in the way Diósi and Penrose supposed. This actually falsified also the Penrose-Hameroff model of quantum consciousness. I received some questions from readers concerning the meaning of the outcome of this experiment. Would it mean also a falsification of the hypothesis of primary consciousness that I defend in my book and on this website?

Orchestrated Objective Reduction – Orch OR falsified

The Penrose-Hameroff theory of consciousness is called the Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR). Their theory can be summarized very briefly as follows:

"Superpositions of quantum states arise in your brain, in so-called microtubules (small protein structures in the nerve cells in the brain). A conscious experience takes place the moment those superpositions collapse.”
Figure from ‘A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory’. Microtubules processing information by the quantum collapse, which is presumed to generate conscious experience.

So this is, properly speaking, one of the theories that tries ultimately to explain consciousness as a product of the brain. More precisely as a product of quantum states in the brain. The collapse of the superpositions – the quantum collapse – is thereby assumed to be a physical process, the superpositions are all physically existing. Then at the collapse they change into just one of all possibilities, the other superpositions disappear without a trace into ‘quantum nothing’.

If that collapse is physical, as physicist Roger Penrose and anesthetist Stuart Hameroff think, it means a small change in the distribution of the corresponding electrical charge and according to Maxwell’s laws a very faint electromagnetic signal should be generated. This is the EM signal that the researchers, who wanted to test the Orch OR theory, thought to pick up. They did so in the deep caves of Gran Sasso, where disturbances of the measurements by cosmic rays are as small as possible because they first have to pass through thick layers of rock. A (most likely costly) experiment that showed that the quantum collapse does not generate electrical signals. This means that one of Orch OR’s underlying assumptions has been falsified. So, good riddance for Orch OR. One theory less about the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness. Which is in my opinion good news . We already have too many theories of quantum physics and consciousness.

However, the Orch OR theory has nothing to do with the primary consciousness hypothesis. I hope you can see that. Orch OR is just a single branch of the tree of divergent ideas that try to understand consciousness from only the material perspective. But the Orch OR theory has nothing to do with the primary consciousness hypothesis. On the contrary, the primary consciousness hypothesis is that matter is a secondary phenomenon created by that consciousness upon perception. Which is something completely different.

Is the Primary Consciousness theory also falsifiable?

If you want to falsify the hypothesis of primary consciousness, it can be done a lot easier and cheaper than with a mediagenic experiment deep under the Gran Sasso. The hypothesis of primary consciousness in my book is based on the concept of information. The information that a measurement or observation can provide determines how the observed object behaves or has behaved. It is becoming increasingly clear in experiments that the less information a measurement provides, the more wavelike behavior is observed.

The most extreme example of this is the effect that when observing through which slit of the double slit the object passed, the signature interference pattern, the light and dark bands, changes into a single spread-out spot. That spot is still the result of a wave hitting the screen but now of a single wave that went through just one slit. The inescapable conclusion, then, is that the object must have manifested itself in only one slit — in response to the fact that the information we were able to obtain was precisely about which way the object went. However, the repeatedly observed fact that it is information that collapses the quantum wave is not proof or even evidence that it is the consciousness of the observer that is causing the collapse, although we have to ask ourselves whether information still has meaning if it does not show up within our consciousness. But, just as the collapse of the quantum wave should produce an electrical signal was a fundamental assumption of Orch OR, the collapse of the quantum wave by available information is a basic assumption of the primary consciousness theory. If we can falsify that assumption, then it becomes difficult for the idea of primary consciousness.

The quantum information eraser can do just that

The quantum information eraser experiments are a good step in that direction, but there is still some further work to be done in order to falsify the information hypothesis. In all quantum eraser experiments that I know of, the irreversible destruction of the information about the chosen slit is done by a semi-transparent mirror. And, noteworthy, let that be just the physical part of these experiments where any physicist – who adheres more or less to the Copenhagen interpretation – automatically assumes that it constitutes an exception to the rule that a physical object, if only massive enough, triggers the quantum collapse. According to these physicists, the quantum collapse takes place in and through the detector and ostensibly not by hitting the semi-transparent mirror or other optical components. My assumption, however, is that the quantum wave collapses on the basis of the available information. So not by the detector but by someone becoming aware of the result of the detector. That means, if we irreversibly destroy that information immediately after passing through the detector before anyone can observe it, that the interference pattern of light and dark lines will show up again. Such a precision experiment can easily be carried out in any well-equipped university optical laboratory.

Adapted from the setup of the – flawed – delayed-choice quantum-eraser experiment of Kim et al. (1999): Detector D0 is movable in the x direction, perpendicular to the path of the upper photon. The beamsplitter BSc is the quantum eraser. © Patrick Edwin Moran

In the above figure, you can see that the quantum eraser components I added – two simple changover switches controlled by a QRNG – are located directly behind the detectors D1 and D2. In the upper position the quantum information about the passed slit is erased mechanically by fusing the two signals into one. It is a fairly simple adaptation, actually a drastic simplification, of a 1999 quantum eraser experiment at Maryland University in Baltimore. That experiment is often mentioned by there-is-only-matter physicists to demonstrate the nonsense of the quantum eraser since the 1999 Maryland experiment had a fundamental flaw in its design that rendered its conclusion unwarranted. The debunkers then conveniently ignore the correct and successful quantum eraser experiments that were done afterwards at the same university. For those who want to delve into this ‘hard’ quantum eraser, I refer to this page on my website or to chapter 13: ‘Falsifiability of the consciousness hypothesis‘ in my book.

