Quantum brain theory: splitting classical-physical reality..from the inside-out -5

It has long been believed that mind and body are separate, but the evidence is unambiguous -- However miraculous the illusion may be, mind is the product of ‘wholly physical processes.’ 1 This conclusion, expressed by neurologist Antonio Damasio of the University of Iowa, is a widely held perspective in the scientific community, although completely at odds with one of the founders of modern science who argued that mind and body are separate: Descartes. We all know what atheism is, but few can grasp that a comparable disbelief in the self is becoming common place among scientists and postmodern thinkers. To a great degree, Descartes programmed the minds of intelligent people for over three hundred years, and is best know for declaring that there is one undeniable reality: I think, therefore I am. Self-consciousness has its roots in Descartes' philosophy. News of the rebellion against Descartes’ scientific and philosophical ideas has been slow in reaching educated people. New ideas have been aired, but we have not yet been aware of their impact. Most people are still so thoroughly grounded in Descartes' paradigm that they cannot think of questioning it. He created the Cartesian co-ordinate system, which shaped modern concepts of spatial geometry, and is still fundamental to how many scientist's think about subatomic particles. More complex still is the movement away from Cartesian point particles to strings in contemporary mathematics and physics. But as with common sense and self-consciousness, it is not easy to shake old habits. The Cartesian co-ordinate system of points still defines reality in spite of all the promise of string theory. Penrose's twistor space does not focus on localized points, but rather presents the all-encompassing perspective of a global geometry.2 In a very real sense, we live in the past, in ideas that are so worn they can easily be re-shaped and turned against us.

The physical origins of mind may still be a mystery to scientists, but of one thing they are sure, there is no physical justification for believing in the reality of something we might call a self. After more than a century of looking for it, brain researchers have long since concluded that there is no conceivable place for such a self to be located in the physical brain, and that it simply doesn't exist.3 Two of the best known social scientists advocating a mechanistic view of the human mind are Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker. They are main stream thinkers in this field, and view the brain as a computer operating according to the principles of classical physics. In his book Consciousness Explained, Dennett describes a bowerbird building a nest instinctively without any awareness as to why it does what it does. Stranger still, are the human beings who create a self. The brain produces a self like a bird builds a nest, using words and language as its tools, but being no more aware of why it must create this self than the bird knows why it builds a nest.4 Dennett quotes from a deconstructionist novel by David Lodge titled Nice Work. According to Robyn (or, more precisely, according to the writers who have influenced her thinking on these matters), there is no such thing as the self on which capitalism and the classic novel are founded -- that is to say, a finite, unique soul or essence that constitutes a person's identity; there is only a subject in an infinite web of discourses -- the discourses of power, sex, family, science, religion, poetry, etc. And by the same token, there is no such thing as an author, that is to say, one who originates a work of fiction ab nihilo. . . . in the famous words of Jacques Derrida. . . il n'y a pas de hors-texte, there is nothing outside the text. There are no origins, there is only production, and we produce our selves in language. This is called semiotic materialism.5 Keep in mind that Dennett and the Postmodernists are taken very seriously by intellectuals. It is important that you understand how central language is to shaping not only human identity, but consciousness. Given this insight, I would ask that you not under-estimate the significance of how language is re-designed in the second half of this book.

After a very mechanical discussion, Dennett acknowledges that his explanation of consciousness is not complete. He observes that his work is a fresh beginning in describing consciousness. What he has done is to replace familiar words and images with new metaphors to better describe one's mental experience. It's just a war of metaphors, you say -- but metaphors are not 'just' metaphors; metaphors are the tools of thought. No one can think about consciousness without them, so it is important to equip yourself with the best set of tools available.6 This kind of superficiality is reminiscent of Hawking's expectation that we will all be knowing the mind of God just as soon as the reductionists get the final theory worked out. The God Hawking describes is a result of his own way of thinking. It is not that we will someday understand the mind of God, or that we would cease to believe in God, but rather that our state of mind would be so changed that the concept of such a self comprehending such a God would not exist, nor would the question. The paradox, the mystery is resolved not by answering the riddles, but by changing our minds so fundamentally that we no longer think in such simplistic terms.

Hawking and Dennett assume that a new science can be created by simply readjusting the theory on paper, restructuring our picture of the outside world. Dennett has focused on an important issue -- the self is an artificial construction --- but his thinking is wooden. Like Hawking, Dennett fails to realize that great ideas never lend themselves to mere clever invention; they overwhelm us in bursts of energy and leave us exhausted and transfigured. A radically new perspective requires changes in the observing instrument --- the mind, as well as the mechanical theory being used to analyze the world, which moves us from within without our realizing it. Such an arresting insight will have extraordinary consequences for all of us emotionally. Collective mind, which is the focus of the later part of this book, is an immensely powerful idea and no artificial construction; it is guaranteed to be a whole lot more persuasive than Dennett's toolbox of new metaphors.

Seeing the mind as having physical origins is surely correct, but describing consciousness as a by-product of classical laws of physics serves a higher power than science: the State. The emphasis here will be on Penrose's view of the mind being governed by principles of quantum physics. But for the moment, notice that something revolutionary has happened: the self, so essential to post-war political and religious ideology, has been discarded by official social science. This is an unwanted consequence of the new physics. A robot-like intelligence is to replace the self. This is a hard product to sell; it just doesn't have sex appeal. The self could be associated with passionate, even religious feelings, but this robot brain leaves us cold. If you doubt it, try reading the first 300 pages of Steven Pinker's book How The Mind Works. If you have encountered one of these automatons, you understand that an open exchange of ideas is about as possible as a discussion of Jewish totalitarianism with the thought police of political correctness. These robo-cops developed from a view of man as a machine, where the brain is seen as the computer hardware and the mind is the programmable software. But even this mechanistic vision of human nature will cause heartburn for the high priests of social science. It is inevitable that any comparison of the brain to a computer will lead to a further understanding that the artificial intelligence of computers is an extension of the human brain. This comparison begs the association of the individual pc to the self-conscious mind, and the opening of the pc to a network of expanding awareness that we might think of as collective intelligence. The solitary soul, alone before his window on the world, becomes a contemplative in spite of himself. He is barely aware of a collective intelligence that is made real and enhanced by technology. Space travel and the colonization of new worlds is also becoming reality. People will find themselves isolated in distant, alien, and even hostile environments; instinct will lead them to turn inwards for comfort, as they seek contact with an uncanny Nature which will disclose an intelligence sure to astonish even the most rational of men.

One such rational man is Francis Crick, of the celebrated Watson and Crick DNA team; he argues that the brain operates according to the principles of classical physics, but his reasoning is certainly suggestive of the cohesiveness characteristic of quantum physics. Crick argues that consciousness is the consequence of the synchronized firing of billions of neurons in the brain; It's the meshing of these frequencies that generates consciousness...,7 much as the instruments of an orchestra create the collective and unified sound we recognize as music. As has been seen from the fractals of chaos theory, nature repeats the same patterns at different magnifications. Collective consciousness would most likely involve some variation on this orchestra theme; this meshing web is not so unlike the net, or the apparent chaos of the stereogram. I hope you can see the significance of this reference to the stereogram; it is a remarkable idea that will become central to our thinking. This kind of collective mind theme does appear in science fiction, and invariably is portrayed as the ultimate evil in the universe -- The Borg of Star Trek for example. It is not that the media masters don't fully appreciate the power of mass communication, nor do they fail to realize that the Internet implies an electronic collective consciousness; it is a matter of control. Those who shape public opinion are not eager for grown-up children to break out of their hypnotic trance by discovering why it is so easy to media-wash them. But more of this later, after we have studied Durkheim. For now, let us focus on the human brain as organic, feeling tissue.

Most of what is known about the brain and human consciousness has its origins in the study of disease. What we experience as mind cannot be identified with any specific part of the brain, and in that respect mind is not a thing which can be weighed and measured. Damage to the brain will not destroy this sense of mind, though it can limit its capacity to function.8 Some scientists think the brain makes effective use of an alternate re-routing of signals around damaged areas to keep mental activity functioning normally. When the brain is not able to supply accurate sensory information to complete the whole mental picture we call mind, the brain improvises -- it fills in the missing sensory data in the form of hallucinations. A familiar example of the brain’s trickery is the phantom limb phenomena, whereby a person who has lost a leg or arm feels that it is still there.9 Physical injury can damage memory, evidently by eliminating essential portions of the brain's memory architecture. But other sorts of shock -- strong emotion, for example --- can do the same.10 A prominent psychiatrist, Dennis Charney observes that 'Severe stress can change the way your brain functions biologically.' 11 Decades after emotional trauma occurs, changes in brain function are still evident to medical examiners. In short, feelings are real. As with consciousness, these intense emotions are not localized in one area of the brain. Damasio, of Iowa, has found that the process of rational thought depends on emotion. In fact, says Damasio, emotion is a key element of learning and decision making.12 The modern plague of drugs has certainly made it obvious to everyone that chemicals, including natural hormones such as testosterone and estrogen, radically effect brain function: ....scientists once believed sex hormones had very little effect on the brain.... ...Recent research, however, has shown that the entire brain, including the thought-processing cortex, is awash in sex hormones, even before birth.13 Humans, like other animals have powerful instincts that have not diminished however sophisticated or pious we may imagine ourselves to be; we must learn to appreciate our own primitive nature, as it combines with intelligence in creative ways, to protect our race from extermination.

