[Music]
Rick Archer - Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump.
Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people.
My name is Rick Archer.
We've done nearly 700 of these now.
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My guest today is Ruth E. Kastner. Ruth is a physicist, she earned her MS in physics
and PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Maryland.
Since that time, she has taught widely and conducted research in foundations of physics,
particularly in interpretations of quantum theory.
She was one of three winners of the 2001 Alumni Research Award at the University of Maryland
College Park, and she's the author of three books, The Transactional Interpretation of
Quantum Theory, the Reality of Possibility, Understanding Our Unseen Reality, Solving
Quantum Riddles, and Adventures in Quantum Land, Exploring Our Unseen Reality. She has
presented talks and interviews throughout the world and in video recordings on the
interpretational challenges of quantum theory and has a blog at transactionalinterpretation.org,
which I'll link to from her Batgap page. She's also a dedicated yoga practitioner and received
her 200-hour Yoga Alliance Instructor Certification in February 2020. So, welcome Ruth.
Ruthie Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
David It's good to have you. Now, you actually typify
the reason I wanted to do this interview with you, which is that a lot of people are interested in
both spirituality and physics. Now, unlike most of them, you really understand physics.
And you know, your books are very interesting, but a lot of the material is way over my head.
I have no training in physics, but I'm well aware, and I've done it myself and still do
it, that people who are interested in spirituality often make reference to quantum mechanics or
some other principle in physics to illustrate and hopefully substantiate some spiritual
concept. So, I have a whole list of such spiritual concepts that I want to talk about with you,
but before we get into that, let's just talk about you a little bit more. Have you been
practicing yoga a long time and been interested in such things for a long time?
Actually, I was into gymnastics early in my life. So, physical fitness is important to
me and being kind of comfortable with my body, feeling like a unified being, both body and
mind has always been really important to me. When I did the yoga training, it was kind of
from a position of ignorance. So, I, you know, I'm kind of later in life, I thought, I think
This is just something I want to...
I was doing a little yoga and I had taken some yoga classes, so I wasn't a complete beginner,
but I wasn't really, you know, the advanced level that you usually think of, a yoga teacher.
But I thought, you know, it was a very welcoming course.
I was living in upstate New York near Saratoga Springs at the time, and there was a studio
that was very welcoming and they offered a teacher training course that didn't have formal
prerequisites, and they just let you know, "Look, you know, this is going to be fairly
demanding.
broaden your yoga understanding, whatever we suggest. If you're not really a seasoned
yoga practitioner, get into it. And it was very challenging for me and I really enjoyed
it and learned a lot. And I got a little bit of a shoulder injury from overdoing it. So
in a sense, I didn't quite have the prerequisites, but for me, it was a crash course and really
fascinating fun. I learned a lot about the yoga philosophy, the Tanjali Sutras and so
So it was a very good well-rounded course and just kind of fit into my general interests that way.
Good. I was going to ask you actually if you had gotten into the philosophical
dimensions of it and read Patanjali and all, so you just answered that.
And I should say actually I was a long time TM practitioner. I'm a TM City, although I'm fairly
lapsed in that regard. So that's one reason I was also interested in yoga and had been exposed to
the yoga sutras through that program. Okay, yeah, I was a TM teacher. In fact, I used to teach all
over New York State back in '72, '73. Interesting. I said it wrong, I said "ha." I'm not a "sid-he."
I'm a "sid-ha." Yeah, I know what you mean. Me too.
Okay, why don't you, keeping in mind the general educational level of our audience with regard to
of physics, which is probably something like mine, pretty meager. Why don't you give us
an overview of what your work has been all about and how you feel it dovetails with spirituality,
if you feel it does?
Okay, sure. Well, I actually got into physics, not a spiritual angle at all. My family was
very agnostic and you might even say physicalist, materialist, scientist. So, my father was a
solar physicist. Well, what I got from him was a fascination with light. He very kindly would
expose his kids to things like he'd bring a spectroscope home. This is a little device
that has a prism in it, it breaks up the light into the colors of the rainbow. And of course,
that just grabbed me and I thought that was magical. So that was kind of my motivation
in a sense for getting into physics. I did some other things, I did art and music, but
I came back to physics, you know, I guess it's a family thing.
But that was my motivation.
I just thought light was fascinating.
It grabbed me and I wanted to learn about electromagnetism, which is the field that underlies light.
So in the course of doing my physics degree, I came across these quantum paradox, the non-locality
and these kinds of issues.
And then that sort of grabbed me.
By the time I finished up my master's, I really wanted to learn more about that.
And I discovered that in the philosophy department, they had this program called the Committee on the History and Philosophy of Science.
And in that group, they were really studying what's called foundations of physics.
So they were really focusing in on kind of what are the philosophical implications of quantum theory and these strange phenomena.
phenomena, whereas the physics department was much more, you know, we want to do predictions,
we want to test theories, and they weren't so much interested in the philosophical implications.
So that's why I ended up in that area.
It was in doing my PhD in that program that I came across the transactional interpretation
that was originally proposed by John Kramer, and that grabbed me because I think that it
It had this sort of intriguing backward in time character that seems very counterintuitive
and yet seems to be very effective in deriving certain things like the rule for the probability
of outcomes.
In quantum theory, basically you have, it's called the Born rule, it's named after Max
Born who was one of the founders of quantum theory.
And it tells you, well, what is the probability that if you do a measurement of something you
want to observe, it's called an observable, like momentum or spin or something like that,
what is the probability that I'm going to get any particular result?
So this rule is kind of ad hoc in the usual theory.
Again, it's a thing that works, but people are not really sure where it came from, why
do we have this rule, and so on.
And the transactional interpretation had the advantage of explaining that rule in a theoretically
substantive way. So even though it had what seems like, and I'm going to say what seems
like backward in time effects, I thought, okay, well, look, if this is what it takes
to make this theory make more sense and not be so ad hoc, maybe nature's trying to tell
us something. That was kind of my feeling. So that's why I started to explore this transactional
picture. So, with that as a kind of a place to start, maybe you have other questions?
Rick Crammond Okay. And also the audience, we have about
100 people on now, there'll probably be more. You can feel free to send in questions too
about any of this. You know, you mentioned you were in the TM movement. Are you aware
of John Hagelin?
Dr. Deborah Taft Oh, yes, we've met. He participated in a
conference in Los Angeles at, what is the name of the college, where a group of physicists at...
Pete: The San Diego area? Manasseh Capital?
Mary: No, it was LA, Chapman College.
Pete: Chapman, yeah, that's where Manasseh Capital is.
Mary: Manasseh, yes, he's a lovely guy and he, thank you, he organized a conference and John
Hagelin was there and I was there, we, you know, a number of us presented some things. And I think
your original question was, you know, what is the connection with spirituality, possibly? If you
want, I can kind of try to... Well, yeah, I was going to ask him. First of all, I was John Hagelin's
TM teacher when he was in high school and lying in a body cast in the school infirmary, but that's a
whole other story. Oh my goodness! But he wrote an article years ago called, "Is Consciousness the
Unified Field?" And he argued that he felt that there was an equivalence between the unified field
those physics attempts to understand it, and consciousness as it's been traditionally understood
in Eastern spirituality. So, you could use that as a springboard if you want.