Now all we have to do is wait for avid researchers who don’t want to miss this opportunity to falsify the primary consciousness hypothesis. No Gran Sasso needed. The NewScientist reader is waiting for them and so am I.

Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy
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What if ..?

A good way to do science is to ask the question ‘What if .. ?’. Posing this question is usually the first step in a hypothesis. The next step in such an exercise is to investigate how many unanswered questions you find a satisfactory answer to. The phenomena and experiments that do not match the hypothesis should also be considered of course. If they don’t match, the ‘What if..?’ assumption can be rejected as impossible or improbable. Important: bias should be recognized and avoided in this regard. Together, that is what I call: ‘Research with an open mind’. So switch your bullshit detector off. It is a fast but unreliable instrument. Read if you wish ‘Thinking Fast and Slow‘ by Daniël Kahnemann.

Isaac Newton must also have followed such a what-if thought: ‘What if the heavenly bodies attract each other with a force that depends on their mutual distance?’ Quite an absurd assumption at the time, given the question of how such a force could be exerted through empty space – although we already had experience with forces at a distance such as magnetism. In fact, that force-at-distance question still hasn’t really been answered today, but Newton’s what-if question did result in the classic gravitational mechanics that were beautifully confirmed by Edmund Halley’s comet and that we still start our physics study with.

The Case against Reality

A good recent example of what-if thinking and then consecutively seeing whether there are obvious conflicts with known facts and if it provides explanations for as yet unexplained phenomena is – as far as I’m concerned – Donald Hoffman’s ‘The Case against Reality‘. What if the reality that our senses present to us is just a construction that our senses and our brains create? Hoffman is a cognitive psychologist and convincingly argues that our senses developed by Darwinian evolution where the appearance of the most suitable version of an organism for survival – read also sense here – always offered the best chances for becoming inheritable .

Based on that assumption, we can say the following:

  • It is not necessary that what is presented to us by our senses corresponds 1:1 to reality, whatever reality may be. What we sense as beneficial to our survival – an apple on a tree, a slice of bread, a glass of water – is just a translation that makes us act in such a way that we survive and are able to reproduce, in this case grab the food and consume it. Think of a VR program where the actual electric digital actions in the computer are hidden and are translated for us into an image that we understand, such as a map icon. There is absolutely no need for that translation to be equal to the underlying reality, as long as our response is adequate that’s fine. So here we see no apparent conflict with our experiences.
  • Hoffman’s idea is broadly in line with the idealism of Bernardo Kastrup. According to Kastrup, everything, including our own senses and brains, is not material and does not exist in a solid state separate from us. All our observations are complex experiences that enter our consciousness through a translation (Kastrup evokes the image of a dashboard that represents the phenomena that are happening outside) and are only experienced within consciousness. Solid material reality as something that exists outside of us is an illusion. Again, there are no obvious conflicts with our experiences, although it requires that we switch our bullshit detector off.
  • The question of what consciousness – that which experiences – is has not been answered, neither by Hoffman nor by Kastrup. However, it is the ground on which their philosophy rests. That is in itself not an argument against their idea as there is no philosophy where consciousness is fundamentally or even weakly explained. Neurologists are also limited to speculating about consciousness as some hazy emergence from a complex brain like steam rising from hot water, but that’s very far from even being a provisional explanation.

All in all, we thus arrive at the what-if assumption of primary consciousness which says that all matter, and the experience of it, are products of consciousness. By primary consciousness I mean something much more extended than our daily waking consciousness, which is probably only a small part of it. The next step in this what-if exercise is whether we can with the hypothesis of primary consciousness explain phenomena that we have not been able to explain with the materialist paradigm – also often called physicalism. Then, of course, we also have to see if there are phenomena that contradict it. That’s the scientific approach.

Step 1 – Explanations of observed phenomena not explained by physicalism

What observed phenomena is the hypothesis of primary consciousness able to explain where physicalism fails utterly, I count nine here:

