Chapter 8: Towards an Integration of Faith and Science

In Part one, we traced the spiritual evolution of humanity through the stages of faith developed by James Fowler. Fundamentalism was seen to have emerged during the turbulent time of stage four faith. According to Fowler, the essential features of this stage include distancing oneself from one’s previous assumptions, and the emergence of an executive ego. These two features were, in fact, features that shaped the character of the enlightenment. In the west, we began to distance ourselves from the assumptions of a religious world view and put those views under the microscope. Our culture dared to challenge the authority of God, and in fact we put God under the microscope. While it was the advent of the scientific world view that provided this impetus to evolve, the scientific worldview also became the new external source of authority on which we transferred our hopes. In the scientific worldview, matter, not God, was the only reality and the ground of all being. Where once the culture was based on a singular religious world view, the culture in stage 4 separated fact from faith, matter from spirit, and saw the spirit aspect as irrelevant. Fundamentalism was a knee jerk reaction to this development, a retreat into the tower of dogma and literalism. But the world that they abandoned for the halls of religion has changed in profound ways. The world of science is a different place today than it was then, and it is continuing to change mind boggling ways.

By the 20th century, science had made incredible strides. Technology had developed to the point that we were able to peer into the natural world in ways that had never been done before. For the first time ever, we were able to examine “matter” at the sub-atomic level. The things that we saw, and continue to see, have changed the scientific worldview in unimaginable ways. Discoveries in the realm of quantum physics during the 20th century have shown us that things aren’t as we thought they were; that at the sub-atomic level at least, matter seems to disappear and something more akin to mind or spirit emerges as the ground of reality. With the advent of quantum physics, we could no longer talk about the dichotomy of “matter” and “mind” or “matter” and “spirit”. In a world that has peered into the mysteries of quantum physics, a move into stage five faith seems not only possible, but inevitable.

According to Fowler, Stage 5, as a way of seeing, of knowing, of committing, moves beyond the dichotomizing logic of stage 4’s “either/or.” It sees both (or the many) sides of an issue simultaneously. Conjunctive faith suspects things are organically related to each other; it attends to the pattern of interrelatedness in things, trying to avoid force fitting to its own prior mindset.

The language of stage 5 faith is the very language of quantum physics. In the discovery of the wave function of matter, the first great pillar of quantum physics, we see categories of either/or disappearing. In the concept of entanglement, the second great pillar of quantum physics, we realize that all things are intricately connected. And in unified field theory, we see that every movement in the universe touches, moves, and shapes everything else.

The Wave function of matter and the end of a material universe

Life was good when we thought that the atom was the smallest unit of matter. It was a time when Newtonian physics ruled the world of science. Everything was composed of matter, and matter was composed of atoms. Atoms were discreet, observable, and inert until some force acted upon them. An apple hangs from a tree until gravity pulls it to the earth; and there it lies until someone or something exerts a force upon it. When the apple is moved by a force, the movement can be charted and predicted by determining the mass and the velocity of the force acting upon it. Things behaved as they should; life was predictable. But technology opened Pandora’s box. When scientists discovered that they could actually study the particles that were the building blocks of atoms by crashing atoms into gold foils and into each other, they found things they never expected to find.

For starters, they found that the atom was not like a big “plum pudding” — a batch of corpuscles swimming in a soup of positive charge. In fact, they eventually discovered that the atom was full of. . . very little of anything, except space. The atomic model posited by Niels Bohr in the early 1900’s looks more like an empty solar system than a plum pudding, a lone small nucleus being orbited by a few neutrons at the outer fringe of its vast, empty universe.

In 1961, the world of classic physics felt the first tremors of the impending quake (or should I say “quark?”) when the results of the famous double-slit experiment hit the literature. In this experiment, the paths of single neutrons were observed by shooting them through a single slit in a mask and onto a plate behind the mask, and then shooting them, one at a time, through a mask with two separate slits. The outcome of the experiment is described in elegant simplicity by Gregg Braden (2007):

"Scientists have found that when an electron, for example, passes through the barrier with only one opening available, it behaves in just the way we'd expect it to: It begins and ends its Journey as a particle. In doing so, there are no surprises. In contrast, when two slits are used, the same electron does something that sounds impossible. Although it definitely begins its journey as a particle, a mysterious event happens along the way: the electron passes through both slits at the same time, as only a wave of energy can do, forming the kind of pattern on the target that only an energy wave can make" (Braden, 72).