One of the most central themes in my own thinking is that emotions are essential to all significant creative thought, and in addition to that, emotion is shared energy which contagiously attracts compatible people who are instinctively drawn to one-another, forming a clan through an intensely felt state of mind Durkheim identified as collective consciousness. There will be no appeal to metaphysical forces, but rather to primate instinct; we shall discover that this intuition is the source of genius and is even more wondrous in man than in the other remarkable creatures of nature. Rather than appeal to some other-worldly spirits, we will awaken dormant human nature which contains within it far more real enchantment than all the miracles of this world's religions combined. The Spirit to which I appeal in this book is imagination, courage, and most of all an intense caring for others, a collective feeling of belonging. All that is asked of you is that you accept the reality that we are all creatures of this Earth. The sexual aspect of hormonally charged thought has primitive racial implications we will not even pretend to repress, however distressing this may be to aging social engineers of the Freudian school.

As we have just mentioned, the injured brain fills in missing information to produce a cohesive image of our surroundings, but so also does the healthy brain. Dr. Rodolfo Llina, a neuro-scientist at N.Y.U. Medical School, makes some very startling disclosures concerning the way in which the brain shapes the reality we experience through our senses. We do not see and hear the real world; we experience our environment as it is interpreted by a human brain, which can very readily be over-whelmed by a flood of conflicting signals. ...Colors clearly don't exist outside our brains, nor does sound.14 Just ask anyone who is color blind, or try to hear one of those silent whistles that dogs respond to. Llina raises the classic question of whether or not there is a sound should a tree fall in the forest and no one is there to hear it. His answer is a resounding no! There can be no sound without a relationship between a transmitter and a receiver. If there is no receiver for television and radio signals, then the show does not go on. Its the same for the tree falling; if there is no one to hear it -- there is no sound. It doesn't mean the tree didn't fall, only that there was no sound. Much later, I will explain that in fact there was sound because the creatures of nature can hear, and their presence in the world is far more significant than our self-centered, urbanized, mechanized civilization acknowledges. But getting back to Llina, he concludes that consciousness is a dream-like state, which evidently also applies to mysticism, that only approximates something we call external reality.

Given what we know of how the brain works, the concept of self can no longer be considered real. Crick writes about an astonishing hypothesis, which is more akin to a final theory than a theory of everything. Crick appears to be a reductionist much like Weinberg. His hypothesis merely states that whoever you think you are, is an illusion created by the firing of neurons in the human brain -- that's all you are, a pack of neurons15 and nothing more. It's this and nothing more attitude which makes people defensive, which diminishes their sense of worth as human beings. Quantum physics indicates that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Because he sees the brain from the perspective of classical physics, Crick tells us we are only the parts, but intuitively we know what we are ....that we belong to the whole. People are intimidated by scientists like Crick because they have made the very foolish mistake of confusing the socially learned conscience of morality with Spirit, or what they think of as their unique soul. Spirituality is precisely the transcendence of self-consciousness, of individuality; it is a discovery of a wider collective awareness of feeling and understanding. The realization that the self is an illusion is fundamental to an authentic spiritual awakening called mysticism. So Crick's sophomoric atheism serves a purpose far nobler than his intent. While critical of most of the world's religions for fostering such unscientific beliefs as the immortal soul, like Hawking he finds Catholicism most offensive. He feels compelled to qualify his attack on religion by stating that: Some religions, such as Judaism, put little emphasis on life after death.16 I have always found it comforting to see high and mighty scientists, of the wrong faith, bend their knees to the raw power of The Chosen. But flexibility and quantum ambiguity are essential for survival in the academic world just as in the jungle. Crick too knows how to approximate reality.

Like psychologists, physicists, artists, and everybody else, brain researchers are fascinated with illusions. Crick instructs his readers to stare at an illusion of a three dimensional cube: ...In this case there are two equally plausible 3D interpretations of the image, and the brain is uncertain which it prefers.17 The problem of multiple images which we encounter in quantum theory is linked to the way in which the human brain interprets information overload. Crick is eager to neatly dispose of illusions by placing them under the category of 'ill-posed problems.' 18 By the clever use of constraints, Crick believes he has accounted for the ambiguity of nature. Quantum physicists would probably not be persuaded by such a convenient solution to the paradoxes of their science. But evidently Crick's discipline is not as rigorous as physics.

The brain processes as much of the environmental input it can make sense of -- treating it as a whole, and most of the time producing a non-ambiguous perception. This problem of complexity resulting from information overload and the resultant illusions has led some to conclude that a theory of everything is beyond the capacity of human intelligence to either discover or create because everything is outside the range of human perception. Others believe that the brain can effectively process highly complex information in the form of what we recognize as beauty. The solution to this problem is a matter of learning to incorporate ambiguity into how we think and express ourselves. The brain is a mystery to itself. It is inherently ambiguous because it is split into two hemispheres. At times, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. The stereogram discloses this complementarity which is built into the structure of those two schizophrenic I s staring both into and out of that weird mirror of quantum relativistic reflection. The study of the split brain has been instrumental in our understanding that the mind has its origins in this remarkable organ of intelligence, and that the self is a transitory creation -- a stereoscopic projection arising out of this living tissue.

Penrose discusses a split brain experiment carried out in 1977 by Wilson.19 The procedure involves cutting the cord, the corpus callosum, which links the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Patients of such an operation are being treated for a debilitating disorder such as epilepsy. The patient in this case, called P.S., is initially only able to utilize the left hemisphere to speak, although both sides of the brain understand spoken language. In time, P.S. develops the ability to speak using the right portion of his brain. Penrose does not believe that conventional language is essential for consciousness, or even thinking. He is of the opinion that the two hemispheres of the split-brain patients are independently conscious, that there are two minds.... and there is a surplus of clinical evidence supporting the observation that duality... complementarity is hard-wired into human consciousness. Penrose imagines a procedure in which the two hemispheres are temporarily separated by use of freezing or an anesthetic drug. He considers the implications of rejoining the hemispheres so that one consciousness would be re-established. He then wonders how it would feel to have been two distinct selves, perhaps to have been schizophrenic. It is this self-contradictory situation which has led some thinkers to conclude that the concept of the unique self must ultimately give way to another, more persuasive model of consciousness. Thomas Nagel states that 'It is possible that the ordinary, simple idea of a single person will come to seem quaint some day’...20; while his intent was to diminish the significance of individuality, his conclusion can also point us in the unintended direction of collective consciousness, which enhances the quality of human life rather than impoverishing it.

The split brain research is of critical importance to understanding human nature. We each have two brains, just as we all have two eyes, two hands etc. Yet, our two hands are more than just two of the same instrument. Used together, they can accomplish what the two right hands of strangers could never do. Our two eyes open to us: depth vision. Our two ears enable us to locate the source of a sound; and two legs make locomotion possible. This bilateral symmetry is rooted in a structure deeper even than our own biology. It is this complementarity within us as much as the ambiguity outside of us in the physical world which seems so confusing, even deceiving common sense perception. There are two channels broadcasting to human consciousness, one from the left brain and one from the right. It is this duality within our nature, like the positive and negative poles of a battery, which charges the mind with the energy of evolutionary change. The depth of human vision is only possible because the left and right hemispheres operate in tandem: they are truly capable of transcending their separateness, of opening out to bring in a whole world of collective experience. This ambidextrous quality we seek is capable of more than the logical discipline of the left hemisphere or the creativity of the right. It is this balancing of opposites, this complementarity of mind that is capable of an instinctive intelligence which is collective in nature.... giving a soul to the tin-man of science, a brain to the scarecrow of religion, courage to the cowardly lions of commerce trapped within a slave-State-of-depression amidst their material affluence -- but most importantly this opening mind gives us one-another.

