How to Inspire Your Brainposted by AdminBy Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), co-authors of Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-being. (Harmony)

 

We’ve entered a golden age for brain research, but all these new findings haven’t trickled down to the individual.  Yet there are broad discoveries that make it possible to everyone to improve their brains. Let me state these succinctly:

 

Your brain is constantly renewing itself.

Your brain can heal its wounds form the past.

Experience changes the bran every day.

The input you give your brain causes it to form new neural pathways.

The more positive the input, the better your brain will function.

 

In a new book, Super Brain, I and my co-author, Prof. Rudolf Tanzi of Harvard Medical School, expand upon the neuroscience behind these broad findings.  The old view of the brain as fixed for life, constantly losing neurons and declining in function, has been all but abolished. The new brain is a process, not a thing, and the process heads in the direction you point it in. A Buddhist monk meditating on compassion develops the brain circuitry that brings compassion into reality. Depending on the input it receives, you can create a compassionate brain, an artistic brain, a wise brain, or any other kind.

 

However, as Prof. Tanzi and I see it, the agent that makes these possibilities become real is the mind. The brain doesn’t create its own destiny.  Genetics delivers the brain in a functioning state so that the nervous system can regulate itself and the whole body. It doesn’t take your intervention to balance hormone levels, regulate heartbeat, or do a thousand other autonomic functions.  But the newest part of the brain, the neocortex, is where the field of possibilities actually lies. Here is where decisions are made, where we discriminate, worship, assess, control, and evolve.

 

If you think of everyday experience as input for your brain, and your actions and thoughts as output, a feedback loop is formed.  The old cliché about computer software – garbage in, garbage out – applies to all feedback loops.  Toxic experiences shape the brain quite differently from healthy ones.  This seems like common sense, but neuroscience has joined forces with genetics to reveal that right down to the level of DNA, the feedback loop that embraces mind and body is profoundly changed by the input processed by the brain.

 

Our aim was to cut to the chase. If input is everything, then happiness and well-being are created by giving the brain positive input.  Without realizing it, you are here to inspire your brain to be the best it can be.  This is much more than positive thinking, which is often too superficial and masks underlying negativity. The input that inspires the brain includes a wide array of things. Everyone wants to experience positive feelings (love, hope, optimism, appreciation, approval) without

knowing how to get them.  For all the theories that proliferate about happiness, from the brain’s perspective, the formula is to maximize the positive messages being received by the cortex and minimize the negative ones.

 

What this implies isn’t a brave new world of thought control or pretending that life is rosy. Life will always present challenges, setbacks, and crises.  The point is to create a matrix that will allow you to best adapt to both sides, the light and the dark, of experience.  In our book, we were particularly focused on a setup that would take people into old age with a brain that remains dynamic and resilient.

 

Here is our recommendation, having considered the most up-to-date neuroscience.

 

Matrix for a Positive Lifestyle

               Have good friends.

Don’t isolate yourself.

Sustain a lifelong companionship with a spouse or partner.

Engage socially in worthwhile projects.

Be close with people who have a good lifestyle – habits are contagious.

Follow a purpose in life.

Leave time for play and relaxation.

Keep up satisfying sexual activity.

Address issues around anger.

Practice stress management.

Deal with the reactive mind’s harmful effects: When you have a negative reaction, stop, stand back, take a few deep breaths, and observe how you’re feeling.

 

Your brain will thrive in such a matrix, even as life brings its ups and downs. But by the same token, the brain can’t arrive at any of these things on its own. You are the leader of your brain. I’ll expand on this theme in the next post, since the whole issue of feedback loops turns out to be vital for all kinds of brain functions, including memory and the prevention of feared disorders like Alzheimer’s.

Five Myths to Dispel About Your Brainposted by AdminBy Rudolph Tanzi. Ph.D, and Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP,  co-authors of Super Brain,

How many of us grew up believing that the brain we are born with is the brain we get for the rest of our lives? How many of us still believe that the brain consists of a set number of nerve cells that we slowly lose as we get older, never to be replaced. And, how about the notion that we only use 5 to 10 percent of our brains? Most of us were raised believing these things. But, guess what? They are not true. The modern age of neuroscience research has taught us that the brain is a much more powerful and adaptable organ than we have ever imagined possible.

 

Your brain consists of hundreds of billions of nerve cells making hundreds of trillions of connections (synapses) that make up your neural network. Placed end to end, the connections in the brain’s neural network extend over 100,000 miles– enough to wrap around the Earth over four

times! As you experience and interact with the world, your brain is at once recording, interpreting, and creating your world. And with every new experience the connections of your neural network are rewiring themselves! The way you choose to experience your world determines how you rewire your own brain!

 

This incredibly powerful three-pound mass of gelatinous material we call the brain sits in the deep dark silence of your skull, yet brings you an incredible world of light, color, music, joy, and curiosity. Your brain creates your entire world, which is entirely different than the world created for a honeybee by its version of a brain. In our book, Super Brain, we propose that relating to your brain in a new way is the way you can change your reality. The more neuroscientists learn, the more it seems that the brain has hidden powers. The brain processes the raw material of life, acting as a servant to any desire you have, any vision you can imagine. The solid physical world cannot resist this power, and yet unlocking it requires new beliefs. Your brain cannot do what it thinks it cannot do. But, your mind can tell your brain what you want it to do. The brain changes every minute you experience life and you are in charge.

 

Five myths in particular have proved limiting and obstructive to change. All were once accepted as fact, even a decade or two ago.

 

The injured brain cannot heal itself.

 

Now we know that the brain has amazing powers of healing, unsuspected in the past.

 

The brain’s hardwiring cannot be changed.

 

In fact, the line between hard-  and soft-wiring is shifting all the time, and our ability to rewire our brains remains intact from birth to the end of life.

 

Aging in the brain is inevitable and irreversible.

 

To counter this outmoded belief, new techniques for keeping the brain youthful and retaining mental acuity are arising every day.

 

The brain loses millions of cells a day, and lost brain cells cannot be replaced. 

In fact, the brain contains stem cells that are capable of maturing into new brain cells throughout life. How we lose or gain brain cells is a complex issue. Most of the findings are good news for everyone who is afraid of losing mental capacity as they age.

 

Primitive reactions (fear, anger, jealousy, aggression) overrule the higher brain.

 

Because our brains are imprinted with genetic memory over thousands of generations, the lower brain is still with us, generating primitive and often negative drives such as fear and anger. But the brain is constantly evolving, and we have gained the ability to master the lower brain through

choice and free will. The new field of positive psychology is teaching us how best to use free will to promote happiness and overcome negativity.

 

It’s great news that these five myths have been exploded. The old view made the brain seem fixed, mechanical, and steadily deteriorating. This turns out to be far from the case. You are creating reality at this very minute, and if that process remains alive and dynamic, your brain will be able to keep up with it, year after year. Think about it. Your entire world, all that you see, hear, taste, touch, and feel is conjured up for you by your brain. And this world is, of course, similar to that of others with similar brains. Every species experiences a world created for them within the limits of their brain and nervous system, from human to dog to mosquito to bacteria. Once you truly appreciate and realize that your brain brings your world, you can make choices about the type of world you wish to live in. Why? Because you, the “ true you” that is self-aware of having a brain, is in charge of your brain. As the master, leader, and user of your brain, you get to make conscious choices about the world your brain will produce for you. Even when the world outside is in total turmoil and chaos, your gift of self-awareness and a “super brain” always keeps you in charge of how the “outer world” becomes the “inner world” of your brain. And guess what? The outer and inner worlds are actually one and the same world, one of which only you are in charge.

 Pre-Order your copy of SUPER BRAIN: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health Happiness, and Spiritual Well-Being.

