A non-local attractor is a galactic gravitational force embedded within the spiral shaped curvature of this space-time galaxy --a spiral draft instilling direction into this whole sector of the universe ..the shape of things to come. Thus, form is meaning! Much as mass and energy are interchangeable (E=mc²), form is paired-up with a non-local gravity – a kind of nothingness or emptiness Being implied, that doesn’t seem to matter, winding in from outside the frontiers of our back-water sphere ...raising the ante by accounting for the weirdness of loaded dice playing games with the reality of "this world". What enchants our intelligence is not the handiwork of a watch-maker God or the utter random chance of cold and impersonal atheism, but an elusive cohesive potential pervading the galaxy, if not the universe ...as we know it.

If you wish to understand this book, you should see it whole – and the place to start is the homepage: Heaven-Words Ó copyright 2005 WEBb1910473801 (All rights reserved by the author) You may view any or all chapters of this very long book simply by clicking on the links below.

Fox News Bill O’Reilly Sean Hannity Savage Double Talk Radio with Their Forked Tongue Tales of Islamofascism in Eurabia

Keys To Heaven-Words: The Art And Science Of Revolution

Gordon Press-ing realities in a surreal world

Cold War origins of totalitarianism in North America and Western Europe

Rise and fall of Roman Catholic Church: revisionist history

Salvador Dali portrays two-timing artists of today: from religious to ideological war with Jewish genius

Quantum theory made easy:  an introduction to the new physics

From String Theory To A Final Theory: Back To The Origins of Nuclear Weapons

Creators of the atomic bomb: debasing nuclear power into a totalitarian order in the new world

Quantum brain theory: splitting classical-physical reality..from the inside-out

Breakdown of madness dawns on genius of collective consciousness

Emile Durkheim: sacred symbols conceal unholy conviction: believers-in-themselves are sacred..chosen people

Chaos Theory: gravity bends of spiraling space-time

Modern theoretical physics seems to be indistinguishable from meta-physics. In this "twilight of the idols", outside the familiar trappings of classical common-sense, logical words fail us. The right side of the brain seems at home in this surrealist dream. Dali could indeed paint a still-life of this space-time landscape. My objective is to lead practical people to realize that talk of illusion, mysticism, self-organization and much else is not merely poetry. Dali should have painted the Disappearing Bust of Da Vinci rather than Voltaire because Da Vinci is like an invisible presence in twentieth century art and science. Da Vinci created a remarkable illusion on the dining room wall of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. The method he used was experimental and the painting has long since faded, but art historians report that in the original version of Da Vinci's Last Supper "...the lines of the wall are projected into the space of the painting to create what Ernst Gombrich described as an 'extraordinary illusion of reality'. 'Never before had the sacred episode appeared so close and so lifelike. It was as if another hall had been added to theirs, in which the Last Supper has assumed tangible form.' "¹ Da Vinci combined real objects, such as the corners of the wall with his painting to create a three dimensional illusion which seemed so real it appeared possible to actually walk inside of it; in the context of 1500 A.D. Renaissance Italy, it would not seem to be inappropriate to describe such a visionary scene as mystical, and Leonardo himself as a mystic. It seems inadequate to describe such a work of art as either a painting or a fresco. "Dali was conscious of Leonardo's method of conjuring imaginary scenes...".² In Dali and Surrealism, Dawn Ades compares Leonardo's Adoration of the Magi and Dali's Spain. What she is saying is that Dali was not only aware of Leonardo's methods, but actually based one of his illusory paintings on a work by Leonardo. "The prancing horses and battles are modelled on Leonardo...". Dali's Spain "... recalls Leonardo's unfinished Adoration of the Magi with its sketched brownish background and strange horsemen set ambiguously in a half-landscape behind the Virgin and Child. There is also a hint that Dali is using the Leonardo itself in the way that Leonardo may have used a mossy wall..."³

What has been shown is that Da Vinci the painter experimented with the themes of ambiguity and illusion, and had a direct influence on Dali's use of illusory images. However, I would like to stretch this connection of Leonardo to modern mystical thought further. Gerolamo Cardano lived during the Renaissance period of the 1500s. He grew up in poverty, but was surrounded by culture and mathematics from his earliest years. His father specialized in the study of geometry. Cardano recalled later in life that as a boy ".... he accompanied his father on a visit to Leonardo da Vinci, and the two men spent long hours into the night, discussing matters of geometry."⁴ As an aside, we might note that Leonardo da Vinci also came from humble origins; he was the illegitimate child of a notary and a peasant girl. Cardano is relevant here not only because of his association with Da Vinci, but also because of some striking similarities to Dali. What I want to establish is a new paradigm that should rivet our attention: a scientifically-minded-mysticism among people in the Arts. "Perhaps Cardano's curious combination of a mystical and a scientifically rational personality allowed him to catch these first glimmerings of what developed to be one of the most powerful of mathematical conceptions. ...."⁵ Cardano made two extraordinary contributions to mathematics: the first was complex numbers, and the second probabilities. These strange ideas remained a curiosity until nearly four hundred years later. In a truly remarkable way, complex numbers seemed custom-made for quantum physics, and in combination with probabilities described the hidden mysteries of the sub-atomic world. My aim, from time to time, will be to show that modern thought has significant origins in mystical visionaries of the Renaissance, and that men such as Nicolas of Cusa (1450), Leonardo da Vinci (1500), Cardano (1540), Bishop Berkeley (1700), and many others shaped the most powerful ideas of the 20th century, which were then given practical applications by Einstein, Bohr, Bohm and their brethren.

Dali borders both the arts and sciences. His technical skill places him closer to the architect and engineer than to a simple painter; but his awareness of mystical perception and his intuitive grasp of theoretical physics discloses an array of talents of remarkable proportions. It is especially important to recognize that Dali exchanged ideas with the leading scientists of his day. He struck upon a variety of extremely important insights that have evidently been utilized by modern scientific thinkers. Dali discredited himself in public opinion, appearing as a clown that no one of integrity would consider a serious source of ideas; we will filter through the superficial distortions cloaking Dali's genius and expose the treasures buried beneath the rubbish. We must follow in the footsteps of prominent physicists who consulted Dali. Illya Prigogine visited him in 1985, a few years before Dali's death. There is a picture of this meeting in The Dali Scandal (p.162) by Rogerson. Prigogine is credited with being one of the earliest chaos theorists. At one site on the Internet, he is referred to as the "grandfather of chaos theory". Perhaps this title might well be shared with Dali. The fact that he continued meeting with prominent scientists, even into old age, strengthens my opinion that Dali was not as uniformly corrupt or as crazy as his public image leads us to believe.

It is likely that Dali's paintings and even the imagery of his words influenced Prigogine and others involved in the creation of the new physics. While the extent of Dali’s contribution to chaos theory may be uncertain, he never-the-less was thinking and painting along the same irregular lines that would fascinate mathematicians and scientists who would come after him. Consider the choice of words he used in his biography, written in 1942. Dali recalls the many hours he spent daydreaming as a schoolboy and staring at the moisture stains on the ceiling. What caught his eye were "... the vague irregularities of these moldy silhouettes". He "...saw rising from this chaos which was as formless as clouds progressively concrete images..."⁶ In his 1936 painting The Great Paranoiac, there is a sequence of self-similar faces. Dali reflected on the wonder that surrounded the rocky shores of his home, Port Lligat. He compared those mystical rocks to clouds, "... a mass of catastrophic petrified cumuli in ruins. All the images capable of being suggested by the complexity of their innumerable irregularities appear successively and by turn as you change your position."⁷ But this was not Dali's imagination alone at work; for generations, the local fishermen had given names to these suggestive forms, names like: the eagle, the camel, the lion's head, or the monk. As they would row past these rocks in their boats, they would all notice how the rocks would seem to change shape from one figure to another. What was so curious is that the rocks were so rigid, yet they appeared to change. Dali's own thoughts were like those rocks of transfiguration: "...relativistic, changing at the slightest displacement in the space of the spirit, becoming constantly their own opposite, dissembling, ambivalent, hypocritical, disguised, vague and concrete...."⁸

While not a scientist, Dali’s revolutionary imagination was remarkably suggestive of the new physics. For a time, he believed he had a mission to over-come the split between religion and science, tradition and modernity. He was on the right track, but Catholicism was unable to meet his expectations, in spite of his extraordinary efforts. It is phenomenal how much Dali achieved using tradition, but much of his success was due more to his basic genius than to guidance from the Church. Nor was it that Dali was merely the "handmaiden" of Science, humbly trying to catch-up with the great thoughts of his age; there is much about perception and illusion which innovative thinkers of this century have clearly learned from him. I believe that if Dali had preserved an authentic mystical spirituality, he had the potential of becoming a twentieth century Da Vinci.

Beginning in the 1970s, in Europe and America, scientists of every discipline were seeking new ways to make sense of apparent disorder. Physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians and all the rest were aiming to discover what they intuitively felt were links in the deep structure of matter, although on the surface each phenomena they examined had only one feature in common: irregularity. They talked about chaos and found a peculiar kind of order in the heartbeat of man; they noticed mathematical similarities to the way in which insect populations rise and decline. Even the data of free markets yielded surprising analytical results. "The insights that emerged led directly into the natural world -- the shapes of clouds, the paths of lightning, the microscopic intertwining of blood vessels, the galactic clustering of stars."⁹ Principles of chaos, such as the powerful effect of initial conditions, can be noticed everywhere in the world around us: the weather, and particularly the unpredictability and wildness of the wind as it effects clouds, smoke, and the flight of butterflies. Chaos involves apparently regular and repetitive motion that abruptly changes to randomness, such as an evenly dripping faucet which suddenly loses sync as it picks up the beat of a nerve racking unpredictable rhythm. But the medium of flow is not limited to air and water; something as abstract as traffic flow, and the clustering of vehicles on the highway also demonstrates chaotic patterns.¹⁰

The science of chaos grew-up along-side computer technology and proved particularly effective in revealing the mathematical patterns and geometrical images that are embedded within the complexity of nature. Some of the most widely used terms from chaos theory are: randomness, unpredictability, initial conditions, butterfly effect, bifurcation, fractals, clusters, strange attractors, and self-organization. Themes of folding and smooth noodle maps seem indistinguishable from surrealist images, such as Dali's soft watches. Chaos is not constructed on concepts of matter, but rather on movement: "... chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being."¹¹ A science of beginnings. Chaos is an inter-disciplinary study because of it's focus on systems. It seeks out common patterns from among superficially unrelated phenomena; it is about the wholeness of Nature, and not specialization or fragmentation. It is integration and not differentiation. Chaos has been a kind of imaginative rebellion within the orderly rank and file of boring scientists. Early theorists introduced organic themes of evolution into the inanimate universe; there has been an evangelical enthusiasm for that which standard science has preferred to ignore. "They had an eye for pattern, especially pattern that appeared on different scales at the same time. They had a taste for randomness and complexity, for jagged edges and sudden leaps. ....They feel that they are turning back a trend in science toward reductionism, the analysis of systems in terms of their constituent parts: quarks, chromosomes, or neurons. They believe that they are looking for the whole."¹²

Mainstream physics has seemed to abandon the world of observable reality, the world of clouds, rivers, and falling apples, in favor of micro-worlds and the speed of light. For decades now, classical physics has had nothing new to teach students about the universe. In place of Newton's mechanics, there was the disorienting theory of relativity, but this was nothing compared to what was to follow. "Later, quantum mechanics suffused into the lay culture as a mystical fog. It was uncertainty, it was acausality, it was the Tao updated, it was the century's richest fount of paradoxes, it was the permeable membrane between the observer and the observed, it was the funny business sending shudders up science's all-too-deterministic scaffolding."¹³ Physicists sought to escape the metaphysical paradoxes of quantum physics by simply discontinuing the use of theory and relying on mechanics. Chaos theorists have been imaginative, even artistic in their efforts to give chaos a comprehensible form which quantum physics lacks. Unacceptable as it may be to reductionists, mystical themes of wholeness are central to chaos.