No one expected the result. It appeared that when the neutron was being watched going through the single slit, it behaved like a particle of discreet matter; but when the researchers provided two slits, and therefore were not “watching” which slit the neutron went through, it seemed to behave like a wave of energy instead of a particle of matter, going through both slits and yet, going through neither. The double-slit experiment suggested that things in the world were not as “concrete” as we might like to think. In an effort to make sense of this curious phenomena, a number of explanations have been offered. One of the most widely accepted explanations was put forth by Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in 1927, an explanation known as the Copenhagen interpretation.

For an eloquent overview of the Copenhagen interpretation, we turn again to Braden:
"According to Bohr and Heisenberg, the universe exists as an infinite number of overlapping possibilities. They’re all there in a kind of quantum soup with no precise location or state of being until something happens to lock one of the possibilities into place. That "something" is a person's awareness-the simple act of observation. As the experiment proves, when we look at something such as an electron moving through a slit in the barrier, the very act of observation is what appears to turn one of the quantum possibilities into reality" (Braden, pg. 74).

According the Bohr and Heisenberg, what is “out there” in the world around us is nothing but endless possibilities. Until we observe the neutron, it isn’t there; it exists only as a wave of potentiality. Once we attempt to measure it (observe it) this function of potentiality collapses and the neutron appears in one certain place.

Granted, in the macro world, things seem to remain physically present even when we’re not there to observe. The larger world seems to play by the well-behaved rules of classic physics. But at the quantum level, when we’re dealing with extraordinarily small particles, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that there’s nothing out there; just possibilities waiting to appear when we turn our focus upon them.

No longer is it possible to see ourselves as a pawn in a closed universe; a victim of circumstances and conditions beyond our control. We can no longer see ourselves as the helpless and hopeless worm in need of some power from “out there” to rescue us from the realities of the world. We are, in some sense, co-creators of those realities; co-creators of the world. Talbot (1991) tells us that William Tiller, one of the scientific pioneers in the new science whom we will meet later, sees the universe as “a kind of holodeck created by the integration of all living things.” (p. 158).

Those of us who came of age during the second incarnation of Star Trek remember the fascination we held for the holodeck on the starship Enterprise. Captain Picard would go to the holodeck, punch in the instructions, and immediately he was on a green, grassy golf course, a blue sky above and the summer sounds of the birds and wind in the trees all around him. I remember thinking how wonderful it would be if something like the holodeck really existed. Who could have guessed that we were living on the most elaborate holodeck ever created? Talbot carries this analogy further, and asserts that

"Indeed if the universe is a holodeck, all things that appear stable and eternal, from the laws of physics to the substance of galaxies, would have to be viewed as reality fields, will-o-wisps no more or less real than the props in a giant, mutally shared dream. All permanence would have to be looked at as illusory, and only consciousness would be eternal , the consciousness of the living universe" (p. 159).

But how can this be? How can the universe be both material and non-material?
How can the world around me be here and not here at the same time? If the matter doesn’t exist as we thought it did, then what is the nature of the world around us?

In the years since the double-slit experiment and the Copenhagen interpretation, a number of scientists have come to the conclusion that the world around us, in fact, we ourselves, are made up of energy. Quantum physics tells us that what we perceive as matter is made up of ridiculously tiny packets of energy called “quanta.” These quanta, when not being observed by consciousness, are in a “superimposed” state. In this state, They are nowhere and everywhere at the same time, with no measurable properties. Quantum physics has taken us to the end of the world of Either/or.