DG The issue of consciousness, I mean, ultimately, on a very ultimate level, one could certainly
propose that, and I think it would be consistent with physical theory, so-called physical theory,
you know, quantum theory. The connection, I think, with, I'm going to call it TI, transactional
interpretation for short, as I've been developing it, is that properly understood TI, and actually
standard quantum theory in a sense, really implies if we want to take a realist approach
to the theory. In other words, if we want to say, well, this theory is describing the
world. Okay. Quantum theory itself has this very strange mathematical structure, this
abstract, complex, it's called Hilbert space. And it's clearly not a space-time kind of structure.
So if we want to be realist about that, meaning if we want to say this theory is referring to
something in the world, then that to which it refers is not three plus one real valued space
time. That's just kind of a straightforward inference. So what we have then is the picture
in which quantum theory is saying to us, like a finger pointing at the moon, it's like saying,
"Okay, here's what I'm pointing to. You can either say I'm..." The theory's talking now.
"You can either say I'm just an instrument for predicting what you're going to experience,
or you could say that I'm reflecting the structure of reality. And if I'm doing that, then it's got
a very strange sort of abstract structure that I view as possibilities, potent possibilities
that truly exist at a level that goes beyond the space-time phenomenal level. So that you
can kind of see an opening for spiritual pursuits in that, you know, people who are doing spiritual
inquiry are entertaining concepts and experiences that clearly transcend our usual concrete,
mundane space-time world. So, there's a parallel there.
Rick Right, and so, you know, in the, let's say
the Vedanta tradition, the idea is that consciousness is fundamental, and some would say the world
arises from it. Vedanta would actually be a bit more radical and say the world doesn't
to rise, it just appears to arise. They use the analogy of perceiving a rope on the ground
and thinking it's a snake, and then you eventually realize it was only a rope. So, where did
the snake go? It didn't go anywhere. There never was a snake. So, the understanding is
that the universe is sort of a fabrication, which is ultimately illusory, and that it's
actually all consciousness. This microphone, our bodies, everything else is just consciousness
through some kind of perhaps self-interacting mechanism, appearing as concrete stuff.
Symmetry breaking to the point where we have all this huge diversity out of total unity.
Right, and that is exactly the picture that you get in the transactional formulation.
I'll elaborate on that in a minute, but another issue that I'm dealing with is that
the standard formulation of quantum theory actually is flawed in that it does not have
this transactional character and that there's kind of a long story that goes with that that
gets into some technical issues but if you want to put it in terms of yin and yang just
to kind of get an overview of what's the deal here. Standard quantum theory inherits this
Yang picture of the sort of Western autonomous Yang thing, you know, where Yang is like the
initiating, creating process, whereas Yin is a receiving, responding kind of process.
And the Western metaphysical approach does not know about Yin, does not see Yin. It sees
only Yang. So its field theories are Yang theories. And in the Yang theory of field,
formal quantum fields, you can never get this, what you just called, symmetry-breaking, crystallization,
manifestation at the phenomenal level, which I would say is not illusory. It's just simply
a different form of being. I'm kind of going off in a number of different directions here,
but in the short answer there would be, there was a rope, something happened to transform
that rope into a snake, perhaps, at a phenomenal level, but it could also transform back into
a rope. So you have this sort of dance of quantum possibilities that really do manifest,
create space-time events, create a phenomenon that's really there, in a sense. It has a
physical counterpart, so it's not wholly subjective, but it's not the whole story, and it's not
as concrete as we think. Right. We always hear that, "Oh, well, that which appears to be
concrete is really 99.999999% empty space." In fact, I heard about some physicist who got
a little bit mentally unbalanced, and he was afraid to walk across his living room floor
because he was afraid he might fall through because he realized how empty everything actually
is. Yeah, if you start thinking of the quantum
possibilities, then the concreteness seems to vanish, and yet, paradoxically, and I make
this point in my book, Understanding Our Unseen Reality, paradoxically, possibility is the
strongest thing in the world because it's what keeps atoms stable. If we didn't have
quantum possibility, everything would just collapse in on itself, there'd be no structure
at all. So, it's an ironic thing, and if, you know, in an atom, the more you try to compress
the electron so-called cloud, because this is the non-locality, this is the indeterminacy.
The more you try to localize it, the harder it's going to push back on you. So, the physicists
needn't have been worried. Possibilities will support you.
Interesting. Let me understand a little bit better what you mean by possibility. I've
often heard the idea of consciousness being an infinite unbounded field, which is a field
of all possibilities, a kind of like an ocean of anything goes, all possibilities, and that
as it manifests, the possibilities diminish, the more concrete or manifest the creation
becomes, and eventually become very isolated and localized. Anything can happen in the
field of consciousness, but a rock can only do so much.
Right, right. Yeah, and one part of this issue then is that quantum theory, I would say, really can only address perhaps a subset of what we would consider this field of all possibilities.
Quantum theory is not addressing my particular thoughts running through my head at any given time, like what should I have for dinner or something.
As far as I know, there's nothing that quantum theory can tell us about that.
So it's more of a restricted, I mean, what we would say is that Hilbert space,
which is the structure of the quantum possibilities,
refers to a subset of all possible processes.
It just refers to specific things like the elementary particles with which we're familiar in physics.
physics. So I think it would be kind of overstating physical theory. It would be overstating the
parallel to say, well, physical theory refers to the field of consciousness and so on, because
we don't really know that. I mean, it might, but there are very specific quantum fields.
There are, you know, the fields that correspond to the electron and so on. So an electron
isn't my thought of a purple rhinoceros. So there are many more conceptual possibilities
in that totality than quantum theory can really address.
A couple of questions came in from Elizabeth in Colorado. Let me just hit you with those
and then we'll continue on. She's asking, regarding using quantum theory not only to
predict experimental results but also to describe reality, what is your definition of reality?
Well, insofar as physical theory is concerned, what I feel I've learned from studying quantum
theory is that reality is, yeah, again, I use this image of an iceberg. There's a lot
of it that's submerged, and then there's just the little tip sticking out. So in terms of
physical theory, I think of it that way, that the whole iceberg is real, ontologically, meaning
the term means, what exists, what really exists. I think that the tip of that iceberg represents
that space-time phenomenal concrete realm of mundane reality, and the submerged portion
represents these quantum possibilities, and those are completely real. They're just as real as,
if not more so, than the phenomenal level. So that's kind of a physical term.
Sometimes when I hear people say, "Well, the world is an illusion," the way I come to terms with that is that it doesn't mean that there's nothing there.
It just means that we really don't interpret it properly, or we only, like your iceberg analogy, we're only sort of seeing the tip of it, and there's so much more reality to it that we don't comprehend or apprehend.
Yeah, and here I think the online role-playing games, the MMORPGs, and I know about these
because my daughters are both gamers, that's a wonderful analogy. And the analogy goes like
this. The users are sitting in their houses with their, you know, computers and they've
got their computer screen and that's their point of view, their POV. And they have an
avatar that runs around in some environment in the game. But they are not their avatar.
playing this game. Now the game POV is analogous to space-time. So it's important in that if
your avatar is running around in some zone and you fall off a cliff, you know, your avatar
is going to incur damage. And if you want to, if you have some goal you want to achieve,
you know, you're going to be held back in your goal or in or so on. So it's kind of a
user interface that allows you to get around and do stuff, but you don't really live there.
I think of the space-time realm is the same way. It's a POV.
Our brain kind of has a user interface with
what we call space-time. And it's not that space-time
is totally illusory. It's important. It's consequential.
And it's a form of reality, but it's only representational.