In chaos theory, as with string theory, the search for a final theory, relativity, quantum physics, and virtually every academic discipline coming and going, the leading figure has been Jewish: in this case, Benoit B. Mandelbrot. He is the nephew of a prominent Bourbakist mathematician of generations past, Szolem Mandelbrojt. But this modern day super-star has led a rebellion against reductionism. Mandelbrot is best known for introducing fractal geometry into the field of chaos. He focused not on the straight and narrow edges of polished science, but rather on the messiness of nature itself. He was fascinated by the jagged contour of rocky cliffs, and the branches of trees which seemed to reproduce their own images in every twig. His thinking was often times as intangible as the drifting clouds that occupied his scientific fancy. Like Feynman and the early Einstein, he relied on the intuition of his visual imagination to make sense of odd profiles and unfamiliar designs.¹⁴ Chaos seems to entangle the worlds of quantum theory and classical physics ....making the weirdness of the new physics recognizable to the naked eye, and in ways to make the hum-drum world of our daily experience more fascinating. Chaos tries to re-capture the sense of scientific intuition, which many feel has been lost in the standardization of their disciplines.¹⁵

The science of chaos does not say that Nature is disorderly; it says that there is apparent disorder: "... chaos does not just produce order, it has order: there is a deep structure: to borrow a phrase of linguistics -- in the apparently random, chaotic behaviour that characterizes all natural and some social phenomena. This structure takes the form of what has been enticingly termed a 'strange attractor'. An attractor is a state towards which a system is drawn."¹⁶ ... A strange attractor is something like the unique resting point around which a pendulum becomes focused -- but it is not that obvious. ...." A 'strange' attractor is an invisible state that comes from analysing very complex data, such as weather patterns...".¹⁶ These strange attractors are not entities like atoms, but rather more like an attracting field which imposes a unique and repeating pattern of organization on the flow of apparently scattered stuff swirling about the world of fathomable sensation.

Given this very superficial introduction to chaos, one might ask what a practitioner of this science does. He tries to identify a strange attractor in any apparently disorganized process he can measure using a computer program; he then interprets this data in hope of discovering some kind of repetitive "theme song" which he can convert into a geometric image. So the colorful pictures of chaotic butterflies you may have seen are the geometric representation of these attracting fields. Chaos theory employs computers to convert the meaningless mechanical calculus of random data into space-time patterns with identifiable geometric organization. So out of the disarray of the universe, chaos is able to paint an infinity of forms theorists call strange attractors. The strange attractor might be compared to a state of equilibrium; but this is an equilibrium of endless repetition and infinite detail, like the eye of a hurricane or tornado -- going up or down a spiraling well -- around and around beyond any identifiable limit. While the strange attractor is an abstract state suggestive of stability, chaotic systems are actually extremely unstable. They "fly off the handle" in reaction to the smallest of changes in initial conditions -- this is called the butterfly effect, and is well described as "the straw that broke the camel's back". It is a triggering phenomena linked to initial conditions. The problem is that chaotic events are never alike, and therefore the scientist cannot identify a chaotic process and forecast precisely which strange attractor it will drift to. The meteorologist cannot say Hurricane Marty is going to gravitate toward the same pattern as Hurricane Jerry established thirty years ago, and therefore Marty will have the same characteristics as Jerry. Because real world systems are so infinitely complex, initial conditions can never be repeated; every chaotic event is uniquely determined by details beyond our capacity to identify, and consequently it is not possible to predict the shape of the underlying strange attractor which is determining the disorder we are measuring. Chaos theory can only give an approximate picture of what has happened; it cannot accurately describe what will happen. However, as we learn to understand how chaotic systems behave, we can develop a sense for possibilities. Perhaps as computers and scientists examine multitudes of prototypes, experimentalists will confound theory and accurately predict the outcome of random events. At present, such a breakthrough seems highly improbable, but that is the direction toward which the power of super-computing is shifting.

Perhaps nature is not always as complex as we think. The natural world may be composed of identifiable fractal-like patterns which are repeated many-times-over at every level of magnification our instruments can detect ....from the microscopic to the inter-galactic. Computer focused scientists tend to believe that the mysteries of the universe can be decoded by nature's universal language: mathematics. They are convinced that mathematics does have some fundamental connection with models of organization in this universe ...that repetitive forms can be reduced to the routine calculations of mathematical algorithms, and that because computers can analyze that mechanistic procedure, it seems possible that the randomness of nature, in spite of all its complexity, is computable¹⁷ ....and consequently, to some degree at least: predictable. If this offers some a feeling of confidence, it might be added that it is by no means certain that all random events have an underlying strange attractor. It is believed that many processes never repeat any identifiable design; they are algorithmically incompressible and consequently their outcome seems impossible to forecast. In nature, a chaotic event is continually in flux, evolving and extremely sensitive to apparently insignificant influences. However, there are well studied chaotic phenomena which are adequately understood to allow a mathematical prediction of their behavior. But such simple models become unpredictable outside a controlled setting. "This is because the accuracy according to which the initial state needs to be known, for a deterministic prediction of its future behaviour, can be totally beyond anything that is conceivably measurable."¹⁸ Chaos, like so many modern theories, assumes that the mathematical world is able to describe the physical world we experience, and because some process develops in a particular way mathematically, it must follow a similar pattern in our material world. This outlook is not accepted uncritically by all scientists. Some distrust mathematics as a foundation for physics.

A strength, and perhaps fatal weakness, of chaos is that it seems to apply to almost everything; in spite of initial expectations, the science of chaos lacks the structure and organization of the more prominent schools of physics, such as classical, relativity, and quantum theories. Chaos is like the jack of all trades who knows a few good tricks, but lacks the in depth knowledge of the experts. Chaos seems to be a useful tool for scientists when they need to take randomness into greater consideration in their observations. The outcome appears to be that chaos may be a passing scientific fad, a mathematical effort to get a handle on the randomness which has baffled the most powerful of all scientific ideas: quantum theory. Chaos theory is actually about order and not disorder. It is just one of many theories trying to find order in randomness. Other versions of this theory are called catastrophe theory and crisis theory. What is noteworthy about all of these theories is that they have all been mathematical models that have proved to be unexpectedly relevant to the describing of phenomena at the level of practical experience.¹⁹ Catastrophe theory preceded chaos, and focused on abrupt change, such as the snapping of a twig, or schizophrenia. Catastrophe theory was largely the speculation of mathematicians and lacked the technical means of testing ideas as diverse as prison riots and bees that begin to swarm into some collective action. Chaos learned the lesson of this failed theory and used the computer as its link to measurable experimentation.²⁰ Woolley anticipates a backlash against chaos theory similar to that which brought an end to catastrophe theory. Its faults are similar: chaos applies to every situation, but seems more suited for the abstract thought of a mathematician or a philosopher than an empirical scientist.²¹ But it is not as though randomness will disappear along with chaos theory. Yet another theory, called criticality or crisis theory, introduces a very important theme that is associated with chaos: self-organization. Criticality may actually have developed from Bohr's concept of complementarity. Criticality describes systems rather than discrete objects. What is peculiar about such a system or event is that it has a " 'multi-component' " nature. This is how it is similar to both complementarity and non-locality. Like male and female, these components draw each other "... into a state of criticality, but they are drawn there not by any external force, but simply as a result of their multi-component nature -- they organize themselves, hence self-organized criticality."²² The idea is that criticality sees things as associated which superficially seem unrelated because they may be separated by some distance. Like criticality, "... chaos is only part of a massive revolution in the way scientists now think about dynamical systems. It has been discovered that so-called 'nonlinear' effects can cause matter to behave in seemingly miraculous ways, such as becoming 'self-organizing' and developing patterns and structures spontaneously."²³ Chaos then is not simply about order, it is about the formation of order, approximation of order, or the disintegration of apparent order. It is about unstable systems coming together or breaking apart. We are identifying a peculiar kind of transitory order. "The behaviour of a chaotic system -- though one normally expects great complication of detail and seeming randomness -- will not actually be random. Indeed some chaotic systems behave in very interesting complex ways that deviate markedly from pure randomness....."²⁴ The Lorentz attractor is perhaps the best known example of chaos. This attractor can be printed as a computer generated image which looks like a butterfly; it is the picture of duality. The event it describes seems to be random, yet it can be portrayed by a simple mathematical curve.²⁵

Because it rejects reductionism, chaos does not attempt to define the whole as the sum of its parts. Chaos does follow laws applicable to complex systems, but they are laws that apply only to the system as a whole. Much like principles of symmetry, "They are laws of structure and organization and scale, and they simply vanish when you focus on the individual constituents of a complex system."²⁶ Weinberg compares this phenomenon to the collective mentality of a lynch mob which simply disappears when individual participants are confronted. While the laws of chaos apply only as long as the phenomena under study form a recognizable whole, it seems that there are unknown laws governing the components of a chaotic system as it is taking shape. While this appeal to unknown laws governing initial conditions will now lead us into an area of speculation considerably removed from standard quantum theory, I will try my best to at least keep the weirdness understandable, documented, and the "meta-physics" to a minimum.