While no youngster, Francis Crick is a relative newcomer to brain research. John Eccles has been a pioneer in neuro-physiology long before it became the place to be. Unlike Crick, Eccles argues that quantum influences are likely during synaptic activity. The eye is part of the brain. Research by Hecht and Baylor indicates there are cells in the retina so sensitive to light that they can detect a single photon.21 This would be a quantum event occurring at the classical level. There is increasing reason to look for centers in the brain that are sites of quantum activity. We are about to engage in a brief, but complex discussion of brain function from the perspective of quantum physics, rather than from classical theory which is the official point of view. The two primary sources I will refer to are Roger Penrose and Danah Zohar. Zohar is an established popular writer in the area of quantum physics, but her relevance here goes beyond her own expertise. Her husband is Ian Marshall, and he is a fundamental researcher and theorist in precisely this matter under discussion.

In July 1995, I heard a radio report announcing the discovery of a new state of matter. Einstein theorized in the 1920's that when approaching absolute zero, a new state would form which is distinctly different than solid, liquid, or gas. That state has been produced in the laboratory. Atoms clump together and act as a unit rather than as separate atoms. It is so cold that atoms do not move; this opens the possibility of producing perfectly efficient machines, such as lasers that do not lose energy as heat. The quantum mechanical phenomenon to be understood here is this: in a large group of similar molecules, qualities of individuality break down and the molecules merge together to form one entity called a Bose-Einstein condensate. One might compare this to individual voices that spread themselves throughout a large arena, seeming to be everywhere and nowhere in particular, blending into one collective voice. Such large-scale quantum synchronicity exists in and accounts for the special properties of lasers, superfluids or superconductors, but the importance of the type found in Fröhlich systems is that it exits at normal body temperatures.22 Zohar discusses the possibility that the brain may have properties of superconductivity. Fröhlich's 'pumped system' is simply a system of vibrating electrically charged molecules ('dipoles'--positive at one end and negative at the other) into which energy is pumped. The vibrating dipoles, (molecules in the cell walls of living tissue) emit electromagnetic vibrations (photons), just like so many miniature radio transmitters, as they jiggle.23 It was Fröhlich who showed that there was a threshold involved; once reached, surplus energy infused into the system resulted in ...molecules of that kind to vibrate in unison.24 The intensity of vibration increases until they form a Bose-Einstein condensate. Zohar indicates that the jiggling of molecules (emitting photons), caused by neurons firing in the brain, becomes synchronized at a critical frequency and that they begin beating to the same rhythm thus establishing themselves as a Bose-Einstein condensate -- having one identity.25 The many components of this highly ordered system do not simply work together sympathetically, ...but they become whole - their identities merge or overlap in such a way that they lose their individuality entirely.26

Zohar thinks that the formation of the Bose-Einstein condensate is the process which distinguishes the organized awareness of living beings from non-conscious matter. Evidence for coherent states (Bose-Einstein condensates) in biological tissue is now abundant, and the interpretation of its meaning lies at the cutting edge of exciting breakthroughs in our understanding of what distinguishes life from non-life.27 Penrose argues that an alternative to the computational simulation view of the brain described in terms of classical physics is needed in order to make sense of consciousness in terms of the physical structure of the brain. He suggests that neuro-physiologists examine the boundary where quantum and classical phenomena are most likely to overlap. The current focus of attention is on that location in the brain where quantum activity may occur, and inter-face with an area of the brain which is already understood in terms of familiar classical brain function. As of the late 1990s, researchers suspect .... that it is through the cytoskeletal control of synaptic connections that this quantum/classical interface exerts its fundamental influence on the brain's behaviour.28 According to this hypothesis, consciousness develops out of the inter-play of quantum and classical processes. It is significant that classical and quantum physics be reconciled in Penrose's biological twist on quantum theory. He argues that quantum activity is prevalent within tiny structures inside neurons. Neurons are then linked together like a classical network of computers, but the energy they transmit has quantum origins. The neurons function as a magnifying device in which the smaller scale cytoskeletal action is transferred to something which can influence other organs of the body -- such as muscles.29 The neuron activity with which we are familiar ....is a mere shadow of the deeper level of cytoskeletal action--and it is at this deeper level where we must seek the physical basis of mind!30 Evidence suggests that large numbers of cytoskeletons function in a collective way in the brain. Penrose draws on the 1989 research of Ian Marshall to advance the idea that even within the hot brain, it is biologically possible that a Bose-Einstein condensate could form -- this was the idea of Fröhlich, who anticipated finding quantum activity at the macroscopic level of the brain. It is hypothesized that a quantum coherent state engulfs a large area of the entire brain. It is thought that this process originates in a bundle of microtubules inside each cytoskeleton. From the cytoskeleton, the quantum coherent state spreads to include the whole neuron. Not only this, but the quantum coherence must leap the synaptic barrier between neuron and neuron. It is not much of a globality if it involves only individual cells!31A The end product of this quantum coherence enveloping the brain is a unified state of mind that scientists, such as Eccles and Crick, would recognize as human consciousness, and which popular culture confuses with a metaphysical belief long enshrined as the self . It is useful to compare this quantum coherent state of the brain being postulated here with Brian Greene’s description of a “coherent state of strings”. “And just as an electromagnetic field such as visible light is composed of an enormous number of photons, a gravitational field is composed of an enormous number of gravitons – that is, an enormous number of strings executing the graviton vibrational pattern. Gravitational fields, in turn, are encoded in the warping of the spacetime fabric, and hence we are led to identify the fabric of spacetime itself with a colossal number of strings all undergoing the same, orderly, graviton pattern of vibration. In the language of the field, such an enormous organized array of similarly vibrating strings is known as a coherent state of strings.”31B In the light of this comparison, the ideas of Marshal, Zohar, and Penrose should not seem quite so far outside the mainstream of contemporary scientific thought.

Penrose is certain of two things: first, there is a non-computational activity, a quantum coherence, within the brain that is responsible for consciousness; and second, that consciousness has a global quality to it, which must be accounted for at the quantum physical level. What Penrose wants to do is describe consciousness as a quantum state. To do this, he reminds us of the collective quality characteristic of the quantum state of superposition in particle physics. He then extends this idea beyond particles to a large number of waves all suspended in the same quantum state hypothesized to be a Bose-Einstein condensate. The critical new idea introduced is that ...there is a coherence on a large scale, where many of the strange features of quantum wave functions hold at a macroscopic level.32... that is, at the level of the human brain. Consider this new hypothesis: consciousness is a direct consequence of quantum relativity, and we can visualize this process using a random dot stereogram as a model for millions of cytoskeleton microtubules in superposition ....and they in self-similar-fractal-like-form are magnified up-wards, across scale, as another random dot pattern spreading through-out the neuron ...which in turn integrates within a wave of random dot synapses forming the quantum relativistic globality of consciousness. One is conscious when the world of depth vision shifts into focus ....when quantum vector reduction appears to occur. Before the Energy of that quantum relativistic chaotic self-organization Materializes, there is just the quantum randomness of non-consciousness. As we examine this matter from different perspectives, you will begin to see that the quantum aspect of consciousness cannot be an individual local matter, that it must be collective ..IN NATURE -- that the random dot template of quantum-relativistic-stereoscopic-vision continues shifting-across-scale to the yet higher level of magnification we are calling collective consciousness ....and that the mechanism of that energy inter-change is contagious human emotion, very much amplified by the non-local energy and relativistic focus of the electronic media. All the ideas of this book will eventually converge on the concept of collective consciousness -- a theme that will unfold as the ideas of Durkheim and Jung are introduced. At this stage, what should be kept in mind is that the physical model for that concept will be the quantum relativistic random dot stereogram. Each member of a living community is like a random dot singer in a choir. As the random players gather and perform together, their voices and identities come into super-position -- undergoing a global existential …shift from individual consciousness to a quantum relativistic collective awareness of their common voice. The beauty and power of that choir’s collective voice might be compared to the shift from seeing random dots to the opening up of the depth vision of the stereogram. Each random dot member of the community is like One of the many shards of the shattered hologram – each little window opens-out on a whole world …enabling Everyman to live “inside the bubble – the collective consciousness” -- of that quantum relativistic stereogram “reality”. Those enveloped by this “vision” share an awareness that is their identity.