  1. Quantum Physics: Quantum physics seems to tell us that the information available to the observer creates the observed reality in time and space. There are excellent arguments for this. I’ve published a complete book about quantum physics, information and consciousness, also and especially for the lay reader. If reality is a construct of our consciousness – including our body and bodily senses – then it provides an explanation for the otherwise incomprehensible results of quantum physics such as objects that can be in multiple places at once and are entangled over astronomical distances, to name but a few.
  2. Relativity Dilation: Special relativity says that when we observe a relative to us moving object such as a rocket, a bullet, or an elementary particle, the rulers, or whatever may pass for them, shorten in that object to zero and time slows down to standstill as its relative velocity increases to lightspeed. This effect has been confirmed by many experiments. This dilation effect is incomprehensible if we stick to the ideas of solid permanent matter, fixed space and time. But when the consciousness of the observer creates the world – the world is within the mind – it becomes suddenly understandable. Matter, space and time acquire then the same properties as thoughts (James Jeans: ‘The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter… we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.’
  3. Field Forces: Gravity, electromagnetic force, the strong and the weak nuclear force are all field forces. They affect matter remotely without direct contact through the use of force-transmitting objects, such as with billiard balls. If the world consists only of matter, then field forces are inherently incomprehensible, not even when we try to use the curved space-time dimensions of Einstein’s general relativity. But when consciousness creates reality, field forces become not fundamentally different from thoughts either.
  4. Dreaming: Dreaming is utterly common and incomprehensible at the same time. When dreaming we sometimes create fantastic virtual realities sometimes complete with all possible sensory impressions, seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling. You really see colors, hear sounds, touch objects. However, try evoking such a realistic experience in the waking state (without hallucinogens). Just try to evoke, with your eyes closed, the experience of seeing the color red or the picking up and feeling the size and weight of an object as a real experience. The result is never more than a faint shadow of a real experience. It always amazes me how little amazing most people find it that we can dream at all. If consciousness is indeed capable of creating vivid experiences of reality, then dreaming is no longer so different from what we do in our everyday waking world.
  5. Blindsight: Nicola Farmer has founded a school – the ICU academy – where children can learn to read, draw colored figures, and play with balls while blindfolded. Nicola also trains teachers who can teach this subsequently to children. This blindsight ability of these children has been confirmed by independent observers and recorded in a film ‘Children with real superpowers‘. Apparently our eyes are not really necessary to perceive the world visually. From the idea of primary consciousness creating the idea of matter this is understandable since what the children “see” is the creation of consciousness itself. Blindsight is also a phenomenon recognized by neurologists, but they attribute it to a different from normal visual processing neural path, ultimately still based on the signals that our eyes transmit to the brain. This cannot be the case with these blindfolded children.
  6. Psychokinesis (Pk): Pk has been confirmed in laboratory experiments, although they concern usually micro-Pk. This is nothing but the primary consciousness in immediate action.
  7. The NDE (Near-Death Experience): Since Raymond Moody’s book “Life After Life” – published originally in 1975 – worldwide interest in the NDE has exploded and large numbers of people have come forward with their NDE experience. The Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF) has collected more than 5,000 experiences on its website since 2000. It is estimated that between 3 and 5% of the world’s population has had an NDE. Primary consciousness provides an excellent explanation for such a widely reported phenomenon, since consciousness being primary means that it cannot the product of a material brain and thus – after the death of the material body – can continue to exist and perceive independently. Skeptics’ claim that the NDE is neurologically explained is – sorry – bullshit.
  8. The ADC (After-death-communication): Since the beginning of this century, the After Death Communication Research Foundation (ADCERF) has collected more than 2,000 reported experiences of contact with recently deceased loved ones and animals. Polls show that more than 50% of people report an ADC experience shortly after the death of a partner, child or beloved pet. Read “The Departed among the Living” by professor Erlendur Haraldsson. This phenomenon is also perfectly explainable from the non-material death surviving primary consciousness.
  9. Evolution: The predominant neo-Darwinian view of the origin of life and evolution — life has come into existence by blind chance and by the survival of the most suitable organism plus a few billion years of single local mutations in DNA — is on the verge of collapsing. Read “Evolution 2.0” by Perry Marshall, “Evolution: A view from the 21th Century, Fortified” by James Shapiro or “Active Biological Evolution” by Frank Laukien. All life, from viruses and single-celled organisms to “modern” animals and plants, responds to challenges from its environment by actively modifying its entire genetic machinery (not just its DNA) – humans also. Amazingly often successfully and also inheritable by the next generations. The irrepressible suspicion that an intelligent reaction to the experiences of the organism is taking place here, starts to receive more and more attention. Primary consciousness, assuming it is also intelligent (a fairly obvious assumption), offers a good explanation.

Step 2 – Conflicts with established observations

Are there phenomena that conflict with the hypothesis of primary consciousness? At first glance (our bullshit detector) it seems there are at least four:

  1. The experience of solidity: Reality as we experience it is solid and rather permanent. We can’t walk through a wall. If we bump ourselves, it hurts. If we fall, we get hurt. Objects left behind remain there until we – or others – relocate them. Matter does not appear out of nothing, nor does it just disappear into nothingness. That would go against the well-known and soundly affirmed conservation laws of physics.
  2. Multiple observers: When my consciousness creates the world and everything in it, a problem arises with multiple observers (read ‘Tom Poes en de Kwanten’ in the bundle ‘Trammelant en Tierelier‘ by Marten Toonder, highly recommended, however only available in Dutch).
  3. Free will: Why – assuming I have free will – can’t I create the world I want. I cannot create or make matter disappear at will. The latter can probably be doubted if you take Mary Rose Barrington’s book – JOTT – seriously.
  4. Evil: Why does Evil exist? In itself this is not a physically definable conflict but nevertheless a valid question. If consciousness creates the world why also Evil? That question is food for philosophers.

I hope you can see that in all the above points the assumption is hidden that primary consciousness is identical to the individual waking consciousness. Which is not necessarily the case. When we can drop that assumption, all of the above points fail as strongly valid conflicts that might reject the primary consciousness hypothesis.

Furthermore, the above is not intended as a plea for idealistic monism, as for instance Kastrup advocates, and which completely denies the existence of matter. Most of the points mentioned in step 1 can also be explained with the dualistic view that matter and consciousness coexist and can influence each other. Something that René Descartes assumed in his Meditations. However, the question that is not answered in his dualism is how these two intrinsically different things, matter and consciousness, can interact with each other.