How is it then, that these indiscriminate packets of energy take various and different forms? One current theory in science is that the form taken by that energy and the density of that form depend on the vibrational signature of the energy; and everything in the universe has its own vibrational signature. In 2002, Dr. David Hawkins published his work with vibrational fields in a book called “Power vs. Force.” The Grand overview of Dr. Hawkins theory is that everything in the universe is created from a conceptual field of data. From each field of data emerges an identifiable pattern, or an attractor. Every attractor exists as an energy field with a definite level of strength or weakness. Evolution occurs as strong energy patterns eventually exert dominance over weak energy patterns. According to Dr. Hawkins, everything – as well as every emotion, attitude, and even cultural environment – carries a vibrational signature. Dr. Hawkins has collected over a million measurements involving many different kinds of stimuli. This data has been analyzed and organized, and from it Hawkins has created a classification of the energy levels of many different emotions and cultural artifacts. According to Hawkins, energy levels below 200 are destructive to human life, while energy levels above 200 are constructive to human life. According to Dr. Hawkins, shame, guilt, and apathy are the most destructive emotions, with levels of 20, 30, and 50 respectively. On the other hand, love resonates at a level of 500, Joy at 540, peace at 600, and enlightenment at levels of 700 and above.

Dr. Lipton’s work (2006) illustrates the importance of the vibrational signatures of various types of energy in relation to personal health and well-being. According to Lipton, our thought energy actually controls our biology, activating or inhibiting our cell’s function.

In Dr. Lipton’s book, The Biology of Belief, he explains how the cells in the body behave exactly like little computers. Just like computers, cells are programmable. They “download” the programs they run from the environment; and that environment is created by the emotions we experience. Negative emotions such as fear, anger, self-loathing, etc. . develop when we feel threatened. In an environment of threat, our cells move into a protection response and cease to create growth proteins. In such a state of mind, energy is channelled to the fight or flight response and our bodies are flooded with adrenaline. You may recognize that as the stress-response substance that wreaks havoc on our bodies.

On the other hand, when we create an emotional environment characterized by love, peace, joy, and other higher vibrational frequencies, our cells are programmed to go into growth mode, creating the protiens used by our brains and vital organs. As Dr. Lipton explains,

"You can live a life of fear and or live a life of love. You have the Choice! But I can tell you that if you choose a world full of love, your body will respond by growing in health. If you chose to believe that you live in a dark world full of fear, your body’s health will be compromised as you physiologically close yourself down in a protection response "( pg. 144).

The Wave Function of Matter and the “Many Worlds” interpretation

Another interpretation that has been offered for the double-slit experiment is the
theory known as the many-worlds interpretation. This theory, first proposed by Dr. Hugh Everett from the University of Princeton, suggests that when presented with a choice (or 2 different slits, in terms of the experiment), each possibility actually exists in a different space, or universe. The reason that we perceive only a single outcome for each situation is that our consciousness fixes itself on only a singular possibility. According to this idea, the reality we perceive is the one that we choose to focus on. While this idea is a bit hard to grasp, it does offer an explanation for phenomena such as the placebo effect.

The concept of the “placebo” has undergone a subtle transformation over the last 200 years. In the early 19th century the term placebo (a latin word meaning “to please”) was used in a somewhat derogatory sense to refer to the products of quack doctors and snake oil salesmen which were supposed to have no medical benefit, but appealed to the hopes and beliefs of the customers who bought them.

In the 1920’s and 30’s, a few research studies began to appear which found that, in tests done to measure the effectiveness of new drugs being produced, placebo medicated subjects (subjects given a “sugar pill” with no active ingredient, but led to believe that they might, in fact, be receiving the active ingredient) saw significant effects when compared to control subjects (subjects given no treatment at all.) Since that time, hundreds of researched studies, as well as anecdotal evidence, have been published that makes the same claim: belief in a treatment’s ability to heal can be just as effective as the treatment itself. In fact, in a 1955 analysis of 26 studies, researcher H.K. Beecher found that 32 percent of the patients responded to the placebo treatment (Nordenberg, 2000). More recently, Karren, Hafen, and others suggest that placebos work from 25-50% of the time (2005).

Could it be that, by truly believing that they were being treated, the patients were able to focus their attention on a different reality? Can it be that the sheer power of our deeply felt beliefs can allow us to make a quantum leap into a different universe?