And it's a map. So it has the limitations of any map.
It cannot show you the full territory. Yeah.
You know how some people say that, well, the world gets created because we perceive it.
And I think, well, wait a minute, let's say there's a tree. Now, a cow, a bat, a snake, a human,
a dog, all these beings could be perceiving the very same tree. And obviously, they perceive it
each very differently. But there's something there that doesn't depend upon their perceiving it to
exist. Right, that's anti-realism and the fallacy in that. Now, somebody can be anti-realist if they
want. But it's an option. It's not forced upon us. And a good way to see this is in
terms of the allegory of the blind men and the elephant. And many times this is
kind of what's driving that the anti-realist narrative is the idea that
each of the blind men has a different theory about what they're dealing with
and they erroneously conclude from that that there's no elephant. But I'm sorry
there's actually an elephant there. You know, it's just that the nature of the
elephant is such that it cannot fit into any particular map corresponding to the abilities
of each of those blind men. So, in order to develop a theory about something, we need
to perceive it, and our perceptions and our knowledge and our conceptual toolbox is perhaps
limited. It doesn't follow that there's no elephant there. So that's a mistake. It's
certainly there. The elephant doesn't need any of the blind men. It doesn't need any
of their theories, it's perfectly fine. Yeah, sometimes I think with regard to this argument,
I think, okay, does the moon exist because there are people around the world perceiving it? All
right, well, what if everybody in the world suddenly went blind for some reason? Would the
moon disappear? Oh, but you could still go to the ocean and stick your toes and feel the tide coming
in. Are your toes creating the moon because you feel the tide coming in? Yeah. That's absurd.
Now, the reason we got into that kind of silliness is because the standard theory cannot explain
what a measurement is. It cannot explain the transformation of quantum possibilities into
actualities. And again, that's where the transactional formulation helps, because it feels that, it
says, fields are behaving in a different way. They're actually mutually responding. There's
a response that's crucial. The yin element of field activity is crucial. And when you
have that theory of fields, then the phenomenon of the moon is always there. It's like the
elephant. The moon is always there. And the standard theory to kind of use this elephant
metaphor cannot explain why anyone ever can see a moon. It can't really account for that.
So it's just, oh, we have to have an observer. That's what we have to have an observer. And
then we'll be able to get a result. We'll be able to say that the moon exists. But again,
that's also to kind of conflate existence with the tip of the iceberg level. And so it's
just this idea that Bohr fell into also. It's because the standard theory could not tell
you what is it at the quantum level that gives a specific result at the space-time level corresponding
to there's a moon there. That's probably kind of glossing over some technical things.
But we got we got a gloss if we got too technical.
Are you alluding to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle with a two-slit experiment where
it becomes a particle once it's observed, which a lot of spiritual people interpret to mean that
the world becomes concrete because we're observing it. I'm not sure that they're
correct in making that assumption? Kind of, yes. I guess the better analogy here is the Schrödinger
cat experiment, that the standard theory, that's actually an anomaly for the standard theory,
because it's got this deterministic Yang only character that you get these superpositions at
the quantum level, and if you don't have any specific process that tells you where your
superposition ended, why you got one or the other, then the superposition propagates endlessly
out to the macroscopic level and it's absurd. And then someone has to kind of go, "Okay,
when a conscious observer comes along and opens the box, then that they collapse, that's quantum
state." So that's just a band-aid. Resorting to the idea of a conscious observer is kind
of a band-aid and it doesn't work because then you get this infinite regress of like,
what counts as a conscious observer. Yeah, and how did we get a universe to begin
with when it was probably billions of years before there could actually be
sentient life? Right, exactly. This is the measurement problem, and so the
measurement problem is sort of arriving at spirituality and consciousness
through the measurement problem, I would say, is not the right way to get an
implication from quantum theory, because that's like the defective form of the
And in fact, I've written about and published papers on how the transactional picture very specifically and quantitatively tells you how a so-called measurement happens.
The symmetry breaking, the crystallization, the transformation of possibility to actuality really happens in the proper formulation of the theory.
So the hand wave to consciousness, it doesn't really work anyway because you can't define what counts as a conscious system.
system. And, you know, you get into inconsistencies and flagrant failure if you do that. So, I
think that the legitimate parallel is again to this idea that there are these two levels
of reality. One is the more phenomenal level, and the other is the subtle level of possibilities.
Now, let's break that down a little bit, and we do have another question from Elizabeth
that I'm going to ask, but it seems to me that it's not either/or, it's more like a spectrum
where there are subtler and subtler and subtler levels, which at least in terms of the consciousness
model, I'm not sure how that would translate into physics, and then there's an unmanifest
level which is beyond the subtlest. It's said in spiritual circles that in these subtle realms,
we have astral and celestial phenomena, you know, ghosts or celestial beings or stuff that you can't
see with the ordinary surface level of perception.
And then there's the whole idea of, I don't know if this relates, I might be jumping here,
but there's a whole idea of dark matter and dark energy which comprises most of the universe,
which physics doesn't understand what that is.
So I mean, I wonder if there's some corollary between the fact that our perception is just
on the very surface of life most of the time, for most people, and there's so much more
that we don't perceive, and in terms of the universe itself, we can only perceive a small
fraction of what we know exists because we can't perceive dark matter or dark energy.
We can only infer their existence from, you know, certain mathematical calculations.
From the TM tradition, I remember, you know, the bubble diagram. Yeah, the bubble diagram.
There we go. And I guess I would have to say that physical theory probably deals only with
the very upper part of that bubble diagram. I would sort of take quantum theory. And again,
I'm kind of not sure about this, but my sense is that that's a more manifest form of reality
already so that I don't think that physical theory is even getting at these, what one
might call the astral level or these much more subtler levels.
So there may be this subtle gradation that you talked about, but once you get to the
kind of systems described by quantum theory, there's a lot more structure there, even though
know they're possibilities, they're not space-time objects. And at that point, what we have, at
least what the theory seems to say, the transactional formulation seems to say, is that these are
well-defined possibilities that exist, like the elephant exists, okay? They cannot all
be phenomenally experienced by the five senses, but there's a specific process that transforms
some of them into, again to use the game analogy, into something you might see in your POV.
You know, "Oh, I just ran into that tree."
Okay, well a particular possibility in the game program just got actualized for you.
So that's really what we're dealing with here.
I should say, as far as dark matter and dark energy, I have a publication with a colleague
of mine where we argue that the positing of these substances, dark matter and dark energy,
actually ad hoc devices that are based on weaknesses in the standard theory, the non-transactional
standard cosmological theory that cannot explain, you know, certain things like galaxy rotation
rates. And actually, if you take into account this actualization process that happens in
in TI, you actually get a formulation of general relativity where you don't need to posit
dark matter and dark energy.
You get the phenomena that you see.
It predicts these rotation curves that are deviating from the standard theory.
So I just kind of need to point out there that the orthodox position is, yeah, dark
matter and dark energy exist, but that's just a theory and it's just kind of those are ad
ad hoc substances that are put out there because of anomalies in the standard theory.
Rick: Very interesting. Wow. In my next life I want to be a physicist. Okay, let's get
Elizabeth's second question in here and then we'll go on to other things. So, her question
is, "How does non-locality coexist with Newtonian causal mechanisms? Is it related
somehow to what we might consider miraculous events? Amit Goswami refers to two levels
of causation, upward causation which aligns with materialist assumptions and moves from
atoms to molecules to cells, and downward causation in which consciousness is seen as
foundational.
