Are We the Masters of Time?

We live in an age where massive amounts of money are spent for research into the brain and almost nothing into researching the mind. This represents a huge demotion. In prior centuries the mind was exalted. It was the mind that perceived beauty, experienced love, and reached for God. Can the brain really do all those things on its own? Neuroscience says yes, but that's a leap of faith. Why would a neuron have any interest in beauty, love, and God to begin with? Its whole life is spent exchanging chemical and electrical signals with other neurons. On the fringes of speculative thinking, the mind is coming back into its own.

Instead of trying to rehabilitate the mind, we think it's more fruitful, and far bolder, to put the mind at the very center of reality. Nothing exists except in your own awareness. If you can't see, hear, touch, taste, and smell a thing, if you can't even think about it, the thing cannot exist. Yet even without a world of things, consciousness does exist, and it has enormous untapped potential. That was proven decades ago when physicists discovered the observer effect. Technically, the observer effect applies to light. Light can act like a wave or a particle, but not both at the same time. It defies ordinary logic, but Einstein and his colleagues discovered that light "decides" whether to act like a wave or particle depending on the observer.

Until it is observed, light exists in suspended animation, so to speak. It doesn't take the form of particle or wave until an observer tries to measure it. After that, there's no turning back. Whatever the observer sees is reality. This implies that observation is a creative act, and quantum physics has lived with that fact for two generations or more. Only for ordinary people, the observer effect hasn't had much to do with their lives.

Or has it?

Children who are raised under a disapproving eye, who are made to feel bad, worthless, and unlovable, are very likely to grow up to feel that way permanently. Isn't a judgmental parent a kind of observer, creating the very flaws he sees? On the other hand, children raised under a loving eye have a far greater chance of loving themselves and developing the good qualities seen in them. You can come up with many examples of how the observer effect might influence daily life.

But what if we are missing the forest for the trees? What if consciousness is creating much more than we suppose? It could be creating something as basic as time and space. At the quantum level, Nature isn't bound by either one. Not only is time relative, but certain phenomena travel faster than the speed of light, needing no time at all to cover billions of light years in distances. That, too, is well known in modern physics. But few thinkers have applied the same effect to the mind.

Here things get tricky. Let's say you are an observer. You watch an event unfold such as the action of light deciding whether to be a wave or a particle. Since your brain is composed of quantum interactions, it isn't a stable observer. Waves are watching waves, particles are observing particles. Which implies that your brain only "decides" to be a brain at the moment you perceive anything. This quirky notion drops us immediately into the quantum soup, where nothing is stable at all.

To get out of the soup, we need to know why time and space look so stable. I don't expect the room I'm sitting in to collapse a minute from now, and I don't expect my car to shoot off at the speed of light, even though photons and subatomic particles are the basis for my car and my room. The reason we have a stable sense of time and space isn't because they are "real," in the sense that time and space don't need an observer. They absolutely do, for without a mind, nothing exists but randomness and chaos at every level.

The mystery of how time and space become real is tied to the mystery of mind. Some cosmologists, looking at the evolution of the universe, can't tolerate randomness. They don't believe that the explosion of the Big Bang could create the complexity of DNA, any more than a hurricane blowing through a junkyard could create a 747 jetliner. It has been proposed that the visible universe is matched to our own minds. The events we observe that lead to our existence here on planet Earth are precisely the events that can be observed by the human mind. One can imagine life forms on other planets that see an entirely different universe, the one that led to their existence.

Calling an idea tricky doesn't make it absurd. This so-called "anthropic principle" rests upon an irrefutable basis: Nobody can observe anything that the mind isn't set up for. Silicone crystals may be vibrating in a language that sings and makes up poetry, but we have no means of eavesdropping since our minds can't conceive of minerals leading complex social and artistic lives. Now let's go a step further.

Instead of hogging the limelight by saying that the mind must be human, what if we posit that life is in charge of the universe? This was certainly true before the rise of science. The creation emanated from a living God, and since God was everywhere, life was everywhere. Science traditionally considered this a matter of faith rather than reason. They could point to atoms and molecules, amino acids and enzymes, proteins and primitive life forms, all the way from blue-green algae to human DNA. Isn't it obvious, they say, that life developed from non-life over billions of years?

Actually, no, The tracks of evolution are just that, footprints to show that something or someone has passed here. A radio playing Mozart is just such a footprint. It proves that Mozart once lived, but you can't tear apart the radio and find Mozart inside. You and I are the children of evolution, but only part of our evolution is visible; the rest, the most mysterious part, is invisible. Therein lies the answer to how we became masters of space and time.

(To be continued.)