Rudolph Tanzi and Deepak Chopra combine cutting-edge research and age-old spiritual wisdom—linking the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience with aspirations for health, well-being, and spiritual realization like no else can. Their combined wisdom and expertise demonstrates that through increased self-awareness and conscious intention, you can train your brain to reach far beyond its present limitations.

Anxiety and Your Super Brainposted by AdminBy Rudolph Tanzi. Ph.D, and Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP,  co-authors of Super Brain

In today’s world of super connectivity and pervasive social media, we have never been in such intimate contact with others. While this is ushering in a renewed sense of community, anxiety levels are on the rise. During nearly every waking moment, in the back of our minds, we are constantly wondering whether we should be checking emails, texts, voicemail, and social media sites. So, while the Internet and social media are making the world a smaller and arguably friendlier place, we may also be experiencing a greater sense of anxiety with the growing social pressure to communicate with others nearly every minute of the day.

Anxiety creates a false picture of the world, piling on things to be afraid of that are in fact harmless. The mind adds fear. If the mind can undo the perception of fear, the danger will vanish. To begin with, life cannot exist without fear, and yet fear creates paralysis and misery. The two aspects, one positive, the other negative, meet inside your brain. For people who suffer from free-floating anxiety (one of the most common complaints in modern society), the short-term solution is a chemical fix-it: tranquilizers. Chemical fixes bring side effects, and the most basic problem of all is that drugs don’t cure mood disorders, including anxiety. Just as being sad is universal while depression is abnormal and unhealthy, fear is universal while free-floating anxiety gnaws away at the soul. As Freud pointed out, nothing is more unwelcome than anxiety. Medical studies have found only a few things that the mind-body system cannot adapt to: one of them is chronic pain, the kind that gives no remission (shingles, advanced bone cancer), and the other is anxiety.

Free-floating means the thing you fear is not a specific threat. In the natural scheme, our fear response is physical and targeted. Victims of crime report that during the act, as the weapon of their assailant loomed large in their visual field, they went into a state of hyper-alertness, their hearts racing. These aspects of the fear response come automatically from the lower brain, and the things that cause you worry and anxiety are thought to be programmed in the amygdala. That doesn’t tell us enough, however. Once you become anxious in a pervasive  sense—as happens, for example, to chronic worriers—the whole brain gets involved. Fear is targeted and specific; anxiety is pervasive and mysterious. People who suffer from it don’t know why.

What they experience is like a bad smell that stays on the edge of their awareness no matter how hard they try to pretend it isn’t there. To heal the anxiety, they can’t attack it as one thing; the bad smell has seeped everywhere. In other words, their reality making has gone awry. Anything or nothing can trigger anxiety in them. They always have something to be afraid of, a new worry or threat. To find the solution, they must learn not to fight the fear but to stop identifying with their fears.

Achieving detachment is only possible if you can get at what makes fear so sticky. In its positive, natural state, fear dissipates after you run away from the saber-toothed tiger or kill the woolly mammoth. There is no psychological component. In its negative, pervasive state, fear lingers. Its stickiness seems unavoidable.

So, anxiety, fear, and doubt generally creep into the brain as a survival mechanism that is deeply ingrained in the more primitive areas of the brain. The ancient hindbrain and emotional brain regions are incessantly attempting to promote survival by ensuring shelter, sustenance, and social acceptance and validation. When we feel the need to check our cell phones for texts and email with every new minute, our primitive brain has taken control. We find ourselves mindlessly serving the instinctive brain’s demand for social acceptance and stature. The key instrument used by the brain to serve this instinctive need is the pervasive and irrational feeling of anxiety, the nebulous feeling of fear that you should be doing something right now that you are not. The solution? Simply be observant, be aware, be mindful of the feeling of anxiety. Examine what you are anxious about. This is easy. Simply ask what it is you feel you should be doing while anxiety permeates your mind. Next, detach. Remind yourself that you are not your brain. You are the user of your brain. When you no longer identify with your feelings but instead observe and learn from them, you can more readily detach from them. At that point, you, the true you, is using your brain and you are a step closer to a “Super Brain”.

Interview with Deepak Chopra on Consciousness, God, & the Nature of Beliefposted by Admin

By Chelsea RoffChelsea Roff: Your book is titled, God: A Story of Revelation. How do you personally define God?Deepak Chopra: God is the infinite potential that becomes the universe and the awareness of the universe in conscious beings.  God is the ground of existence that differentiates space time matter and information.  God is the creativity inherent in the cosmos.  God is the evolution of platonic truth such as beauty, goodness, love, compassion, harmony, joy, and equanimity.  God is our highest instinct to understand ourselves.

Having said all of this, all definitions of God are inadequate. To define God is to limit God.

CR: When you say the creativity inherent in the cosmos, it sounds like you’re suggesting that the cosmos is a conscious entity. Do you think we live in a conscious universe? 

DC: Yes, I believe that the universe is conscious like any other living organism as a body mind and soul.  The body as it appears to us through our five senses (it may appear differently to other species with other nervous systems) the mind of the universe is its energy and information fields and the soul of the universe is the infinite void from which it emerges.  The void is not just an emptiness but the womb of all creation and contains the building blocks of both mind and matter as potential .

I recently co-authored an article with Drs. Menas Kafatos and Rudolph E. Tanzi in the San Francisco Chronicle, A Science Based Consciousness, which explores these ideas in greater detail:Explaining consciousness as produced by the brain is referred to the hard problem in cognitive science. There is no theory in science that explains how electrochemistry in the brain becomes subjective experience. Physicalist explanations of consciousness have thus far, entirely failed.Traditional science assumes, for the most part, that an objective observer independent reality exists; that the universe, stars, galaxies, sun, moon & earth would still be there if no one was looking. However, modern quantum theory disagrees. The properties of a particle, quantum theory tells us, do not even exist until an observation takes place. Quantum theory disagrees with traditional, Newtonian physics. Most scientists, although respecting quantum theory, do not follow its implications.When traditional science finds itself in such an impasse, it might be time to question some of the basic assumptions about so called independently-existing reality. We must revisit the idea that science is a methodology and not an ontology.CR: So what would you suggest as an alternative theory of consciousness? And would that theory hold that the universe itself is conscious?DC: I addressed this topic in an article I coauthored with Drs. Menas Kafatos and Rudolph E. Tanzi – How Consciousness Becomes the Physical Universe – in the Journal of Cosmology:Consciousness is a field phenomenon, analogous to but preceding the quantum field. This field is characterized by generalized principles already described by quantum physics: complementarity, non-locality, scale-invariance and undivided wholeness. But there is a radical difference between this field and all others: we cannot define it from the outside… Consciousness includes us human observers. We are part of a feedback loop that links our conscious acts to the conscious response of the field. In keeping with Heisenberg’s implication, the universe presents the face that the observer is looking for, and when she looks for a different face, the universe changes its mask.Consciousness includes human mental processes, but it is not just a human attribute. Existing outside space and time, it was “there” “before” those two words had any meaning. In essence, space and time are conceptual artifacts that sprang from primordial consciousness. The reason that the human mind meshes with nature, mathematics, and the fundamental forces described by physics, is no accident: we mesh because we are a product of the same conceptual expansion by which primordial consciousness turned into the physical world.Our approach, positing consciousness as more fundamental than anything physical, is the most reasonable alternative: Trying to account for mind as arising from physical systems in the end leads (at best) to a claim that mathematics is the underlying “stuff” of the universe (or many universes, if you are of that persuasion). No one from any quarter is proposing a workable material substratum to the universe; therefore, it seems untenable to mount a rearguard defense for materialism itself. As we foresee it, the future development of science will still retain the objectivity

of present-day science in a more sophisticated and evolved form. An evolved theory of the role of the observer will be generalized to include physical, biological, and most importantly, awareness aspects of existence. In that sense, we believe the ontology of science will be undivided wholeness at every level. Rather than addressing consciousness from the outside and trying to devise a theory of everything on that basis, a successful Theory Of Everything (TOE) will emerge by taking wholeness as the starting point and fitting the parts into it rather than vice versa.CR: Many people base their belief in God on the virtue of faith. What do you think is the value of faith, versus a method of seeking truth that relies on empirical evidence, like the scientific method?DC: I have always held that belief is the cover up for insecurities.  You don’t have to believe in electricity if you can see how it works. Nor do you have to believe in gravity or anything that is real. This includes abstract, non-material such as love, joy, compassion and any of our feelings or emotions.