Well, non-locality really applies to that part of reality, the submerged portion of
the iceberg.
So you have in the possibilities, in the realm of possibilities, they are not limited by space-time
because once again, that realm of possibilities is like the user playing the game in their
house.
They can put the game on pause, they can go get a cup of coffee and come back and then
start interacting again as their avatar and do things that show up in the POV.
So that's kind of how non-locality plays in.
Give us an example of non-locality.
that the thing where you could have two particles on the opposite sides of the galaxy and...
So there's no actual space-time distance in quantum land, what I call quantum land. So
you can have sets of what we call particles, they're not localized necessarily, so I don't
like to call them particles, but just like quantum systems that are correlated, that
are in a particular collective state, such that whatever sort of measurement is done
on one of them has consequences as far as the kinds of probabilities of outcomes you're
going to get on its partner.
So you can have an experiment where you send these guys off to opposite ends of the galaxy
and one experimentalist measures one of them and the other one measures the other one and
they find these correlations that can't be explained in the usual local manner about what
she called the Newtonian manner.
So no, Newtonian physics cannot explain that. It cannot explain that at all, because it does
not allow for really this level of possibility in which you have connections ongoing that
seem to violate relativity theory that governs space-time phenomena, but they don't really
because they're going on in the submerged portion. Only the tip of the iceberg, metaphorically
speaking, is subject to relativity.
Okay, so you're saying that the tip of the iceberg is limited by, let's say, the speed
of light, and so there's no way that particles on opposite sides of galaxies are going to
respond to one another in anything under a hundred thousand years time, but that there
is a manifest or submerged reality which is not constrained by the laws of physics that
operate on more superficial levels, such as the speed of light.
Right, and in fact, the subtle point here is that these quantum systems are actually always
in the submerged portion. Anything that has rest mass never actually comes out of this
portion. What happens is you have specific interactions that give rise to events. The
events are in the tip of the iceberg. So once again, it's like your cup of coffee remains
in your house and your hands manipulating your mouse while you play your game. They never
are actually in the game, they're not in the game environment. That's the parallel here.
So what we call space-time is the structured set of happenings that happen in your user
interface only. They're not happening in your house. There's nothing in your house corresponding
to you running into a tree. There are phenomena. That's the only thing that's in space-time.
Events. So there are events, but events are not the systems themselves. We usually think,
"Oh yeah, everything's in a space-time container." But actually, no, nothing's really in a space-time
container. Phenomena, events, phenomenal events, and they need not be seen by any particular
entity, but they are still events.
So they are events, but they are beyond space-time.
That's the only thing space-time is, and again, ironically, what we call space-time has neither
space nor time in it.
It's just a set of events connected by photons.
It's like a bunch of tinker toys, if you will, connected by light, and it's just a map.
Some people could say, well, maybe it doesn't really exist in a sense.
One could interpret it that way.
I think of it as, yeah, there's a structured set of events, and that is what space-time
is.
only invariant thing about the space-time manifold, and Einstein said that himself. He said space-time
is what he called point coincidences. That's all I mean when I say event. And the term
space and time refer to our maps that we bring with us, they're like reference frames that
we bring with us, like if I'm in my house, I'm like, I got my watch, okay. So in a sense,
kind of a form of time that applies at the quantum level, and that corresponds to what
we call proper time in relativity. But technically, I know I'm kind of throwing a lot at you,
it's all in my books. What I'm talking about right now is discussed in Chapter 8 of my
second edition, 2022 of my Cambridge University Press book. Chapter 8 discusses this, that
the ironic thing is that what we call space-time, it's not a container, stuff doesn't exist
in it, it's a set of events that's the only thing that's invariant about space-time. It's like it's
almost not there. Just like your user interface, their attention is on it. Like all the players
are like, "Oh my god, look, I gotta get that scarab beetle, I gotta do this, I gotta do that."
And they're really into it. They're like, "But actually, no, none of your objects really exist
there." Right. Which is reminiscent of the way some supposedly enlightened people have described
their experience. The world is just this ephemeral sheen of faint remains of ignorance on the surface
of a vast totality of consciousness. In fact, in Vedanta, they sometimes use the analogy that
when you're totally ensconced in the world and not enlightened, it's like you have a big wad of
butter in your hands. And then eventually you get enlightened and you throw off the butter,
but there's still a greasy surface on your palms because you were holding the butter.
and that's called "leisure video" which is said to mean "faint remains of ignorance" which is said to
be necessary if you're going to live in the world. You have to sort of take the world somewhat
seriously. Sure, it's consequential. Right, and you know, obviously it's more painful to
go wrong in our reality than in a game, but it's a good analogy. If you think of enlightenment,
and I don't know that this is, you know, I'm not enlightened, much as I'd like to be. I've had a
a rough year and I'm dealing with a lot of challenges, but my particular user interface has really
been a pain in the neck lately and I'm like, I'm really in there, I'm like, oh no, now this
happened, oh my god, what do I, you know. Those events are consequential if you're playing
the game. And now maybe we have a reason to play the game. Maybe we need to be involved
in this particular game. But again, if you kind of notice, oh wait a second, I can put
this game on pause and get a cup of coffee or whatever, that it's not the totality of
reality. Yeah, I think when we put the game on pause and go get a cup of coffee is when
we die and then get a...
Or just meditate.
Come back to your body. Yeah, meditate. In a way death because you transcend individuality.
So you studied philosophy of science, which you know I find very interesting. I took a
course in which we studied Thomas Kuhn's book for a month, was it the structure of scientific
revolutions and paradigm shifts and all that.
You said at one point in your book that the assumption that space-time encompasses all
of reality is a stumbling block to the acceptance of the new scientific revolution or new paradigm,
just as the experience that the sun and everything else orbits the earth was a stumbling block
to the acceptance of the heliocentric model of astronomy.
So a lot of people feel that the world is a mess because we have a fundamentally upside
down understanding of reality.
In fact, there's a guy I interviewed named Mark Gober who wrote a book called The End
to Upside Down Thinking.
And he basically presented all the arguments in favor of consciousness being fundamental
and everything else being more epiphenomenon of consciousness rather than consciousness
being an epiphenomenon of the brain.
And I think you can extrapolate from this upside-down thinking to understand why the world has so
many problems.
We view the world as inert material stuff.
We view people as being these transitory things and once the body dies, that's the end of
it, you don't exist anymore.
We don't see the intelligence that's shimmering in every little particle of creation.
We think we can do anything to the environment as if it were just dead matter and not a living
reality and so on and so forth.
So that's the world we structure.
Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
And I think that a consciousness first philosophy or God first, if you want to put it that way,
if you want to think of pure consciousness as being divine intelligence, if that were
our orientation or perspective, we would structure all of our political, economic, business,
environmental, agricultural, etc. systems completely differently.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, clearly, you know, as you've laid out, our Western materialist worldview
has dire social consequences, and in particular, you know, the Cartesian dead matter paradigm
and Democritan atoms in the void just clunking around, you know, and that obviously there's
no meaning in that. Obviously, if you want to have any sort of meaning in a metaphysical
picture like that, you got to be ad hoc about it, you know, because your ontology doesn't
support meaning. So yes, I definitely agree with that. And I think the other toxic element
of that dead matter picture is again this Yang only, you know, along with the dead matter
goes this Yang only idea where the only thing that's real, the only thing that counts, the
only thing that's seen and the only thing that's significant is the tennis serve, the
unilateral metaphorically speaking tennis serve, that one entity can unilaterally put
stuff out there and do stuff in this autonomous way. And that's why we have the measurement
problem in the standard theory that still isn't fixed because that's part of one of the core
beliefs. If you have a picture of field interaction that involves yin, that sees yin, that makes
yin, that allows yin to be in there, and it can be very easily be in there in the mathematics,
And that's actually the most general natural approach to field theory.