Dr. Lipton suggests that our attitudes and beliefs play an even larger role in the creation of health/illness than does our genetic structure. According to Dr. Lipton, the theory that our biology is determined by our genes has never been proven. Noting that only 5% of cancer and heart patients can account for their disease by heredity, he explains that “there are simply not enough genes to account for the complexity of human life or of human disease. . . the human body, comprised of over fifty trillion cells, contains only 1,500 more genes than the lowly, spineless, thousand-celled microscopic worm” (p. 63-64).

Dr. Lipton is not the first to suggest that the role of genetics as the sole determinant of biology has been overstated. In 1981, Rupert Sheldrake proposed the idea of “morphogenic fields” in his book, “A new Science of Life”. According to Sheldrake, the regularities that we observe in nature are more like habits than laws. According to this theory, each species develops a “collective memory” that imposes reoccurring patterns on genetic structures. These collective memories are known as morphogenic fields and develop and evolve over time, as each member of the species both draws from and adds to the field. Other scientists, including Karl Pribram (1970) and Michael Talbot (1992), have suggested a similar theory of energetic resonance by positing that the brain is a hologram; suggesting that memories are not located in brain neurons, but in energetic patterns of nerve impulses that form a field in the brain. These theories point to the idea that thoughts exist as fields of energy rather than physical or chemical properties. Building upon his earlier work going back to the 1960’s, Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles also concludes that, although the mind acts upon the brain, it originates in a different level or reality. The Mind, according to Eccles, is non-material and composed of a fine grade of energy-substance (1995).

This “field” within which is generated our perceptions, reckonings, feelings and attitudes is at its base a field of energy; and yet, it is an energy field that is somewhat different from other types of energy. This “fine-grade energy substance” is beyond our understanding, and is a part of the biggest mystery of all, the mystery of human consciousness.

In both of these interpretations of the wave function of matter, The Copenhagen interpretation as well as the many worlds interpretation, consciousness plays a major role. What is this thing we call consciousness? While no one can explain exactly what it is, a good place to start would be to describe it as the ability we have not only to experience the material world, but to recognize our experiences. For example, take the recognition of color. Our eyes, through physical processes, detect waves in the color spectrum and transmit those into visual images. That may account for the different images of color we experience, such as red and yellow, but it doesn’t account for the experience itself. We don’t just see yellow, we experience yellow. We recognize it as something more than waves; we interpret yellow, assign meaning to yellow, and even experience emotion in response to yellow. This process of recognizing our experiences is what we call consciousness, and we cannot explain this as a function of physical processes alone.

Consciousness studies are now on the leading edge of science and scientific debate. We have recognized that there is, in fact, a “ghost in the machine,” a transcendent reality behind all the formulas and observations, but science is at a loss to describe what it is and where it comes from. It is because of this great mystery that, according to Ken Wilber, many of the great physicists of the last century have come to be mystics of a sort. “The great difference between old and new physics is both much simpler and much more profound: Both the old and the new physics were dealing with shadow-symbols, but the new physics was forced to be aware of that fact – forced to be aware that it was dealing with shadows and illusions, not reality” (pg. 7). But while physics can acknowledge the existence of some reality behind the physical world, science can never hope to explain it. Wilber, quoting the well known physicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, tells us that
"We should suspect an intention to reduce God to a system of differential equations. That fiaso at any rate [must be] avoided. However much the ramifications of [physics] may be extended by further scientific discovery, they cannot from their very nature trench on the background in which they have their being . . . We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but of a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for pentrating" (pg. 6).

Accepting the limitation of scientific research to fully apprehend the nature of consciousness, recent research at least seems to be describing it’s scope. Lazlo (2004) tells us that this research seems to be suggesting that conciousness is not a quality of individuals, but is a single quality shared by a society, and perhaps even by the whole of humanity (p. 91). This concept of the grand unity of all consciousness has been a truth recognized by mystical religion for thousands of years; now, with the discovery of entanglement, the second great pillar of quantum physics, science is recognizing it as well.

Entanglement and the Illusion of separation

Science, like everything else, is resistant to change. Early discoveries in the area of quantum physics brought with them implications that few wanted to consider. If these discoveries were valid, then the entire Newtonian paradigm of physics was invalid, at least at the quantum level. Few scientists were willing to accept that.