God is revealed to us not through belief, but through spiritual practices. These include:

1. Self-awareness: The entire wheel of awareness including awareness of sensory experience, awareness of the body, awareness of relationship2. Self-reflection: Who am I? When you ask the question, “Who am I?”  go deeper.  Who is asking the question, Who am I? As you go deeper into the question, you realize you are neither body, mind, ego, nor intellect, but a speck of consciousness which is an aspect of an infinite consciousness. As Rumi said, “You are not just a drop in the ocean. You are the mighty ocean in the drop.”3. Transcendence: Going beyond through meditation4. Conscious choice making5. Understanding perceptual reality is not fundamental realityI discuss all of these in my book, God: A Story of Revelation. The novel brings to life the defining moments of our most influential sages, ultimately revealing to us universal lessons about the true nature of God from Job in the Old Testament, Paul in the New Testament, Rumi, Tagore, Baal Shem Tov, and Julian of Norwich.CR: What do you think we can learn about the nature of belief from studying changing perspectives of God over the centuries?  

DC: Beliefs are capricious and subject to change, as the lens from which we view reality continuously changes. Today, quantum mechanics and cognitive neuroscience reveal a deeper invisible reality, which is the source of everything, visible and manifest.

CR: You’ve written a great deal in this book about the evolution of religion, belief, and spirituality… How do you think humanity will (or should) continue to evolve in these areas in the coming century?

DC: I do hope so because, at the moment, our spiritual evolution is not keeping pace with our capacity for creating diabolic technologies, mechanized death, and biological warfare.  We risk our extinction if we don’t.

A Consciousness Based Scienceposted by Admin

By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University, and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose

F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

The greatest mystery of existence is existence itself. There is the existence of the universe and there is the existence of the awareness of existence of the universe. Were it not for this awareness, even if the universe existed as an external reality, we would not be aware of its existence, so it would for all practical purpose not exist. Traditional science assumes, for the most part, that an objective observer independent reality exists; the universe, stars, galaxies, sun, moon and earth would still be there if no one was looking. However, modern quantum theory, the most successful of all scientific creations of the human mind, disagrees. The properties of a particle, quantum theory tells us, do not even exist until an observation takes place. Quantum theory disagrees with traditional, Newtonian physics. Most scientists, although respecting quantum theory, do not follow its implications. The result is a kind of schizophrenia between what scientists believe and what they practice. When we examine this hypothesis of traditional science, we find it more a metaphysical assumption than a scientific assertion.

How can we assert that an observer-independent reality exists if the assertion itself is dependent on the existence of a conscious observer? This raises the additional dilemma of who or what is the observer and where is this observer located? When scientists in general describe empirical facts and formulate scientific theories, they forget that neither facts nor theories are an insight into the true nature of fundamental reality apart from any observer. What we consider to be empirical facts are entirely dependent on observation, in agreement with quantum theory. The scientific observer in this case is an activity of the universe called Homo sapiens usually with a Ph.D. in physics. However, many scientists have never really asked the question “Who am I”?

Most neuroscientists who still don’t believe that quantum theory has anything to do with the brain, would assert that “I”, the conscious observer, is solely an epiphenomenon of the brain; that consciousness is produced by the brain, just as gastric juices are produced by the stomach and bile is produced by the gall bladder. The problem with this of course, is that any neuroscientist worth his/her tenure will tell you that there is no satisfactory theory in neuroscience that explains how neurochemistry translates into conscious experience. How do electrochemical phenomena in the brain create the appreciation of the beauty of a red rose, the taste of garlic, the smell of onions, the feeling of love, compassion, joy, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, or awareness of existence of self and the universe? There is no physicalist theory based on classical physics to explain these subjective experiences. Nor, is there any obvious means for coming up with one.

When traditional science finds itself in such an impasse it might be time to question some of the basic assumptions about so called independently-existing reality. We must revisit the idea that science is a methodology and not an ontology. Current science however is based on a physicalist ontology. This is the basic belief that reality is physical and mind is an epiphenomenon of matter (the nervous system). Nonetheless we are baffled when asked to explain how matter becomes mind. We suggest here a fundamental revision in our most cherished scientific assumptions. We boldly suggest that matter, force fields, particles, waves, even the fabric of space and time are not denizens of fundamental reality but that they are perceptual and cognitive experiences in consciousness. Actually what we propose, would be in agreement with what the great physicists who founded quantum theory almost a hundred years ago would hold. But we are also going beyond, taking the statements of quantum theory to the next level: All of physical reality is a perceptual experience in consciousness alone. The experience may turn out to be different for different species.

What is physical reality to a bat, a honey bee, a nematode, a whale, a dolphin, an eagle, an insect with numerous eyes? There is no fixed physical reality, no single perception of the world, just numerous ways of interpreting world views as dictated by one’s nervous system and the specific environment of our planetary existence. We propose that the worldview of current science as its is being practiced, which operates from the assumption that human perception and particularly facts emanating from observations made with human scientific methods are the only fundamental truth, is clearly flawed. Furthermore the subject / object split that is the basic premise of the current scientific methods has led to the creation of arguably detrimental technologies including mechanized death, petroleum products in our food, genetically modified foods, global warming, extinction of species, and even the possible extinction of the human species. Building on the quantum view of the cosmos, which accepts a non-local, entangled reality that includes observers as fundamental, we suggest the next natural step, a new science rooted in consciousness, one that strives to interpret the entire universe, with all its observers, all modes of observation, and all objects observed as nothing other than consciousness and it’s manifestations!

Rejecting what we believe is the most reasonable and rational approach proposed here, will lead nowhere and force us to accept randomness and lack of purpose as the hallmarks of the universe. Such a view is, ultimately, leading to no meaning for our own very existence. We suggest that perceptual objects experienced in consciousness, including our very brains, are not the source of consciousness. We suggest rigorous testing of this radically different ontology. We feel a holistic science that does not separate observer from that which is observed would lead to the unraveling of the mysteries of the universe which at presently seem beyond reach, leading to an understanding of a conscious universe in which all are differentiated activities of a single field that is an undivided wholeness and in some sense bridges external reality with inner being.

In Physics, the Arrow of Time Gets Bent

posted by Admin

By Deepak Chopra, MD and Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Vice Chancellor of Special Projects and Director, Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Computational Physics, Chapman University

 

Out of sight, and for most people out of mind, the physical world has been vanishing.  For over a hundred years quantum theory has shown that the solid objects of the physical world are made of invisible energy clouds. Atoms have no fixed physical properties until they are measured; therefore, it remains to be shown why our world of everyday experience feels solid in the first place. At the same time, other properties we take for granted are dissolving. Einstein described time as dependent on frames of observation. Now it seems that in the world of quantum phenomena it can appear to move backwards.

This is a fascinating topic, and one that raises more questions about things we take for granted. Quantum physicists at the University of Vienna were looking at particles of light that are either entangled or separable. These are technical terms going back to the era of Einstein and Schrodinger. If two particles are entangled, they will exhibit synchronized behavior no matter how far apart they are in space. As soon as one particle is measured, its exact counterpart will show up in the entangled twin state, even if they are far, far away from each other. In other words, this “action at a distance” defies the speed of light.  Einstein could not accept the consequences of quantum entanglement, and so he added the word “spooky” to action at a distance.

