Non-Local Consciousness

Wouldn't you say that if it's confirming something Psi then it's confirming something Non-Local and Quantum? You can write it off as "the declaration of an anomaly is the only valid statement that can be made", but every effort to resist something that sounds esoteric or New Age is just a bias. If you want to know about whether Magick works then you can only find out by trying for yourself.

Hopefully you're not being completely sarcastic regarding his disappearance. Definitely not out of the question. Letting the world know that their Consciousness is more powerful than they realize isn't necessarily the best way to control the masses. That's why the Occult means "hidden" knowledge.

Now about those EEG experiments on non-locality. Goswami makes much of the experiments by Professor Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The research was published in Physics Essays, a respectable peer-reviewed journal, and replicated by other scientists, so I'd say it's scientific. But what does it show? at best it might show ESP or PSI activity involving some kind of non-local instantaneous connection between human minds. It might not show even that, because interpretation of the correlational results might be inflated by errors in statistical analysis of the data, and the "the declaration of an anomaly is the only valid statement that can be made." E.C. May et al.,http://www.lfr.org/LFR/csl/library/CorrelationFinal.pdf This is not conclusive support for Goswami's theory of quantum consciousness. Quantum phenomena aren't necessarily involved, although the results are consistent with it. The results are also consistent with other possibilities dear to the New Age, like the so-called Akashic field or ESP. So I'd agree with Mr. Writer that more is required before we go generalizing about the moon disappearing, collapsing wave functions, Magyck, etc. Unfortunately, Grinberg-Zylberbaum is no longer continuing these experiments, owing to his mysterious disappearance in 1995. He may have been getting too close to something big!

 

Well there's absolutely zero way to prove that the moon is there if you aren't looking at it. Your own subjective experience is proof. There NEEDS to be someone observing the Moon for it to actually be there. You simply can't prove that it's there unless it is being observed. Your Consciousness is key. It's not "New Age", it's common sense in the most basic and simple way.

 

So waddya think? It's just anybody's guess?

No, I wouldn't say that. Confirming something Psi is quite a bit different than confirming that it's all quantum writ large. That's a real quantum leap, excuse the pun. Maybe it was a miracle. One could say, as many religious folks do, that rejecting the Resurrecton and the virgin birth is just bias. But I think there's something to be said for resisting those beliefs, because extraordinary claims require extraordinary results. I'll believe in the efficacy of Magick if and when somebody pulls a white rabbit out of my ass. The phrase you quote about declaring it an anomaly came from a study by statisticians using the Grinberg-Zylberbaum EEG studies to illustrate how errors in interpreting the significance of correlations can result in faulty inferences. Why don't you accept that possibility? Bias? It could be that Goswami is a level-headed, brilliant scientist. After all, he has a Ph.D. in physics. However, so does Dr. Frank J. Tippler, mathematical physicist and Cosmologist, who holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane University. Professor Tippler believes that the laws of physics require intelligent life to bring about the collapse of the material universe. Meanwhile the computational capacity of the universe will reach infinity as the universe reaches a solitary point singularity called the Omega Point (aka, God, since it will have the properties of God in all known religions). By that time, an advanced society will resurrect all the dead by trasferring all of their personalities onto virtual reality computer simulations. The good guys will spend eternity in virtual heaven, the bad guys will be consigned to virtual hell, and the Geeks will inherit the earth. (I made that last part up myself). He and Goswami may either be geniuses or are possibly partaking of the same brown acid or both. In the end, its a matter of judgment. Which would you bet on?

 

You wouldn't say that it's Non-Local if it's Psi? They are the exact same thing, are they not? Non-local communication between minds IS equivalent to Psychic.

 

You don't have to guess. The moon has a shape and substance while observing it. But if it were never looked at by humans, there would be no conception, no idea of it. Nothing really exists until it comes into your Consciousness.

 

I thought you were referring (as Goswami does) to non-locality as specifically a phenomenon of QM. QM non-locality is "the apparent ability of objects to instantaneously know about each other’s state, even when separated by large distances (potentially even billions of light years), almost as if the universe at large instantaneously arranges its particles in anticipation of future events". Psi "is the term parapsychologists use to generically refer to all kinds of psychic phenomena, experiences, or events that seem to be related to the psyche, or mind, and which cannot be explained by established physical principles". So telepathy would be a kind of Psi phenomenon, but would not encompass the whole of Psi. An experiment showing telepathy would not necessarily confirm psychokinesis or clairvoyance. As for quantum non-locality, that refers to a Quantum property that can involve particles that are literally worlds apart. Showing that the minds of two human subjects or groups of human subjects in different rooms are non-locally connected confirms PSI, but does not show that the connection would exist between subjects on different planets in different galaxies. Montecuco has shown long-distance brainwave sychronization between subjects in different Italian cities. Impressive. Again, this would confirm PSI, but does not prove Quantum Consciousness as a general macrocosmic phenomenon. It doesn't necessarily prove quantum involvement at all. It might be the case that Quantum Consciousness is indeed the explanation, but a cautious investigator shouldn't just assume that. Penrose invokes QM as an explanation for human free will, but so far, that's just speculation.