Brain research is the great frontier of science in the twenty-first century, and is easily as important as nuclear physics was in the early twentieth century. It is difficult to imagine that, as more of nature's biological secrets are revealed, we will fail to notice that they are entangled with the physical principles of quantum theory and relativity. Let us expand upon and modify Penrose’s two concerns mentioned in the previous paragraph: quantum coherence and globality. First of all, significant thought occurs in quantum bursts, and is an organic, cyclical process, not merely calculated reasoning. Emotionally charged ideas are super-imposed upon the deductive logic characteristic of the established classical architecture we call reality. Second: total perspective. This concept appeals to the collective dimension of mind, to wholeness. I would like to present a model of wholeness ....of quantum coherence -- in the form of a random dot stereogram. Zohar explains that overlapping brain waves produce an electromagnetic field. This field arises from energetic activity within neurons, which she and others believe to be of a quantum nature. Zohar goes on to suggest that this field may possibly produce a Bose-Einstein condensate as Fröhlich had hypothesized.33 ...which we are visualizing as an array of highly energetic random-dot-cytoskeleton-microtubules. The two hemispheres of the brain focus over-lapping (super-imposed) quantum waves -- the stereoscopic vision of two eyes brings into focus one whole world. Consciousness is that quantum relativistic in-sight, and has its physical origins in the complementary structure of the split-brain. Furthermore, this depth perception is a consequence of the apparent reduction of the quantum state to a relativistic reality ...a concentrating, a focusing of quantum energy which I am arguing triggers the quantum relativistic phenomenon of consciousness -- something Ehrenwald has identified as an existential shift.

As you must realize, I am neither a physicist nor a neuro-physiologist, and the above thought experiment is only a poor effort to re-organize and interpret the physically based observations of others in the hope of making some sense out of the conversion of energy into the barely tangible form we think of as consciousness. My talents and objectives are more literary and spiritual than scientific. The ideas from the new physics introduced thus far will never be too distant from whatever issues we are contemplating because they will be embedded within the poetry of the text; while the forthcoming outing of collective consciousness will involve us in the themes of chaos and self-organization briefly alluded to above, for the present at least, the limits of my own understanding necessitate that the focus of our attention shift toward matters for which I have a more intuitive sensitivity.

Salvador Dali exaggerated the importance of the irrational. He claimed that genius must reject the reality factor. But this turned out to mean that he embraced decadence. Dali did pay a very real price for selling-out to the Jews: the corruption and consequent limiting of his genius. It is evident from what Dali discloses, if he was in fact accurately represented by the author of Unspeakable Confessions, that his understanding of everything was not only less than brilliant, it was ridiculous. Yet, his paintings remained impressive even into his seventies. They don't betray much sign of his aging. They are like the wonder of a newborn babe fathered by an old man. We can speculate on his private life through his written words, but we would be wise to measure Dali by his real genius, his paintings, and not by his writings or his philosophy -- for much as he may have seen himself as a universal cosmic genius, his only real works of enduring value are his paintings. Evidently, Dali was able to contain, or even draw upon the energy of his maddening perversion when he painted, but lost control of his genius when not concentrated on his work -- much as the depth dimensional image of a stereogram fades from view when the energy essential to attention wanes, or one’s self-induced hypnotic concentration is short-circuited by distraction. I would like to compare this situation to Beethoven because it enables us to introduce the ideas of a very interesting neurologist and psychiatrist: Jan Ehrenwald. The Existential Shift is a person's ability to switch his perceptual orientation, his motor and psychomotor responses and his whole behavioral repertoire from one mode or level of existence to another.34 Ehrenwald tells of Lord Russel's visit to Beethoven in 1821. He was not greeted by a sophisticated celebrity, but rather by a cranky, disheveled old man 'full of rude energy' . But it was not merely a matter of age having extinguished the light of a once great composer. This distinguished visitor was astonished to discover that 'The moment he was seated at the piano, he is evidently unconscious that there is anything in existence but himself and his instrument ' (Marek, p.566). This is indeed a graphic illustration of an abrupt transition from one state of consciousness to another, or rather of the global existential shift.35 What I am driving at is this: I believe that Dali was a genius only some of the time ...when he was inspired. Much of what he did was routine and of no particular interest, except that it is attributed to Dali. Our bias is that we assume a constant continuous personality, and that is a mistake. If we view Dali as a quantum relativistic intelligence, we may recognize that he continued to sometimes be Dali the gifted artist even into his later years. Many more youthful and less offensive geniuses have ceased to be of consequence altogether long before their seventies.

As self-consciousness is transcended, so also is conscience, and with enlightenment comes a tremendous vulnerability to corruption. I would suggest that Dali was overwhelmed by his own genius, not only by his cowardice and greed. Nor should we discard Dali as a lunatic; for in spite of his periodic lunacy, he kept becoming Dali the artist. Ideas, including works of art and science, seem to have a life of their own; they exist at certain energy levels. Those creations of Dali, both artistic and literary, will struggle to endure over-time. I believe the quality work will persist, that the decadence and insanity will be all too easily forgotten. Despite the claims of today’s predatory gurus, we do not instinctively turn to a perverse irrationality as a model for shaping our minds. Dali was tormented by his own passions most of his life. This vulnerability of genius to self destruction is one reason we must move toward collective identity -- there is safety in numbers, as the mathematicians might say. Dali was Dali because he persisted in being a creative painter, and not just another sicko. Genius will always be a scandal to us. Much as we may despise the Jews, we have to confront the creations of their genius; reconciling ourselves with Dali will be a whole lot easier than deciding how to adapt ourselves to thousands of years of brilliant cultural deception aimed at our extermination. It is precisely this very hard issue with which we will wrestle throughout the remainder of this book -- creating a credible alternative to Christian spirituality.

This non-constant consciousness adapts itself well to the theme of illusion, which plays on the expectation of constancy. We expect the external world to be continuous because I am constant, as God is unchanging. But chaos theory suggests that everything is relative and in a state of flux -- not just at the cosmic and sub-atomic levels, but on the macroscopic plane of human experience as well. This mystical ebb and flow ties in also with the peculiarities of time and relativity. The self is based on the common sense belief in the constant observer who endures forever with his eternal personal God. But if change is the hallmark of the physical world, then human self-perception must account for this reality in order to be in harmony with a world we must come to know inside and out; scientists need to understand this! We are capable of insight only sometimes, when our energy level stimulates the body-mind to wake up -- to grasp ideas intuitively, and not merely mechanically -- logically. I am referring to the need for inspiration -- this is what is meant by spirituality, and this is the kind of enrichment that a healthy culture can provide to even its' most intelligent scientists, soldiers, and business people. Without inspiration, thought is futile. All that can be done is to concentrate on boring background work. Compare genius to love and you will understand exactly what I mean, but if what you mean by love is the official love of the Christian Socialist then you won't. I am referring to the biological passion that over-whelms you, that leads you to desperately yearn for another person -- that flame of feeling which becomes the most cherished experience of your life. Genius crushes you like a lost love and burns you to cinders, and then creates the world again out of the nothing you have become. Nobody has the energy to be a passionate lover all the time; likewise, genius is as transitory and enduring as your deepest heart-break. It is this intensity of experience you sacrifice when you sign on to the love everybody equally policy of the multi-racial Super-State. You sell your heart and soul for security. This book is of no use to you if you are not emotionally troubled by it. Feeling-for-others is the electricity into which every quantum relativistic-vision plugs-in.

We, like Beethoven, are literally different people, depending on the energy level at which we are functioning. This book can only be seen and understood if the observer is tuned to the same frequency at which it is transmitted -- we may share the same consciousness for as long as our energy holds out, as long as the music lasts. That is why I believe that much of this book should be spoken aloud as it is being read, to raise the energy level of the listener so that she can feel what is being expressed -- just as poetry is written to be sung, and music composed to be played. I write as though I were composing a symphony or a love song. What I can know fluctuates with my level of alertness, so at times I do not have access to the depth of half the ideas expressed here. At other times, you cannot imagine! Sometimes, I am simply not myself. But age and illness take their toll on awareness, and before you know it .....it is someone else’s turn to light the torch ....once again.

Our mistake for centuries has been to assume the permanence of inspiration by making idols -- gods -- out of people who, for a time, did experience this transient state of genius. By worshipping the image of Jesus, not only have we failed to nourish the spiritual life of our own troubled souls, but embedded a messianic complex within the minds of the vulnerable. We cling to our beliefs because we need something firm to hold on to, so that this brief time we live will not slip too quickly through our fingers. We find time passing fearful, so we make time for ourselves in a heavenly after-life we call eternity. But is there a price to be paid for wishful thinking, which at worst appears harmless? By now we have learned the philosopher's lesson: don't trust appearances.