 

Yet quantum behavior is frequently spooky, and experiments have validated entanglement very soundly. In a recent article a useful analogy was given. Two entangled particles are like a pair of tumbling dice. If you stop one to see which number comes up, the other dice must show the same number; it has no other choice. If the two dice are separable, then the measurement of one doesn’t affect the other. Being separable seems normal to us. We never expect two dice to exactly match. If they did, Las Vegas would go out of business, since chance would disappear.

Now on to time. We expect time to move forward, the so-called arrow of time. Past, present, and future constitute the normal progression of events. For the same reason, cause precedes effect. It would be bizarre to bleed before you cut yourself shaving or to hear a car crash before the two vehicles collided. In the quantum world, however, certain phenomena have arisen known as retro causation, and exactly as it sounds, a future measurement appears as if it is affecting a past event. This would be a form of entanglement that reaches backward in time, a new form of spookiness.

Physics has depended for decades on “thought experiments,” where a new concept predicts what will happen before a physical experiment proves or disproves the predicted result. In this case, the Viennese team was working to prove “delayed-choice entanglement swaps.”  As a thought experiment, this has existed for over a decade.  Let us follow the team’s description closely:

Four photons, made of two entangled pairs, are produced (think of them as four tumbling dice waiting to be measured). One photon from each pair is sent to a physicist named Victor. He will be assigned the task of measuring them. The two remaining photons are put in separate packages, one sent to a physicist named Alice, the other to a physicist named Bob. The three physicists now have their sealed packages of photons that have not been measured yet.

Victor can choose between two kinds of measurements. If he decides to measure his two photons in a way such that they are forced to be in an entangled state, then Alice’s and Bob’s two photons also become entangled. But if Victor chooses to measure his particles individually, Alice’s and Bob’s photons end up in a separable state.  This is a point that Einstein was stuck on. He couldn’t believe the assertion made by Bohr and Heisenberg that the mere act of measurement by an observer determines where a particle will be. But accepted quantum theory has shown that particles have no physical characteristics until they are measured. For a long time this has been true for position in space. Now it seems that where a particle is in time also depends on measurement.

Modern quantum optics allowed the team to delay Victor’s choice and measurement with respect to the measurements which Alice and Bob perform on their photons. As the lead author in Vienna describes it, “We found that whether Alice’s and Bob’s photons are entangled and show quantum correlations or are separable and show classical correlations, can be decided after they have been measured.” In layman’s terms, what you do today can affect what happened yesterday.  Or, perhaps, to put it in better way, the future and the past are entangled, in a way that classical physics could not explain it. The experimenters are working on a quantum scale billions of times smaller than everyday events, and rather than claiming to change the past, they say that their experiment “mimics” the effect of turning time’s arrow around.

So no one is saying – yet – that present causes can change past effects. The mystery still remains over how entanglement, defying the speed of light and now the arrow of time, actually relates to the “naive classical world,” which is to say, the everyday things we take for granted. Our own bias is for expanding the observer effect more and more, until science accepts that awareness is key to everything. We are making reality through our role as conscious agents. But that’s an argument for another day – perhaps yesterday if we get around to it.

Good News: You Are Not Your Brain

posted by AdminBy Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP & Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School Director, Genetics and Aging at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).Like a personal computer, science needs a Recycle Bin for ides that didn’t work out as planned. In this bin would go commuter trains riding on frictionless rails using superconductivity, along with interferon, the last AIDS vaccine, and most genetic therapies. These failed promises have two things in common: they looked like the wave of the future but then reality proved too complex to fit the simple model that was being offered.

The next thing to go into the Recycle Bin in might be the brain. We are living in a golden age of brain research, thanks largely to vast improvements in brain scans. Now that functional MRIs can give snapshots of the brain in real time, researchers can see specific areas of the brain light up, indicating increased activity. On the other hand, dark spots in the brain indicate minimal activity or none at all. Thus we arrive at those familiar maps that compare a normal brain with one that has deviated from the norm. This is obviously a great boon where disease is concerned. Doctors can see precisely where epilepsy or Parkinsonism or a brain tumor has created damage, and with this knowledge new drugs and more precise surgery can target the problem.

But then overreach crept in. We are shown brain scans of repeat felons with pointers to the defective areas of their brains. The same holds for Buddhist monks, only in their case, brain activity is heightened and improved, especially in the prefrontal lobes associated with compassion. By now there is no condition, good or bad, that hasn’t been linked to a brain pattern that either “proves” that there is a link between the brain and a certain behavior or exhibits the “cause” of a certain trait. The whole assumption, shared by 99% of neuroscientists, is that we are our brains.

In this scheme, the brain is in charge, having evolved to control certain fixed behaviors. Why do men see other men as rivals for a desirable woman? Why do people seek God? Why does snacking in front of the TV become a habit? We are flooded with articles and books reinforcing the same assumption: the brain is using you, not the other way around. Yet it’s clear that a faulty premise is leading to gross overreach.

The flaws in current reasoning can be summarized with devastating force:1. Brain activity isn’t the same as thinking, feeling, or seeing.2. No one has remotely shown how molecules acquire the qualities of the mind.3. It is impossible to construct a theory of the mind based on material objects that somehow became conscious.4. When the brain lights up, its activity is like a radio lighting up when music is played. It is an obvious fallacy to say that the radio composed the music. What is being viewed is only a physical correlation, not a cause.It’s a massive struggle to get neuroscientists to see these flaws. They are king of the hill right now, and so long as new discoveries are being made every day, a sense of triumph pervades the field. “Of course” we will solve everything from depression to overeating, crime to religious fanaticism, by tinkering with neurons and the kinks thrown into normal, desirable brain activity. But that’s like hearing a really bad performance of Rhapsody in Blue and trying to turn it into a good performance by kicking the radio.We’ve become excited by a flawless 2008 article published by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive sciences at the University of California Irvine. It’s called “Conscious Realism and the Mind-Body Problem”   , and its aim is to show, using logic, philosophy, and neuroscience that we are not our brains. We are “conscious agents,” Hoffman’s term for minds that shape reality,

including the reality of the brain. Hoffman is optimistic that the thorny problem of consciousness can be solved, and science can find a testable model for the mind. But future progress depends on researchers abandoning their current premise, that the brain is the mind. We urge you to read the article in its entirety, but for us, the good news is that Hoffman’s ideas show that the tide may be turning.

It is degrading to human potential when the brain uses us instead of vice versa. There is no doubt that we can become trapped by faulty wiring in the brain – this happens in depression, addictions, and phobias, for example. Neural circuits can seemingly take control, and there is much talk of “hard wiring” by which some activity is fixed and preset by nature, such as the fight-or-flight response. But what about people who break bad habits, kick their addictions, or overcome depression? It would be absurd to say that the brain, being stuck in faulty wiring, suddenly and spontaneously fixed the wiring. What actually happens, as anyone knows who has achieved success in these areas, is that the mind takes control. Mind shapes the brain, and when you make up your mind to do something, you return to the natural state of using your brain instead of the other way around.

It’s very good news that you are not your brain, because when mind finds its true power, the result is healing, inspiration, insight, self-awareness, discovery, curiosity, and quantum leaps in personal growth. The brain is totally incapable of such things. After all, if it is a hard-wired machine, there is no room for sudden leaps and renewed inspiration. The machine simply does what it does. A depressed brain can no more heal itself than a car can suddenly decide to fly. Right now the golden age of brain research is brilliantly decoding neural circuitry, and thanks to neuroplasticity, we know that the brain’s neural pathways can be changed. The marvels of brain activity grow more astonishing every day. Yet in our astonishment it would be a grave mistake, and a disservice to our humanity, to forget that the real glory of human existence is the mind, not the brain that serves it.

