Are We the Masters of Time? (Part 2)

The mind gives us mastery over our lives far more than people recognize. It's unpopular to make such claims for the mind, because the fashion is to give all credit to the brain. In the first part of this post we argued that the mind, although invisible, is the true creator of reality, including the brain's reality.

Let's see how far this bold statement can take us.

There's no doubt that you possess hidden powers. You have mastered levels of nature you aren't aware of. When you reach for a piece of chocolate, your desire is carried out by your arm automatically. Yet away from your awareness, the motor cortex in your brain sent electro-chemical signals to your arm muscles. You aren't aware of this level of nature, but it obeys you nonetheless.

Going to an inner level, brain and muscle cannot do anything without thousands of chemical reactions taking place in every cell each second. These also obey your command to reach for a piece of chocolate. Since cells operate by creating new proteins and enzymes, we can say that you literally create whatever is needed to carry out your desires. There is no gap between what you want and what your body does. (When there is a gap, some disorder or disease process has created damage in the chain of command.) The quantum world, where atoms interact to form the building blocks of life, is open to consciousness.

Once we get to this ultra-subtle level of nature, more is coming into being than just particles and waves, although that is primarily what quantum physics studies. Time and space also come into being. Are they under the mind's command, also? We speak casually about people who rewrite the past to suit themselves. What if that is literally true?

In the laboratory, isolated experiments have shown that photons can travel from point A to point B without crossing the space in between: this is a rudimentary form of teleportation. In the same vein, when an observer performs the classic experiment that determines whether light will act as a wave or a particle (we discussed this in Part 1 of this post), the so-called observer effect can be delayed. A beam of light can wait until a second observer, using a second piece of equipment, makes a later observation. Then and only then does it "decide" to be a wave or particle.

Without going into complications, what is happening is a rudimentary way of changing the past. By delaying what will be observed, an action in the future is able to change an action in the past. History is literally rewritten. Of course, in both these cases, whether we are talking about teleportation or changing the past, the experiments are isolated and very tiny. Yet speculative thinking carries us to exciting possibilities.

In science fiction time travel is common, but in real life it supposedly can't exist. Why not? Because time travel runs into paradoxes. Here's a familiar one: if you travel back in time and kill your grandfather, you wouldn't be born. Since you were never born, you can't travel back in time to kill anybody, thereby negating your ability to not be born. A paradox. But in the rich spiritual tradition of India, there's a way out. One could rise to a level of consciousness that escapes the limitations of time. This so-called state of enlightenment exists in everyone, potentially. If any person is able to master time, by implication there must be a way to explain how it works.

The observer effect gives us a clue. Simply by looking at light in the laboratory, and doing nothing else, an observer can determine whether the light is a wave or particle. There's nothing special about light being shone in a lab. Ordinary light is affected by the observer effect. In fact, everything you are looking at right now depends upon you to exist.

This includes not just objects and events but time itself. Time didn't create you; you created time. Other sentient beings would perceive time in totally different ways. Why, then, do two people agree when they look at their watches? Because as life forms, we are set up to repeat the perceptions of our ancestors. Our brains are the depository of all the realities that have been experienced over two billion years. DNA makes us who we are, in terms of brain activity. However, our every action alters DNA at the same time.

In this case, we cannot tell the dancer from the dance, to paraphrase the poet W.B. Yeats. His famous line even implies the observer effect: "O brightening glance, how can we know the dancer from the dance?" Sitting here in the present, you and I aren't aware of being the masters of time, but if we knew our consciousness deeply enough, we would see it. After all, before the advent of microscopes, no one would have believe that thinking "I want some chocolate" depends upon mastery of quantum reactions.

The latest Nobel Prize in physics was given for the basic discovery of how photons can carry information through fiber optic cables. That represents the state of current knowledge. The late Herms Romijn, a brilliant Dutch neurologist, surmised that photons also carry consciousness. They interface everyday reality with the quantum world and beyond to the realm of intelligence, information, and awareness.

You aren't aware that you create the scent of a rose by smelling it, or that what you decide today can alter something you did yesterday. None of us were raised to think that way. But as speculative thinkers, backed up by thousands of years of spiritual insight and the most current experimental evidence, we believe that thinking can be changed. It must. As long as we remain prisoners of materialism, destined to obey random events and subatomic interactions over which we have no power, the true nature of mind will be distorted. More importantly, we will postpone the day when we can master every level of nature through no more than the wisp of a thought and the power of an intention.

Published in the San Francisco Chronicle

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Comments

[willowranch]

I guess the sciences of geology, paleontology and most of astronomy are out the window since they study events that happened before I was around to create them. I wonder if I can go back and get a refund on the time I spent studying these things?

[fairwitness]

"...we will postpone the day when we can master every level of nature through no more than the wisp of a thought and the power of an intention.­"

I know of no human being whom I would want to "master every level of nature"--it is a great comfort to know that we cannot do so (at least with the comprehensive, intentional control you suggest we should pursue). That kind of intentional control over ANY level of nature, given human ignorance, passionate attachment to delusions and selfish moral deficiencies, would likely be catastrophic on every level. Witness the many so-called "spiritual teachers" of even the last decade alone who have abused the little influence they manage to attain over their students and done great damage. Or the results of scientists' inquiries into the nature of matter and energy which have created the technologies that now and permanently threaten this planet.