Penrose argues that our psychological sense of time flowing is seriously mistaken. According to the laws of physics, time does not flow; this effect is entirely the product of human consciousness. In physics, time is viewed in much the same way as is space. ... we just have a static-looking fixed 'space-time' in which the events of our universe are laid out!36 What is to explain this feeling of time passing which modern man knows so well? My guess is that there is something illusory here too....37 It appears that the human brain imposes this effect on consciousness in order to produce a cohesive image which approximates the changing environment in which we exist. Because time passing is an illusion, it does not follow that change is an illusion. But change can have a quality of uncertainty about it which our sense of time only poorly approximates. The brain is flexible. If a society should re-structure its collective sense of reality more closely in tune with what science informs us actually occurs, I am convinced that the human brain will adapt -- producing new and persuasive sensations to give the totality of our experience coherence.

Self-consciousness takes time; it slows us down so that we can take conscious control of events. Yet, at times, it is vital that we be able to act with the speed of reflexive instinct so that we might save a child from harm. We could learn to do this quite well if we were not so pre-occupied with being somebody. Self consciousness creates the illusion of time passing slowly (as opposed to quickly when having fun), but there is a price we pay for this illusion of having time, of protecting ourselves from the uncertainty of death. The value of a blade is the sharpness of its edge, how quickly and incisively one can think. Self-consciousness inhibits some kinds of thought; for example, Penrose complains that mathematicians and real scientists like Einstein think in visual images (geometrically) and not in words. We interpret our experience to ourselves through words, which is like shifting from light speed to the speed of sound. Yet, the child can see the beauty of a flower without uttering a word, without naming the rose. Self-consciousness dulls the blade of human intelligence! But how do we get out of this flatland in which we are trapped? There is a way out, but interestingly it is neither the after-life of the believer nor the dead-end of the atheist. We must confront both belief and disbelief. We must discover reality, of all things.

Speaking personally, Crick admits that at times he cannot escape thinking of himself as some kind of metaphysical entity, even though he knows full well that all the magic he experiences has its origins in the neural firings of the brain and not in any separate 'I' independent of his physical body.38 He is surely aware of the incongruity of scientific facts and his self evident vanity.39 But his sense of self-importance and hostility to Christianity should not prevent us from hearing what he has to say. While he may attack traditional religious beliefs about the soul and the self, Crick is honest enough to acknowledge that religious experiences ...can be real enough, even if the customary explanations of them are false...40 As he sees things, The aim of science is to explain all aspects of the behavior of our brains, including those of musicians, mystics, and mathematicians.41 He believes that complex mental experience will be understood scientifically within a century's time. This is significant. My aim is to simply demonstrate that mysticism exists as a biological experience -- that it is not just sickness or mental illness; my purpose is not to support traditional metaphysical beliefs which may have grown up around mysticism, some aura of authority which is then used to legitimize corruptible real world power, such as that of Church hierarchies and television ministries. It is human Spirit that must be protected from the deadening power of the Slave-State. Spirituality concerns courage in the face of insurmountable odds. This is what we are trying to preserve, not only for the sake of resisting tyranny, but as our only hope of surviving this environmental holocaust which is a direct consequence of science in the service of intellect, greed and unbridled power. I know that science is used as a weapon, but I also understand that there is nothing inherently evil about science itself. To construct a New System of the World we need both inspiration and imagination, but imagination building on flawed foundations will, in the long run, fail to satisfy. Dream as we may, reality knocks relentlessly at the door. Even if perceived reality is largely a construct of our brains, it has to chime with the real world or eventually we grow dissatisfied with it.42 Much as I may mock scientists like Crick, Weinberg and so many of the Jews, I admit the inescapable necessity of facing facts when they are honestly presented. Too many of us cannot do this. That is why I am writing about quantum theory and the human brain, and not about the mythology of the master race, or the second coming of Christ. But what I have understood is that just as science ultimately discredits the wishful fantasies of the weak, so also does it expose the deception and corruption of the mighty. The degradation of our earthly environment cannot be explained away by some presidential scientific blue ribbon committee of Nobel laureates, or by some star-studded feel good media blitz. What both the pious and the merciless fail to anticipate is that a new intelligence is emerging which has little patience for either the ignorance of the victims, or the greed of the winners.

The harm done by ignorance and good intentions is more dangerous than consciously malicious action because we don't know that we are acting destructively, and so we systematize and institutionalize such imprudence as celibacy and mercy missions to the third world. And finally, we pay the price: BIG TIME; but when the error of our ways becomes evident even to the pious, our old friend Miss-Guided-Goodness is no where to be found -- is never called to account for her stupidity. But new idealists are pounding on our doors demanding that once again we abandon intelligence for the sake of our Christian Socialist morality. But these rank amateurs are nothing compared to the high powered lobbyists from the nuclear weapons industry. Science has committed far more than its fair share of atrocities. The scientific observer effects his environment, much as he pleads detached innocence and objectivity. This observer has the wrong perspective; he cannot be outside the events he is observing -- he can only create an illusion of separateness. What we need as human beings is a feeling that we belong, that there is a place where-in we fit. This is precisely what we seek when making love, or creating a work of art; the quality of beauty we sense springs from the feeling of wholeness, inclusiveness, which creative products radiate. The brain fills-in missing information to create a sensational world, and in this way is the source of so much of the illusion which is at the core of these paradoxes that plague us on every side and at every turn. While the unreality of the quantum cosmos is beyond human perception, we can perceive more than the passive illusory projections of the brain. Quantum-relativistic-stereoscopic-vision is the creative capacity to see a limited aspect of our universe of experience as cohesive -- the focus here is on the all-purpose plug-in-dimension of a seeing flexible enough to make sense out of anything. This is very different than embracing the rigidity of objective reality or the permanence of the thousand year Reich.

This book aims to introduce a new kind of thought. Instead of approaching a problem as an isolated phenomenon, surround the idea with something like a total environment of related and influencing forces, so that one's perspective is whole. Recall the chaotic background encompassing and penetrating the stereogram. All related ideas cannot be reconstructed, and many may be unknown; but what can be done is to create living tissue around your central concern so that, like a living entity, it can grow --connected to the fabric of real feeling, so that one is examining a living process and not a machine. This world is dying because we treat it like the all-purpose waste dump module of our system; and we do this out of the devotion to materialism we share in common with the tyrants who see us as inter-changeable components in their master game-plan. Their methodology is to isolate a problem into an artificially simple, and consequently dead, model. Our objective here is to confront difficulties in a living context. I belief that all dilemmas are so complex that they can be understood only when we are able to become emotionally involved with them.... Only when we care about our world and each other. There are forces controlling our lives which cannot be made simple. The totalitarian State over-powers us by replacing natural feelings with the market forces of greed and fear. We sacrifice our human nature by becoming robotic slaves to a political machine. The reason we are focusing so much now on our biological nature is this: in the past we made the profound error of seeing ourselves as bodiless spirits, but today's tyranny defines us as spiritless machines. A multitude of unlikely themes have been interwoven to illuminate a new perspective which discloses what totalitarianism is, in the very volatile imagery of today's most passionate conflicts. It is passion which distinguishes man from machine, and intelligence which links them together.

Real thinking is always a great risk, and never merely mechanistic. Society creates a class of boring intellectuals whose primary task is to keep thinking safe. However, our endangered species is in such peril that we have no choice but to think dangerously and act courageously, for the good intentions of Christian Democracy and scientific technique have not only failed us, but marketed our children's future to the lowest bidder. Writing is one way to concentrate the mind, reprogram one’s brain. It takes days to get back into serious thought when one has suspended working for a time. The immensity of it all is astonishing. The aim is not only to inform, but to inspire ....to open minds, to set the imaginations of others alight -- to entangle reason and emotion. This language, these images and ideas are intentionally wild; it is hoped that they are sufficiently fresh to hold your attention, and lead you to wonder .....

Mechanistic thinkers such as Crick, Dennett, and Pinker attack a traditional sense of spirituality; and in an understandable way Eccles defends the integrity of the past much as he would stand up for his family's name. He is a good man. But I am not interested in this conflict, for my sense of spirituality is very different indeed. Crick bemoans that It would be comforting to believe that most people would be so convinced by the experimental evidence that they would immediately change their views. Unfortunately, history suggests otherwise.43 Crick is no-where near as radical in his thinking as he imagines. This battle over man’s immortal soul was fought and won by Charles Darwin around the time of the American Civil War. Crick does not grasp that it is the state of mind of people, their feelings, that must change, not merely the model of reality they use to interpret the facts. Scientists, such as Crick, are very eager to do away with God, Jesus, and Christian metaphysics. They are atheists. But should they be confronted with the horrifying reality of Jewish subversion and our enslavement ... our loss of freedom, it is remarkable how quickly their passion for the facts cools. Their problem is that they lack the courage to follow their atheism far enough; the scientific search for facts stops at the publisher's door or the funding office, where research grants are approved or denied by people who care nothing for truth. Money is power, and damn few scientists care more about scientific objectivity and integrity than they do about their own professional success.