Conclusion

As far as I’m concerned, this what-if exercise provides ample confirmation that the primary consciousness hypothesis is at least worth taking seriously. While it’s probably not the ultimate scientific theory of everything, it can explain a lot of things that are simply inexplicable from the physicalist perspective that prefers to ignore en deny an abundant amount of clear facts.

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Help, I’m being shut down!

Is my computer aware? Would it mind being shut down? Sometimes you might wonder with your finger lingering on the off switch. Not likely, but still…..?

The PEAR Lab

The PEAR laboratory – Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory – was founded in 1979 by Robert Jahn, a professor of aeronautical engineering, along with Brenda Dunne, a developmental psychologist. In the PEAR lab, the special influence that the mind could have on physical devices, including electronic random signal generators (REGs), were studied in a variety of ways. Below is an example of the result of their influencing by intention REG experiments .

The three colored graphs represent the cumulative deviation from the standard expectation (the zero line) of the output of a REG in three test runs. The curved lines indicate the limits where the result is within the commonly accepted standard expectation limit of 5%. The red graph represents thus an clear case of the influence of intention. But apparently a reverse effect of intention is also possible (blue graph). Compare this with the behavior of an unaffected REG shown below. The graph hovers clearly around the zero line.

REG Cumulative Deviation without intention

Psyleron Conscious Technologies & Research

One of the lab collaborators was Herbert Mertz who mainly dealt with the REGs used in the PEAR experiments. Together with colleagues and friends he founded Psyleron in 2005. Psyleron supplied affordable REG kits based on QRNG devices (QRNG: Quantum Random Number Generator) with accompanying software. With these kits everyone should be able to independently investigate the effects of the mind on matter. One of their more playful products was the Psyleron Mind Lamp, a lamp that changes color when the results of the built-in REG deviate slightly from the standard expectation. Be sure to read the user experiences on the Psyleron Mind Lamp page.

Psyleron’s Mind Lamp. Changes color with focused attention, it seems. Unfortunately no longer for sale.

Herb Mertz’s book The Selection Effect is an account of his fascination with quantum number generators (REGs) and of his serious attempts in succesfully influencing them. He finds that he can indeed, but his influence evaporates as soon as the playful element disappears from his efforts and he becomes too serious in his attempts. What I want to talk about here is his description of an experiment where the experimenter effect seems to have played an important role. Herb opens his book with an extensive report of an experiment that certainly seems to belong in the category of special experimenter effects. It was conducted in 2013 by Professor Garret Moddel of the University of Colorado Boulder, one of his students, James Zhu, and Adam Curry of the Psyleron Company.

The Colorado Research Question: Is a Machine Conscious?

The research question was whether a machine, such as a QRNG, ‘feels’ coming that it is being turned off and shows this in its reaction. A QRNG is based on a quantum physics process and its output, a zero or a one is fundamentally unpredictable according to quantum physics. The only way a QRNG can ‘react’ is a deviation in the generated sequence of ones and zeros. Such a sequence is completely random, the probability of each bit – a zero or a one – in the sequence does not depend on the series of zeros and ones before it. The probability of a sequence of, for example, 20 consecutive zeros is less than 1:1,000,000. The expectation for the mean value of a random sequence of ones and zeros is 0.5. When the deviation from the expected mean value of such a sequence is statistically significant, you can consider that a QRNG reaction. Incidentally, this is exactly what is being done in the Global Consciousness Project. All over the world QRNGs continuously produce zeros and ones (the so-called EGG sites) and check in real-time whether significant deviations from the mean value of the bit rows occur and whether these are correlated with important global events. And it turns out that it is. Remarkable in itself. And ignored in many academic circles still trapped in a purely materialistic paradigm.

Global Consciousness Project: Cumulative Deviation during 12 years of standard expectation

Many experiments have been conducted to test whether people do sense a negative event coming. Most of the time this is done by showing subjects, sitting in front of a screen, a randomly selected image five seconds after they have pressed a button. The image shown can be neutral or emotionally disturbing. Through the output of an QRNG, five seconds after pressing the key, a random image is selected, and displayed, by the computer from a database with an equal amount of neutral and emotional images. Monitoring physiological factors such as heart rate and/or skin resistance can be used to investigate whether the test subject unconsciously senses what is coming before the time that the image is selected by the QRNG. This sensing the future has indeed been demonstrated in these kind of presentiment experiments. Read Dean Radin’s 2004 presentiment experiment research publication. His experiment is also extensively discussed in my book.

The warden and the prisoner

Garret’s idea was that if a machine with a QRNG built-in had any consciousness, it would probably find it unpleasant to be turned off, and, like those human subjects, it would have a presentiment of it. In those last few seconds before shutdown, it’s QRNG would respond with a measurable deviation in the generated series of zeros and ones.

The unpredictable switching on and off of the device with the QRNG was done by a second QRNG, the warden. It’s victim, the device with the QRNG 1, is the prisoner. The generated zeros and ones from warden and prisoner were both recorded. The whole device had been extensively tested for correct functioning, ‘null’ tests had been done, so, the experiment could begin. Expectations were tense. The device was switched on at the end of the day and the results would be viewed the next morning.