 

I would just say that the Psi phenomena is a good first step in the right direction. We can't know about the Cosmic stuff until we contact E.T.'s and get some tests going.

 

The moon does not require an observer to exist because of the dynamic of decoherence. If mvd is greater than the Planck Constant, probability overrides any quantum weirdness because of decoherence. However the double slit experiment, and the recently proven Quantum Zeno Effect both demonstrate that this is not so significant as it may first seem. Obviously, quantum effects should be observed with light, because m = 0, and therefore mvd = 0. But the double slit experiment prodices the same results even with molecules, and objects as large as bucky balls.

But the original Zeno Paradox stated that any observation would represent a state where v = 0, and in fact, whether via decoherence, or the controversial conscious observation, a specific position in space/time is determined, and therefore, for a brief instant v = 0. I would suggest that this brief instant is no longer than 1 planck time.

To add to all of this weirdness is the fact that as humans we cannot actually observe the particle or quanta in question. Instead we simply 'know' that the quanta is in a specific state, and what is even stranger is that we obviously know this after the fact. But the Wheeler Delayed Observation version of the double slit experiment demonstrates that time is not an issue. Thus we are left with the Hiesenberg's interpretation and the only other possibility--that the measurement problem is one of decoherence rather than conscious perception or knowledge---which I have already presented my argument against that in the previous thread (Karen J's, philosophy versus religion thread) This makes it much harder to escape the possibility that consciousness can impact reality at a non-local level.

In any event---the probability wave collapse is about the only explanation we have for both decoherence and the observation.

I disagree with Stenger that quantum entanglement, the superpositioned state of quanta, and other such phenomena can be explained by Newtonian physics. The Wheeler Delayed Observation Experiment alone demonstrates that we can break the rules of Newtonian Physics----because Newtonian Physics deals with reality in the physical three dimensions, and at the very least, we need a timeless fourth dimension to explain such things----in other words, we need to jump into the realm of Einstein.

In the end, it may very well be that all of reality is nothing but a hologram, the width of which is no greater than one Planck distance...

The girl you dated who had didn't want you to create bad vibes, or the suggestion that Heisenberg jump out of the window are touching upon the ridiculous, because they are suggesting a belief that goes against the tremendous decoherent trends that are already in place---the natural path which by its very nature sticks to the Newtonian laws we understand as reality. However such is the meaningless objective world of Modern Man. If you were to live in the enchanted world of those we label as primitive, where the belief in a living world is taken for granted, and where the belief in such seemingly ridiculous things is also taken for granted, you would be surprised at how different every day life plays out----in a way that we, trapped in our modern disenchanted world, literally find spooky.

I agree with your sentiment on Goswami---he does jump to Hindu conclusions. He is very reductionist in this manner. But Stenger is just as reductionist. I would say that his fight for atheism closes the door just as tightly, if not more, to the new possibilities that quantum mechanics presents to Modern Man.

 

I think a more elegant and parsimonious explanation of things like entanglement are that we are observing phenomena occuring in higher dimensions; exactly akin to a sphere passing through a 2d world appearing as a line which magically appears out of nowhere, grows, shrinks, and disappears. It's a matter of perspective.

 

Here's a question in regards to all of this...why is it so out-there in the first place the consider from a Scientific point of view that one's Consciousness would play a role in all of this? Why does this have to be considered "magical thinking"? It seems pretty basic and common sense to me, even if it is labeled something "New Age" or leaning towards the Occult or whatever.

It just seems pretty obvious that your Consciousness would play a role. And from my own direct experience, Consciousness seems to be Non-Local. I don't even know anything about Quantum Mechanics to say this. Just relying on my own direct experience. But seeing Scientists argue the same thing doesn't hurt anything.

 

There's another book worth noting: The Conscious Universe by Menas Kefatos and Robert Nadeau from 1990. The Self Aware Universe is from 1993. Seems like this was a popular subject in the early '90s, and reflects the cultural shift and uprising that was happening in the early '90s, which got squashed by the mid '90s.

 

Exactly---entaglement, for example, where two particles are able to share information on spin simultaneously despite being a great distance apart, even light years----may seem very paradoxical to us, but that is because we think of it in terms of the three physical dimensions. Think of a two-dimensional being trying to conceive of the third dimension. From his/her perspective, that third dimension, which we take for granted, is an infinitely thin sliver.

For us, the fourth dimension is the point of Now. In my philosophy I define anything beyond the three physical dimensions as non-physical. In this sense, everything is nonphysical until that point of now, which is the point of the current simultaneous probability wave collapses---when the particles that make up the Now each have a point in physical space-time.

 

For the record, whether one agrees or not, I never attack until first being attacked. But with that being said, i'll keep the conflict to a minimum.