Peat describes a non-local process, at the quantum level, in which a quasi-crystal forms. "Somehow the orientation of incoming atomic groups has to take into account the overall pattern. But how on earth do individual atoms know about the pattern of the whole crystal as it is growing?"²⁷ Quantum events do not happen piece-wise; everything seems integrated into a global network, so that each component has all the information of the whole system. Seen in this way, there are not actually individual elements, but only the whole, whether dispersed or assembled. But what that whole actually is seems to be more a non-local cohesive energy than individual localized pieces. Bohm calls this non-local cohesive energy a "quantum potential". This is not a classical field which controls movement; all that holds everything together, whatever the distance, is the information this quantum potential makes available by the principle of non-locality. It is this "information-wave-potential" which accounts for the order, the wholeness we observe.²⁸ I would like to take some speculative liberties with Bohm’s concept of the information-wave-potential; I do this because I think he was barking up the right tree. With regard to non-locality, it seems to me that it need not be the particle or wave that "moves" instantaneously, but information-energy about a particle/wave configuration -- that there are idle electrons, either as wave-modules or particle-modules that pick up the information-energy and act like the entangled partner at a distance. It is only the information-energy that counts, and not the particle or wave modules through which the information-energy passes. We become confused because we focus on the package through which the information content appears, asking the wrong questions as we try to figure out how a particle moved from position a to position b faster than the speed of light. We should be focusing on the non-local cohesive energy of the global network and not the "individual elements" visible from our very limited local relativistic causal perspective. The problem is that we are focusing on the dots in our random dot stereogram and failing to fall into the hypnotic wholeness of this quantum-relativistic-stereoscopic-global-network. It makes a certain chaotic sense that the non-local cohesive energy of this global-network would be a self - organizing - strange - attractor - spiral - gravity - whole ....Bohm’s quantum information potential. In trying to imagine communication that can exceed the speed of light, it seems that our thoughts turn in the opposite direction of light-itself ...to a category of unseen-particles called gluons. As you will recall, photons and gravitons are gluons ...the stuff that holds space-time together. It is logical that Bohm’s information-wave-potential would be thought of as an array of gluons. Thus, the information-wave-potential, which accounts for the order of the dispersed whole system, and which is believed to demonstrate the non-local weirdness of faster than light communication, can be meaningfully visualized as a self-organizing-strange-attractor spiral of gluons ....particularly: gravitons. According to the General Theory of Relativity, gravity is to be thought of as a consequence of the curvature of space-time! Not so unlike a strange attractor, a galactic gravitational force is embedded within the spiral shaped curvature of this space-time galaxy. From our relativistic local fixation on this solar system, that galactic influence would be experienced as a "non-local" weirdness; but adopting a more panoramic galactic insight makes sense of that apparent strangeness in terms consistent with both relativity and quantum physics ....thus returning to "this world" a sense of "reality" and cohesiveness ...once we localize the galaxy as the focus of our more expansive physical environment -- making it then possible to reconcile the split between classical relativity and quantum theory.

The revolutionary alteration in perspective Galileo’s generation introduced shifted the center of physical reality from the Earth to the Sun. What makes the new physics so confusing is that we have lost a sense for "the center", for reality ...as quantum non-locality invades our world. What is suggested here is that we are being drawn into the recognition of this spiral galaxy as central to unreality as we know it -- that form is everything ...across scale. Penrose suspects that consciousness is spread-out over a wide area of the brain as a cohesive quantum network ...a kind of "film" through which we see "the world" whole. Because there is this quantum lens ...this "film" through which coherent wholeness is projected, the human brain is able to perceive the environment around us as cohesive. This is similar to the way in which a movie projector magnifies the tiny images on a plastic film to the bigger than life scenes portrayed on the silver screen. Wholeness then is a projection of the brain and not a quality we should be attributing to a universe "out-side" of ourselves.

Nature is fond of a fractal-like repetition of form, particularly the spiral form. We find spin as a fundamental characteristic of elementary matter. As spiral revolutions are completed, movement from one fractal orbit to the next is accomplished. This spiral revolution is governed by a gravitational force built into the shape of our cosmic environment. There are many connections plugging into this quantum relativistic resolution: this spiral revolution is the mechanism of fractal magnification ...which in turn is a consequence of a weak galactic gravitational influence shaping our own evolution. Identifying the source of that spin will disrupt what is left of current "reality", as our perspective shifts beyond the unexplored frontier of Galileo’s solar system to a galaxy that today is little more than a non-local unreality indistinguishable from mysticism. Just as the rise of classical physics marked the beginning of the end for a spiritual world view, the implications of the new physics will re-turn us to the heavens.

The difficulty we face is a matter of scale ...the focus of chaos on the whole; we can imagine context within the confines of this planet or even our solar system, but we simply do not yet have the "eye-piece" to intuit "everything" through the more all-inclusive panoramic spectacle of this spiral galaxy. Evidently realities beyond the range of our current outlook never-the-less effect our cosmic environment, and will inevitably attract us to the source of this strange influence. We find weirdness in the new physics because it is forcing us to shift our perspective beyond the outer-limits of self-consciousness and the bounds of "this world". When thinking in the imagery of quantum-relativistic-stereoscopic-plug-ins, we ought not lose sight of one central observation: this is a paradigm which assumes human consciousness-wrapped-within-the-context of an environment with defined limits, and is not a description of "objective totality" ....of the "external" physical universe independent of all observers.

"The great unanswered question is whether there exists some undiscovered organizing principle which complements the known laws of Nature and dictates the overall evolution of the Universe."²⁹ This organizing principle would be subtle and influence such processes as the clustering of dispersed matter throughout space into stars. Many scientists find the universe more organized than existing principles of science can explain. Entelechy is the belief that there is a natural guiding force leading all things to a greater order, to fulfillment. It is akin to the idea of evolution. Vitalism maintains that a non-physical force influences events in the material world. Such ideas are not taken seriously by modern science.³⁰ Zohar describes an "ordered quantum coherence", which is a more primitive force, out of which the creative energy of life develops. She refers to a self-organizing capacity within biological organisms able to take inert materials from their chaotic surroundings and assimilate them into the ordered complexity of cells.³¹ This "ordered quantum coherence", out of which life forms, must not be given the human attribute of self-conscious purpose as vitalism and entelechy appeared to do. "But as Ilya Prigogine has argued, it does have a sense of direction -- what he calls his 'evolutionary paradigm'."³² Life creates greater complexity by inter-acting with the inanimate ....primitive non-conscious sense of direction ...the evolutionary dynamism of Nature-on-a-grand-scale -- a non-local gravity, that doesn’t seem to matter, winding in from outside the frontiers of our back-water sphere ...raising the ante by accounting for the weirdness of loaded dice playing games with the reality of "this world". What enchants our intelligence is not the handiwork of a watch-maker God or the utter random chance of cold and impersonal atheism, but an elusive cohesive potential pervading the galaxy, if not the universe ...as we know it.

In his article Physics of Far-From-Equilibrium Systems and Self-Organization, Gregoire Nicolis recognizes that physicists have not traditionally thought in terms of the evolution of matter in relation to complex order, but now they have to. With the emergence of chaos theory, it has become difficult to recognize what is ordered and what is not; the boundary distinguishing simple from complex has narrowed. It has become necessary for scientists to think in terms of large scale movements, such as world weather patterns, rather than the limited and controlled laboratory experiments of the past.³³ ..... in terms of a global perspective rather than "self-consciousness". There is a critically important change in outlook involved here, where-by scientists become less focused on nature within the circumscribed confines of their laboratories, and more open to seeing scientific observation taking place within the context of a natural environment. As they do this, Nature begins to appear ...less "dead", less inert .... and more astonishing. This change in bearings takes some getting used to, but should not be confused with new age magic which the new physics has come so much to resemble.

Zohar notes the influence of pan-psychist ideas on modern thought; this viewpoint recognizes the mental and physical as complementary aspects of the same energy and matter which are the quantum essence of all reality. These ideas are not so far removed from Einstein's greatest insight, which was the realization that mass and energy are interchangeable. This moves us in the direction of Tielhard de Chardin, the Jesuit scientist, and his "... process view of reality leads him to consider the presence of proto-conscious (Nagel's proto-mental) properties at the level of particle physics. .....In some strange way an electron or a photon (or any other elementary particle) seems to 'know' about changes in its environment and appears to respond accordingly."³⁴ As an example, Zohar refers to the well known two slit experiment which demonstrates the particle-wave duality of light. Photons appear to "know" "....which aspect of their double-sided nature is called for by the experiment and behave accordingly."³⁵ Bohm does not consider "proto-intelligence" to be a conscious state; he views it as the energy source from which fresh organization may develop from a domain beyond the range of scientific observation.³⁶ Fred Hoyle, the astrophysicist, maintained that life on this planet "...involves the action of some form of intelligence which pervades the entire universe."³⁷ Again, we must resist the temptation to personify as God natural processes we so vaguely understand, but on the other-hand we must not close our eyes to disturbing observations because they offend our atheistic convictions. The defining characteristic of proto-intelligence is not merely order, but the cohesive totality evident throughout quantum physics. This stirring totality is once again modeled on the random dot stereogram. What is now Being-implied is that multitudes of chaotic particles seem to be implicated in-knowing their places in this many dimensional universe -- the cohesion of non-local attractions materializes as a stereogram proto-intelligence pervading this whole curvature of space-time in-two which we ourselves fall. Mathematicians and scientists, on rare occasions, discover the amazing way in which a line of investigation can take them only so far; should a breakthrough be made, they do not simply find another new fact, but rather all the necessary facts seem to fall into place, as though by themselves. In describing the remarkable multi-dimensional complexity of string theory, Peat explains how inadvertently mathematicians stumbled upon the beginnings of a theory of everything. "It was almost as if Schwarz and Green did not even have to bother with juggling this final ball. Provided that all the other balls had been kept in the air, nature itself took care of this final step and created a perfect theory. A unified symmetry was forced on the theory, and once this had been admitted, it became possible to create a superstring theory that had all the features physicists had been dreaming of."³⁸ Someone who argues that the universe has no order, that everything merely occurs meaninglessly out of blind chance is not being consistent with known scientific observation.

Non-locality is the engine of Bohm’s information-wave-potential, which accounts for the order of a dispersed whole system. Recent experiments involving photons have demonstrated non-local influences across substantial distances. The central factor is that two entangled particles, such as photons, influence one another. If something is done to one, the other will also respond. In addition, these particles behave as though they are near each other. There seems to be no distance between them, so interaction is instantaneous. What non-locality states is that this interaction occurs independent of distance. So if the entangled particles should drift hundreds of millions of light years apart, their interaction would still be instantaneous. This would mean that they somehow communicate at a speed which far exceeds the speed of light. But instantaneous signaling over great distances contradicts Einstein's special theory of relativity which asserts that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. To complicate an already bewildering situation, it is obligatory to think of distance in terms of time because space and time are integrated into space-time, according to the general theory of relativity. The effects of quantum non-locality have been found to operate in ways that suggest that time is no barrier to the bond linking entangled particles. "Two events happening at different times influence each other in such a way that they appear to be happening at the same time."³⁹ This is what Einstein would call "spooky action at a distance", and what Jung’s in-depth-perception brings to light as synchronicity -- Being deeply involved in this acausal dimension ...in a space of time ....an observer ahead of his time. As with Dali, physicists would do-well in taking a second ..look through Jung’s Swiss spectacles. In the event you want to disregard such observations as a waste of time, you will have to account for the Austrian experimental successes involving photon teleportation which demonstrate that these strange matters are the scientific realities of our time.