It's actually eliminated in an ad hoc way.
Richard Feynman was one of the ones who did this, brilliant guy, but what he did was he
said we're going to take these fields, I don't like this non-local character.
He initially started with this great theory that would have worked, that is actually transactionally
the basis of the transactional picture, and that was the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory.
But then he decided he didn't want to work with that anymore.
And then he got into this standard approach where he says, "We're going to impose causality."
And God, I just causality hammer.
And he said, "Okay, my field theory is now going to be causal because that's what I see
in my user interface.
It's going to be causal, darn it."
And in a very ad hoc way, he created what's called the Feynman propagator that is now
canon in field theory.
And this is Yang.
It's a pure Yang.
"Okay, I'm just going to, in an ad hoc way, take out my causality stamp and say, 'This is the way fields work.'
And now you have the measurement problem and, you know, you have stuff that doesn't work."
So, before Feynman and, you know, people who thought that was a good idea and went along with him,
and there's something about it that makes sense, but the ad hoc nature of it doesn't.
But people thought, "Okay, well, we need to have this kind of propagator because we want causality.
That's what we want."
Nature's like, "Wait a minute, what about me?"
And they're like, "Well, we don't care about nature.
We want what we want."
But if you look at the math, the most general solution is a non-local one in which charged
particles are non-locally in communication all the time.
And it's not causal in the Yang sense, in that autonomous Yang.
Bucket brigade, I call it sort of a bucket brigade.
It's not causal.
But if you allow for that, and that allows this Yin component to enter where fields are
actively kind of responding to one another and you can quantify that probabilistically.
And if you allow for that, then you get an account of the transformation from, you know,
your behind-the-scenes game stuff I'm doing as a user to, I got an outcome, I see an outcome,
I can see why I got an outcome, I can quantify it, whereas the standard theory can't do that.
And so the pathology here is wanting to not have yin, wanting to pretend as though reception,
listening, responding, and annihilating, those are all yin processes.
The standard theory wants those to not be there.
If we allow them to be there, then we get all kinds of great solutions to our problems,
And that's also kind of remedying this conqueror mentality, because what you just laid out
with your question was this dead matter destructiveness, whoever dies with the most choice wins.
And part of that is not seeing the other.
Part of that is, what do I want?
I'm all that matters.
I'm autonomous.
I can do whatever I need to do without anybody's help.
Nobody needs to respond to me.
I don't have to listen to anyone.
this whole pathology and along with this goes misogyny, the sort of female, I hate playing
a woman card, but I think Betty Kovacs in her books, Merchants of Light and so on, has made
a good case for, you know, a lot of the pathology being the denial of yin. That, okay, you know,
we don't have to be receptive, I don't have to listen to anyone, I'm being very yang now
now kind of but it's just like Yin doesn't exist and now with what we see happening.
It's kind of the Kali Yuga and Kali is kind of the ultimate Yin warrior.
She's like, well guys, you tried to pretend like Yin didn't exist.
Well, she's coming for you.
Interesting.
I've interviewed Betty Kovacs.
I love that interview.
And it was very popular.
She got a lot of views.
Yeah, she's right on target with that.
It's a pathological neglect of, it's like a fear of Yin because Yin has this sort of
the night, the darkness, and it's scary, maybe.
Yeah, and it might seem unusual to people to suggest that these deep philosophical considerations
could have such real-world consequences as wars and economic upheaval and wealth disparity
and all these different things, but that's exactly what we're suggesting.
All these surface problems are symptomatic of deep underlying mind states, really.
The dysfunction, yeah, it's a dysfunction.
I'm sure there are problems all over the world and Eastern cultures too.
But, you know, personally what I see when I go out is the manifestation of the neglect
of yin.
I see parents out with their children and the children, you know, they're out in the
marketplace and they're in the user interface, shopping or whatever, and the children are
calling to their parents.
And the parents are in yang mode.
I want that.
I'm going to do this.
I'm going to get this.
And they have no yin.
They don't hear their child calling, needing their attention.
They're not receptive, because we don't have to be receptive.
That's what our culture tells us.
We don't have to listen, we don't have to receive, and that creates a lot of subtle
trauma and...
So that's, I'm on my little soapbox now.
That's okay.
And you mentioned Eastern cultures, I mean, anybody who's been to the East and spent some
time there realizes perhaps that although some very beautiful philosophies were born in those
the actuality of what's going on doesn't necessarily reflect that wisdom. It's either been lost or it's never been applied or it's not being applied now or whatever.
Sure, yes. But I think, you know, in those cultures they at least have some kind of ability to do things like wait and be passive, and it's not so taboo, you know, in Western culture it's sort of more taboo to be passive or to be viewed as passive.
So, the yin is taken as weak passivity, and that's kind of a distortion that many times
yin behavior is seen as weak.
And I think that Eastern cultures generally don't kind of have that handicap that Western
cultures do.
They may have their own dysfunctions.
What may seem like passivity might actually be an appreciation of the intelligence that
orchestrates the universe and how things are not just arbitrary and random and accidental,
but there's a wisdom in the way things unfold and you want to flow with that rather than
just sort of butt your head against it.
Of course, right.
Let's talk about free will and determinism a little bit.
You did a nice critique of Sam Harris's book and one of your books, and you used a term
that I always use when I refer to this topic, which is wiggle room.
And that is that we don't have absolute free will.
I mean, I can't play basketball like LeBron James if my life depends upon it.
But on the other hand, we don't have zero free will.
We're somewhere in between with a certain amount of wiggle room.
And in my opinion, the way we use that wiggle room moves us towards either greater freedom
or greater bondage.
Yeah, I definitely think that there is, I would not say, "Oh, I know we have free will."
Like I wouldn't be dogmatic about it.
I don't know for sure that we have free will, but what I argue is that the usual arguments
that claim that we do not have free will are just not tenable.
That's what I do with my discussion of Paris's comments, and what's unfortunate is that authority
figures, neuroscientists and physicists and so on, make these categorical statements.
They make these claims such as physical theory tells us we don't have free will.
And that's a false statement.
No, it's just simply whoever's saying that, you know, Professor X, Professor X's metaphysical
assumptions together with his interpretation of a physical theory result in a conclusion
of no free will.
And what Professor X doesn't know is that so many of his assumptions are completely optional
and almost certainly wrong.
So it's just a real irresponsible kind of a form of, you know, this may be strong language,
form of professional malpractice on the part of scientists to say things like that.
Physical theory tells you you don't have free will, because it's abuse of authority in a
sense.
Yeah.
It could be that people who ascribe to that attitude or that perspective have a vested
interest because they don't want to believe in the existence of a jiva or a soul or something
that's independent of the body.
I was listening for quite a while to Sean Carroll's podcast, I think he's a physicist, and I remember
hearing one episode where he was having a debate with B. Allen Wallace, who's a Buddhist
teacher.
In fact, I remember I was out shoveling snow while I was listening to this, and Sean Carroll
made some kind of a statement like, just adamant that when you die, that's it, lights out.