 

Exactly---entaglement, for example, where two particles are able to share information on spin simultaneously despite being a great distance apart, even light years----may seem very paradoxical to us, but that is because we think of it in terms of the three physical dimensions. Think of a two-dimensional being trying to conceive of the third dimension. From his/her perspective, that third dimension, which we take for granted, is an infinitely thin sliver.

For us, the fourth dimension is the point of Now. In my philosophy I define anything beyond the three physical dimensions as non-physical. In this sense, everything is nonphysical until that point of now, which is the point of the current simultaneous probability wave collapses---when the particles that make up the Now each have a point in physical space-time.

 

Doesn't the Now pierce through every dimension? And I thought that Time was the 4th Dimension. And then more Metaphysical people would call the 4th Dimension the Astral realm. What do you mean that the Now is the 4th Dimension?

 

While the 4th dimension was first used used as a vehicle to add time into Einstein's theories, I argue that it is our experience of the 4th dimension that accounts for time. The fourth dimension is the realm of energy or light, and it is a timeless realm. A single point in the fourth dimension would seem to be everywhere from our perspective, which is why, from a three dimensional perspective, if we tried to determine which direction the now lies in, or which direction the past went to, or the future will come from, the answer is everywhere (though again the past, present, and future, are physical conscious understandings, and exist only because consciousness transcends the physical dimensions---for physical reality only exists in the present).

It is the self, i.e. consciousness, that pierces through all the dimensions, up to the point to where we exist. Therefore we are each our own center of the universe. Beyond that is consciousness as essence. This is philosophical and not scientific, but it is arrived at by means of philosophical argument, and it presents a model of reality that accounts for and explains quantum mechanics, relativity, and Newtonian physics, while resolving their differences.

The Now is simply what we perceive as physical reality. To be exact, the Now is all phenomena clear across the universe, because what we perceive as concrete physical reality is really an illusion. In truth, it is phenomena that we experience---phenomena resulting from probability wave collapses lasting no more than one planck time (For what is mass really (and this is back to science)? It is inertia, and mostly empty space (the space between particles and between and within atoms and molecules. If we were to truly remove all of this emptiness---all this void within mass---and compress it all to nothing but what we understand as physical material particles, after squeezing out that last little final bit of void-----we would then have a hole in space-time, a singularity where all physics breaks down because time and space end. IN other words if we try to remove emptiness, we are left with nothing but a greater emptiness). This does not mean the obvserver is necessary to manifest reality (at least in the sense we understand an observer to be) for phenomena interacts through out the universe---that is the flow of the natural world.

 

Cool . Do you explain teleportation ?

 

Hmmm... Yes I do---it is a phenomenological phenomenon made popular in science fiction film and print media as a metaphor for the continuing shrinkage of the world due to technological advancements in transportation and even in computer technology and the internet... ;-)

 

I feel that the self/consciousness and the now are equivalent to each other. This is why the present moment is pointed to especially in eastern religion. Consciousness can only ever be in the Now, and the now is the only time that phenomena can occur...no matter where that now is.

I'm still trying to understand your viewpoint. I feel that we have similar but slightly different perspectives on it. But I definitely agree that all that time is is really the movement of atoms in this timeless Now, but I still feel that no matter what dimension you're dealing with, you're always going to be dealing with it in the eternal Now.

Also, in regards to squeezing out the emptiness of space, would it potentially shatter as proposed by the physicist in the OP of the thread I made regarding the Aether? http://www.hipforums.com/forum/topic/472223-is-there-really-an-aether/

And isn't the observer/consciousness needed in order to register whether phenomena manifests or not throughout the Cosmos?

I think it's inescapable to be able to say anything at all about manifestation or matter without first having a Consciousness to observe and be aware of it. I think it's true that Consciousness is primary, while matter is secondary. I think that the timeless Now is also primary and Time is secondary. But what does this Consciousness-Nowness actually look like? I think it doesn't really have a shape or size to it, but it's obviously there. Kind of like Space. You can't really give space any features but it is the backdrop to matter. So is there a link between the Now, Consciousness, AND Space? I would say so. Maybe this is what the Aether is? Are they all the same thing? I don't really know. This is where language begins to break down for me.

But I will try for a second to break it down. This is just my theory by the way. Not proclaiming it as dogmatic truth.

Consciousness is eternal. Why? Because there's know way to know anything on any level without a consciousness of it. So if there's no Consciousness, then to me there's no Universe. Remember Uni means One. So I feel that the Universe "out there" is directly linked to your Consciousness within. And it's eternal because without the Consciousness you wouldn't be able to register Time.

The Now is eternal. This doesn't need to be explained.

Space is eternal. It seems to be the "field" for which matter to exist and operate in, just as The Now is the "field" for which Time (which is nothing more than dividing Change into intervals) to exist and operate in.

So perhaps Consciousness, The Now, and Space are all the same eternal thing/no-thing.