One way to discount this weird, new physics, in the mind of some scientists, was to apply the reductio ad absurdum method: reduce the implications of the new physics to their absurd conclusions and thus show that they were untenable. This is the approach taken by Einstein and others in 1935. Einstein and his colleagues created a mind experiment to show that if some of the ideas proposed by quantum physics were correct, then theoretically, non-local effects were possible; in other words, by simply interfering with one particle in your proximity, you could instantaneously interfere with another particle far away without any medium of communication. This “spooky action” was nonsense, according to Einstein. But the revered scientist had thrown down the gauntlet; and years later, Bell would pick it up.

In 1935 Bell published the results of his study where he was able to prove that the reduction ad absurdum mind experiment created by Einstein could actually be replicated, with the results predicted by Einstein. Bell has proven that an interference with a single particle could instantaneously effect an interference with another particle a great distance away if the particles had at one time been in close proximity. Since that paradigm shattering experiment, the reality of “entanglement” (a term first used by Schrodinger to describe Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”) has been demonstrated to be a quantum reality over and over again. The principle of entanglement suggests that when two particles (or charges, as we have now come to understand the nature of sub-atomic particles) which have been connected in some way are separated, they retain the connection in the form of the ability to “communicate” without a physical medium, regardless of the span that separates them. This type of communication is referred to as “non-local” communication.

An impressive body of research continues to grow as scientist verify and harness this phenomenon of non-locality. Radin (2006) reports a study published by Leanna Standish and others at Bastyr University. By using advanced brain scanning equipment, the scientists demonstrated that, by stimulating the visual cortex of one partner’s brain, they could produce a flash of light in the brain of the other partner who was located at a great distance away (18).

An even more dramatic effect was achieved by Army scientists in the early 1990s (Braden, 2007). While it has been proven that emotions effect the body, it has been assumed that this effect occurs only while the body is intact. Braden reports that:

"In a 1993 study reported in the journal Advances, the Army performed experi- ments to determine precisely whether the emotion/DNA connection continues following a separation, and if so, at what distances? The researchers started by collecting a swab of tissue and DNA from the inside of a volunteer's mouth. This sample was isolated and taken to another room in the same building, where they began to investigate a phenomenon that modern science says shouldn't exist. In a specially designed chamber, the DNA was measured electrically to see if it responded to the emotions of the person it came from, the donor who was in another room several hundred feet away. In this room, the subject was shown a series of video images designed to create genuine states of emotion inside of his body. This material ranged from graphic wartime footage to erotic images to comedy. The idea was for the donor to experience a spectrum of real emotions within a brief period of time. While he was doing so, in another room his DNA was measured for its response. When the donor experienced emotional "peaks" and "dips," his DNA showed a powerful electrical response at the same instant in time. Although distances measured in hundreds of feet separated the donor and the samples, the DNA acted as if it was still physically connected to his body" (pg. 47).

Braden goes on to report that he later met the architect of those Army studies, who shared with him that although the Army has stopped the studies at distances within a single building, he had carried out further studies on his own. This man, Dr. Cleve Backster, told Braden that The effect continued to be observed even at distances of as much as 350 miles. (Braden, 2007)

In “The God Effect” (2006), author Brian Clegg describes entanglement as “an indubitably well documented effect” and as the science behind a “collection of major breakthroughs” (pg. 220), one of which is the quest to develop a quantum computer based on non-local communication.

The science of entanglement begs the question, where does our body stop? We leave DNA every place we go throughout the day; does that mean that our emotions are being registered everywhere we’ve been? Is the joy I feel today being echoed in the classroom where I sat yesterday? Are the emotions of those who have visited my home still registering there?

The implications of entanglement do not stop there. Not only does this phenomena suggest the possibility that our emotions and energies can be picked up by the minds of others, but that our thoughts can also affect the physical bodies of other people. In “Science and the Akashic Field: An integral theory of everything,” Lazlo (2004) presents a number of research studies that demonstrate just this phenomena of “telesomatic” effects. In the now famous work of Dr. William Tiller ( 2001), he demonstrates how people who have achieved an advanced level of controlled focus through meditation are able to affect the life span of fruit flies at a distance, just by storing focused attention is an electrical “black box” and sending the device to a separate location where the fruitflies are located. Tiller also discusses the “charged space” phenomena that he and others have documented in their work. While we will look at these studies more closely later, the short version is that it seems that the physical spaces in which this healing intention is routinely focused in time takes on the “charge” of the intention and maintains a healing effect even after the meditators have left the building.