Quantum physics forces scientists to re-examine how things relate to each other through the whole, and what kinds of relationships can exist. The wave-particle duality of matter does not fit into the existing causal structure of separate individual things. "Things and events once conceived of as separate, parted in both space and time, are seen by the quantum theorist as so integrally linked that their bond mocks the reality of space and time. They behave, instead, as multiple aspects of some larger whole...".⁴⁰ These things only appear to be independent. Actually, they are integral components of a unity which can maintain cohesion even when spread-out over sweeping distances of time. The acausal principle responsible for this peculiar connectedness is referred to as quantum non-locality. Zohar is not far off the beaten track in recognizing that quantum non-locality "...has obvious mystical overtones".⁴¹ ....a kind of nothingness or emptiness Being-implied ...as a galactic gravitational force ...a cosmic attractor ...the Mother of all Jungian mandalas ...a spiral draft instilling direction into this whole sector of the universe ....the shape of things to come within this Milky Way Galaxy. Are you noticing how the millennium is turning yet?.....turning you inside-out!

Wholeness is the primary consequence of non-locality, which is the cohesive energy of Bohm’s quantum information wave potential. Non-locality is a quantum principle of faster than light communication and not a field, which is a traditional concept from classical physics. Physicists have understood the connectedness of forces in the universe for centuries; for the most part, they have accounted for this cohesiveness by referring to fields. Today, cohesiveness is most widely appreciated in the context of computer imagery. The universe is seen as a digital computer network, where the net serves as a field. Scientists have begun to shift from the understanding of network as a classical field toward Bohm’s quantum information wave potential. A digital system has its foundations in an on/off duality of 1's and 0's. This is consistent with the complementarity of quantum physics. Feynman suggested that every particle in space-time could operate like a super-computer which has a connection to all other computers on the network; this would imply that within even the simplest of particles there must be a computer-like structure.⁴² ...a primitive collective sensation at the foundation of matter. This argument has gained credibility with the photon teleportation demonstration of non-locality first announced at Innsbruck in 1997. IBM has been involved with this kind of research, and hopes are high that this new technology will open the age of quantum computers and instantaneous communications, even to the far reaches of this galaxy and beyond.

Many scientists believe that the bilateral structure of the human brain suggests that it may be an organic digital computer following classical laws of physics. David Deutsch is more interested in artificial intelligence than the human brain. He has predicted for many years that a quantum computer would be developed. Deutsch is only extending conventional scientific wisdom by arguing that an artificial brain can be created which is a quantum computer. Strangely enough, Deutsch is a leading advocate of the many-universes theory; this theory, he notes, can explain the increasingly important non-local effects which can be demonstrated experimentally. It accounts for the weirdness of quantum physics. With a quantum computer, he would be able to test the many-universes hypothesis. This is real science, just as photon teleportation is. The computer memory would keep a multi-track record of quantum experiments, accounting for the paradoxical events surrounding super-position and the collapse of the quantum wave function, if such actually occurs. He argues that according to the many universes theory, the quantum vector reduction will cause this artificial brain to split going into separate universes; however, he will be able to ask his schizophrenic computer all kinds of questions about the universes in which it exists.⁴³ Deutsch is an Astrophysicist who splits his time between Oxford University and the University of Texas at Austin. Weinberg also is located at that Austin campus. I would think these two must have some interesting discussions.

Deutsch is taken seriously by other scientists, as he describes a quantum brain exploring parallel universes. Deutsch's hypothetical computer is not only able to undergo a quantum split, but merge its quantum memories back together. The information gathered would be about the behavior of electrons, and not the latest news from CNN-Beta edition. But you know what they say about humble beginnings! In the event you think I am joking here, please read the following quotation twice: "The proposed Deutsch experiment depends upon the existence of a quantum-level intelligence, and although such ideas are taken seriously by some artificial intelligence experts, all are agreed that it will be a long time before we can expect to build such a thing."⁴⁴ But now that possibilities are improving for the development of quantum computers, it may not be such a long time after all before Deutsch can carry out his experiment.

If this all sounds unrealistic to you, then you probably are getting old; the computer age and virtual reality are just passing you by. Post-modernists argue that certainty and truth are simply rationalist concepts existing only in the limited perspective of a classical physical world, and their universal relevance has been obliterated by modern scientific thought. So from their perspective, absolute reality is dead. Virtual realists believe that the message of this computer age is that all reality is artificial ...relativistic and transitory, and therefore you can make your dreams into reality. I would suggest, however, that you not hang-on to those dreams too tightly ....other-wise the "Men In Black" or Ludwig’s Men-In-White will come to re-define reality for you. Best to hang-out with the in-siders who count. Woolley argues that there is in fact an enduring reality, but it is not of this world: "....reality is still there, though not in the material realm of the physical universe where the modern era assumed it to be. ... I have tried to provide a glimpse of where that reality may be, in the formal, abstract domain revealed by mathematics and computation."⁴⁵ What this means is that because mathematics is the language of nature, it is real; and because computers are capable of interpreting mathematics, it is possible to either discover or create a new reality based upon this technology. There seems to be at least one certainty: it will be a reality that must account for a universe of limitless complexity and endless change. Some may think that talk of artificial intelligence and virtual reality is the same as saying there is no reality, that it is all illusion, or if you prefer, on a plane with multiple universes.

Post-modernists have decided that all reality exists only within language; and being strong supporters of multi-cultural equality, they view mathematics as just another language. However, scientists make a very clear distinction between human languages and mathematics. They consider mathematics alone to be the language of nature. "....Quantum mechanics relies on a mathematical expression, the wave function, as the ultimate description of the universe."⁴⁶ The mechanism being used within this text to over-come the split between science and spirituality is revolutionary: to re-design language so that it becomes possible to express concepts previously believed accessible only through mathematics. This is done by modeling poetry on the mystical dimensions of the new physics, and is by no means at odds with the radical ambitions of mathematicians themselves. Woolley explains that artificial reality is created by computer wizards who are trying to integrate the mathematical and linguistic functions of the brain, and project them through a window of user-friendly imagery transparent to common intuition.

Roger Penrose is a prominent mathematician from Oxford University. What is unusual about Penrose is that he can communicate the ideas and experiences of a creative scientific intelligence in words meaningful to people having a more artistic frame of mind. Penrose obviously is a colleague of Deutsch's at Oxford, and also a believer in at least one other universe: Plato's world of mathematical Ideas. Many very serious scientific thinkers insist that mathematics is our only contact with whatever ultimate reality there might be. Popular belief in a heavenly after-life has its origins in Plato's philosophy. At times, I become despondent when reading a book by someone like Penrose who seems to agree in principle with Deutsch. Is it really possible to create human-like consciousness and feeling in a computer, which can then access limitless other universes? I really and truly doubt it, but five hundred years ago my peasant ancestors, who never heard of Leonardo da Vinci, probably would not have believed this world of scientific materialism possible ....nor could they have imagined the devastation that has be-fallen our utopia. Maybe genius does sound insane. So here is Penrose's spin on Deutsch's quantum brain. He does not deny that it is possible to build a truly intelligent computer. But he insists that it cannot be of the calculating machine variety. "Instead it would have to incorporate the same kind of physical action that is responsible for evoking our own awareness."⁴⁷ He then reminds us that there is no device even remotely similar to the human brain currently in existence, and what is more, no theory for actually creating Deutsch's quantum computer. But he does not argue that it cannot be done. Quite surprisingly, Penrose accepts that such a computer would not have to be somehow biological. Because he sees the brain operating on the principles of quantum theory, it makes little difference if quantum intelligence arises out of the stuff of biology or physics. So now you can appreciate why scientists read, and some write, science fiction. Because there is no reality, the unreal is possible.

Deutsch's idea of splitting a quantum brain and then merging the memories together may seem too foolish to take seriously, even if proposed by a prominent scientist from Oxford. But this theoretical experiment has a history in actual medical practice involving the human brain. In 1981, Roger Sperry shared the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for brain research. The psychologists Levy and Sperry worked with epileptic patients in split-brain studies and are credited with discovering very peculiar consequences which result when the nerve fibers connecting the two hemispheres of the human brain are severed to reduce seizures. You will recall our brief introduction to split-brain research some pages back. This is too involved a matter to discuss in detail, but the most startling finding Sperry and his successors made was that under laboratory testing conditions it becomes apparent that there are two distinct conscious identities, one associated with each hemisphere. If the experimental conditions are removed, the person is able to re-establish one coherent identity. The implications of this finding are fundamental. Most importantly, it demonstrates that whatever it is that we think of as the self is directly linked to the brain. "... Somehow the creation of two brains results in the effective creation of two selves..."⁴⁸ It seems to me that counting personalities spilling out of the split-brain is a simple minded pre-occupation. Two hemispheres, two brains, two selves -- that adds up to a very flat and mechanistic two-dimensional picture of nature ...with a small n. Those two hemispheres pair up to create a quantum-relativistic-stereoscopic-revelation of far greater consequence than all the universes in the world.

Another Oxford voice entering this discussion of the self is Derek Parfit. He concludes that "I" am my brain, and all the rest is just lights, mirrors, and illusions created by the brain itself. The fact that experience is connected and continuous does not result in an eternal self: "me". Parfit espouses a Buddhist outlook on life. "He feels that his argument against the reality of personal identity, originally inspired by the split-brain research, has liberated him from the prison of self."⁴⁹ Zohar affirms her conviction that in fact a unique self does exist. If such a self did not exist "....a great many things that we take for granted about our world -- the nature of our subject-predicate logic, the whole basis of our morality -- would have to be different."⁵⁰ While Zohar's reasoning is understandable, it certainly does not prove that a self must exist, only that our politically correct post World War II social system necessitates such a self-centered orientation. Penrose suggests that the self may be a legal necessity, a convention for assigning responsibility for actions.⁵¹ He seems to take an agnostic position on the question. It would be fair to guess that the most celebrated of quantum physicists would have sided with Parfit in concluding that the self is an illusion. Neils Bohr, of Denmark, was knighted for his achievements. When designing his coat-of-arms, he selected the symbol of yin and yang along with the inscription "Contraria sunt complementa (Opposites are complementary)".⁵² As we shall see, Bohr was aware of mysticism, and not only of the Asian school.

