Will kind people be rewarded for their good deeds? Will the wicked be punished? Yes, according to a new interpretation of recent experiments. Although our science is too primitive for us to fully comprehend, there is a direct and proportional price to pay for any act of cruelty or injustice.
Science suggests that there are consequences to our actions that transcend our ordinary, classical way of thinking. Emerson, it turns out, was right: "Every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty."
I remember fishing on a warm summer night. Now and then I could feel the vibrations along the line linking me with the life prowling about the bottom. At length I pulled some bass, squeaking and gasping into the air. It was a puzzle to feel a tug, and to be conscious in that precise moment of a part of me, which, as it were, was not a part of me, but scale and fin, circling the hook, slow to strike.
Surely this is what Spinoza, the great philosopher, meant when he contended that consciousness cannot exist simply in space and time, and at the same time is aware of the interrelations of all parts of space and time. In order to have knowledge of a pout or a pickerel, I must have somehow been identical with them.
But how can this be? In experiments, it has been repeatedly shown that a single particle can be at two places at the same time. See the loon in the pond or the dandelion in the field. How deceptive is the space that separates them and makes them solitary. They are the subjects of the same reality that interested John Bell, who proposed the experiment that answered the question of whether what happens locally is affected by nonlocal events.
Experiments from 1997 to 2007 have shown that this is indeed the case. Physicist Nicolas Gisin sent entangled particles zooming along optical fibers until they were seven miles apart. But whatever action they took, the communication between them happened instantaneously. Today no one doubts the connectedness between bits of light or matter, or even entire clusters of atoms. They're intimately linked in a manner suggesting there's no space between them, and no time influencing their behavior. In fact, just last year, Gisin announced a new twist on his experiment; in this case, he thinks the results will be visible to the naked eye.
In the same way, there is a part of us that is connected to the fish in the pond. It is the part that experiences consciousness, not in our external embodiments but in our inner being. And although we identify ourselves with our thoughts and affections, it is an essential feature of reality that we experience the world piece by piece.
Everything you experience is a whirl of information occurring in your head; according to Biocentrism, space and time are simply the mind's tools for putting it all together. However solid and real the walls of space and time have come to look, there is a part of us that is no more human than it is animal − even the fish, sporting there in the pond, a part of us unwittingly tempted by a bunch of worms strung on a thread.
As parts of such a whole there is justice. The bird and the prey are one. This was the world that confronted me that warm summer night. From the shore I could see the shiners dimpling the water with their tails in the moonlight. A bug furrowed the water, making a conspicuous ripple, which the fishes darted at. Only two diverging lines stood between them and natural justice.
"Non-separability," said physicist Bernard d'Espagnat, "is now one of the most certain general concepts in physics."
We suppose ourselves to be a pond; and if there is any consequence to our actions, if there is any justice, it must approach upon these shores. Yet that night, I sensed the union that the one man and creature has with the other. The fish and I, the criminal and the victim, are one and the same.
Justice is built into the fabric of nature. Make no mistake about it: it will be you who looks out the eyes of the victim. Or you can be the recipient of kindness -- whichever you choose.
The problem is that even scientists are just earthworms beginning to grasp the non-linear dimensionality of nature. Heinz Pagels, the esteemed theoretical physicist, once stated: "If you deny the objectivity of the world, unless you observe it and are conscious of it (as most physicists have), then you end up with solipsism − the belief that your consciousness is the only one."
This may not unsettle you, except perhaps on a warm moonlit night with a fish gasping for life at the end of your rod. I knew then, at that moment, that Pagel's conclusion was right. Only it wasn't my consciousness that was the only one, it was ours. According to biocentrism, our individual separateness is an illusion. Remember the words of Omar, who "never called the One two," and of the old Hindu poem: "Know in thyself and All one self-same soul; banish the dream that sunders part from whole."
There was no doubt; that consciousness which was behind the youth I once was, was also behind the mind of every animal and person existing in space and time. "There are," wrote Loren Eiseley, noted anthropologist, "very few youths today who will pause, coming from a biology class, to finger a yellow flower or poke in friendly fashion at a sunning turtle on the edge of the campus pond, and who are capable of saying to themselves, 'We are all one − all melted together.'"
Yes, I thought, we are all one. I let the fish go. With a thrash of the tail, I disappeared into the pond.
Robert Lanza, MD is author of over two dozen scientific books, including "Biocentrism," a new book that lays out his theory of everything.
Follow Robert Lanza, M.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RobertLanza
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As to Roberts point, we cannot be disconnected, there is no alternative but the lack of awareness of our connectivity.
Yet our perception of individuality is with purpose in this life. As we evolve spiritually, humanity will come to better appreciate this framework.
Let's have the conversation.
Cheers,
TheeDaveMoore
http://www.ThinkersAndSinkers.com
Then again, you separate the inseparable, time and space. Kant not withstanding, it no longer makes sense, no matter how comfortably familiar it makes us feel, to speak of time and space as two things. They are one and the same. Who knew? Not Newton, not Kant, and I have to wander about you.