These are just a couple of the many studies that have shown that we really are connected across space, and that our thoughts can affect others and other spaces removed from us by great distances. No longer can I assume that what goes on inside my head affects only me. Somehow, my thoughts extend out into the world and touch others in very real ways that we don’t fully understand at the present moment. Yet, once again, we find that the key to such phenomena lies within the consciousness. Not everyone, it seems, can harness this power of entanglement in order to effect others in specific ways. In the research on telepathy and telesomatic effects, one thing seems to be clear; it is most successfully performed by those who exhibit high levels of consciousness, or are able to achieve, through focused attention, states of altered consciousness. Once again, consciousness is the “ghost in the machine” that seems to allow us to transcend the ordinary state of isolation and separation. In fact Lazlo ( 2004) tells us that, as evidenced in the work of Dr. Stanislav Grof, “in deeply altered states of consciousness, many people experience a kind of consciousness that appears to be that of the universe itself” (pg 155).
Is the universe itself conscious? If it is, does this universal consciousness represent the mind of God himself? These are questions that arise in our minds when we consider unified field theory.

Unified Field Theory: The fabric of the universe

Does a fish understand the concept of water?

Now I know this is in some sense a ridiculous question, since “understanding” is a characteristic of conscious beings. But imagine for a moment what you’re conception of reality would be if you were born into a world where water filled every single part of your environment. Since it is the filter through which you see everything, you wouldn’t be able to “see” the water itself. Would you only be able to percieve things that had a density and appearance that was different from the water? Having never experienced a state of not-water, would you perceive only emptiness where there was nothing but water?

The discoveries of modern day physics suggest that our world may be more like that aquarium than we could have ever imagined. We know that the universe around us is reverberating with waves of all kinds. Our ability to see and to hear is made possible by some of these waves. According to Talbot (1991), "When physicists calculate the minimum amount of energy a wave can possess, they find that every cubic centimeter of empty space contains more energy than the total energy of all the matter in the known universe" (pg. 51).

Apparently, what we percieve to be “empty space” is hardly empty. Many scientists today believe that living in our universe is a lot like living in a big aquarium; but instead of swimming in water, we swim in a pervasive, all encompassing field of energy that connects all things and is the medium of instantaneous communication between all things. Still others tell us that there are no “things” in the field, but only various and momentary images that appear in the fabric of the field in response to our conscious perceptions.

Like so many other young boys in the 1990’s, my son was fascinated by Pokemon. “Pokemon,” or “pocket monsters” in English, was a Japanese world of creatures that hatched from eggs and evolved through a series of forms over time. There were all kinds of different creatures, some cute and some fierce; but my son and I knew the names, and the evolutionary stages, of all of them. He had Pokemon action figures and games, but his favorite activity was collecting the Pokemon trading cards. These came in packages of ten, and each package contained at least one prized “rare” card. I can still remember my son tearing open the foil package in excitement and quickly shuffling through the cards, searching to see if perhaps he had hit the jackpot by acquiring a rare and highly coveted “holographic” card. A holographic Pokemon card was a special foil card that contained images of all three evolutionary stages of that particular creature on the same space. By slightly moving the card, you could watch a Pokemon “grow up” right before your eyes. Even today, these holographic transformations still delight my son and I.

Holographs are amazing things. Somehow, through a process of bouncing and reflecting lazer light, images are enfolded into the foil. . . and I say enfolded as opposed to imbedded, because a holographic image is more than just an image printed on the foil. A holographic image is “in” the foil; the complete image existing in the very fabric of the foil. People who understand how holograms work tell me that, if I were to cut a small corner off of the holographic Pokemon card and shine a light through it in just the right way, I would see that all three images of the Pokemon in various evolutionary stages still remained, entire and intact. No matter How small of a piece I examined, the complete images would remain.