Published in the San Francisco Chronicle

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Comments

[EricIndiana]

Is there something unique about the human mind that allows it to create reality, as opposed to the minds of dogs and mice? What if the realities of two minds are contradictory? What if the lion believes it will catch the antelope and the antelope believes it will escape? What about the minds of mentally ill people? If someone strongly believes light is not a particle or a wave but is a toaster oven, will that be true for that person?

Here are some of my thoughts on reality:

http://www.daisybrain.wordpress.com

Thanks,
Eric

[skatoolaki]

As further reading on Deepak's post, I would recommend the anthology "Mind Before Matter: Vision of a New Science of Consciousness" by Trish Pfeiffer and "The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal Is Bringing Science and Spirit Together" by Charles Tart for some interesting and up-to-date takes on similar issues.

[skatoolaki]

(...contin­ued)

In the meantime, I am eager to read the continuation of your post. There is so much beautiful Truth in it, and it's so nice to hear someone explain it in such a concise and sensible manner. I love how you are able to take the most deep, esoteric things and explain them in a way that anyone can understand and apply to their own path towards enlightenment. Thank you so much for all the work you do in helping people find their own inner Light with which to walk that path!

[skatoolaki]

(...contin­ued)

Many people have a hard time accepting that religion - or, better, spirituality - goes hand-in-hand with science. Neither disproves the other; in fact, they work together to explain the bigger picture.

Your concept of "footprints" rang so true for me! I remember having a vision once as I rode in a car along a particular stretch of road I had ridden many times when I was younger. I had not been to this area in a few years. In that moment, I saw myself - years earlier - on the same road, riding in a different car. I realized this "memory" was real - that somewhere, somehow - that younger me was still there, on that same road. I felt as if the two "times" - the past and the present - had somehow merged in that instant. The younger, past me and the older, present me were both part of the Eternal Now - somewhere that "past" memory was actually still happening. I don't know how else to explain it, only to say that - for me - it was a "door in the mind" swinging open, a moment of revelation and a flash of enlightenment that explained so much in an instant.

(more...)

[skatoolaki]

(...contin­ued)

On the "other side", as some call it, or in many of the spiritual realms or other dimensions, things are lighter, more ethereal, made of lighter stuff, if you will, and vibrate a much higher frequency (like the blades of an oscillating fan on high - we cannot see the blades, as they are moving too fast, but they are, nonetheless, there). The "other side" is like the blades of the fan - there, ever present, and all around us - though it less dense and vibrating at a much higher frequency.

The past, present, and future are all happening *now* - which is a very hard concept to grasp and took me a couple years of inner consideration to acknowledge. Everything that has ever happened, has happened, will happen, is happening now - anything that could happen, all possibilities, are happening, will happen, and are happening now. I have yet to figure out how our higher selves decide which of these myriad experiences to be conscious of at any given moment, but I'll get there.

(more...)

[skatoolaki]

Deepak, your books, music CDs, and posts have always inspired me, but you have touched on something very amazing here that speaks to me more powerfully than any of your previous works.

For years now I have considered the the concept of reality, time, and space. My own studies, observations, meditations, and evolving conclusions are very similar to what you speak of here.

I believe there exists two consciousnesses that we live in and around. A shared, collective consciousness - the one that we all, essentially agree on, that creates the world in which we live (how, for instance, we all see the sky as blue and the grass as green). This collective consciousness is, in a way, our concept of God - it is created by us and it creates us; it is in us and we are in it - together we and It are a cohesive whole making up "reality" or consciousness as we know it.

The second type is our own, individual reality - our realistic experiences that happen and exist (and co-exist) within the framework of the collective consciousness.

As to time, I have found it is entirely relative and can only be measured here in this 3rd dimension in which we currently exists because this dimension is very dense - enough so that the Eternal Now is slowed down enough in a manner that "time" can be measured.

(more...)

[cc]

The brain is primarily a psycho-mechanism through which consciousness operates.

[sixchair]

The night Kennedy was elected I was 7 and asleep. I woke up and on the wall saw:
1. An image of Kennedy
2. A motorcade
3. An image of A. Lincoln

Where does precognition dovetail with Dr. Chopra's thoughts?

[skatoolaki]

An interesting question.

I believe it goes to what I mentioned in my (very long) comment(s). Past, present, and future are all the same thing - they are all happening right at this moment in the Eternal Now.

There's really no easy way to explain this. It was something that came to me in a flash one day, with that "knowing" feeling that just hits you sometimes and suddenly all becomes clear. It's very hard to put into words, even for a writer like myself.

I have often felt that deja vu was actually more like a "memory". That, for a moment, the two times overlapped­...time only being able to be measured here in the dense 3rd dimension we physically live in at this time. That, in the moment you experience the feeling of deja vu, your mind is actually remembering something it has already experienced in the "future"; almost as if it's the future you having a memory that the present you feels and recognizes in the moment you are experiencing. Since deja vu gives the feeling that "this has already happened" or "I've been here before", it actually is a memory the future you has/had.