War of the Worldviews: Let’s Talk God

posted by AdminIn this series of posts about science and spirituality I’ve left God for last, even though God has become the hottest topic as we struggle toward the future. The arguments against belief in God have been stridently raised by a small band of scientific atheists – their avowed leader, Richard Dawkins, has become a household name. In our recent book, War of the Worldviews, my co-author, Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow, doesn’t pursue the atheist line. His worldview is scientific, but Leonard holds a view that is much more defensible than atheism:

“While science often casts doubt on spiritual beliefs and doctrines insofar as they make representations about the physical world, science does not – and cannot – conclude that God is an illusion.”

I believe that spirituality can take hints from modern science to actually support the existence of God. Some of these hints have emerged from quantum physics, which long ago showed that the seemingly solid, convincing world of matter and energy actually derives from a highly uncertain, invisible realm that existed before time and space. Is this the domain of God? If so, it can’t be the God of Genesis, a human-like figure sitting above the clouds who created heaven and earth in seven days. I think a new and expanded spirituality can deliver a God that is the same as pure intelligence, creativity, and consciousness. Such a God is our source without being human – a source from which all possibilities emerge and flow. Quite a number of credentialed scientists are

thinking in the same direction without necessarily being religious. It would explain a lot about the cosmos if we fit into a living, conscious universe.

Dawkins uses every tactic he can find – including some underhanded ones – to make it seem that science can disprove God. Leonard is right, however, to deny this. In simplest terms, you can’t prove that something doesn’t exist. But the scientific atheists are really relying on probabilities. Having mounted a heated attack on myth, superstition, and belief in the supernatural (most of this argument is seriously outdated and belongs in the Victorian age) Dawkins tells us that all religious experience should be judged on rational grounds, asking how likely it really is that God, the soul, the afterlife, or any other aspect of spirit actually could be true.

This stupendously misses the point. It’s in the very nature of spirituality not to conform to everyday reason and logic. The point of spirituality is to transcend the ordinary world and reveal something invisible, unknown, and yet part of ourselves. If an exotic traveler came to the court of a medieval king and claimed to have seen a rhinoceros, even there reason and probability wouldn’t help. It makes no sense to test the claim of a new species of animal by saying, “How likely is it that this creature exists?” You produce the rhinoceros or you don’t. But Dawkins throws out of court the thousands of spiritual experiences that are a continuous thread in human existence. He doesn’t want to examine if they are true; he only wants to examine how many ways they could be false.

That’s offensive and intellectually dishonest, ultimately appealing only to die-hard skeptics of the same stripe. Religion has enough bad things in its long, checkered history – and science has enough triumphs – that atheism seems to have a strong hand. In our book I argue that the case can be made in reverse, however. Science has given us atomic bombs, ever-new mechanized warfare, biological and chemical weapons, and countless forms of environmental pollution. If we want the best that science has to offer, are we destined to accept the worst along with it?

Not if spirituality is taken seriously, which means valuing our inner world. Science doesn’t deal in purpose and meaning; it deals in data and measurement. Dawkins makes the fatal mistake of believing that data and measurement are superior to everyday experience. His brand of skepticism doesn’t work to bring light; more often, it revels in making people feel insecure and doubtful. In reality, life is about purpose and meaning. We don’t have to throw those things out just because they aren’t scientific. Quite the opposite. Like it or not, the scientist works on behalf of human beings who want even more purpose and meaning. If God is the word we apply to highest purpose, why not keep it? Or if another word is needed, a term that has no religious baggage, let’s find one. The spiritual worldview is our salvation if we want to save the planet. I have no doubt of that, and our best hope is that science becomes part of the project that will redeem our future, not an enemy to the highest and best in human nature.

War of the Worldviews: Let’s Talk Brain and Mind

posted by Admin

People are surprised and often offended to discover that the truth is shifting, and yet a shift always happens at the moment of greatest uncertainty. If you canvassed a hundred neuroscientists about where the mind comes from, it would be a good bet that 99 would say the brain. There’s a solid wall of certainty there, which would automatically indicate that a new answer is ready to emerge, toppling all conventional wisdom.

I argue this new idea in War of the Worldviews, a new book co-authored with Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow. Taking the scientific side of the debate, Leonard supports the brain-is-mind

position that has been forced upon brain scientists. I say forced, because neuroscience studies physical processes, and with sophisticated imaging technology, those processes are understood with great specificity in the brain. But physicality is the wrong place to look for mind. By analogy, you can study a piano down to its atoms and molecules, but that won’t tell you anything about how composers create music.

Likewise, studying the firing of synapses in the brain tells us nothing about where thoughts arise. My role in our book is to defend the spiritual position, and here mind gets tricky. In one way or another, every spiritual tradition believes in an invisible reality, and mind–meaning all the traits of intelligence, creativity, order, harmony, etc.–is embedded in that reality. It isn’t necessary to use God as a creator. The spiritual position counters the scientific one in a simple assertion: mind created the brain, not the other way around. We live in a conscious universe, and the reason we humans are conscious is that Nature is imbued with consciousness to begin with.

There are many arguments for such a position, which goes back to Plato in the West and much further back to the ancient philosophers of Vedic India. Let me give a sketch of how the argument goes.

1. There is no way to physically observe consciousness. We know that we are conscious, but awareness cannot be found physically in the brain. Science infers that the brain creates mind, and inference isn’t proof.

2. All of the basic materials of the brain, primarily water and organic chemicals, are not conscious. The sugar in a sugar bowl can’t think, but the glucose in the brain is part of thinking. Does glucose think? That seems unbelievable yet science cannot show us the point at which chemicals learn to think.

3. Science reduces all physical phenomena, ultimately, to mathematics, which explains the basic laws of nature. Mathematics is a mystery. No one knows if it exists in nature without human existence, yet it seems improbable that math had to wait around for humans to invent it. Let’s say that mathematics exists beyond the physical universe, as many theorists believe. If math is transcendent, it is woven into the invisible fabric of reality. Math is more than numbers. It is also order, harmony, balance, and rigor. These are all qualities of mind, which implies that mathematics and mind have the same universal status.

4. Using much the same argument, Plato declared that all the other qualities of mind–love, beauty, truth, etc.–must be embedded in nature, also. Higher values of mind did not have to wait for the human brain to evolve. They exist at our source, woven into the fabric of creation, which is why among spiritual visionaries, there is always an intense experience of truth, love, and beauty.

Trying to settle these kinds of arguments belongs not just philosophy and religion. Neuroscience faces “the hard problem,” a term arose the tough question of where consciousness comes from. The value of solving the hard problem isn’t merely theoretical; it has huge practical implications. Consider the following riddles:

Can you think yourself sick?

Can you think yourself well again? Are emotions linked to cancer?

Is depression best treated with drugs or talk therapy?

Are psychics real?

Can we communicate with the dead?

How do geniuses and savants get their extraordinary abilities?

Can you boost your mental potential?

These aren’t frivolous questions. If we knew which came first–mind or brain–we’d have the key to the right answers. Science operates as if the issue is already settled: brain comes first and then creates mind. But if you survey working neuroscientists and ask them basic questions like “How is memory stored in the brain?” no one knows; they only know which part of the brain lights up to indicate where memory is stored. This is like saying that if you find the transistor in a radio that produces the sound of words, you know how language works.

In fact, the brain poses the same mystery. There is no sound in the brain, yet we hear sounds. There is no light in the utter darkness of the brain, yet we see light. The entire world is evoked in the brain, but you will search in vain for any sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell in the brain. When you look at a rose, there is no image of the rose once one travels past the retina at the back of the eye. The rose is turned into pure signals of electricity and chemical firings across synapses. Science cannot approach an explanation for how the real world emerges, and therefore the spiritual position–that the real world is created in consciousness–has great weight and significance.