Penrose may not be especially involved in metaphysical discussions of the self, but he is very much concerned about something more quantum physical: consciousness. As we have seen earlier, Fröhlich, Penrose, Zohar, and others intuitively understand that the brain cannot be simply a classical calculating machine operating according to the principles of Newtonian nuts and bolts. The brain must also correspond to the quantum relativistic laws of weirdness. It seems very evident that consciousness must arise from the organic material of the brain. How this happens is not yet well understood, but is an area of extremely energetic scientific research; it is probable that scientists will unravel much of the mystery surrounding the conscious brain within the coming decades. Such advances will certainly be a mixed blessing ...having as much impact on the quality of our lives as the advent of nuclear power. At present, standard science does not recognize quantum physics as operating at observable levels within biology. I am convinced Penrose is correct in challenging that consensus. The defining characteristic of consciousness is a quantum cohesiveness that holds everything together creating a persuasive experience of wholeness, but as we have just seen -- this is an energetic wholeness among things that may be barely tangible and very spread-out. However, theory is not supposed to be enough for science; it helps to have empirical evidence, and not just a low-energy mathematical proof. What is needed is a physical explanation for this very human sensation of wholeness. It must be demonstrated that cells over a wide area of the brain join together in unison, that they behave according to principles characteristic of quantum physics. As we have seen earlier, Penrose argues that within the cytoskeleton are the microtubules, and it is there, and not in the neurons, "...where collective (coherent) quantum effects are most likely to be found".⁵³ Because of the global characteristics of human thought, "...There must be significant quantum entanglements between the states in the separate cytoskeletons of large numbers of different neurons, so that large areas of the brain would be involved in some kind of collective quantum state."⁵⁴ The aim is to explain the mechanism of the brain’s non-computable activity, which Penrose considers to be the source of consciousness. Such a system would manifest authentically non-random and mathematically non-computable properties. He emphasizes that much responsible study of large collections of brain cells is needed before it is possible to map specific areas of the brain where consciousness is spread-out. The purpose of this review is to accentuate the inter-active coupling of the physical structure of things and our perception of them -- the revelation that structure is meaning ...the quantum pervasiveness of dispersed wholeness ....the everything and nothing we both feel within ourselves and witness all around us.

While it is essential to discover the physical origins of consciousness, the most passionate interest is centered on how quantum consciousness functions. The physical basis of consciousness is thought to be the Bose-Einstein condensate. The coherence of the condensate "...depends upon the amount of energy pumped into the brain's quantum system at any given moment. If there is less energy available to the system, then the unity of consciousness will be less marked; if there is more energy, there will be greater unity. The range of unity possible in both directions is enormous".⁵⁵ Zohar goes on to compare human consciousness to the concentrated light of a laser. "Just as laser beams are brighter than ordinary light because they are more coherent (they, too, are Bose-Einstein condensates), some charismatic people are more radiant than others for the same reason..."⁵⁶ What is to be concluded from this is that because human consciousness is a quantum function, it is characterized by wholeness. Not only that, the more energy available to the quantum brain, the more coherence, the more wholeness is experienced. It must be emphasized that there are different intensities of wholeness, and the energy which regulates the degree of coherent wholeness experienced, that energy is human emotion. I want to say to serious scientists that feelings count two, that understanding is entangled with passion! Feelings pull us into the whole like a gravitational force. It is all a matter of intensity. We sense that our lives have direction, but we are uncertain toward what. That inevitable direction is toward wholeness, whether it be in terms of scientific final theories, the totalitarian State, the Net, God, or the simple felt closeness of a people for one another in what we are coming to call collective identity.

Danah Zohar refers to the shared identity a mother feels with her baby. "It is the common experience between mothers and their babies, where the mother, at least, feels the baby as an extension of herself and experiences the two of them as existing in a sphere of intimacy whose boundary defines their common identity".⁵⁷ She adds that psychologists say the baby also feels their common identity, and goes on to explain that this extraordinary intimacy, involving even the merging of thoughts and identities, often occurs between psychotherapist and patient. She describes a Jungian concept called "projective identification", which entails "...'a kind of fusion which involves the mixing and muddling up of subject and object, of inner world and outer world; it involves the undoing of boundaries.' "⁵⁸ It is understandable why many physicists just do quantum calculus and don't try to interpret what is happening at the quantum level. Consider what is perhaps the most incredible example of quantum weirdness, the "delayed-choice" experiment; it "...illustrates graphically that the quantum world possesses a kind of holism that transcends time, as well as space, almost as if the particle-waves seem to know ahead of time what decision the observer will make."⁵⁹ Most disturbing to physicists who do think about these things is the primary importance of the observer in shaping the events that will be encountered. The intimate inter-connectedness of the scientist and what he observes has led some to suggest that they are "interwoven". " ....The effect of observation is absolutely fundamental to the reality that is revealed, and cannot be either reduced or simply compensated for."⁶⁰ The wave properties of the measuring device and the observer seem to become entangled with the quantum phenomena that is being described. Like the mother and her baby, the physicist and the quantum event share something fundamental in common: the primitive proto-intelligence which organizes their separateness ......their individuality --- into a coherent situation encompassing all entangled. Consciousness, at some level, appears to be that dimension of experience which integrates the individual into the whole, both in human and in physical terms. "According to this view, proposed chiefly by quantum physicists John Archibald Wheeler and Eugene Wigner, human consciousness is the crucial missing link between the bizarre world of electrons and everyday reality."⁶¹ I would suggest that the consciousness involved is not what we think; it is not our self-consciousness, but this more basic proto-intelligence which might be thought of as a chaotic self-organization affecting the situation in ways that we would consider to be chance. Yet, we feel the uncanny quantum weirdness, and know that things are not what they seem ...that the dice are loaded. There is a sense that we are encompassed by an intelligence other than our own, an order that includes us as it comes into Being. But the strangeness of it all has us strung between bewilderment and ecstasy, between disbelief and adoration; but our disbelief is more astonishment than denial. It is the disbelief of discovery and creation. This is the interface between mind and the world at large; these are the timeless hours of genius into which Tennyson, Toynbee, Darwin, and countless others fell ....into the grand scheme of things. You see, it is all about fitting in, its all about the wholeness of loaded words -- the quantum relativistic cohesion of collective consciousness ...of racism!

In discussing the evolutionary lineage of Homo Sapiens, Barrow observes that: "Humans are distinguished further by the highly effective way in which they have pooled the individual intelligence of single individuals to produce a collective intelligence that greatly outweighs the capability of any single individual."⁶² Bohm and Peat refer to the Latin origins of the word consciousness, observing that "...consciousness is 'what is known all together.' Originally this meant 'what everybody knows all together'...".⁶³ Consciousness was understood to be a collective, a social phenomena. In modern times, that meaning has reversed itself. "By now, however, it generally refers to 'what the individual knows all together,'....".⁶⁴ But innovative thinkers instinctively return to the original meaning of consciousness ....as the collective awareness of the community. As we just noted, consciousness of some kind is entangled with the quantum experiment. Wheeler goes farther than Wigner regarding the centrality of the observer to the quantum experiment. Wheeler asserts that "...it's not enough for just one observer to put it to use -- you need a community."⁶⁵ Some would stretch this insight beyond these limits by declaring the community embraces all people on the face of the Earth, and perhaps beyond that. David Bohm was the best known advocate of "undivided wholeness". From his perspective, "Everything, and everyone, is so integrally related that all talk of individuals or separation is a distortion of truth, an illusion."⁶⁶ Zohar describes a collective consciousness she calls a "...whole non-locally connected 'field' of consciousness."⁶⁷ From this perspective it is to be concluded that all men are our brothers and we their keepers, and that the established morality of the multi-racial new world order is solidly based on principles of quantum physics. Zohar makes a curious association between the "extreme collectivism of Marxism"⁶⁸ and Asian mysticism. They are both contrasted with exaggerated individualism and wide-spread alienation evident in western countries. While she does not develop the full implications of her insight, I would argue that there is a profoundly significant connection between mysticism and the well known collectivism of Asian peoples. If one realizes that there is a natural tie between mysticism and a collective mentality, it is possible to understand the vulnerability of mystically oriented societies to the collective appeal of communism; individualistic America has been less inclined toward such mystical collectiveness, but the media is changing that. Throughout the following pages we will come to the unmistakable discovery that mysticism is collective consciousness. This mystical sense for undivided wholeness is consistent with the communist sympathies of spiritually aware Jews such as Marx, Durkheim, Einstein, Bohr, Oppenheimer, and Bohm. If you can recognize the collective mind-set of communism as a mystical fanaticism, it makes perfect sense that these godless zealots would see communism as superior to the established spirituality of mystical Russia and Asia. The excessive enthusiasm of communism and nazism has mystical roots in collective identity; both ideologies ultimately promise and deliver the same conviction to their true believers. A mystical collectivism substitutes "The Proletariat", "The Aryan Race", or "The Chosen" for individuality ....and in the place of our weakness enthrones messianic gods: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Moses and Mao ....who tower above mortals daring to turn heaven-words. But this is not to say that every brand of socialism cannot bend Christian symbols to a higher will, thus maintaining the appearance of traditional religion while deifying the dictatorship of a tyrannical people. So we should no longer be confused by "idealistic" atheists aggressively advocating world capitalist/socialism with the evangelical fervor ....or even support ...of Christian fundamentalists. David Bohm's upcoming synthesis of quantum physics, Marxism, and Asian collective consciousness should no longer surprise us either. There is much about the remaining pages you may not approve of, but there is one essential reason for you to keep reading: you may not yet know it, but your highly prized individualism is being obliterated by the all-knowing automated World-Wide-Media-State. What you will find out from "me" is how to preserve what is most uniquely "you" ...how to over-turn this railing of our sensibilities by the new mystical-technology of a wired world. We have over-learned a programmed out-rage for the consequences of blind faith in nazism, but remain untutored in Solzhenitsyn’s Warning to the West of the ever pressing perils inherent to the ruling capitalist/socialist tyranny, and the horrors of its Old Soviet Order.

Those who govern both the "free markets" and the newly defined and expanded "free world" know full well the hazardous implications of the emotional contagion of the crowd. The media is the central instrument for controlling that greatly feared unreality code-named "group mind". A cavalcade of self-transcendent passions will begin to make sense as we learn to see the collective State-of-Mind through the sociological theory of Emile Durkheim. The central idea we will examine in his thinking is collective consciousness. While this term may not yet be familiar, what you are likely to recognize is a related theme in the work of Carl Jung: the collective unconscious. More scientifically-minded souls are prone to disregarding such ideas as meta-physical, and therefore inconsequential. I admit feeling uneasy, or simply disinterested in Jung's fascination with such matters as astrology and alchemy, but I believe he has made valuable contributions to understanding the collective dimensions of human awareness.