Crick views spirituality and morality as outdated. I am sure we can be absolutely certain that Crick is not too casual in his attitudes about the nazis, Jews, and racism. We can rely on him to march in lock step with such scientific giants as Hawking and Weinberg. But like Hawking, Weinberg, and Dali, Crick is sometimes a formidable thinker. It is passion which shapes the ideas we are capable of thinking, which determines whether or not we can even understand each other. When emotional commitments become irreconcilable, communication breaks down even between the most brilliant of men. All that is left is conflict. With so many of the Jews, like Weinberg, I believe that stage has been reached. But Crick seems to still have a soul, hidden somewhere safe within his crusty old scientific integrity. He raises questions a more ambitious man would ignore. Crick considers how religious ideas originate in the first place and concludes that they fill a basic human need for a wholly satisfying explanation of our lives and the totality of the universe. He thinks that the need for such shared unifying beliefs may have a genetic component. One factor is our basic need for overall explanations of the nature of the world and of ourselves. The various religions provide such explanations and in terms the average person finds easy to relate to.44 Religion has been in the theory of everything business for a long time. Crick comments that the brain evolved over many millennia during which human beings were tribal hunter-gatherers. Belonging to a group was necessary for survival, and so was belligerence with competing clans. A shared total view of the world distinguished one tribe from another. But Crick makes a far more astonishing observation here than in the central argument of his book. Regarding unifying belief systems, he concludes that ... It is more than likely that the need for them was built into our brains by evolution.45 He is arguing that the human brain may crave not only belonging to a group, but participating in a commonly held picture of the world in its totality. One might suggest from Crick's observations that we human beings have a need for collective identity ...that the physical design of our brains links us to one-another in a Jungian network of shared dreams and ideas..... We will find evidence for this argument some-what later in the recent research of the neuro-physiologist Vilayanar Ramachandran.

Crick maintains that the defining characteristic of human beings is their talent for expressing complex concerns through language. A group is held together largely through the language they hold in common, whether it be spoken or the written and diagrammatic languages of mathematics and science. Eugene Wigner maintained that The best reason for hope that our species is intellectually capable of continued future progress is our wonderful ability to link our brains through language...46, but he was by no means certain that human minds have the capability of creating ideas adequate to express nature's wonders as a totality. Eventually, this book will take a decidedly linguistic turn as language becomes the unifying instrument drawing science and spirituality together into a collective intelligence as real as a stereogram.

Remember that Crick presents his ideas concerning the brain as a hypothesis and not the certainty of dogma. This is what makes him a scientist ...as distinguished ..from a scientologist. He considers three possibilities regarding his hypothesis. The first is his astonishing hypothesis: you're nothing but a pack of neurons. The second possibility is that a perspective closer to a religious outlook will prove more credible. But it is the third possibility suggested which seems most likely: ... that the facts support a new, alternative way of looking at the mind-brain problem that is significantly different from the rather crude materialistic view many neuroscientists hold today and also from the religious point of view.47 I believe that the reconciliation of science and religion will be this third possibility, and the ground they share in common will be mystical.

The object of the art of mysticism is one's programmed mind. The objective of the artist is to refine this inner being, much the way a sculptor can touch our hearts of stone. The task of the mystical artist is to see the depth dimension of our stereogram reality, not to learn dogma. Experience ...not belief. We can be certain that human nature is evolving -- that we have a collective destiny; but unless we choose to follow these mysterious promptings from no-where, the meaning of our lives will remain hidden like some illusion. Religion describes mystical experience as ineffable -- without content. I am saying there can be content: one sees through the hoax of this politically repressive system and recognizes another reality, the kingdom of the masters that is super-imposed upon the propaganda world around us -- much as the Disappearing Bust Of Voltaire exists in the same space as the Slave Market in Dali's painting. We frequent that bazaar ourselves, where souls are bought and sold by the hour. The difference between brainwashing and mysticism is this: the brainwashed person is entranced, hypnotized by an external force, such as the Media-State; the mystic is able to change his own internal programming by means of self-hypnosis, by turning off the TV world and tuning in to his instinctive intelligence for guidance. What we seek as unique human beings is contact with our own deepest natural instincts, with an ordering principle which holds everything together, which exists through each of us, and gives continuity to our lives. This is neither rhetoric nor mere poetics. Before too much longer we will return to chaos theory and learn something of strange attractors and self organizing systems in nature. For now, let it suffice to say that something in this universe seems to hold us in relation to one-another.

Eccles believes that the self is a cohesive force within man, ordering his life and giving it meaning, direction and continuity. He argues that however disconnected the experience of a human being's life, one remains a cohesive self because of the continuity of human memory. There could be no elimination of a self and creation of a new self. Since materialist solutions fail to account for our experienced uniqueness, I am constrained to attribute the uniqueness of the self or soul to a supernatural spiritual creation...... This conclusion is of inestimable theological significance. It strongly reinforces our belief in the human soul and in its miraculous origin in a divine creation.48 It is unique individuality which Eccles argues necessitates concluding that the self is created by God. He rejects both genetic and environmental explanations for the development of identity. More important even than its own existence, this unique self points toward its Creator, both as the transcendent God Einstein acknowledged, and as the God we feel influencing our personal lives. What he then adds is quite surprising, for he expresses gratitude to the Creator for this marvelous Earth on which we live ,... each with our wonderful brain, which is ours to control and use for our memory and enjoyment and creativity and with love for other human selves.49 His emphasis on controlling one's brain is not the first thought that comes to mind when expressing a prayer of gratitude to God. It even suggests man can bring about his own salvation, without the intercession of a savior. It seems to me that Eccles is trying to introduce a rather radical idea on bended knee.... not a bad approach, and at least more sincere than Crick's genuflection. I believe that Eccles stretches the facts by over stating the capacity of mind to control the operations of the brain. He may be injudicious in appealing to traditional religious beliefs in a scientific context, but I believe that the awe he expresses is authentic as he bears witness, in the only words he knows, to the uncanny nature of the human brain itself. Eccles is by no means alone in recognizing the curious way in which creative people can apparently control the brain, at least to some degree. Like Ehrenwald, the psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig identifies a remarkable change taking place when artists get down to work. ...What is especially impressive about all these individuals is their ability to 'turn the power on' in their brains when they are involved in important tasks.50 In the event you want to know where all of this is heading, we are taking a turn toward creative genius.

Postmodernists would argue that the self does exist, but only within the context of language. So to the extent that I speak, I create myself in my own words. Words are largely the medium of my expression. I need words for the kind of thinking I do, and more so for writing. I have to speak aloud as I write, so that I can feel the music and hear the beat of the logic as others will. I must be an outsider to my own creation. This concept of no-self from Zen is very misleading for one who is a writer. The nature of religious experience in the West appears to be largely verbal because of Christianity's focus on God's Word. But this fascination with the Logos is of Greek and not Hebrew origin. Genius is flexibility personified, and is able to accommodate itself to language in a way that Asian mysticism does not. I am suspicious of a Tao which leads people to silence. Repressive governments like religions that teach the people to be quiet, to be passive, to be docile like sheep. The genius is a lion and not a sacrificial lamb. Isaiah Berlin has argued that the genius is a risk taker who does not know his limits; he trusts only his intuitions, and leaps ahead of the practical man of caution without a thought to compromise. Berlin suggests that 'in the case of seminal discoveries -- say of imaginary numbers, or non-Euclidean geometry, or the quantum theory -- it is precisely dissociation of categories indispensable to normal human experience, that seems to be required, namely a gift of conceiving of what cannot in principle be imagined nor expressed in ordinary language.' 51 Words must be overcome by reshaping language into a visual form of illusion, and composing a symphony of sounds which conveys an energy unknown to formal grammar. Genius seeks a way around both Wittgenstein and the Tao, uttering the impossible silence of the unspoken, while the masses oriented spirituality of Asia and the West teach submission to God's will ....meaning the authority of Church and State. We must be careful about importing the spirituality of the East into our souls wholesale; ultimately, we must create a Soul that is uniquely our own because spirituality is that feeling of belonging which holds us together. We are enslaved by the Jews today because our ancestors were injudicious about taking a foreign God into the heart of the European people. We can learn from other cultures, but our most urgent mission is to discover ourselves. That is why this book returns to the pre-Christian focus on genius, which was at the heart of ancient Greek culture before we lost our minds, before Jesus saved our souls. Earlier, it had meant spirit, the magical spirit of a jinni or more often the spirit of a nation. Duff and his contemporaries wished to identify genius with the godlike power of invention, of creation,...52 Thus, genius once referred to the spirit of a nation, to the creative intelligence of a whole people.