The reason that science can’t find–and will never find–consciousness in the brain is that it isn’t there. Experience exists in consciousness first and foremost. Nothing is real unless you are conscious of it. There is no red in nature, for example. There is only a wavelength of light associated with red. The color red needs consciousness to exist. The term of the flavors of experience, meaning, color, texture, taste, smell, and all the other aspects of reality, is qualia.

Red is qualia. If you have a human nervous system, you perceive the world as pure qualia, such is the richness of experience. Science doesn’t deal in experience; it deals in data. So we find two contending ways to look at red, either as a vibration that can be expressed as a number, or directly as a color. It’s obvious that without the experience, the number can’t exist. And to reverse the situation, with only the number at your disposal, the color cannot be produced. Qualia are primary, data are secondary.

What will topple our current scientific theories isn’t the return of God. Spirituality is now totally about consciousness, at least when we come to answering the hard problem. In our book, Leonard concedes that science has serious limitations when it comes to solving the riddle of mind and brain, but he argues that one day, with more research, neuroscience will find that the brain is the source of consciousness. Which of us is right? The debate swirls in and around many field of inquiry. Nothing is settled, and yet I’d wager that the future is likely to arrive at a place where science will only succeed if it takes the spiritual argument seriously and begins to explore domains of reality beyond materialism.

War of the Worldviews: A statement on science and spirituality

posted by Adminby Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow

As we travel around the country promoting our new book, War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality, people are asking about the major points of contention between science (the worldview represented by Leonard Mlodinow) and spirituality (the worldview represented by Deepak Chopra).  Do we always disagree or are there some points of agreement?  We thought it would be appropriate to summarize the major differences and agreements in a short note.

 Our book has four major sections: Cosmos, Life, Mind and Brain, and God.

 Cosmos:

Leonard describes Einstein’s theory of relativity, and quantum theory, and how they are combined to create a scientific theory of how the universe began, and evolved.  He describes the impressive agreement between the theoretical predictions based on this picture, and actual observations of the heavens made by astronomers.   Deepak proposes a creative first cause that preceded the infinitesimally brief Planck epoch (10-43 seconds) following the Big Bang.  He suggests that since the laws of nature and perhaps space and time emerged after the Planck epoch, any understanding of the pre-crated universe remains outside the scope of objective science.

  Life

We describe the cutting-edge ideas of modern genetics. Leonard argues that physical evolution occurs through random mutations and natural selection.  Deepak argues that random mutations are not an adequate explanation for the variety and speed of viable adaptations.

 Mind and Brain

Leonard posits that the mind is created by the physical workings of the brain, and that our consciousness can be explained through the same laws of nature that govern the rest of the physical world. Deepak proposes that the brain is the physical instrument of the mind, just as a radio serves to turn invisible radio waves into music.

 God

There is an important point of agreement here. Leonard maintains that “While science often casts doubt on spiritual beliefs and doctrines insofar as they make representations about the physical world, science does not – and cannot – conclude that God is an illusion.”  While not defending God in religious terms, Deepak holds that God is a way of understanding some extremely crucial things: the source of existence, the reality beyond spacetime, the underlying consciousness and creativity in the universe.

 Overall

Leonard suggests that the universe operates according to laws of physics while acknowledging that science does not address why the laws exist or how they arise.  Deepak maintains that the laws of nature as well as mathematics share the same source as human consciousness.

Richard Dawkins Takes the Magic Out of Reality

posted by AdminBecause of his popular fame, the dogmatic atheist Richard Dawkins has made himself immune to critical challenge.  His biggest bestseller, The God Delusion, was roundly castigated in intellectual outlets for being misinformed about the state of modern spiritual belief, Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow, co-author with Stephen Hawking of The Grand Design, has written a new book with me on the deep issues involved around science and God, called War of the Worldviews. In it he says, “While science often casts doubt on spiritual beliefs and doctrines insofar as they make representations about the physical world, science does not – and cannot – conclude that God is an illusion.”   Our book is in a long line of considered treatments from many quarters.

But Dawkins is on a mission to prove that all spirituality is the field of fools and knaves. Now, in a new book that is essentially a primer for young atheists, Dawkins continues to ignore his critics, and the result is shameless propaganda disguised as helpful, even avuncular popular science. In many places it flirts with intellectual dishonesty.

The Magic of Reality   is a sunny title for a young adult book that suggests its real agenda in the subtitle: “How We Know What’s Really True.”  The giveaway is “really,” because it implies that

there are ways of knowing the truth that might seem valid but aren’t. For the good of our children’s minds, these false ways must be extirpated. In the book’s didactic introduction the reader is informed that reality consists of “everything that exists,” which is unarguable. To discover what is real, we use our five senses, Dawkins writes, and when things get too big or faraway (distant galaxies) or too small (bacteria), our senses are augmented with devices like telescopes and microscopes.

One anticipates that Dawkins will add a caveat that the five senses aren’t always reliable, as when our eyes tell us that the sun rises in the sky at morning and sets at twilight. But no such caveat is offered; the reader is already being guided incorrectly. Quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity posed revolutionary challenges to what the five senses tell us, but Dawkins doesn’t mention them, even in passing.  Perhaps this is forgivable in a book for young readers, but it falls short of the promise to tell us how we know what is really true.

Dawkins outlines in simple terms how the scientific method works, but what he really warms to is false knowledge of the kind he calls supernatural. Much time is spent on obscure mythology (e.g., Pan Gu, the first living being in Chinese creation myths) in order to pooh pooh it. The reader is warned with numbing repetition that no supernatural explanation can ever be true. The logic here is circular. If any supernatural phenomenon, from psychism to biblical miracles, turns out to be true, only science can prove its truth, and therefore it won’t be supernatural in the first place. Anything that science cannot prove thus falls into two categories: either it’s false, or science will get around to it soon enough.

Like any dogmatist, Dawkins maintains a merry arrogance about his ignorance. His dismissiveness toward spirituality of any kind is a cover for deep misunderstanding.    In Dawkins’ scheme, nothing that we know emotionally or intuitively is valid. Likewise, nothing unconscious, delivered in dreams, produced by a sudden flash of insight, made evident by a chance observation (like the discovery of penicillin) counts as a valid way of knowing the truth, either.  The history of science undercuts Dawkins’ stance. For instance, Friedrich August Kekulé struggled to understand the structure of benzene until in a day-dream he envisioned it as a snaking eating its own tail. We won’t even speak of art, morals, metaphysics, philosophy, or wisdom. Dawkins, like other staunch materialists, believes that all subjective experience, being a product of the brain, must come down to a physical process, leaving no possibility that the physical processes of the brain may be correlates to something happening in the mind. How microvolts of electricity and neurochemicals flying across synapses produce the entire world is a deep mystery, often referred to as the hard problem in consciousness research. This Dawkins doesn’t even consider.  (No matter that light and sound are perceived inside a brain that is utterly dark and silent.)  The bulk of the book is taken up with cut-and-dried answers to questions about evolution, physics, and the cosmos.  Cut-and-dried materialism isn’t an intellectual sin; it’s rare to find any student textbook that questions the infallibility of the scientific method.What is obnoxious about Dawkins’ version is his tone of absolute authority about matters that he shows complete ignorance of.  Respected physicists like John Archibald Wheeler, Sir Arthur Eddington,  Freeman Dyson, Hans-Peter Dürr, Henry Stapp, Sir Roger Penrose, Eugene Wigner,  Erwin Schrodinger, and Werner Heisenberg suggest a fundamental role for consciousness in quantum theory and a mental component at the level of biological organisms and the universe itself.   Dawkins bypasses evidence from his own field of genetics that might upset his hobby horse. He ignores, either willfully or through ignorance, the evidence for directed mutagenesis first put forward by John Cairns of Harvard in 1988.  John Cairns showed that if you grow bacteria with the inability to metabolize lactose, they evolve that ability in petri dishes tens of

thousands of times faster than would be predicted if mutations simply occurred randomly.  Professor Rudolph Tanzi of Harvard Medical School further points out that mutations in the human genome do not occur randomly but cluster in “hot spots” that are hundreds of times more likely to undergo mutation.Could these hot spots be driving the evolution of humans according to our current need for survival?  Tanzi and others are eager to speculate and thus expand Darwinsim, where Dawkins uses evolution merely as a club against superstition and organized religion – this does a disservice to young readers and betrays the hollowness of Dawkins’ allegiance to scientific objectivity.  Recent evidence from whole human genome sequencing has shown that in a newborn there are roughly 30 new (de novo) mutations that were not present in mom or dad.  So, for the first time, we can earnestly begin to ask whether human DNA undergoes directed mutagenesis that has been already observed in bacterial genomes. (Tanzi and I have had several conversations on how the mind may influence the flow of energy and information in living things, and beyond that to the universe as a whole.)