And lo and behold, the next morning it turned out that the ‘prisoner’ had indeed reacted every time shortly before the fundamentally unpredictable times when the ‘warden’ took out the ‘prisoner’. Statistically significant in a way that the result could not be ignored. It could not be considered as an accidental glitch in the experimental set-up. Had they perhaps made a discovery here that would stir up a lot of controversy around the world in universities and labs investigating consciousness and its effects? It was wise to wait a little longer and let the set-up run another night. The second day the outcome was an even stronger indication of presentiment of the prisoner. The third night again yielded the same result, the prisoner every time shortly before being shutdown reacting by producing a significantly deviating series of zeros and ones .

The serious scientific approach

Now it got really interesting. It became possible that a serious publication in scientific journals was in the offing. But in that case there are strict conditions attached to the test procedures. Does the length of the interval between off and on switching affect the outcome for example? The frequency of the generated zeros and ones maybe? The way it was turned off and on, perhaps? The experimenters turned the dials, doubled the frequency and then waited another night for the result. The result was now that the deviations in the prisoner’s behavior were shown no longer. Then they halved the frequency. Again no reaction of the prisoner any more. At last they reset the frequency to its original value. Again, the result remained zero negative. The effect was gone.

What had changed?

Mertz’s suspicion, and mine too, is that the moment the experimenters started to behave ‘really’ scientifically, their unconscious expectations changed. In other words, that the expectations of the experimenters early in the experiment, when uninhibited natural open curiosity played an important role and academic scientific demonstrability was less important, had changed into academic goals. It was no longer play but serious science. When they were still ‘playing’ the experimenters’ expectations influenced the outcome of the QRNG’s quantum process, the prisoner, in such a way that it changed significantly in the short time before the guard evicted the prisoner.

In my opinion the minds of the experimenters did two things. First it premonited the shut down of the prisoner by the warden, second it then influenced the prisoner REG to produce a sequence of bits outside the normally evenly distributed values.

Isn’t it panpsychism?

Panpsychism – all matter is conscious – is becoming more popular among philosophers and physicists. Too bad for them that the guard and prisoner experiment turned out so disappointingly at the moment stricter research methods were applied. But I suspect anyhow that consciousness, and in particular the expectations of the researchers, played a significant role here.

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A Crash Course in Quantum Physics and Consciousness

On April 3 and 10 I presented a Crash Course in Quantum Physics and Consciousness in two Zoom sessions for Wendy Zammit’s Global Gathering audience. Quantum physics is not an easy subject, but in my opinion you can get a good idea of the basics if you pay attention so you can also understand its message. Consciousness is the primary stuff of the universe. Pretty good news about what happens when the body dies. Consciousness is the creator of your experiences. Think about that.

The audience – about 50 attendants – were very interested in the consciousness message of quantum physics. A lot of questions were asked, some I could answer.

Part I
Part II

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Gifts of Unknown Things

Sometimes, in a book actually not really about quantum physics, I unexpectedly come across a text that particularly appeals to me in the context of my idea that quantum physics has an important message for humanity. A message that is still not understood or not been recognized by the majority of scientists today. Lyall Watson however is a scientist who recognizes the message.

A scientist of stature

Malcolm Lyall-Watson is a widely oriented scientist of stature. He is a botanist, zoologist, biologist, anthropologist, paleontologist and ethologist. He was, among other things, director of the Johannesburg Zoo and has produced nature series for the BBC. Watson is an adventurer and also a captivating storyteller. This has resulted in a series of books of which I have only recently read just this one which leaves me wanting more.

I am concerned here with a passage in his book ‘Gifts of Unknown Things’ where he summarizes adequately quantum physics in three pages, in an attempt to explain his experiences on a small Indonesian island where the local population accepts extraordinairy phenomena as an element of everyday life. By the way, I can recommend the entire book to you, if only for its captivating reading pleasure.

An infinite book as a metaphor of the state wave

The text fragment in question: Watson presents in it a very understandable metaphor about quantum physical reality as a book where every set of two pages contains one of the infinite possible states of the universe. Where the book will open is unpredictable, but the book is bound and used in such a way that it does show a preference for certain pages. As long as the book is still closed, everything is possible, all pages – all possibilities – are still there. That is comparable to the situation where the state wave has not yet collapsed. The opening of the book is thus the measurement, the collapse of the state wave by the observation of the reader with only one pair of pages now being readable. But in fact everything is possible, all the pages are still there. Sumo – mentioned in the text – is one of the inhabitants of the island who, because of his belief system, cannot accept what he sees, until a dramatic outcome is needed.

A Modern Physics Problem

“Modern physics has a problem. In Newton's time, concern was directed largely at measuring things, because he believed, as many people still do today, that everything was knowable, and it was just a matter of clear thinking and lots of hard work. It was felt that the collection of information was vital and that when enough was available, the rest could be calculated or inferred. So classical physics for two centuries concerned itself almost entirely with the motion of bodies and the force of fields.

Then Heisenberg showed it was impossible to determine exactly the position and momentum of any body at a single instant in time. This discovery in itself would have been of only academic importance if it had not also shown that changes were necessary in some of the most basic equations of physics. The changes were made, and they resulted in the development of quantum mechanics, and this has begun to bring about a major philosophical revolution.

Physics is concerned with systems. As an example, let's choose a system made up of a number of moving particles that happen to look like the letters of the alphabet. The old physics had its classical equations of motion which were supposed to be able to calculate the complete state of such a system. Let's say that what they had in mind was an arrangement something like this page of this book. A pattern in code which would need deciphering but which could be used, they thought, like the Rosetta Stone, to understand the language and to predict the form of all future states, the pattern on all pages that might precede or follow this one.