Genius is about profound change and total perspective. This sense of self Eccles refers to is a recognizable and very ordinary experience most people from our culture can identify. Eccles is not being forthright here in acknowledging the mystical nature of Einstein's God, nor recognizing the transcendence of self-consciousness characteristic of genius. This self Eccles is championing clearly is bound up with memory, and belief in God. It is this rational perception of God and self that Hawking and Dennett are attacking, and perhaps rightly so. Eccles does not have a profound enough sense for human identity and the collective dimension of consciousness. It is time for this old fashioned God and self to pass from the scene; Hawking and Dennett are well-suited undertakers for this mission. I don't mean to put Eccles down; he has done truly important work. I just think he is mistaken here because he forgets that memory can be lost, and along with it the self --- yet there remains a sense that everything holds together, not just my personal history, but all of creation; and it is this mystical sense of totality that replaces the self at the center of human consciousness by absorbing that personal identity into an infinitely wider collective awareness ....such as the universes of music, art, science, poetry, or sport.

It may help you to make sense of the mysticism in this book if you think of a mystic as a rather intelligent person who has figured out how to function in the world without much short term memory. This loss of self, which is so central to mystical thought, serves a practical purpose here. Mental confusion and instability are often times associated with memory problems. For those approaching the age of fifty, loss of memory is a very real concern. However, the brain can function at a very sophisticated level, even as memory loss may increase with aging. I would suggest that as people age, those who have not developed the custom of thinking logically are much more prone to becoming confused and forgetful than those who have. Writing this book has taught a logical discipline that has evaded me for well over forty years. It is possible to learn new ways of thinking which can make sense of complex experience, that are not heavily dependent on the kind of short term memory which may fail us sooner than we expect. If no-self is too mystical a concept to grasp, and losing your mind is too fearful to contemplate -- then let us think in terms of being absent-minded. The brain is plastic and forever capable of changing its own wiring; we may think of this activity of the mind re-programming the brain as mysticism. Spirituality enters our lives as we mature, and it does so in very intelligent and practical ways. The wise old man is a symbol that our culture would do well to remember.

I am no believer in gods and the mythology of religions, although I appeal to those themes as a means of awakening very real feelings that are still attached to ancient symbols ...much as physicists refer to quarks as though they really exist; my intent is to preserve spiritual feeling, not to defend Christian beliefs and the morality they imply. The brain is the source of spiritual wonder. Mystics through-out the ages have developed elaborate exercises to evoke the relaxation response. Meditation (Za-Zen), yoga, prayer, fasting, and self-chastisement all come to mind. Not long ago, the Jesuits still whipped themselves as part of their spiritual exercises, a harsh discipline originating with Ignatius Loyola -- a soldier turned missionary. This sort of thing can easily be taken too far and become distorted. Physiology is a prerequisite to spiritual experience. Mental effectiveness is strongly influenced by the level of tension in the muscles. Muscular tension is a very real source of physical pain and mental confusion. In my experience, swimming combined with a good-sized Finnish sauna has been a God-send, and is the most effective exercise for the tormented soul that I can imagine. I am completely convinced that I would never have matured as a mystic if it were not for this wet sauna (steam envelops the whole space as water is thrown on the hot stones). I was unable to practice this discipline for several weeks, and found that my mind and muscles were wound in knots. Once this exercise was resumed, my genius returned. The point here is that the spirit, the body, and one’s environment are a cohesive whole. It would be irresponsible not to mention that as I reached fifty it became necessary to minimize time spent in the sauna because of dehydration problems. What is therapy at thirty may be a harmful practice at the age of fifty ...so one must discover new ways of dealing with old-difficulties. Flexibility and not ritual is the standard of this very human spirituality. Everything has a wholeness about it, and once we can feel that, we can enter the circle of insight from which it becomes possible to solve a multitude of the problems that have over-whelmed us for too long.

In practical terms, this means we need to have a feeling for what we are doing. The observer must see the process -- feel the flow of events, and intuitively recognize his cue to step in ..... to join the dance, without losing the beat of the music: to anticipate what must come next because one has figured out, one has felt out the code to nature's rhythm. A step in the right direction might be to follow the lead of a photographer who knows to not wait for people to pose, but to catch them just before they are ready.... when they are still behaving naturally. Timing is everything, not just for photographers, comedians and trapeze acrobats, but for scientists too. Not being on time, but timing: not structure alone, but process as well. The scientist must learn the art of physics, and instinctively recognize the primacy of beauty adorning systematic logic; he must discover perfection in whatever he is doing, for this is the essential quality of all that is -- and it is this instinct for beauty which binds the observer emotionally to the ongoing process and allows him to feel what is happening -- to tune the mind: to synchronize one's internal relativistic clock with the rhythms around us. This is the secret which can unlock the deepest mysteries of nature, and keep the human mind light years ahead of the artificial intelligence of computers and uninspired scientists. This may sound like Holy Roller hysteria to you, but as we begin our study of genius it will become evident that human nature is as weird as quantum physics. Keep in mind that: It is never an easy call telling the Holy Rollers from the high rollers when the good timers are rocking and rolling in their joints.

Like Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman was strange, a curiosity to his more normal colleagues. Thought was an intensely physical experience which he needed to express in ways that would have branded a less brilliant person with the label disturbed. Those who did know him, tell how he rolled around on the floor of his Cornell University dormitory room mumbling the mysteries that occupied the full attention of a very physical intelligence that could not be confined to any concept of mind.53 Above all else, Feynman was an extraordinary teacher. His legendary lectures and diagrams have been essential to any who seriously have tried to visualize quantum mechanics. Feynman is reported to have had a remarkable imagination which enabled him to vividly daydream about zipping around sub-atomic worlds astride electrons, creating clear images in his mind of the most abstract concepts known to man.54 In part the process of scientific visualization is a process of putting oneself in nature: in an imagined beam of light, in a relativistic electron.55 But how does one imagine one's self inside some relativistic electron? Lights should start flashing, and bells ringing. Of course: stereograms! Think of the well known magic eye images, such as the wallpaper illusion. It is a flat picture of no interest. Stare at it a minute or so and it reveals a multi-dimensional in-sight, such as a heart or an animal concealed in the wild. It seems as though you can almost reach inside this flatland picture into another dimension. What has your brain done? Some people evidently are fearful of falling into this pop-out art; all they are willing to visualize is the boring wallpaper. Anyone of the scientific persuasion is certainly obligated to carry out this visual experiment. But obviously Feynman and others before and after him have not all been studying stereograms. The question is this: what are you doing when looking into a stereogram? Self-hypnosis! That’s what genius has been up-to for a long time. Throughout the ages, people have created lots of ways to hypnotize themselves, others, and entire nations. Freud understood this, and made hypnosis central to his psycho-analysis. Hitler's memory is so feared because he had the gift of mesmerizing multitudes of Germans through his ecstatic oratorical style. As with the Jews, any group that aspires to shape public opinion must have control over a complete range of the mass media. I am not advocating totalitarianism, only disclosing that tyrants employ mass hypnosis as a means of brain-washing entire populations. Like TV advertisers, they don't call it brain-washing; they hire psychologists who speak in very sophisticated terms about their latest variation on classical conditioning. So many of us out here in TV-land are trapped inside stereo sounds, illusory scenes, and are unconscious of the whole song and dance ...unwilling, unable to break the trance. This is what brain-washing is! Getting out entails encountering chaos. Better to be a robot-in-step then bewildered, right? Think again! This gives insight as to why the duality games of the Jews are so important. They define the boundaries of our imaginations and lock us inside a world they can control. My aim is to teach you how to break out of this joint. Given this understanding, please bear with my interest in off-the-wall subjects such as hypnosis, mysticism, madness, genius, collective consciousness, and racism.