There's nothing after. It wasn't even like, this is my belief or my theory or I don't see
any evidence for an afterlife. It was just like, boom, that's the fact. And B. Allen Wallace is
like, what can I say to this? I mean, I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised when you
die. But it's interesting how unscientific scientists can be. It's so dogmatic and it's
It's against the spirit of science to be dogmatic in that way.
The fact is that scientific theory has nothing whatsoever to say about anything that goes
beyond what can at least be indirectly empirically corroborated.
Where empirical is...
Now here's where I go to the Flatland analogy.
I think this might help us here.
Flatland story by Edwin Abbott, where we have a bunch of geometric figures whose whole reality
is a flat plane, a two-dimensional surface. And their sensory organs are, you know, are
on their periphery. And the idea that there could be three dimensions is just hogwash to them,
because they can't sense it. And their theories that they've devised seem to work well to
corroborate their perceptions and predict things on their flatland plane. Well, then one day,
this sphere comes in, decides to have some fun with flatland, and he does things that are viewed
as very mysterious and non-local and can't be accounted for by the usual flatland theories.
And in a way, that's really what quantum theory has kind of been doing, that if we interpret it
in a realist way, that quantum theory is referring to, metaphorically speaking, space land, to
another part of reality that, no, we can't, you know, poke it, no, I'm sorry, but indirectly
we can manipulate things that seem to behave according to this theory. So, what Sean Carroll
is basically doing, so if at least one can admit that there is an aspect of reality that
doesn't fit into what you think of as your space-time container, meaning your flatland
realm of perception, then we don't know what else might be out there in other areas of
reality that we can't directly empirically corroborate. And now consider, suppose we
have your Buddhist teacher, debating...
- D.L. Wallace.
- Okay, yeah, who's debating Sean Carroll, who, it's a woman, you said?
- No, he's a man.
He's a man. Okay. Suppose Wallace has had a spiritual experience. Well, we could model that. This is just hypothetical, you know, as say a sphere coming down and have Wallace's body be in flatland, perhaps a part of his body, maybe be in flatland and have the sphere coming down and touching him in his interior, then going back out.
Sean Carroll is out there, he's a square, he's out there in Flatland, he didn't see anything.
He can't do any experiment that can corroborate that that happened.
But if our vision encompassed that, then empirically for us, we could say,
"Yeah, we saw this, you know, I don't know, spirit dragon, whatever it was,
come down and touch Wallace and go back out again and they can have a little laugh about it."
about it, and Wallace had an authentic experience, internal, geometrically, you know, internal
experience, and who is Sean Carroll to say, "No, that never happened"?
Yeah.
He can't say that.
He has nothing to say about it.
Just to elaborate on the Flatland thing a little bit.
So Mr. Flatland is sitting in his living room, right, and a sphere comes into his living
room, and all he sees is a circle, because he's in a two-dimensional world, but he can't
see anything that has three dimensions like a sphere.
So he's like, "Oh, look at this interesting circle."
So he's kind of picking up on something is happening to his living room, but he doesn't
have the tools, the perceptual tools or understanding to comprehend or perceive a sphere.
And so it's a good analogy because there could be stuff all around us, angels and all kinds
of things that are just outside the realm of our perception, and there might be indications
in our world that they're there, but we ignore or misinterpret those indications because
we can't perceive them. Right, we can't directly, they're not empirically available to us and
those kinds of events, and I don't know whether angels exist or not, no angels ever contacted
me, you know, but the point is, if someone has an experience, okay, suppose someone reports
this little episode that I just concocted where a real sphere came down and just touched
a flatland shape in the stomach went back out again so that only that one individual had
that experience in an internal way.
Well, it was not an empirical event at the level of flatland, so no one else can say,
"Okay, that conforms to my scientific theory."
But they also can't say, like Sean Carroll, "That didn't happen.
He's overstepping his authority.
He's speaking from ignorance."
No, it's possible that someone could...
I mean, he's a brilliant guy. I like listening to his podcasts, but still...
But he's got metaphysical presuppositions that he takes as correct and not optional, and he doesn't know what they are.
So he's not being scientific.
Exactly. I mean, this is where philosophy is so important to science, and physicists often kind of like to bash philosophers, you know.
But the fact is that, as I said elsewhere, physics was originally called natural philosophy.
And you don't do physics without the discipline of philosophy in some form.
Critical thinking, being aware of what your premises are, not dogmatically stating conclusions
without taking into account auxiliary hypotheses and assumptions went into arriving at that conclusion.
conclusion. And so if you do stuff like that, you are not being scientific. Suppose we have
the statement, "If it is raining, then the grass is wet." Okay, there's a theory. Fine.
Okay, now I go out and I see the grass is wet. Well, you can't say, "Okay, I know it's
raining." No, I'm sorry, somebody might have had a water sprinkler on that's affirming a
consequent. You can't do illogical fallacies and claim that you're doing science. And a
lot of the time that's what we're getting. We're getting these kinds of careless, dogmatic
statements.
Right. And then of course, there's the whole political situation in academia where, I mean,
it's getting more open now, but there were times where you couldn't barely mention the
word consciousness without jeopardizing your career. So all that is very unscientific.
I mean, that kind of attitude. Have you ever spoken to the Galileo Commission or the Scientific
and Medical Network?
Oh, Scientific and Medical Network, yes.
Yes, David Lohmer and Bernard Carr.
Yes, yes, I know them well.
Yeah, I met Bernard at the Perry Center.
They'd love to have you speak to one of their webinars.
A few questions have come in.
This one is from Hamza Al-Rashdan.
What do you think is the role of the observer and observation
in breaking out of the history and trajectory of an energy in the quantum field.
The term observer is kind of ill-defined as it's been used in physics.
And again, it sort of came in as a band-aid to fix the measurement problem.
So, because the standard theory couldn't tell you what kind of interaction counts as a measurement,
meaning what kind of interaction counts as something that can give an outcome.
And so there was an appeal to an outside observer.
And this is actually, you know, I've argued problematic and not necessary.
So in a sense, that kind of use of the term observer is sort of neither necessary nor
sufficient to do what people wanted it to do was to try to say, "Okay, why is Schrodinger's
cat not in a superposition?"
So in a sense, rather than observer, we need to sort of come to grips with what kind of
process is it that crystallizes an event, that brings about an event.
This is a very subtle issue and it gets into sort of technical issues, but again, the involvement
of yin is critical.
So these are processes.
Now we call them quantum fields, and this might make someone wonder, "Well, what happened
to consciousness?
happen to the idea that we don't want to be physicalist and well, we don't have to assume
dead matter in order to have these processes go on. So these processes are going on and
they're dynamical, but there's a key element of yin, there's kind of a give and take and
a mutuality among fields. And again, the theory itself can only say here are the conditions,
like energy conservation, conservation laws must be satisfied and I have to have
the right kinds of systems whose properties are compatible and so on. In
those conditions all you get is a probability that at any particular time
some kind of energy flow will happen, which means you get a real quantity of
energy, a photon, going from one system to another. So it's kind of like a handshake,
kind of like a manifestation occurs. But this is only governed by a probability.
It's fundamentally indeterministic. So this is where there's room, like Rick said
earlier, about wiggle room. This is sort of where we have room for volition and
you know this might address the questioner's intent a little bit, that
perhaps this is where volition can enter and arguably might even need to enter.