The new physics says fine, but there is a problem. There is no such thing as a single state. Each system has an infinite number of possible states, and it exists in all of them simultaneously. Quantum mechanics recognizes not the page, but the whole book as a more valid expression of the pattern of a system at any one moment in time. In fact, it goes a lot further than this thin book can, because it needs an infinite number of pages.

Now, when we try to observe a physical system, when we attempt to make a measurement, we do not find a particle moving at a number of velocities, located in widely different positions. We catch the system in one of its infinite number of states. When we open a book, we see only one of the many different pages. With the book lying closed on the table in front of you, all those pages or states already exist, and any page is possible. The probability is not necessarily equal; there is usually a bias built into the binding which makes the book open more easily at a well-thumbed page. But with the covers closed, the system is open. It is a multiple state and enters a single state only when a reader comes along to take a measurement or make an observation.

In the words of quantum mechanics, an observer collapses the system into one of its component states. He is not part of the system, he is not one of the letters that make up the pattern on the pages, and he cannot be included in the equations. But neither can he be left out, because without him there cannot be any particular pattern. Without an observer, there is no description; but no description can be considered complete unless it takes into account the effects of the observer who made it. There is no such thing as an objective experiment.

This is the measurement problem, and it has left much of the physics community in a state of considerable disquiet. There are inevitably a number of unconvinced Newtonians (like Sumo) who are doing their best to discredit this interpretation, but so far they have had very little success. The uncertainty just won't go away. In fact, it gets more alarming all the time.

When a system is observed, it collapses into one of its states. But what happens when there is more than one observer?

Science refuses to accept as valid any measurement made by only one person. The experiment has to be repeatable and produce the same result. So when two scientists in widely separated laboratories succeed in making the same measurement, when they get the book to open at precisely the same page, there must be some factor which at that moment puts them on common ground. They must be linked. This linkage, which provides them both with the same page number, is a procedure that we call experimental protocol. It has to be followed precisely or the experiment will "fail"—the book will open elsewhere. It is a very strict procedure with a precise set of rules which require that individuality be held as far as possible in abeyance. It suggests that the scientific approach is a ritual, an incantation, a set of magic words and gestures for producing the desired effect.

And what if there are two observers stationed at the same vantage point? Assume that the two scientists involved in this work happened to be together in the laboratory when the experiment was completed successfully for the very first time. They were exploring new territory, so there was no established protocol; they were simply following a hunch. They collapsed the system and exposed one of its states. Both made the same observation. They saw the same page. This could happen only if the observation process itself united them in some way, or if one of them saw the state first and imposed his view of it on the other. Both sides in the quantum-mechanical argument support the theory of relativity which says it is not possible to put either of the observers first. So that leaves us with only one possibility. Observers of the same state at any moment in time are coupled. And if there are more than two, they are grouped. And as joint observers are often too far apart to hold hands or make any normal physical contact during the process of observation, they must be united by some nonphysical factor.

There is only one nonphysical entity that is nevertheless real and sufficiently widespread to be held responsible.

Our consciousness.”

From: Gifts of Unknown Things by Lyall Watson published by Inner Traditions International and Bear & Company, © 1991. All rights reserved.
http://www.Innertraditions.com  
Reprinted with permission of publisher.

I totally agree.

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Consciousness taken to court

It is the neurologists who still largely believe in classical physics, through which they want to explain consciousness as an emergent phenomenon of the brain. European neurologists are busy working on the Human Brain Project. This is one of the largest research projects in the world. In its final phase (April 2020 – March 2023) the HBP’s focus is to advance three core scientific areas – brain networks, their role in consciousness, and artificial neural nets – while further expanding EBRAINS. They expect – and hope – that their digital copy of the neural netwerk that we harbor in our skulls will become aware. For the sake of this emerging digital awareness, I hope not. In the main media I regularly come across articles that subscribe, rather uncritically, to this emergence idea. Fortunately, I also come across critical reviews, such as here in The Telegraph.

The neurologist’s message: your consciousness is a hallucination. It’s a recursive pattern within a pattern within a pattern of neuronal activity.

If you repeat a message often enough, a significant portion of the recipients will simply believe it. Just look at Donald Trump, about 43% of the male residents of the US currently believe that large-scale vote fraud has been committed in the presidential elections of 2020. The other male 57% are just looking uncomprehending at such a belief, since it can only survive if you completely ignore the facts. Apparently this is also the case with this neurological ‘We are our Brains’ brainwashing. It’s a belief. Verified facts are completely ignored. Entire tribes believe it. Of course you are free to believe what you want, but this is a belief with major consequences for science, humanity and its future.

A lawsuit

Suppose the question of the origin of consciousness were the subject of case law. In such a fictitious case, consciousness is accused of masquerading as an objectively existent thing when, according to the indictment, it is just a hallucination of our neurons. Therefore, its right to exist as an original phenomenon is dubious and unfounded. A verdict would have major consequences for our society. Fortunately, there are facts to consider, both for and against consciousness as a product of our neurons. So let’s put consciousness in the dock, and ask the judge to make a legal decision based on scientifically established facts.