Talbot (1991) and others believe that our universe is much like a giant hologram. In this model, the “field” in which we exist is a field of information. Infolded in the field is the information about every energy form that has ever existed. When consciousness interacts with the field, “quarks” pop into being and information “materializes” into images. A change in perception is like a slight movement of the holographic Pokemon card, and a new image materializes out of the field. In this model, our brain does not “contain” our thoughts, it simply acts as an interface between consciousness and the “field” that surrounds us. Our brain picks up the frequency of mind and imposes that upon the field to create the material images we see. Everything we could ever imagine is out there in the field, in the form of information; the reason we don’t see it all is because our brain “edits” our visual reality of the energy field (Talbot, 1991). According to Lazlo (2004),

At every moment throughout our life we read what we think, feel, and perceive
into the A field, a holographic field that preserves the experiences of our entire lifetime. . . The conclusion is evident. We as individuals are not immortal, but our experience is. The traces of everything we have experienced persist, and they can be forever recalled (pg. 161).

Crazy stuff, this quantum physics. The wave function of matter, entanglement, unified field theory. . . it sounds more like an Isaac Asimov novel than a science lesson. What all this seems to suggest is that we are not in a closed system. We are not helpless, or hopeless “worms” at the mercy of an angry God. Rather, we are co-creators with God, or consciousness, or whatever name you give to the transcendent force. We live in a “participatory universe” ; and although we may not be able to manipulate the material world at will, we certainly have a say in how it takes shape around us (Braden, 2007).

The question becomes, then, How does one “participate” in this dance of creation? How do we learn to harness this power of the mind to edit our reality in a conscious way? The answer seems to be summed up in a single word: intention.
Co-creating our world through intention

Another interesting characteristic of the holographic universe model is that, since material images are generated in the thought domain, “the mind/body untimately cannot distinguish the difference between the neural holograms the brain uses to experience reality and the ones it conjures up while imagining reality (Talbot, 117). In other words, an image that I imagine in great clarity and detail is just as real to my brain as an image I percieve in the field around me, a field we call “reality.”

This is not a new insight. Performance athletes at the highest levels understand this concept; they know that winning is “all in your head.” While physical practice is key to improving one’s athletic performance, mental practice is also important. Studies as well as experience has shown that by visualizing, step by step and in great detail, the correct execution of a skill, one can improve one’s performance of that skill. When I visualize myself executing a skill successfully, that experience is just as real to my brain as if I had actually performed the skill. By the same token, If I constantly imagine failure or let my fears of failure play out in my mind, those images are just as real to my brain as if they had actually happened; and the images I hold in my mind are the images I will produce in reality. Our future reality begins in our present mental practice. This is the power of Intention.

According to Webster, “intention” is defined as “an act or instance of determining mentally upon some action or result.” An intention then is a mental decision we make, or a conscious choice. Unfortunately, most of us go through our days very unintentionally. We get up in the morning and fall into a mindless routine, doing the things we have always done just as we have always done them. This is the essence of living in the De javu mode, because our unintentional actions are driven by the scripts of the past. If in the past I have learned that people can’t be trusted and that the world is a dangerous place, then that is the mindset that will guide my interaction with the world around men when I’m not living from my intention. I’m unconsciously choosing to see the world through the eyes of a victim, and that is the reality I will create for myself from the myriad of possibilities available to me throughout the day. Luckily, since we only participate in creation, the door is left open for other forces to interfere with my dreary outlook; but for my part, my negative filters are stacking the deck in a negative way.

The alternative to mindless living is living from a place of co-creation, from a place of intention. I can get up in the morning and before stepping into the flow of the universe, I can take time to consciously imagine how my day will go. I imagine myself being happy and productive. I imagine interactions with co-workers being positive and supportive. I imagine myself stepping in front of my class, excited and inspired, and lights coming on in their eyes as wisdom and understanding pours from my lips. The level to which I am able to hold this intention in my mind throughout the day will depend on how much work I have done to discipline my mind; but at any rate, a day started like this is likely to go much better than a day that is guided by my unconscious habits of the past.