We lost something vital over the course of modern times: our sense of belonging to one another.... our collective identity. Today, that intuition is branded racism, and increasingly is considered criminal. Official science declares that words are inconsequential, and only numbers count.... and you are a number. Likewise, mysticism is portrayed as mere foolishness if not delusion. But words can live; they can have a power to match any numbers. That power comes from within you ...from within us. To some extent, I would prefer to side with the non-magical scientific disbelievers. The non-local mystical connection I have in mind is a sharing of feelings, not the transporting of physical or metaphysical entities. I believe such ideas distract our attention from what is truly significant and possible today. Thus power is not in bending spoons by a mysticism of concentration, as the Israeli Yuri Geller is supposed to do, but in moving the emotional intelligence of millions of like-minded people ....through the melody of words and the force of reason.

  Mystical spirituality turns on the illusions of a twisted physics

Out of this maddening fear of everything in the urban jungle, one does get a feel for totality, and the intensity of this collective vision of chaos is not easily endured. We may feel like witnesses to our own impending execution, but what must not be lost sight of in this frightful situation is the uneasy sense of being detached observers of our own lives ....This feeling of disassociation, of unreality, is dreadful; but only when our minds have been broken-open can we begin to appreciate timeless ideas that once seemed to be irrelevant abstractions. The calamity of modern thought is that there seems to be no objective reality! Everything is believed to be a projection of human consciousness, whether that of an individual or a group. However, even this perspective seems too self indulgent. We are forced to abandon the common sense of our anthropomorphic paradigms. The perception of individual entities is a consequence of very restricted vision. Scientists unwittingly search for classical solutions to quantum relativistic problems. During the course of these remaining pages we will attempt to recognize what both quantum relativistic questions and resolutions might look like. Recall that because quantum measurements are probabilities, they describe collective phenomena; Nature is focused on group activity. To solve the problem of the quantum observer, what is required is a living collective intelligence, not necessarily a conscious one. There are non-human, empirically observable, intelligences existing in this world! The creatures of Nature, alongside whom we are evolving, are cognizant to varying degrees -- but not in the same configuration as we are. The mindfulness we Westerners so highly regard may not be as essential to human Nature as many of us think. There is objective reality, but not because human awareness alone creates it, but because the non-conscious collective intelligence of Nature, which includes us, not only observes everything, but has sensitivity to our common environment. Questions arise regarding quantum observers and this indeterminate universe. Who is witnessing events in other solar systems and galaxies? Just as there are other intelligences here on Earth besides our own, it is conceivable, even likely, that there are other kinds of intelligences throughout the cosmos. The most probable recognizable characteristic they will have is collective awareness. We may imagine an anthropomorphic Mind pervading all of Creation, when something very different is more likely..... the non-conscious collective intuition we understand to be shared feeling.

Life interacts with inanimate forces. The sunflower turns like a satellite dish tracking the source of its energy. The seasons and climate shape how life evolves. This non-conscious organization can create a sensational world which includes the totality of plant and animal kingdoms. All life exists in a maze of camouflage, not so unlike the multitude of answers cloaking quantum physics in mystery. It is this lack of awareness everywhere which breathes life into this mechanism of concealment, producing a cohesion which allows competing, yet interdependent life forms to coexist for their common advantage. Without concealment, everything falls apart... as is happening to the ecological system today. Camouflage protects individual creatures, but Nature comes out of hiding in the form of groups. It is possible to easily observe herds of animals, flocks of birds, schools of fish, fields of flowers, and races of humanity ... It is this totality of all living things together, acting in consort, which creates the symphony which is experienced by all as an ecologically viable system that can be thought of as objective reality. This sensitivity of all living things to common surroundings and one-another is how Nature observes everything in its totality. Nature lives through each creature, and feels the ecstasy and pain of every one of them without prejudice or reflection. Human intelligence has pierced this ozone-like-layer of unknowing which has shrouded this macrocosm in a masquerade of protective shading; the self centered perspective of human awareness has made it possible to profoundly damage an intelligent natural system rooted in a concealing mystical non-consciousness. The Gaia Hypothesis was introduced in 1979 by Lovelock, who presented it as a falsifiable scientific theory and not some new age religion. Gaia was the ancient Greek name for Mother Earth. His theory stated that the "...earth, its lands and seas as well as its plants and animals, is a living organism."⁶⁹ We ourselves are creatures within this organic system our wasteful technology is so fatally desecrating. We must find a way to allow Nature to express Herself through us. What is remarkable is that we can get in touch with this hidden intelligence within human Nature; we do this by breaking social taboos, by escaping the isolation of individuality, and entering into the collective under-world of primitive Nature -- by encountering our own not-so-basic instincts. This is the creative urge Freud so emphatically emphasized must be repressed, but Jung saw as a realm offering far more than just the sexuality and aggression which Freud insisted are destructive to civilization... more particularly -- the Zionist order he and his clan have established. Jung recognized that the creative genius of human Nature is concealed in this jungle of primitive passion. This feral state of non-conscious intelligence is something which frightens the tame creatures of socialized Christian society, so much so we call it madness. We can no longer simply repress our own Nature because in doing so we constrain creativity as well. We must somehow make peace with what we are, not change ourselves into what we are not. It is our intuition which links us together collectively and allows us a sense for Nature's cohesiveness. This is the ultimatum confronting us: re-establish a feel for the cohesiveness of "this world", or continue on course for planet-wide destruction -- guided all the way by Durkheim’s universalizing moral reason. Supremacy over the whole world is a suicidal ambition, whether cloaked in the finery of pharisaic moralism or fully exposed as the raw force of nuclear power. We need to allow some kind of natural equilibrium to re-establish itself on this organic oasis we inhabit along side teaming plants and animals in the wild. If we are unwilling to share this Earth with other forms of life then we will become committed to the madness of a future of artificial environments, which today may seem to be a fair trade-off for the natural world, but tomorrow .....a fall beyond redemption. Should the collective conscience of the "whole world" finally get round to holding folks accountable for the devastation of this past century, it seems pretty likely that guilt for this holocaust will fall squarely on the gold plate of universalizing moralists like Durkheim, Einstein, Bohr, Oppenheimer and Bohm.

Nature's intelligence lives within us, but also exists outside of us. It is an all inclusive inside-out-intelligence-with-cohesion, and not socialized man's fractured inside vs. outside self-conscious point of view. Give your house-broken pets and the denatured animals imprisoned in zoos a break, and go for a walk in some real woods, if there are any left where you live. Wild life preserves an order no less sensitive than our own. Eventually, our experience with the artificial intelligence of computers will clue us in to the living non-conscious collective network of intelligences which have held Nature in balance..... for-ages. It is exceedingly important to appreciate that this non-conscious intelligence of Nature includes human sensibility within it, but precedes and exists independently of humanity. Penrose very seriously believes that on this Earth "...consciousness is not restricted to human beings."⁷⁰ He refers to a TV program made by David Attenborough, about elephants. Penrose was deeply moved by the behaviour of these animals, so much so that he concluded that they "...not only have strong feelings but that these feelings are not far removed from those that instill religious belief in human beings."⁷¹ Zohar considers a transcendent God of creation as unknowable and therefore not productive for a scientist to discuss. However, the possibility of an evolving intelligence that is immanent within the universe is a different matter. Such an involved intelligence could be associated with "... the basic sense of direction in the unfolding universe."⁷² Such an evolving consciousness might know "...Himself only as He knows His world. It is the concept of God proposed most strongly in this century by Teilhard de Chardin..."⁷³ This idea is called process theology; it maintains that the physics of the human brain and the consciousness it creates reflects the same structure as exists at every magnification throughout creation -- that man then is indeed created in the image of the Divine and a quantum participant in the creative energy of the universe. Teilhard de Chardin suggests that the growing refinement of thought is a consequence of an ongoing evolutionary development and that man's sensitivity to the changes going on within himself, which he may consider spiritual, is "...nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself, to borrow Julian Huxley's concise expression."⁷⁴ For decades, it has been apparent to me that we human beings are something very different than the personalities we represent ourselves to be. I have long since ceased to believe in the personal historical identities bestowed upon us by Durkheim's society. It has been painfully obvious that there is a deeper and more authentic identity far more worthy of claiming human attention. But what? That has been the source of much confusion and wonder. Unlike Durkheim, I have not come to the conclusion that this deeper identity is primarily society. Teilhard de Chardin's more biological evolutionary approach to the mystical spirituality Durkheim fails to properly address is a more persuasive expression of man's collective endowment than Durkheim's borrowed-off-the-shelf Kantian "pure reason".

This God/self anthropomorphism or atheism, this belief or disbelief of ours is an unfathomable mistake rooted in a logic that alienates us from Nature, or at best gives us a fairy tale concept of the organic world from which we are forever taking our leave. Nature is the non-conscious intelligent observer, the collective eyes, ears, and other sensors that together witness the Sun, the seasons, the hardness, and the majesty of existence. I am suggesting that Nature is a sufficient collective observer to satisfy the needs of quantum theory. Not only is non-conscious intelligence adequate to observe Nature's physical wonders, but is more suitable than human self-consciousness because it is collective, and consequently compatible with the aggregate quality of quantum events. The suggestion is not that the physicist be put in Schrödinger's box and the cat be the observer, but rather that the physicist discover his own natural capacity for fascination. This change in perspective is not merely a joke. Where does all this encounter with primal intelligence lead? -- To the realization of passionate creativity ....the intuitive understanding that one actually is Nature. One grasps fundamental scientific ideas because one can feel them with an intensity of insight unmatched by programmed education. Intuitive intelligence exists at very intense energy levels, and can be a challenge to organize logically; but if complex ideas are to be shared efficiently, then they require logical structuring. This organization necessitates conscious effort; there must be a shifting back and forth between intentional awareness and this non-conscious intelligence that might be thought of as intuition. Communication with others is most effective at the level of collective feeling, as primal passion. Dirac's sense for beauty has it's origins in such experience, as does Plato's world of mathematical ideas. What is indispensable is that there be ideas which have arisen from primitive depths, intentionally organized by the conscious mind into an understandable structure, so that when expressed ....thought contains not only primal energy, but the guiding intelligence of uniquely human reason. This is what Nature seeks to accomplish through man: the capacity to become conscious of Her deepest concerns, and to articulate these feelings in understandable forms that can touch the human soul. The appeal to soul always implies our Being interrelated. Where we end up here is discovering non-conscious intelligence not only "out-there" in the creatures of Nature, but within us, as our own common sense ...our human Nature. This common sense of Nature is empirically observable and scientifically meaningful; we are not evoking some other worldly metaphysical belief here. But at the same time, reason is not the end of the road; the intent is simply to put us on the right track, so that we might be in the proximity of Nature's primal mysteries -- not merely as observers, but to give conscious expression to those primitive feelings Nature is struggling to translate into brilliant forms of beauty. It is difficult for me to understand the absolute primacy of profit; even money seems insufficient to explain why scientists find it so offensive to include a deep feeling for Nature in their own thinking; creative scientists, like artists of every kind, do precisely this and we admire the beauty of their creations. What is so wrong in trying to transform science into a creative art? My purpose is to describe a very human and natural sensitivity which people can know with a greater certainty than reason alone; this is not an appeal to what is ordinarily thought of as religious belief, but rather the uncovering of a groundlessness which is the common mystery at the foundation of both science and spirituality. Ultimately, the mission of science is to hold the mind open to that which we do not know! But it is this knot-knowing with which mysticism is best suited to deal. Quantum physics draws the scientist into the uncertainty, the creative non-conscious processes of this physical world. Nature is sensitive, not mechanistic, and presents the physicist with ambiguous solutions; a new leaf can often be sensed solely by the keen knows of a Dirac or Einstein.... turned over only by the delicate touch of intuition. If a scientist chooses to be a technician, it is only a matter of time before a computer will make him irrelevant. Some mathematicians no longer occupy their minds with calculated thinking; they would rather become visionaries. Penrose removes the need for equations in quantum mechanics and introduces the geometry of twistor space, so that like Feynman and the early Einstein, he relies on his visual imagination. He draws the solutions to his problems rather than relying on formulas to calculate them. But in cases like these, it is only a matter of timelessness before discovering the unknowing ...the unreality of the surrealist multi-dimensional mind, where art and science are thoughtlessly entangled.