The prosecution:

Your Honor, if I get a blow on the head, I lose consciousness. If I drink a lot of alcohol, my consciousness will behave less well. When I get demented and my brain is affected I forget who I am and who my husband is. With a dose of LSD or DMT I experience the most fantastic hallucinations. These are all examples where the cohesion and/or the chemistry in my neurons is affected. I am my brain. My consciousness pretends to be real, but it is only an illusion.

The defense:

Your Honor, what has been put forth is by no means conclusive evidence that consciousness is produced by the brain. The correlation of the electrical behavior of neurons with thoughts and sensations has been demonstrated, but a correlation is not a causal relationship. The fact that many firefighters are usually present at a fire does not mean that their joint presence causes fires. There is no question that the brain plays a role in our consciousness, but it is arguable that the brain is only an instrument of consciousness, to be able to interact with the world, a receiver of awareness with a very advanced filtering capacity.

When I crash my iPhone, it stops functioning, but the content that was ready to be shown or to be played is still there. When I buy and install a new iPhone, this content can be revived again. Much to the amazement and unbelief of someone of the 19th century. Furthermore, fMRI research has shown that when people use drugs such as LSD and DMT, their neuronal activity decreases while the intensity of the hallucination increases. This contradicts the idea that the brain produces their intense experiences and directly supports the filter hypothesis. Finally, you can also ask yourself what it is that experiences that illusion. Those neurons?

The prosecution:

Your Honor, consciousness here apparently masquerades as something that exists outside the physical body and communicates with it in ways unknown to us. This is not possible given generally accepted scientific knowledge. As far as we know there is only matter and energy, and energy exchange can only take place between matter and other matter. No disembodied consciousness has ever been demonstrated in the laboratory. The Cartesian duality, a disembodied spirit in a physical body, is a misrepresentation born of outdated religious beliefs. I think the me, who thinks so, is itself an illusion.

The Judge:

Pardon me, this is an illusion addressing me? Well well, I surely want to hear more of the defence now.

The defence:

Your Honor, if the prosecutor thinks his thinking self is an illusion, I wonder why we should listen to an illusion. And that a disembodied consciousness has not been demonstrated in a laboratory is not proof of the non-existence of a such a phenomenon. The measuring instrument that would be needed is, as far as is known, not yet available. The only known way to perceive consciousness is consciousness. Current scientific knowledge is necessarily incomplete and based on materialistic models, the correctness of which in the past had to be repeatedly adjusted or even rejected. That energy exchange can only take place between matter is not a fact but an unproven dogma. Quantum physics, the most successful physical theory currently, seems to indicate strongly – by delayed choice experiments, among other things – that the observer creates the observed. Matter thus seems to become the illusion, not the perceiving consciousness. But it is not matter that is in the dock here to be defended.

There are excellently documented cases of individuals where no brain activity at all could be detected – flat EEG and ECG – while this person was observing the environment from a point of view different from the usual, that is, observing the world from somewhere outside the body. In support of this defense I offer here an excellent verified file of cases where brain and normal sensory perception could not function, but where the person concerned clearly consciously perceived and remembered details that were verified on correctness in a way that cannot be explained with a strict material model of reality. Something that means that strictly material theories are limited in their explanatory models and that full awareness at the time of the Near-Death experience cannot be a product of complex neuronal activity. A clear awareness going together with a cerebral cortex that is demonstrably no longer functioning cannot be reconciled with the idea of an emergent consciousness.

I want to present here also the case of the 44-year old man with a tiny brain. His case was published in The Lancet in 2007. The man seemed to function normally with a healthy IQ, but, as a result of hydroencephalitis, he walked around with a skull mainly filled with cerebrospinal fluid. See the x-ray for yourself.

The large black space is the fluid that built up in his brain. Feuillet et al./The Lancet.

Consciousness in this case can hardly be the result of an extremely complicated network of neurons that produce together a pattern within a pattern within a pattern.

Your Honor, finally I would like to add that if I were to say to my GP, “I think the me, who thinks this, is an illusion,” she would be concerned, write a referral to the psychiatrist and think probably, “Oh my, the poor wretch’. But when a neuroscientist says the same their audience apparently listens breathlessly. I beg you to remain critical.

The prosecution:

Your Honor, I hope you will exercise some patience in this matter and will wait until there is conclusive scientific evidence to show that consciousness is a product of the brain and thus is a hallucination. We are confident it will be produced within a few years fom now. That person with so few neurons still had quite a few, as you can see from the x-ray, so apparently not so many are needed for intelligent consciousness as we thought. That proof, that consciousness is a product of the neurons, will come, I assure you. That won’t be long. We are working on it with all our might. I implore you to have confidence in the promise of science and its devoted practitioners. In anticipation of the outcome we are already so sure of, I propose that consciousness should already be given the status of hallucination at this stage. This will, according to our belief, explain completely the emergence of consciousness from matter and, very important, in that way we only need matter to explain the world. Please, let’s not complicate matters more than necessary.

The defence:

Your Honor, it should be well known that at this time any active interest of scientists in consciousness as an independent primary cause that does not originate in matter, could be detrimental to their careers, even if they already had a Nobel Prize. Nevertheless, there is a steadily growing number of scientists who dare to defy this career risk. I therefore I ask you urgently not to base your verdict upon some vague promises, but only on documented and verified facts, even if they do not come from laboratories, and to assign consciousness rightly its status as an actual, independent and original entity. Thank you very much.