One doesn’t ask for advanced genetics in a primer for young adults, but one does ask that the writer know his field before adopting a tone of authority. It’s ironic that Dawkins is addressing “how we know what’s really true” when he is oblivious of the fact that we can never know the whole truth. The scientific method does not explore “nature as it is” but nature as exposed to a human nervous system and the available range of questions we ask about Nature.  The unknown inspires more than the search for new facts: “Revere those things beyond science which really matter and about which it is so difficult to speak.” (Werner Heisenberg)

Dawkins, carried away by his own propaganda, keeps repeating the same fallacy over and over, drumming it into the young reader’s head.  Only science tells us what’s real.  In actuality, science extrapolates data so that experience can be quantified and measured. But that is not the same as saying that data is superior to experience – the crude position that Dawkins seems to believe in. Experience remains richer than any scientific model.  If I say that I am in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, in what way is a skeptic proving anything when he points out the improbability that I have found one woman out of three billion who is the most beautiful?

Does science tell us why a brave soldier runs in to rescue his buddies under heavy fire? Does science tell us why we want to be creative and why we exalt art? Does science even tell a scientist that he exists? Dawkins fails to admit that some things may not be reducible to data. As the noted mathematician and physicist Eugene Wigner remarked, “Where in Schrodinger’s equation is the joy of being alive?” Dawkins sneers at such questions, which he has a right to do. But to back up his disdain by cloaking himself in the scientific method is dishonest. He even has the temerity to say, with considerable piousness, that science must remain open to those things that it cannot yet explain, which is exactly the opposite of his attitude, an iron-bound skepticism that has decided a priori what can and cannot be true. He is a one-man society for the suppression of curiosity.

These willful distortions will likely remain invisible, to both his untutored young audience and popular culture in general. I have no interest in defending the God that Dawkins disbelieves in. The real tragedy is that the possibility of an expanded science, one that can answer the most difficult questions, isn’t suggested by The Magic of Reality. It’s been two generations since Sir James Jeans remarked that the universe “looks more like a great thought than a great machine.” You would never suspect reading The Magic of Reality that many reputed scientists with credentials far above Dawkins’ are seriously asking if the universe is conscious, if mind creates action at the subatomic level, if purpose can be understood as a property of the cosmos, if “soft inheritance” allows for evolution without classic gene mutations, and so on.

Blinded by his atheistic certainty, Dawkins promulgates a notion of science that is already outmoded.  He isolates himself from scientists who are far-sighted enough to leave all possible solutions on the table. As the astrophysicist Joel Primack and co-author Nancy Abrams point out in their book The New Universe and the Human Future, the challenges facing our planet are so severe that we need to draw from every aspect of human knowledge, including wisdom, myth, archetypes, and the creative unconscious. No doubt all of Dawkins’ shortcomings will be pointed out by academics who know their philosophy and theology. It’s a shame that he will get away scot-free in the popular press.  This book tries to kill the legacy of faith in human culture, but it winds up showing bad faith toward the science that Dawkins supposedly reveres.

Is Evolution Ready to Evolve?

posted by AdminAlthough science prides itself on objectivity, it has some cherished articles of belief, and if you question them, however reasonably, you can expect ire and raised hackles. Bruce Lipton has discovered this after posting “Has Modern Science Bankrupted Our Souls?” In it he challenges basic assumptions of modern science, such as the pre-eminence of a Newtonian physical universe and the conception of evolution through random mutations for being flawed. Natural selection and random mutation no doubt played a part in getting us where we are now, but they won’t carry us into the future. The controversy being stirred up is old and, so far as Darwinists are concerned, completely settled. On one side is the light of reason, on the other darkness and superstition. The fact that Bruce Lipton is a cell biologist doesn’t mean that his credentials protect him. People don’t take kindly to having their faith questioned.But the issue here isn’t about bringing Darwin down, but rather about expanding his theory. Lipton’s post reflects the urgency of future evolution, or where we grow from here. He poses the potential threat of mass extinction and the ruin of the planet (very real threats, even if you don’t push as hard as he does). After painting a doomsday portrait of the future, Lipton offers hope, saying that humans will make exciting breakthroughs if we face our hour of crisis by evolving to the next stage of consciousness. As the author of a book titled The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Lipton stands at the forefront of a growing movement. Some cutting-edge scientists belong to the movement, although it has roots in the new spirituality as well.

The basic premises that are able to cross the line between science and spirituality are these:

We live in a conscious universe. Such a universe is constantly evolving. Humans are woven into the currents of cosmic evolution. The future of our own evolution will be based on conscious choice

There are precincts of science where any of these statements would be considered outrageous. I know from experience, since one of my first posts at Huffington addressed the future of evolutionary theory. My argument involved pointing out the holes in classical Darwinism, which turned out — quite unintentionally — to be the most inflammatory way to begin. True believers came out of the trees (apologies to any non-Darwinists for that image) with the usual cries against superstition and my presumed ignorance. Lipton takes a mo re palatable route, holding out exciting openings for the future (a carrot) and the dismal prospects if we don’t go through those openings (a stick).

One could also appeal to personal interest, however, and the best way might be with the last premise on the list: *The future of our own evolution will be based on conscious choice*. A person

can be left at peace with randomness, natural selection, a universe where the only conscious beings are us, and so on. But most people also gravitate to the idea of choosing their own future. It’s more optimistic than resigning yourself to the mechanical operation of fate, or stand ins like all-controlling genes. Science can also get on board, since in the scientific mind choice includes a support for research, innovation, and unexpected breakthroughs. We often hear that humankind is on the verge of a major change in our perception of reality, a paradigm shift as it is called. But there’s no necessity for the new paradigm to break into laboratories and smash all the test tubes.

The brightest prospect is for an expanded science, one that takes consciousness into account. This is actually unfolding all around us. Even ten years ago a scientist who took consciousness seriously risked career suicide. He was likely to be rebuked with a common slogan in physics, “Shut up and calculate.” In other words, stop this foolish speculation and go back to what we trust, mathematics. But there is no getting around the bald fact that every human experience occurs in consciousness, including mathematics. If there is a reality beyond our awareness, by definition we will never know it. One branch of science after another, starting with the quantum revolution in physics a century ago, has been faced with mysteries that force it to consider consciousness. How does the brain produce thought? Why do genes respond when we interact or have experiences? Is biology a quantum phenomenon? Happily, there are now sizable conferences on these once unthinkable topics.

So is evolution ready to evolve? It would seem so, if we are to judge by the cutting edge. Younger researchers are open to these topics; they won’t just shut up and calculate. There are tussles, of course, and angry skirmishes. A war of two worldviews has broken out, in fact. One conception of the universe and our place in it is being forced to yield its supremacy to the new paradigm on the block. What Lipton’s post has done is to bring the clash of worldviews down from the ivory tower.