I hypnotize myself by writing, and then reading the words back aloud again and again -- searching lines already written for the un-said ...re-writing all-the-time. This experience is mystical and as contagious as a love song; it is precisely this kind of emotional packing and out-pouring that has led me to conclude that human awareness is ultimately collective. Consider once again Dali's illusions or the stereograms. Notice that the process of shifting the I's focus so as to see the depth of the artistic mind seems to involve a kind of self hypnosis in which self-consciousness is suspended. The harder you try to see the vision, the more impossible it becomes. The trick to seeing it (besides starting with the picture flat against your nose and gradually moving it to arms length) is distracting your attention from what you are doing by talking about something entirely unrelated -- this is how psycho-analysis works; or listen to the music of someone you love speaking. You are doing something correctly only when you can do it so well that it is easy, or at least looks that way. Once your self-consciousness lapses, you are able to concentrate on this depth dimension of perception. Evidently what you are doing is learning to control how your brain works. You shift from using the left (verbal) to the right hemisphere; or even balancing both sides of the brain ...holding them together-while-apart in a tandem embrace -- the reason I suggest this is because depth vision is involved and this kind of perception appears to work only with two eyes. My technical explanation of this phenomenon may be simplistic or even inaccurate, but the basic thrust of what is Being-described is simply human experience -- it is phenomenological, not theological. The point is that we have a method for triggering mystical contemplation, a kind of trance. This was Dali's strength and weakness, his madness as well as his genius ...the self-transfiguring evolutionary instinct that got him so wrapped-up in multiple dimensions. If you see a picture of Dali, his eyes always look as though he is staring at something, that he is in a hypnotic trance. As we shall see, Dali was not unique in this affliction. Darwin's gardener is said to have responded once to a visitor who inquired about his master's health: 'Poor man, he just stands and stares at a yellow flower for minutes at a time. He would be better off with something to do.' Darwin's work was of an intangible nature which eluded people around him. Much of it consisted in just such standing and staring as his gardener reported. It was a kind of magic at which he excelled.56 This is basically what monks of long ago used to do when chanting psalms at four o'clock in the morning ...awaiting untimely visitation by the Eternal in the dead of night, or mystics meditating.... as in za-zen, staring, trance, autistic, catatonic, concentration, revelation, genius. This existential shift is very meaningful for those who are verbally-oriented. Some other spiritual discipline, such as long distance running, may be the exercise to your deliverance. You must strike-out on your own path to enlightenment. The objective seems to be to use both sides of our bilateral-brain, to use the whole brain. This idea is really quite staggering. The balanced brain seeks to perceive everything in depth, so much so that the observer is included inside this timeless multi-dimensional global vision, much in the way we may feel that we can fall in-two a depth dimensional illusion created by a skillful painter. The problem of observer and object is transcended not by an idea expressed in some formula, but by an actual change in how One perceives ..and is perceived by the world. My objective here is not to simply change your beliefs about God, yourself and nature, but rather to teach you how to change the way in which you encounter your own human Nature. This is the art of mysticism. In the 60's and 70's counter-culture heroes, like Bill Clinton, augmented their pacifist ideology with mind-altering drugs. Here, our objective is to use natural experience, even mental breakdown, to change our own minds about everything.

Think of the mind as the control center for human consciousness rather than as a mirror for admiring or judging your self. This is by no means an unfamiliar topic for most of us. Practices such as hypnosis, meditation and biofeedback have captured the popular imagination for thousands of years. My only point is to emphasize that methods of re-programming the brain are fairly well established, not merely in lunatic fringe cults, but in responsible scientific, medical, and religious traditions. Just as we have had to learn how to use our heads to solve mechanical problems in a practical world, and whip our bodies into shape, we must learn to use exercises to re-wire our brains so we might open new dimensions of collective consciousness. Evolution doesn't just happen passively; it is a creative struggle.

It is my own observation that the intensity of mystical experience is a consequence of new pathways being established in the brain during times of agonizing creative ordeals. One may have an unmistakable experience, preceded by years of confusion, in which well established, but inefficient habits of thought -- break down; one begins thinking in very logical patterns, where-as previously this has not been characteristic mental programming. It may be that for much of one's life, stepwise reasoning has been strained, even painful; unexpectedly, logical thinking simply happens and this feels like contact with the Mind of God. When a new circuit first opens up in the brain, this apparently causes a rush of sensation and a feeling of astonishing mental clarity and depth perception. One may not know the same rapture later while engaged in very concentrated reasoning, but the process is never-the-less characteristically self-reinforcing. When the energy of this transformation subsides, the change remains. It is also possible that the intense energy of the mystical experience is the cause for the new circuitry coming into Being. Either way, mystical experience serves a functional purpose heralding a breakthrough in perception, and this is no mere pipe dream. Try to recall these ideas when we discuss Ramachandran's brain research.

Throughout human history, artists, mystics, and those without names, have discovered the secret of self-induced hypnosis. They instinctively strive to re-create themselves. Whether we speak in terms of self-reflection, meditation, concentration or some variation on this theme, there is only one fact to be understood: Hypnosis results in the gradual assumption by the subject of a state of consciousness wholly dissimilar to either wakefulness or sleep, during which attention is withdrawn from the outside world and is concentrated on mental, sensory, and physiological experiences.57a Joseph Campbell recognized The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Shakespeare wrote of A rose by any other name... The cultures of the world have created a multitude of symbols and sacred images to describe the same basic experience. We become confused because we fail to see the simplicity of human Nature. We fail to grasp the fact of the One-experience which goes-by a myriad of names. So the creative scientist, the mystic, the poet, the musician, the psychic, the Zen monk, the prophet, the genius, the natural athlete, etc. etc. and the moderately schizophrenic as-well -- are all encountering the same phenomenon: timeless hours when human Nature is without the burden of self-consciousness. The duality of schizophrenia is very revealing. The human being is discovering his other side -- everything he is not, so that he might become whole, so that he might belong.

Ehrenwald discusses the importance of children being trained to develop ambidextrous sensory-motor skills57b. Learning to use both hands is important because to do so requires that we alter the way we are accustomed to favoring one side of the bilateral brain. Musical instruments augment this practice by introducing the quantum element of feeling. The boxer exercises his weaker arm. The surgeon must use both hands together, to recognize them as one instrument and not view them as two hands -- just as we use our eyes together and not separately. We have got to stop seeing double, stop counting ...to stop and smell the roses and hear the sound of oneness clapping. By learning to use the hands together, the conscious human being trains his brain to set up new and stronger neural pathways for this particular function. Repeated thoughts and reactions become 'hard-wired' into consciousness in the form of 'neuro-physiological reflexes.' 58 The brain is plastic and adaptive. The point is not simply to be able to use the two sides of your brain: What is of consequence is the depth of vision that results from exercising the brain's duality. Duality is just another name for complementarity -- the hallmark of the quantum world. Wholeness, unity arises out of this apparent split. This is the kernel of Jewish genius and their authority over us! This is how their brains work, how they think! ...attacking from the left and from the right, capitalists from above and communists from below. We must be narrow minded, but not in the way we think. Their power comes from a hidden duality ...which my words are repeatedly trying to evoke; but once deprived of the advantage of their concealed totalitarian game-plan, this empire of illusions would not deceive anyone. Bringing them out of concealment changes everything. Complementarity is the essence of Jewish mystical thought, and is so fundamental that exposure of this mystery makes it possible to understand them as readily as they understand us. My objective is to disclose how this duality operates through the way I write ...so the duplicity of the Jews will become familiar. Making chosen methods commonly recognized weakens their grip on us in a truly meaningful way. Most of us are specialists: I am a mathematician, a businesswoman, a chemist, a soldier, an athlete ... and I don't really think much about philosophy, politics, and spirituality. I am a writer, a teacher, an artist, a clergyman, a craftsman ..... and I don't really understand much about the complexities of engineering, modern technology, or computer networks .... . But the Jews do! They focus on the whole picture, on the One God who sees all. I don't know how many times or from how many different directions we can focus on this one still point: Everything fits together.... including you the observer within a cohesive quantum relativistic reality. We are in the mess we are in today because scientists don’t intuitively know what they are doing, nor do they care about our common environment, and the social implications of their technical work. They are just robots following orders. People in the humanities are so politically correct they have nothing of consequence to say to anybody. We must become beginners in that which we are not: challenge our own fundamental point of view. There is far more to gain than you can believe.

What is most critical to understand is that there are ideas which deepen into an amazing intensity of beauty and organization. Feynman noticed that the deeper a thing is, the more interesting it becomes.59 This is a consequence of the wrapped concentration depth perception necessitates in order to see the wholeness of stereoscopic mystical vision. Such perception is much more than an interesting insight. The idea and the emotion that accompany it are astonishing. The stereogram is a good illustration of a fascinating experience that just continues to expand until it draws you into itself like the totalitarian God of the Jews. Still another is an awareness this book is moving toward ever so gradually: collective consciousness. Once you discover such a revelation, it reshapes your perception of everything. This kind of occurrence is not common place. It is genius. Einstein began such a rare transforming passage about the age of four when he first encountered a magnetic compass. This uncanny turn of events set the course for his life's work. Prior to his discovery of relativity theory, Einstein reports 'There was a feeling of direction, of going straight toward something definite.60 But what is this feeling of direction? It is a homing instinct which promises fulfillment, the gift of seeing one's world whole. As Crick suggested, this instinct is the origin of man's religious nature.