That at some level nature says, "Okay, I want something to happen. We're going to
transfer this energy now. So there's this symmetry breaking and that could really call for volition.
Yeah, you quoted Freeman Dyson in your book as having posited that elementary particles like
photons and electrons might actually have some rudimentary form of volition.
Exactly, right, and you know I don't know that, but it's an interesting, and I have a paper on that
that's fairly technical, you know many times people will say well you can't have volition or you can't
you can't really have free will because then you'd be a slave to the quantum probabilities,
even though there's indeterminism. But that isn't really true because the kinds of choices
that complex organisms make are really not described by quantum states in any kind of
one-to-one fashion. But anyway, that's a technical point. But indeed, you know, we can say, well,
these atoms decided, "Okay, now's the time that I'm going to hand a hunk of energy to
you."
Those, at the level of the atoms, they are constrained by the probability law, but that
doesn't mean that there's no volition.
And in fact, you know, if you think about the idea of the principle of sufficient reason,
that if you have a number of possibilities but no reason to pick one or the other, that
nothing's going to happen.
So then the only possible reason could be volition.
So you know, under that kind of analysis, then you need volition for anything to happen at
all.
Interesting.
Here's a question from Lydia John in London.
Please, could Ruth say a bit more about what is meant by the transactional formulation?
Yes, the transactional formulation is based on this so-called direct action theory of
fields or the absorber theory of fields that was developed in the early 20th century by
a number of people, notably Richard Feynman and John Wheeler, although there were others
that were exploring it before them.
And it basically involves, I mean, this is where we get a little bit technical and I
want to kind of do it on a conceptual level, but it involves the idea that a charged particle,
by a charged particle we just mean a particle that is a possible source of the electromagnetic
field that underlies light. So that these charged particles are constantly connected
to one another in this direct action theory by what's called a time-symmetric field. So
this is very non-local connection. This is where we get the kind of yin component coming
in, it's not this causal, autonomous Yang picture. It's a very mutual kind of relationship. It's
very relational in a way, again, that Western metaphysics doesn't like. There's like an
instantaneous relationality among all charges. So that's one feature of it. Another feature
is that, you know, like I was mentioning before, under certain circumstances, systems can elevate
basic relationality to what can be seen as a process of individuation, where there's kind
of a response.
So you have one system that has the potential to generate, give off some energy, and another
system that has the potential to take up, to accept that energy.
That's the yin component.
And that this absorbing particle actively responds by generating another field that's
time symmetric and the fields interact in such a way that they kind of reinforce each other
in a wave-like way so that energy goes from the emitting quantity to the absorbing quantity
and this ends up like a causal space-time process.
So this is the emergence and it comes out of this transactional process and you don't
get that, you know, in the standard theory of fields it models it as follows, an emitter
gives off a photon.
it. So there's no mutuality, there's no handshake, if you will. It's just assumed to be autonomous.
So that's on a very conceptual level, that's kind of how I can relate what the essence
is. I think my book, Understanding Our Unseen Reality, has a diagrammatic explanation of
that process.
Okay, thank you. Here's a question from Mila now in California. Can you please explain the
basic significance of the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment and do the outcomes of this
experiment support your interpretation of quantum mechanics? Well I have a paper on that experiment
and it's entitled "The delayed choice quantum eraser neither erases nor delays" so unfortunately
that's a really fun experiment that mainly highlights the non-locality in quantum theory
But unfortunately, nothing is really erased and it's unfortunately been portrayed misleadingly.
I don't know if I can get into enough technical detail here, but it's basically
under the transactional picture, you get a clearer account of why you get certain outcomes.
It's two correlated particles and one of them can do an interference effect or not,
or collectively you get a bunch of hits and collectively they will either form an interference
pattern or not and another particle is that particle's partner and they're correlated.
And the transactional picture helps you understand why you get outcomes, but it's really standard
quantum theory explains why you get what looks like erasure if you're not taking into account
certain things. So that's kind of the best I could do for now. I can definitely provide my paper,
you know, but it's not erasing anything. Nothing's being erased. There's nothing that's going back
in time and erasing anything. It's a kind of a misuse of statistics to make that claim. The claim
that things are being erased is to overlook certain things with the statistics. Let's say that Jesus
actually walked on water and Saint Joseph of Cupertino and Saint Teresa of Avila and many
many yogis in India actually flew in the air, and all these different cities that we hear
about from just about every ancient culture in the world.
Let's say those things really happened and theoretically could happen in this day and
age.
Do you have any idea what the physics underlying that would have to be?
Not really according to the standard theory.
I mean, I could say, in terms of our game metaphor, you could say, well, the game has a certain
program that tells you what kind of zones there are, what the features of the zones
are, how the avatars interact in those zones, how likely they are to sink into water when
they fall into it.
And those are the rules of the game.
They're written into the software.
And so I can kind of speculate that a hacker, somebody who is really good at the software,
go in and say, "Well, my avatar, I can put in a little subroutine here and I can hack that
and just change just the way the software works and my avatar can do that."
So it's like from that metaphorical picture, it's kind of simple to see a consistent way
to create those phenomena.
However, the standard theory, it seems like they'd probably have to hack the rules, something
about the probabilities for the standard theory.
you know, I'm not sure how that would work, but you know, clearly you don't want to
rule it out from the idea that the phenomenal realm is a statistically
highly likely result of a lot of possibilities being factored in. And if
someone is at a level where they have access to and can perceive the source of
these possibilities, in the analogy being hacking the software, well sure, why not?
I'm not sure whether the rest of us would see, "Oh my God, you just violated quantum theory."
That I'm not sure.
Hmm. Tell me what you think of this argument.
If consciousness is utterly fundamental, if it is equivalent to the unified field as physics conceptualizes that,
then in my understanding the unified field would contain in some latent or seed form all the laws of nature
which eventually manifest and perform their functions.
Well, if they're equivalent, then consciousness contains all the laws of nature, whatever
they may be.
And in terms of consciousness, we might understand them more as impulses of intelligence rather
than as inanimate laws.
But in any case, if there is this equivalence and one sort of masters the field of consciousness,
as it were, knows oneself to be that and learns to function within that, then would it not
be possible perhaps for that person to, well, as Jesus said when he calmed the waters, "I
out on the boat. One of the apostles remarked, "Even the winds and sea obey him."
Pete and Terry: Mm hmm.
Pete: Because you could say he had mastery over the laws of nature.
Terry: Mm hmm.
Pete: And he did that not because he was the son of God, but because he was one with God
and God contains all the laws of nature and you can function from that level, you can
do all sorts of things that you can't if you're just off on some little end of the
spoke of the wheel.
Yeah, sure, and again, you know, in our analogy that would be like changing the software, the matrix, right? Like changing the matrix, you know, we all know Neo when he was like, "Okay, I see the code, I see the code, I could see the bullet, I don't need to have that bullet there."
So yeah, I mean, why not? There's nothing that rules it up. I guess a hard-headed physicist would be like, "Okay, would I then have empirical violations of the quantum probability law?"
Well, would you? I don't know. I mean, it'd be fun to test that, you know? And if you do, then you can say, "Okay, fine."
then, as you said, what we call these laws are just sort of regularities that
happen to apply at this sort of collective level. That doesn't
necessarily mean they're immutable. Quantum theory is multiply confirmed.
It's a very, very well confirmed theory and it's never been seen to be violated.