Vulgarization is a difficult and necessary art. You are doing your duty by trying it, but I do not think you are succeeding. I fear, in fact, that you may be fooling both yourself and your readers.
First, read about quantum entanglement and surf around from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
Then, check out the article on the Principle of Locality, which specifically cautions against this kind of conflation of physics and metaphysics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality
Excerpt:
Realism in the sense used by physicists does not directly equate to realism in metaphysics. The latter is the claim that there is in some sense a mind-independent world. Even if the results of a possible measurement do not pre-exist the measurement, that does not mean they are the creation of the observer (as in the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation of quantum mechanics). ...
Finally, as an example of the kind of fallacy Lanza's reasoning embodies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
For the sake of brevity, I'll omit David Hume's sublime quote from "A Treatise of Human Nature" but it's highly recommended! This is the error that Lanza makes when he jumps from a mere description of quantum entanglement to "In the same way, there is a part of us that is connected to the fish in the pond" and thence to "Justice is built into the fabric of nature" and subsequent moral reasoning.
This is not to say that Lanza is actually wrong! Maybe "justice" *is* built into the fabric of nature... but it doesn't automatically follow from the argument he has made.
Any help from the folks here that didn't fall back on the social sciences after high school?
For all of those needing punishing an information transfer would occur prior to the reprehensible acts enforced penance. Do the crime, do the time, only works if the crime is noted. I sincerely don't believe that happens to many who are deficient in certain values. Do I think all of the super-rich will have specific knowledge of every economic crime? Only if they are told. They and any others deserving a smack, have to recognize the depths of the injustice visited upon so many .
OR (There can be other views.)
There is no such thing as sequential time and the presumed resulting one way evolving system. Our apparent mutual conceptions (You are reading this.) go through cycles of change. This leads to further refinements. Thoughts can die unless accepted. This leads to a winnowing. "That which is left....".....allows then for the impossible.
Any replicating living system attempts to optimize its use of surroundings. Once upon the earth there was no free oxygen. Nothing we know of could have survived upon that earth. Life managed that trick without an intelligence we can codify. Our past is mystical and dimly lit.
If time anomalies becomes accepted and desired they will spawn pre-pruning processes of competing time-lines, less fruitful branches. This would be prior to them becoming critical issues for the reigning powers, whenever, wherever and whatever they be.
"....the central mystery of knowledge: that the laws of the world were somehow created to produce the observer. And more important than this, that the observer in a significant sense creates reality and not the other way around."
Someone help me here. Is that two contradictory ideas in one sentence?? I guess he's have to define what "In a significant sense" means.
And this is what has me scratching my head....
."... Nothing has existence unless you, I, or some living creature perceives it..."
So where did the molecules that make up the living creature come from?
Yeah, I've been reading a lot lately about postmodernism, and how the more radical version of it have run their course, hit a dead end; but this stuff is post-modernism on steroids...cubed... and really there's really nothing new here, this is idealism repackaged with a newer sexier scientificer truthier name.
I will have to look through my bookshelves for a book written by a neuroscientist who made the point that latest theory is consciousness and memory are not to be found on the molecular or cellular level but occurs in the fields between the neurons (I'm probably slaughtering the theory description here, I hope you bear with me). I think it might be fair to posit that field theory can be thought not to arise from matter and molecular existence, but be pre-existing and matter coalesces around the fields. But really we conceive fields "energy" or weak force strong force gravity etc etc, and as deriving from E=MC2, at least as I am following the argument. What is the nature of how those fields are experienced. And if we are conscious of our own awareness, it might be legitimate to extrapolate that speculatively that their might be a larger field of consciousness than we are capable of tuning into? Where it falls apart for me is when it leaves the playground of speculation and is presented as being probative.
It's like that other doc posting on here with his convoluted argument about nothing makes a sound unless there is a human ear to hear it, which was even further out there. There seems to be something in these speculations that somehow hooks these guys, but maybe it does us too cause here we are again discussing it.
Now it is a rather widely accepted deduction that the observer of an experiment affects the experiments outcome just by the process of observation, so it is unlikely that ultimate knowledge of a disconnected or objective observance is possible. Which gives a healthy scepticism for questioning our own stuff that we bring to an experiment. (I forget the truism described in my limited way, is it Shrodinger's cat?) Which implies some kind of connectivity in the simplest form (I start hearing the theme for the Lion King in my head when I start writing stuff like this)
(You can't see through cyber-space that my tongue is firmly in my cheek.)
Quantum mechanics proves that some things that seem really weird are actually true.
My beliefs seem really weird.
Therefore, my beliefs are actually true.
The insane content is only revealed after the member has been re-educated and made more susceptible. They practice a variety of brain-washing and mind-control techniques on weak-minded people. Their aim is to enslave people to further their wicked ends.
The writings of their founder are incontrovertible testimony to this wickedness.
Revelations from God are not transmitted through science fiction.
God is not one with us.
God is love.
Well, as long as man creates his God in HIS own image, you
will be correct.
It would be much more useful if you actually provided references for the information that you are trying to use to support your theories. References would allow people to go back and examine the actual research themselves to determine if your summaries and generalizations are accurate representations of what was done and the conclusions of the work performed.