Genius emphasizes the hidden-ness of Nature, and the capacity of vision to see through the concealment of this chaos ....creating an observable order. Symmetries disclose perceived organization. When that beauty is hidden, enfolded, physicists speak in terms of symmetry breaking. We might think of beauty as strange attractors in the process of breaking loose from chaos .....aspiring to be symmetries. The mathematics of all possible symmetries is called group theory. Such abstract thought brings one onto Penrose's path to the Platonic world of pure ideas, and an ancient question: does the order of symmetries exist in Nature or is order a fabrication of the brain? A final theory will be based on principles of symmetry, but I would suggest that a theory of everything can never be final ... everything is always emerging through delicate vessels of endless intricacy that are forever reforming themselves. A creative work of art or science is a kind of code or formula, an algorithm; and unraveling that knot is an algorithmic process. Is the process of creativity one of discovering a pre-existing algorithmic order or is all order human creation? There need not be a great distance between natural order and creation. Unlike Durkheim, I am unwilling to attribute the miraculous intuition of human Nature to society alone. The only god society can be is the creation of the totalitarian-State-of-mind. It is transparently evident that human Nature feels a wider and more inclusive power than this corrupt society. It is the wonder of this mysterious intelligence-of-not-knowing that is the elusive source of the creative mind's discovery. It is astonishing enough to recognize intelligence in the wild; but to bang into order within non-living elements of one’s environment challenges both belief and disbelief. Roger Penrose presents a very informative distinction between discovery and invention, as seen in the field of mathematics. Discovery involves creative work in which a flood of significant implications seem to pour out of a newly created mathematical form. There is a clear sense that in such remarkable circumstances that thinkers have "... stumbled upon 'works of God'."⁷⁵ It is the fertility of such discoveries that distinguishes them from mere invention. These more mundane creations lack the magnificence and uniqueness of discoveries. Inventions have an artificial character and produce little more information than was initially put into the system. They may advance our thinking, but only by a step or two. Discoveries are revolutionary shocks that decimate everything we know. Penrose notes that great artistic creations, as with mathematics, seem to have an existence beyond the individual who created them. "It is a feeling not uncommon amongst artists, that in their greatest works they are revealing eternal truths which have some kind of prior ethereal existence..."⁷⁶ The conviction that the profound concepts of mathematics have a timeless existence in some other world independent of human observers is called Mathematical Platonism, dating back to the Athens of 360 BC. Penrose argues that the mathematical world of Platonic ideas "...was not of our creation."⁷⁷ Mathematics is the language of the known universe and discovery of these timeless principles does not depend on the particular person who may first recognize them. Mathematical laws must have existed long before human life came into Being, and these same principles will govern space-time long after all observers have passed from the scene. Mathematical Platonism is the origin in the West of other-worldly ideas, such as heaven, perfection, and immortality; these mystical revelations have been combined with the Christian belief in a personal Savior ...who doubles as the God of Israel -- to form what is still called the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Just as thoughts of heavenly perfection have their origins in Platonism, so too does the multiple universes theory. The many universes perspective is mathematically accurate in that it tries to see the collective nature of things rather than a single particle. The problem is trying to describe a quantum state from the perspective of a mind that is still thinking in the imagery of classical physics. The solution to these quantum paradoxes is to stop thinking in terms of an isolated particle or a schizophrenic "cat in a box". These are unreal situations from the perspective of quantum physics, and can produce only paradoxical results. In the new physics, only questions of a collective nature matter. Much later we will discuss the formulation of meaningful questions. But until we learn how to ask what we do not know, we will be plagued by answers beyond belief. What is most unbelievable about this many universes theory is that prominent physicists at major institutions vigorously support it.⁷⁸ You see, the idea is very persuasive mathematically, and physicists view mathematics as the ultimate language of the universe, so they don't much care that the idea appears nonsensical when translated into words. As they see it, the power is in the music, and not in the lyrics. The nonsensical images serve more to conceal than to reveal these quantum ideas which "no one understands". As with the incompleteness of everything, this thought of non-conscious-knowing, emerging from art and science, seems to escape us; but these themes will eventually become integral forces in the thinking taking shape within these pages. Some physicists do not accept the reality of quantum vector reduction. It is seen as "...some kind of illusion, convenience, or approximation, and is not to be taken as part of the actual evolution of the reality that is indeed to be described by the quantum state."⁷⁹ The many universes theory rejects the state reduction vector as an illusion of duality, and maintains that superposition accommodates an infinite number of coexisting realities in multiple universes. Penrose endorses his own Platonic "Shadow World" variation on this multiple-universes solution. Everett's interpretation is blatantly misguided if taken literally, but may make sense in terms of some virtual reality. However, the underlying mathematical structure seems substantial, and the conclusions precisely what we need. Keeping super-position, and interpreting vector reduction as illusion allows for us to think in terms of one physics rather than the presently endorsed "many physics theory". Along with Einstein, we must trust that Nature follows one cohesive set of principles, and not a myriad of conflicting laws. This theory allows for the preservation of objective reality, as most scientists are convinced must finally be the case. The focus here is on the quantum state of super-position and not quantum-relativistic-stereoscopic-vision; Nature is being observed as an undifferentiated whole and not through the relativistic eyes of primates in particular. Everett's theory lends itself well to describing a collective state composed of an infinite number of observers, who in no way are required to be self-conscious....only that there be sufficient sensation to meet the minimal requirements of a collective quantum reality. This array of wildlife in super-position is enfolded within the shadows of Nature’s broken symmetries. But dumb animals are not the only one’s embraced by this quantum cloud of unknowing.

By combining Plato's "world of pure ideas", which is independent of human consciousness, with the many universes theory, Penrose is attempting to create a credible foundation for Mathematical Platonism.⁸⁰ In Shadows Of The Mind, Penrose tells Plato's parable of the cave, from which he derived the title of his book.⁸¹ Plato described people who lived in a cave; their backs were not to the wall, but rather to the entrance of the cave from which light came. At times figures would dance past the cave opening casting shadows on the wall. The cavemen were mesmerized by the illusory images in front of them. They dared not turn their heads toward the source of the shadows because the bright light at the entrance of the cave hurt their eyes, and they feared it like fire. So they accepted the shadows as reality. Plato explained that the perfect shapes moving outside the cave are the true forms of mathematics, and the shadows are the everyday things people believe to be the "real world". Plato taught that by turning one's eyes away from the phantom figures toward the light..... that gradually the eyes would adjust to the brilliance of things as they are, and people would come to see the true shape they are in ...and no longer be blinded by shadows. Today, the television is often compared to the wall in Plato's cave. People are just unable to tear their eyes away from the hypnotic illusions that hold them entranced in a distorted universe of twisted values. If this is beginning to make sense to you, consider that Plato is one of the "dead white men" the politically correct multi-racial society activists at your university no longer consider relevant for you to study. However, these same people do appear to hold much of the politically correct programming on television in high regard. The stakes here are high indeed: reality .... your State-of-mind -- your sanity!

Penrose evidently has good reason to believe that this Platonic world of ideas is real, and can be known existentially through concentrated thought. "Does awareness play some kind of role as a 'bridge' to a world of Platonic absolutes?"⁸² He argues that the beauty of mathematics cannot exist simply by chance; the order is too perfect to have arisen by random action. Curiously, he does not seem especially convinced of the reality of self-consciousness, but does not want to espouse mysticism either. He evidently sees the brain as a sufficient explanation for human awareness. It seems inconsistent to espouse a metaphysical world while hesitating to support a metaphysical soul. Regarding the independent self as the mechanism responsible for controlling human behaviour, he concludes that we are far from answering that question, but he is confident that whatever the explanation is for human consciousness, it must be something other than a brain functioning like the classical calculating devices we call computers. However, it seems computer technology is shifting its primary focus from calculation to network communications; and this should give us an important clue as to the nature of our own consciousness. Is it not obvious that mass communications, such as radio, television, and the Internet, assume collective consciousness, in much the same way as scientists assume the existence of objective reality, while refusing to discuss the embarrassing implications of their assumptions? Is not collective consciousness just another way of talking about what we call objective reality? Is today's cultural warfare not a matter of defining reality and the consequent collective consciousness that occupies your attention? Are we not battling over which channels are allowed to be broadcast to the collective mind's eye? ....deciding who dances on MTV and who gets stuck idolizing them? Penrose does finally explain what he believes to be the nature of the brain and the world of ideas. He suspects there must be some kind of hidden relationship between this Platonic world of mathematics and the physical world, which includes the brain. He thinks that ultimately they must be two complementary aspects of the same reality.⁸³ While Bohm may sound like Bohr in the following idea, he is actually drawing on the thoughts of someone who preceded them both by centuries, whom I believe was a common influence on Bohr as well as Bohm: Nicholas of Cusa. Bohm gave these two aspects of the same reality mentioned above names and form in what he called the implicate/explicate order.⁸⁴ The implicate order is the "field" from which the electron information emerges. I have described this relationship earlier geometrically using the model of the random dot stereogram. As long as everything is enfolded within the shadows ....within these random dots, all that is observed is the chaos we call quantum super-position. Peat notices a similarity between Bohm's implicate order and Carl Jung's collective unconscious. Its mysterious collective structure manifests itself explicitly through individuals, but can never disclose its total content.⁸⁵ Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist, has pointed out that Bohm's implicate-explicate order is a duality sounding very much like Platonism. The explicate order is a particular observable thing, but concealed behind it is the ideal thing existing within the implicate order.⁸⁶ As we will see before long, much of modern scientific theory has its origins in Christian metaphysics, which in turn leads us back to Platonism.