Intention, when focused by a disciplined mind, seems to create more than just mental images. McTaggart (2007) tells us that research studies done with energy and faith healers have shown that healing intention creates waves of light that flow out through their hands. Intention, Dr. McTaggart tells us, can even be used to override the physical systems in our bodies. In “The Power of Intention”, she shares this amazing story:

"In a drafty monastery high in the Himalayas in northern India, during the winter of 1985, a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks were seated quietly deep in meditation. Although scantily clad, they appeared oblivious to the chilly indoor air tem perature, which approached freezing. A fellow monk passed between them, draping each, in turn, in sheets drenched with cold water. Such extreme conditions would ordinarily shock the body and send the core temperature plummeting. If body temperature falls by only 12 degrees Fahrenheit, within minutes a person will lose consciousness and all vital signs. Instead of shivering, the monks began to sweat. Steam rose from the wet sheets; within an hour, they were thoroughly dry. The attendant replaced the dry sheets with new ones, also drenched in ice-cold water. By this time, the monks' bodies had become the equivalent of a furnace. Those sheets were efficiently dried, as was a third batch" (McTaggart, 2007, pg.65).

Affecting physical reality in dramatic ways is not just some quantum “pie in the sky.” All over the world, in laboratories, monasteries, and in the lives of everyday people, focused intention is proving what quantum physics has been suggesting.

Some of the most widely publicized and intriguing intention experiments are known as the “black box” experiments, referred to earlier in this chapter. These were conducted by Dr. William Tiller, a physicist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, and others in 1997. Using small black boxes that had been developed to store information from incoming electromagnetic waves, Dr. Tiller set out to discover if intention could actually be “stored” and used to affect the objects of intention. Gathering together four people well experienced in meditation, he asked them to focus a specific intention towards the box. In one experiment, the intention was to extend the life of fruit flies; in a second experiment it was to raise the PH level of water. After a specific time of focused attention, the box was wrapped in foil and placed in a Faraday cage ( a device to prevent interference from any outside electromagnetic waves.) The boxes were sent to a second lab far away. There, the technicians exposed the treated boxes to the fruit flies and the water. In the first case, the fruit flies lived longer than those exposed to the untreated box; in the second case, the PH level of the water exposed to the black box was significantly higher than the PH level of the water exposed to the untreated black box.

The results of Dr. Tiller’s experiments were astonishing; The meditators were able to affect changes, even removed from the object of intent by space and time; but that wasn’t all. As Dr. Tiller continued to work with the experiments, he made another discovery. The room in which the meditators were treating the water soon became “conditioned” by the intention — and other boxes charged in the space would charge more quickly and produce stronger results. After much observation and testing, Dr. Tiller discovered that the actually space had become electrically charged; conditioned by the focused intention going on within (Tiller et. al., 2001).

This “charged space” phenomena is not unique to Dr. Tiller’s experiments. Taggart (2007) recounts another example of this phenomena, this time witnessed in a research project intended to test the healing power of the focused intention of psychics. People known for psychic ability were asked to focus healing intent upon anesthetized mice in an effort to rouse them from the anesthesia more quickly than would normally occur. While the intention of the psychics produced significant positive results, the researchers were more astounded by a second effect they observed:

"The Watkinses repeated their experiment seven times. They discovered that the healing had a “lingering effect”: if a mouse was simply placed on the spot on a table where another mouse had received a psychic’s intentions, the second one would also revive more quickly than usual. The space appeared to have developed a healing “charge,” affecting anything that happened to occupy space " (McTaggart, 2007, pg 121).

I once saw a faith healer on television offering to send out “prayer cloths” to folks who would send a donation. He had prayed over these cloths, and promised that they were saturated with “healing power.” All one had to do was place the cloth on the part of the body in need of healing. At the time, I wondered how anyone could believe such a preposterous claim. Perhaps now, I might be tempted to order one.

Quantum physics has changed the story of our universe, which is what a new mythology does. But more importantly, as we interpret the findings of quantum physics, we are rewriting the story of ourselves. Quantum physics is giving us a new language, a new way to talk about the world and our place within it; and this language sounds, at times, more like the language of the mystic than the language of the scientist.