(more...)

[skatoolaki]

(...contin­ued)

Though, sometimes, I could swear the deja vu I am experiencing is something that I dreamed - that would hearken back to the precognition that you mentioned. But if past, present, and future are the same thing - would precognition be more of a "memory", the future you warning you of something it has already experienced?

It's actually kind of hard to explain, lol, and my head is spinning from my initial comment to this post. Tell me your thoughts and we'll see what we can come up with together in a back-and-forth on the issue.

[Etrusci]

Using quantum physics as a metaphor is one thing. Pretending it can be applied literally is something else. Let's see how else this kind of faulty logic could be applied:

- Spinning in circles generates a negative aura, because that's what electrons do.

- Lifting weights will cure you of depression, because you're applying a positive force to counteract the downward pull of gravity.

- Darker colored ales will get your more drunk because they absorb more light and block your vision.

Physics proves it!

[wondering]

I can't do this anymore.

This is beyond the pale.

Good luck, HS, JFC, and kwinter. You're gonna need it. Hope Dap is well.
.

[HeevenSteven]

Come back Shane!

[kwinter]

wondering,
Got your reply ... and I don't know.

I heard a caller on a podcast a few weeks ago who said many comments on a website (like this one) caused him to start reevaluating his beliefs and he eventually gave up his superstitions. My guess is they were the well thought out kind of arguments that you're so good at making.
You make people think ... and that's (to borrow a word often used by religionists) ... a virtue.

Hope your sabbatical is a short one.

k

[JohnFromCensornati]

You're gonna miss the war on xmas.

[minimalist syntax]

Don't go. You will be missed. by me too.

[JohnFromCensornati]

He said he'll be back in a couple of months in the zapped comment kwinter referred to.

[khanti]

Time is a human creation to measure change. The hands in the clock turn the same circle but it is we who change. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. All elements and matter are made form energy. Energy creates matter thereby with matter space exist.
Existence comes into being through many causes and conditions. The Universes exist in a flux with continuous movement expanding and contracting. It is timeless without ending; without begining. We can freeze time but we cannot stop changes.

[johnsopinion]

Beautifully written, sir.

I look forward to the next installment.

[HeevenSteven]

Does this mean Max Headroom is conscious?

[kwinter]

Only if he's being observed.

BTW - I haven't seen Dap around for a long time.
Psst ... Dap, if you're reading but not posting ... you're missed ... and I hope all is well!

[minimalist syntax]

I was noticing that too. Does anyone have a way to contact him? I was worried that maybe his vision has been giving him too many problems to read and/or post.

[HeevenSteven]

I've been worried about Dap for some time. His activity dropped so much over the last year. I sure do miss him. He took a long break around this time last year, so I'm keepin' my fingers crossed..

He dropped me a hello on his last comment. I see he pared his fan-of list down to me and JFC. I'm sure that's a sign that his vision is really bad, and he's keepin' it really simple.

I can be reached at a gmail dot com address; care of my moniker here if anyone can tell me anything.

[Angie Cordeiro - Huffpost Blogger]

Life is good when I can start my day with an article by Deepak Chopra!

Thanks, and yes, we need is a "radical revolution, the crisis is a crisis in consciousn­ess."

http://www.paripurnayoga.com/Home/books-of-interest/fun-stuff-1/monster-happiness/interesting-bits--pieces/arevolutioninconsciousness-krishnamurti

[squinky]

Without parts of the brain, the mind vanishes.
QED

[davidly]

Yeah, and the chicken came first. I mean the egg.

[johnsopinion]

A somewhat skewed observation.
Without parts of the brain, the mind
loses the physical tools to express
what the mind conceives. The mind
is never lost.

But, since you 'believe' so strongly
in a human organ being the source
of your intelligence, your joys, your
pleasures, then, may I suggest that
you always wear a helmet.
Always!

[squinky]

You are demonstrably wrong. Many people have specific deletions to parts of their brains either from trauma or disease which results in very specific changes to their personality and their perception of the world. Look up prosopagnosia forinstance.

Memories (the mind) can very easily be lost and lost forever, think Alzheimer's disease. Memory is hard-wired. Some compensatory mechanisms may account for recovered memory but memories can in fact be deleted and deleted forever. Humans actually recognize other human faces using just a couple of neurons (see Chritof Koch's work at Caltech). There's evidence now what do you have for me?

The brain and its chemistry are everything. Using chemicals (drugs) I can make you see things that aren't there, make you angry, sad, lose consciousness, hungry, and invincible. In other words, change your mind and your cognition at will. The mind has never been separate from the brain (even if it is an emergent property). Sorry, you fail.

[khanti]

Mind can be over matter but cannot be without matter. The brain is the matter part.