Choosing the future isn’t just about government energy policy and technologies to clean up greenhouse gases. We are living on a shrinking planet with bulging population growth, and each new arrival wants the good life. If the good life means endless consumption, pollution and waste, if toxic nationalism and war protects the haves from the have-nots, Lipton’s darkest scenario may come true. But evolution is a force of nature, and perhaps we will all feel which way the wind is blowing. Lipton’s brightest scenario could also come true. There’s no final reason why millions of people cannot wake up and decide that the good life is really about a choice to evolve. With that one insight planetary healing can begin.

The Paradox of How We Die: Arriving at a “Good Death”

posted by Admin

Let me begin by reassuring you that this isn’t going to be a grim post. But it begins in an area people are uncomfortable with. We all must die, yet this is one inevitability that almost nobody feels comfortable talking about. That includes doctors and nurses, as was discovered in a newly published study from King’s College in London. It surveyed the staff that surrounded dying patients in hospices and found that they witness every common end-of-life experience (ELE). These fall into two types, and one of them will seem very strange.

The first type of ELE seeks final meaning. Near the time of death, people often want to be reconciled with family members who have become estranged, and this desire can be so strong that the moment of death is postponed until the estranged person visits. There is often a desire to put one’s affairs in order and to right past wrongs. It is observed that patients who have been

semi-conscious will have a moment of sudden lucidity in which they express their dying wishes before lapsing back. This whole category of ELE is psychologically intimate, and a significant number of doctors and nurses feel uncomfortable being present for it. Two inhibitions stand in the way. Doctors spend most of their energy trying to extend life, so learning about dying isn’t part of their training. Secondly, it is still considered a sign of weakness for a doctor to feel emotional about death, which leads to distancing himself from the actual experience.

The second type of ELE is labeled transpersonal, although the common word for it would be spooky. Dying patients, far more often than is acknowledged, have highly mystical experiences. They get visions of departed ones who have come to take them away. They sense the transmission of light and love from other realities and can visit those realities. The study found that such ELEs could not be accounted for by the medical state or treatment of the person — the ELE occurred in clear consciousness.

Yet probably the most uncomfortable ELE in this category was observed by the staff, including seeing something leave the body at the time of death, finding that a peculiar synchronicity occurred, such as the clock stopping at the moment of death. It’s more common than you would suppose for relatives who were not present when the dying person passed away to have them appear at the moment of death. Needless to say, modern society is skeptical enough that ridicule and quick dismissal of these transpersonal experiences will arise, even though they have been reported continually in every culture since history has been recorded.

The study makes the point that ELEs, which of course do not occur with every dying person, bring comfort and consolation; they seem to be a natural mechanism that surrounds the climactic event of death. Which brings us to the paradox of how we die. In the 1930s, eighty percent of people still died at home; now more than eighty percent die in the impersonal setting of a hospital. Massive expense is involved in trying to cure the last disease each of us will have, the one we eventually die from. As medical technology shrouds the dying process, as people become more and more discomfited being around it, nature doesn’t seem to care. Mind and spirit experience death the old-fashioned way. Happily, the paradox resolves itself in favor of death being much less scary than we imagine. There is every indication that we are meant to die at peace, and so we do.

The breakthrough book in this area was Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying, which appeared in 1969; we’ve had over forty years to rid ourselves of the suppressed dread and panic that surrounds a natural process. The new London study should help pave the way for even greater clarity and hope about dying, but there is strong resistance still. Kubler-Ross herself, having enjoyed great acclaim for her book, went on to explore the mystical side of ELEs, the transpersonal kind. Her efforts were greeted with hostility by mainstream medicine and various brands of skepticism. In many ways it was a sad turn-around for a brave psychological researcher, yet in the end I think Kubler-Ross, whom I knew when she herself was dying in 2004, will be vindicated. There is much more to dying than lying in bed connected to tubes and praying that you will “go into the light.” The real light we need to shine is here and now. What awaits a great many people is that mysterious thing, a good death, and we would do well to realize that.

No More Science Please, I’ve Already Made Up My Mind

posted by Admin

We live in a society saturated by science, and every year we hear alarming reports that unless we educate more scientists, America will lose its position as number 1 in research and technology (some experts believe we’ve slid out of first place already). Yet it’s not often observed that people suffer from “science shock,” a numbness to the flood of data that assaults us almost as if it’s in the

air we breathe. Haven’t you heard someone greet a new study by saying, “It doesn’t mean a thing. These studies are always contradicting each other”? The more science rules, the greater the resistance to it.

Take the link between cell phones and brain cancer. Just last week a long article in the New York Times outlined the 12-year research, heavily funded and involving thousands of subjects, that tried and failed to find such a link. The results were not quite conclusive, though, leaving a margin for doubt about as slender as a thread. If the data was crunched a certain way, it turns out that regular use of a cell phone may actually decrease the incidence of brain cancer, while very heavy use seemed to increase a specific, rare type of tumor. Yet that isn’t really the point, because for millions of laymen, the connection between cell phones and cancer has become part of common belief. The more the link is disproved, the stronger their faith.

One volume of The Lord of the Rings is titled The Two Towers, and it’s as if science lives in one tower while popular belief lives in another. The two camps are separate and aloof; they communicate only with the greatest suspicion. If you visit one tower, you will meet firmly held beliefs like the following:

Cell phones cause memory loss in older people.Aluminum pots and pans are the cause of Alzheimer’s disease.Autism results from childhood vaccinations.Mega vitamins prevent all kinds of diseases, from the common cold to cancer.Needless to say, scientists scorn such beliefs as superstition, and they feel immense frustration when, for example, juries hear abundant evidence that silicone leaks from breast implants do not cause disease, only to award millions of dollars to the women who believe that they have been harmed. (The opposite frustration arises when science detects a real danger, such as the link between smoking and lung cancer, but then has to wait decades before the rate of cigarette smoking significantly declines.) The net result, as viewed from one tower, is that the other tower is rife with ignorance, irrationality, and superstition. Yet that isn’t really the issue.

Science shock is also an expression of human nature, just as valid as reason, devoted to emotions, hope, anxiety about death, and the impulse not to face our mortality. This side of our nature runs after laetrile as a cancer cure, or coffee enemas or having your blood “cleansed” in some obscure clinic in Mexico. As much as science might want to eradicate irrationality, the fact is that a planet ruled by science would be hell on earth. The objectivity of research is a valuable enterprise, but when devoid of emotion and all forms of subjectivity, what happens? We get the rise of atomic weapons, mechanized death in wartime, biological and chemical agents, chemical carcinogens, and many other forms of diabolical creativity. I fully realize the howls of protest that such comments incite. Science wants to equate objectivity with having clean hands.

In fact, the two are very different things. No doctor wants to take personal responsibility for the side effects of drugs, iatrogenic disease (illness created by medical treatments), or the rise of super germs that are increasingly ravaging hospitals. Much less do they want to consider the enormous suffering that cancer patients go through during chemotherapy and radiation — as long as the overall mortality rate drops by one-tenth of a percent, that’s all that counts. The reason that the two towers exist isn’t that one side of us is rife with superstition. It’s that we have a healthy skepticism about science. We’ve heard too many claims for “promising” cures while watching AIDS and cancer essentially remain a mystery.

I am not science bashing here. My deepest desire is to see the two towers join together, which means arriving at a science of wholeness, an expanded science that will accept that reason is compatible with imagination, hope, morality, emotions, and every other subjective experience.

Because ultimately people live for their experiences, not for science and its data. Science serves experience, and it has no right to consider that numbers are superior to feelings. It is certainly true that human nature is prone to superstition and false hope, but it is equally true that man doesn’t live by data alone. Keeping ourselves whole is all-important.