Further, I suspect it may be that, if one were to realize the true nature of the universe (both material and conscious--and beyond), one would not desire to intervene to reflect the desires of the very limited, very small, very self-concerned human mind. And that's probably my main beef with this whole line of thought--it fans the flames of desire for power and control. I think THAT desire--for conscious control of everything, both inner and outer--is itself a distortion of mind that breeds and perpetuates ignorant aggression and narcissistic myopia.

[PanBaccha]

There is no doubt in my mind that the brain takes its instructions from the spiritual aspect or facet of the soul, namely, the mind. The mind interpenetrates and imbues the cellular structure of our being with intelligence, and possess incredible powers yet discovered. The brain however miraculous is physical by nature and can be liken to a 'computer' that records all experiences of this particular lifetime. Too much credit is often given the brain, yet the guiding intelligence behind it, the mind, receives but seldom a puzzling nod of cognition.

[Shirley Fisk]

11/10/09
5:26am
Alexandria,VA

RE: "There is no gap between what you want and what your body does. (When there is a gap, some disorder or disease process has created damage in the chain of command.) The quantum world, where atoms interact to form the building blocks of life, is open to consciousn­ess."

How about this example:
You have been injured in combat or some kind of attack and you want to go to get help or help somebody else but your injuries would ordinarily prevent you from walking. You proceed to go wherever necessary and do whatever is necessary without even feeling pain.
(this has happened to me and many others)
This is an example of what?

[jonmonbuckeye]

This is the same principle underlying the interesting read- Biocentrism. Of course, this will piss off lots people (Christians and atheists).­..

[SILVANUS]

Curiousasascheck said it well: Maya has a strong grip on consciousn­ess/awaren­ess, but... a good column! We have so much potential locked up under social conditioning.

Where's the brown wafer?

[johnsopinion]

Excellent Part 2. Thank you.

A Parts 3, 4, and 5 would be nice.

[JShankel]

There is no evidence to suggest that consciousness and quantum phenomena are related in the way you suggest.

I suspect you are using quantum theory as the basis for your article because it is mysterious to most people and allows you to give the impression that you have a deeper understanding of human consciousness than you evidently do.

Human consciousness is a complex, emergent phenomenon operating a scales vastly larger than the quantum scale. A stone thrown into the sea has more effect on the tide than quantum uncertainty does on our consciousness.

Also, the material world exists independently of us. We emerge from it. We do not create it with our thoughts. That's a delusion commonly referred to as "narcissis­m."

[perelmanfan]

I am amazed. You understand the nature of consciousness, including the particulars of the size of the brain structures involved in producing it?

If you want, you can accuse Dr. Chopra of conflating two mysterious phenomena - quantum physics and consciousness. But to argue that only the former is mysterious is an amazing piece of hubris.

[Tim Ellis - Huffpost Blogger]

I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Shankel in the above comment, but I must admit this is a fair response. Well done.

[JShankel]

"But to argue that only the former is mysterious is an amazing piece of hubris."

Indeed it would be, if I'd argued any such thing.

The nature of consciousness is one of the deepest mysteries in science, but everything we've studied about it indicates that it emerges from neurobiology.

If you're aware of an published, peer-reviewed work that shows a substantive relationship between consciousness or any other cognitive phenomenon and quantum dynamics, I'd be most interested to review it.

[johnsopinion]

nar⋅cis⋅sism
–noun
1. inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.
2. Psychoanalysis. erotic gratification derived from admiration of
one's own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition
at the infantile level of personality developmen­t."

Not even omitting the 'erotic,' it kinda defines the 'science-minded'
too, doesn't it? But then, that's only logical.

[Tim Ellis - Huffpost Blogger]

I'm afraid I don't understand exactly what point you're trying to make here - are you saying that people who are science minded (for example, all those quantum physicists performing those experiments that Mr. Chopra cites) are narcissistic?

Curious.

[curiousasheck]

Maya has a pretty substantial grip on things. It's going to be a while.

[Sarah Bauer]

I appreciate this article because ties philosophy in with Quantum physics, and I've been wondering about these things lately. I'm worried though that the Observer Effect is not a metaphysical phenomenon, but rather an epistemological one instead. Simply because we cannot know, or only know something with a certain probability, does not have any impact on the real nature of that which we are studying. That is to say it may be a particle or a wave, this is not contingent on our knowledge of it, our knowledge of it is contingent on how it appears to us. Maybe this is fine for Chopra since he doesn't think there is a material world anyway, but for those of us who tend to think there is, and perhaps we just perceive it differently then it really is, then the question remains.

[JShankel]

The Observer Effect is not just a philosophical question. It is fundamental to the nature of quantum physics: quanta do not resolve into a definite state until they are observed.

Einstein spent a good deal of his later years trying to show that this was NOT the case, that there could be hidden variables that account for the appearance of an observer effect, but Bell's Theorem demonstrated that it is not merely a lack of information or inadequate tools. The information does not exist in the universe.

Now, by "observer" we don't mean a conscious being. We mean any entity that can form a record of the past. Schroedinger's Cat is either alive or dead (not both) because the cat (and the rest of the interior of the box) is a qualified observer.

[Vxx]

+5 mod points for the Cat fallacy reference. :)

[IrishMale]

Second!