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An ultra short introduction into quantum physics

Recently I did an online presentation to an audience while I knew I shouldn’t be speaking about electrons, photons and double slit experiments and all that phyicist stuff. Still, I wanted the participants to glean a useful insight into what quantum physics has to say about the world and how it supports the idea of a consciousness that doesn’t depend on our material brain. It worked wonderfully, given the comments and the questions. That is why I am posting this introduction here as well. I’ll start with some basic definitions.

Particles

When we talk about particles, what are we actually talking about?

  • A particle is a concept that originates from classical Newtonian physics. That is, it is a model and therefore does not necessarily have to be the true reality. What follows is therefore only the definition of the concept of a particle. However, one that we usually use when we think and talk about reality.
  • A particle is an object where all of its matter exists within its boundaries. It has clear defined boundaries.
  • A particle has an exact location and speed.
  • Material reality consists of particles and their interactions.
  • Particles cannot pass through each other, they collide and usually bounce back or stick together.
  • Particles exist in place and time but are not part of it.

Waves

When we talk about waves, what are we actually talking about?

  • A wave is a moving excitation of a coherent medium.
  • A wave has no boundaries. The boundaries are those of the medium. The boundaries of a wave in the ocean are the surrounding coasts.
  • A wave has speed and frequency, but not a precise location.
  • That a wave has no boundaries means that the wave is present everywhere in the medium. Every wave in the ocean exists everywhere in the ocean.
  • A wave is not apart from the medium. It is the medium in a state of excitation.
  • Waves do not collide but pass through each other. Their excitations can be added at any time, creating more complex waves. Even standing waves.

Waves and particles

Waves and particles are thus completely different concepts. To claim that something is a wave and a particle at the same time is therefore confusing, it’s nonsense, a sham. Don’t fall for it.

The quantum wave is a non-material wave

A sound wave is a good example of a material wave with the air acting as the coherent medium. Ditto for a wave in water. The quantum wave and its medium, on the other hand, do appear to be non-material, given the following facts:

  • The mathematical dimensions of the quantum wave’s physical properties do not exist in our 3D reality.
  • The immaterial quantum wave of an object gives us the probability of observing that object as a particle when we focus our attention on a certain location at a certain point in time.
  • The outcome of such a focused attention is called a “measurement” by physicists. Physicists do not agree in this regard to what an exact definition of a measurement is. The result of a measurement is, without exception, something that, independent of the instruments used, an experience in our consciousness.
  • That the quantum wave is a probability wave strongly suggests that the quantum wave is something that is not taking place in material reality but in our mind. Probabilities are not matter. They are numbers.
  • The medium in which a non-material wave propagates must be coherent because a wave can only exist in a coherent medium. A good candidate for a coherent non-material medium is, of course, the mind.
  • Prior to the ‘measurement’ – the observation – the observed particle does not exist. This has been confirmed in many experiments and is therefore a major source of cognitive discomfort for many physicists. That discomfort is in turn the source of interpretations that turn out as inconsistent and/or absurd on critical consideration – such as, for example, the multiverse hypothesis – when these try to explain this phenomenon materialistically.
  • There is no known reason why the manifestation resulting from observation – the quantum collapse – should be limited to atomic dimensions. The fact that we experience the world as a permanent presence is no proof that this is indeed the case. The statistical probability that my desk will be in the same place on the next time I observe it is so close to 100% that I don’t have to worry about that at all. Every time I look it is – it materializes – exactly where I expect it to be. The discontinuities are so small I’ll never be able to observe them.
  • Since the quantum wave itself has no boundaries – that is a basic property of a wave – any object can in principle materialize instantaneously at any location in the universe, although that probability is generally extremely small. This may sound far-fetched, but it is the basis of the so-called quantum tunnel effect, where objects materialize on the other side of an impenetrable barrier without being able to pass through it. This effect has been known since 1927 and is at the root of nuclear fusion, all semiconductor technology and also of the efficiency of the metabolism of animals and plants, something that was discovered at the end of the 20th century. Quantum tunneling can happen even faster than the speed of light.
Quantum Tunnels Show How Particles Can Break the Speed of Light – Quanta Magazine october 2020

Conclusion

An observation (measurement) thus seems to bring the manifestation about of the observed object. This is not necessarily a cause-effect relationship. It is conceivable and even credible that perception and manifestation are identical, that they both do take place in the mind. Hopefully it has become somewhat clear to you how quantum physics does not contradict the idea of a consciousness that exists independently of our brain and can survive death. It even supports it.

For those people who object that it would then be sufficient to simply close their eyes to an oncoming bus or train, for them I have this answer: train and bus are examples of macro objects. It is true that as long as they are not observed, they are a non-material probability wave. The probability of being hit by that bus is 99.999999999999% (or closer to 100%). So, closing your eyes will not help very much, and it should not be forgotten that we have more senses than eyes alone. Finally, the bus driver is also an observer, of course. In philosophy the view of the world as being entirely inside mind is called Idealism.

The above is an extremely concise summary of my view as a physicist on the meaning of quantum physics. If you want to know (much) more I have to refer you to my website or to my book. I invite you not to believe me on my word, but to be curious and to do your own exploration of quantum physics. No mathematics needed.

You can see the presentation ‘Quantum Physics and the Afterlife’ I did here.