The previous few paragraphs fore-shadow ideas to come. These ideas are not simply intellectual speculation; they are the reality in which one lives, much as the sense of self-consciousness is reality for so many at the present, but need not be in the future. Initially, there was little benefit in using Einstein's theory of relativity in place of Newton's classical reality. But several decades later, the kinds of problems physicists work with often find Einstein's methods millions of times more accurate than Newton's calculations. Einstein had uncovered "..a profound mathematical substructure that was already hidden in the very workings of the world."⁸⁷ He paired up this mathematical structure with his genius for visualizing this physical world, and together they formed a vision that was to become the foundation of a new kind of relativistic reality: space-time. What is the link between the abstract world of mathematics and the physical world we live in? Why can mathematical theories be converted into physics and implemented in the material world of machines? Penrose, like Plato, argues that by thinking mathematically it is possible to establish "... contact with a pre-existing Platonic mathematical reality...".⁸⁸ This Platonic world is timeless and independent of ourselves and the day to day illusory world in which we are accustomed to believing. The Mathematical Platonist Gödel presented a proof, called his incompleteness theorem, which demonstrated not that there are mathematical truths inaccessible to human or mechanical investigation -- rather, he reasoned "...that human insight lies beyond formal argument and beyond computable procedures."⁸⁹ This theme of incompleteness will become increasingly central to our thinking as we proceed. The truth of mathematics is not the product of "...the rules of some 'man-made' formal system, but has an absolute nature, and lies beyond any such system of specifiable rules."⁹⁰ Both relativity and quantum theory have radically altered man's perception of reality. Common sense has fallen by the wayside, but what has endured, and even strengthened, is mathematics. But that is not to say that mathematics will solve all problems; or if it can, that human intelligence is capable of understanding these solutions ...or even the questions such resolutions would call upon us to see. It appears that the closer we move to the fundamental nature of things, the more mathematical our ideas must become. Penrose argues this is so because the universe is ultimately governed by mathematical laws.⁹¹...whether we are conscious of them or not.

Inventionists view mathematics as a function of the human mind; any paradoxes or limitations uncovered by mathematicians such as Gödel indicate the peculiarities of the human brain, and do not disclose fundamental information about some objective reality. Curiously, it is the Mathematical Platonists who are the realists, who assert the existence of objective reality. From their seat in the ball park, concentrated thought actually discovers the structure of the universe itself as human intelligence discloses the mystery of Nature's blueprint, which we call mathematics. Platonists argue in favor of a universal truth which is objective and independent of man. Physics relies on mathematics to describe the physical world because the universe operates according to mathematical principles. Any inherent limitations to mathematical knowledge itself reflects the inaccessibility of some dimensions of the physical universe, meaning that if mysteries cannot be resolved mathematically they cannot be resolved by other avenues of approach. All knowledge is fundamentally mathematical, and that which is not mathematical is unknowable. Consequently this mathematical foundation of the universe means that any viable "theory of everything" must be a mathematical theory. The effectiveness of mathematics in guiding physical theory strongly supports this perspective. Even if mathematics is the language of the universe, human understanding of that mathematics is far from complete, as string theory would seem to suggest. In spite of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, it has been a matter of scientific dogma, close to a religious belief, that mathematics is the "unfailing guide" of physics and the only language in which a "final theory" can be expressed. But string theory has proven to be "... a striking example of a physical theory that has found off-the-shelf mathematics insufficient for its purposes..."⁹² This is all well and good for creative mathematicians who are no longer taken for granted, but not the message physicists hoped to hear. Like Einstein, they believed that a brilliant geometry or set of mathematical formulas was hidden away ...just waiting to be plugged into their unified theory. This means that physicists must either become inventionists and create the required mathematical calculus as Newton did for his mechanics, or simply wait for the mathematicians to make the great discovery. But one thing is for sure: No one is going to get a free ride to glory the way Einstein did when his friend discovered the Riemannian and Gaussian ready made four-dimensional geometry so integral to the General Theory of Relativity.

Even though the inventionist philosophy of Bohr’s Copenhagen school is formally supported, "Most scientists and mathematicians operate as if Platonism is true, regardless of whether they believe that it is. That is, they work as though there were an unknown realm of truth to be discovered."⁹³ Does it really make the tiniest difference if you believe in one other-worldly universe called heaven or an infinite number of them you attribute to quantum physics? If questioned about their curious assumptions, physicists will simply dismiss the questions as a consequence of language and emphasize that they have "long sense" ..stopped worrying about such absurdities -- It is the mathematics that counts and that makes sense. As will become evident before too long, Barrow rightly suggests that modern scientists sound much like medieval theologians; all that is necessary is to replace the word God with the word mathematics, and metaphysics becomes physical theory. The reason this happens is that both mathematics and Christian metaphysics were based on the same source: Mathematical Platonism.⁹⁴ The many universes theory is seen by some as a metaphysical throw-back to the Middle Ages when theologians argued over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.⁹⁵ These multiple universes simply sound too much like a literal belief in the heaven of Christianity, which has been so utterly discredited by the materialistic age of science and technology. Plato's world of mathematics cannot be abandoned, but we must account for it as a creation of the collective mind of a time honored civilization, and not attribute to it a metaphysical reality that leads us back into a failed theology ...a lost innocence which we cannot redeem. Durkheim raises a question of interest to modern day Platonists. He recognizes that there are ideas of which a philosopher, or mathematician, may be aware -- ideas which are discovered, rather than created. The question is where did this awareness of these ideas come from? and the ideas themselves? " ...The answer is collective experience. It is in the form of collective thought that impersonal thought revealed itself to humanity for the first time, and by what other route that revelation could have come about is hard to see."⁹⁶ Human identity is defined to such a large degree by the structures within which we think; and language is at the foundation of social thought. If we experience consciousness to be collective, then language and the human identity which emerges from it can come into harmony with mathematics, science and the wholeness of Creation. While this is truly a miraculous phenomenon, we are not compelled to make it into a metaphysical one.

Mathematics is a universal language capable of describing Nature; because it is independent of cultural bias and at the foundation of all grammars, it is the most fundamental means of communication. There is a sense in which mathematics seems to think itself, arriving at inevitable conclusions -- thus allowing it to operate as a non-conscious trans-personal complementary state of mind we may consider as either a mechanistic particle rationality or a mystical wave of intuition. While It may not seem strange to assert that mathematics, or Durkheim’s moral reason, "is thinking itself" along inevitable lines, it is surely no more outrageous a statement for the Christian to assert that "it is not I who live but Christ within me." Once we become persuaded of the reality of collective intelligence, observations which seem to equate human creative awareness with Nature Herself will no longer strike us as either insane or blasphemous. Is it so utterly unbelievable that "I" am not actually the metaphysical self society expects "me" to be, but rather something "greater than myself": a collective poetic voice of a people? Barrow asserts that mathematics differs fundamentally from the arts in that it allows for "simultaneous discovery", as science does. This "...points towards some objective element within their subject matter that is independent of the psyche of the investigator."⁹⁷ A mathematical theorem can be discovered by different thinkers, world's apart; but this does not happen with great art, literature or music. A remarkable characteristic of the sciences and mathematics, that is not found in the humanities, is shared authorship. Barrow appears very close to Penrose's position. He notes in his own experience that he has written research papers with people he has never met, or even spoken to over the telephone.⁹⁸ Because mathematics based disciplines lend themselves so well to collaboration, this leads one to consider the possibility of some objective reality which is being discovered. This I would argue, is a strong indication of collective consciousness -- the same sense of inevitability which does indeed occur within the softer sciences (Darwin and Wallace), and even within the creative arts through the empathic contact established between an orator, such as Hitler, and the people for whom he speaks -- the poet and those who re-live ....even extend his words -- the composer and .......all those who have a feel for the direction in which we march -- but in this case, as Zohar might see it .... the mystical non-local wave-aspect of "thought thinking itself" collectively, rather than the quantum mechanical particle-aspect of logical thought running its narrow course. To describe the creative source of this contagious Spirit, the most sharp-sighted resolution is found by turning our focus on the quantum-relativistic-stereoscopic-vision shared by the charismatic leader and those with whom he is engaged. The aim is not to high-light one person, but to disclose the initial conditions which can open the way to genius for count-less others.

Penrose asks if mathematical ideas can be accounted for in any other way than to assume they are creations of the human mind. He believes these ideas as a whole have a brilliance that far exceeds the capacity of any individual to create. He senses that the thinker is "... being guided towards some eternal truth -- a truth which has a reality of its own, and which is revealed only partially to any one of us."⁹⁹ He goes on to discuss the Mandelbrot Set. It has a beautiful and complex organization that was not created by any mathematician; it is simply a wonder of Nature. No one can grasp completely the complexity of this chaotic design, nor can any computer disclose the entirety of its mystery. Because this complex structure reveals the same organization to whoever examines it, Penrose concludes: "The Mandelbrot set is not an invention of the human mind; it was a discovery."¹⁰⁰ Rather than discussing this argument right now, I would ask you to recall that Mandelbrot also introduced fractal geometry, and observe that the Mandelbrot Set is like an unending fractal design ....an arithmetic representation of one of those geometrical strange attractor patterns we find so fascinating, even beautiful. Later we will see the implications of choosing this relativistic perspective emphasizing incompleteness rather than order. Everything depends on whether we observe the Mandelbrot Set as a model of form or chaos. Penrose wishes to grant the quantum state the status of objective reality; Bohr, Feynman, and today's advocates of virtual reality do not. For them, quantum physics does not offer information about an existing world; it is simply a useful calculus for taking measurements. Manipulation or even misrepresentation of virtually any event in this computerized media environment has led Woolley and others to conclude that "It is for this reason that reality is no longer secure, no longer something we can simply assume to be there."¹⁰¹ Unreality in our daily experience results as much from the abuse of technological power as a consequence of scientific progress. Theorists can account for the same facts but portray them in configurations that appear to be opposites ...like a photo and its negative. You see certain ideas have a tendency to disappear into their own negations, like some ghost from Dali’s past ....its all a matter of emphasis -- how "you see things" ...and how you don’t! Like Bohr, many believe that at the quantum level there is no objective reality "out there". They see reality as an emerging process and not something already formed. It is observation which creates what we call reality. This process of observing events is so central to quantum physics that it will come to be seen as something much more involved than the mechanistic ritual of the scientific technician.

Crick acknowledges that it is truly difficult for many of us to realize that we never see more than the modified image of the world created by the brain. It is simply such a persuasive experience, we cannot help but believe it is absolute reality. Not only that, we simply cannot experience the world as it actually is, but only within the limited capability of human perception. Bees, dogs, birds, dolphins ....all experience very different aspects of a common reality. Crick's astonishing hypothesis is si