That doesn't mean it's inviolable. I don't even think we have to consider
violating it, like airplanes and birds might appear to violate the law of gravity, but
actually they're just utilizing other laws which enable them to fly through the air.
So it could be that yogis and people like that have mastered laws of nature which don't
violate the known laws of nature, they're just using laws of nature that we don't commonly
know yet.
That could be.
Yeah, that could be.
Okay.
We covered non-locality, we've covered the observer effect I think, and tell me if we
haven't, then the holographic principle, that's a theory that states that all the information
about a three-dimensional object can be encoded on a two-dimensional surface, and some spiritual
people interpret this theory to mean that the entire universe is a hologram and that
we're all interconnected in some fundamental way, which I believe we are, but I don't
know if that means that the universe is a hologram.
Do you think there's any correlation between the holographic principle as a purely mathematical
theory and our real world experience?
Well, interestingly, my co-author and I use the holographic principle in our paper on deriving
a generalized form of general relativity, but we use it in a way that what's sort of
contained in this inner environment is possibilities. And so the mapping isn't
maybe the way it's usually thought of in terms of a holograph. It's more
information about the possibilities can be kind of represented on the surface.
But then we do get a transformation that's physically significant. It's not
just an appearance thing, it's not illusory, it's a real transformation from
the form of possibility to the form of actuality. So I guess in the picture that I'm comfortable
with or the way I've used it, it wouldn't really be legit to say, well, the universe
is a hologram, because I think that would take out a crucial aspect of the dynamical process
where we really do have possibilities being transformed into actualities at the level
of empirical experience, things that can be empirically corroborated. It's the mechanism
by which we get a tip of the iceberg. So it has significance, and the tip of the iceberg
is not a replacement for the submerged portion. They're not the same, they're both there,
but they have different character, if you will.
Rick Yeah. Okay, good. Actually, I'm glad you
mentioned that tip of the iceberg analogy, again, because, you know, when we were just
talking about siddhis or supernatural powers or abilities. Most people in the world are
the tips of the iceberg, but a being, a yogi, a saint who could do those kinds of things
that we've been discussing would be someone who knew the whole iceberg, who is aware of
the whole iceberg, and who is familiar with all the laws of nature that superficially we
interact with, all the more fundamental laws. I was going to bring up this analogy when we
were discussing free will, but it kind of relates to this also. If you wanted to change the course
of a river, let's say, if you're down at the mouth of the river where it enters the Bay of Bengal or
whatever, you really can't do much. The whole river has run its course and so you're at the mercy of
whatever it floats down, probably corpses and things, if it's the Ganges. But if you're up in
Gangotri, you know, where the river starts, then according to the topography, you might be able to
send the river off in a completely different direction because the whole river is downstream
from you. So, it's kind of like that.
Much more powerful at the source.
Yeah, it's like that with thoughts, it's like that with our actions, if we're functioning
from a causal or fundamental level, then we have tremendous leeway or leverage that we
won't have if we're just stuck at the surface at the mercy of whatever bubbles up.
Yeah, I love that. As a so-called law of nature, quantum theory, I think, is really operating
very close to the surface. It's very near the mouth of the Ganges, so to speak. It's got
a lot of statistical force behind it because it is so well corroborated. But again, I think
it's not the tip, but it's very close to it. That's the way I see the analogy here. Such
a strong regularity.
Would it be fair to say that it deals with the world of the very small, but not necessarily the world of the very subtle? Would that be fair?
Yeah, I mean, yeah, and I'm not quite sure how physically I would define subtle, but again, it does have very specific structure.
So it's close to the level, you know, here's where Kabbalah might come in. My daughter happens to be very interested in Kabbalah, and she's always telling me about the Tree of Life, and there are like all these different levels of manifestation.
And it could be that quantum theory is one of the spheres that's just very close to the
concrete Malkuth Sephiroth.
So, but I don't know much about that.
David: By subtle, I would mean, we were talking before, astral and celestial and so on, where
there could be angels or celestial beings and other things like that, which you wouldn't
see with a telescope or a microscope or any gross instrument because they exist on a dimension
which the gross can't necessarily tune into.
This is an interesting idea.
Could we think of the human nervous system as a scientific instrument?
I gave a talk once at one of the Science and Nonduality Conferences about the mutually
enriching potential relationship between science and spirituality.
I think spirituality can benefit from science in that it can become more rigorous and empirical
and less imaginative and fanciful.
you really sort of want to know what's what, you don't want to go off on imaginal tangents.
But on the other hand, science can benefit from spirituality in that the human nervous
system is an investigative instrument, if you will, which possesses capabilities that
no other man-made instrument has in terms of its ability to experience consciousness
and also to experience all the subtle realms that exist between the gross world and the
transcendent or unmanifest world. And I guess the question would be, could the
human nervous system be used in a systematic way so that everybody's
subjective experience could be correlated or corroborated in a way and
not just be subjective experiences that could very well be imaginary and there's
no way of determining it? I think there are people who are trying to do that. Ed
and Emily Kelly are people who come to mind. They are interested in the
paranormal and they are endeavoring to be very scientific.
See the guy at the University of Virginia?
Ed Kelly. I met him at Esalen and his wife Emily.
I'm not sure.
Could be. He works with Jim Tucker who does reincarnation stuff.
There's three or four people down there who investigate these.
Could be. It could be.
I'm actually not sure about his affiliation and I think that's
so important.
But again, I see physical theory, physical science is properly restricted to the empirical realm, and that's both its power and limitation.
And even if we have, like, to use a flatland analogy, a bunch of squares meditating and contacting spheres and they're all like, "Yes, okay, I got poked, I got poked," it still is not going to be an empirical corroboration because it's not going to correspond to the tip of the iceberg.
It's tricky. I mean, what it means is that physics is very powerful by being able to predict stuff that happens at the tip of the iceberg, but it needs to be more humble when dealing with what's viewed as anecdotal reports.
It can't just say, "Well, you said this happened to you and he said this happened to him and so on, but how do I replicate that in the lab?"
lab. And so instead of being arrogant and smug about that, they need to say, "Okay, that constitutes a
domain of inquiry that physics is not qualified to address, period." That's my take on it.
There's a constraint on physical science. It's the empirical constraint. It's an advantage,
and it's a disadvantage. It could be used like a bludgeon to say, "Look, you didn't give me
a procedure by which I can corroborate your subjective experience in my lab. Therefore,
go away, you're stupid, you know, and that's what a lot of physicists want to do and that's
what they shouldn't be doing. Empirical means it can be experienced, right? No, it means third-party
corroboration. Okay. It means it's got to be really fully manifest and that's the tricky part. See,
so the analogy is in Flatland, suppose everyone in the room said, "Gee, I felt something, you felt
something, but the spheres call the shots. And if they are operating according to some law that
the Flatland domain doesn't know about, then it's not initiated by those experiencers and they can't
say to some other squares who maybe wasn't participating, "Okay guys, well tell me what's
your theory." And they can't. They can't say, "Okay, well stand here, we'll put up a laser."
it wasn't up to them. Now maybe if they could gain access and say, "Okay, do this, eat this food,
eat this mushroom, do a prayer to the West, then you'll feel what we felt." Maybe. But you know,
that's not really a third-party empirical at this stage. But maybe it could be, you know, but
not quite as concretely as science is accustomed to. But let's say the yogi or the Zen master,
whoever is sitting there with a couple dozen disciples, and he says, "Okay, here's what I'm
experiencing and you are not, but we're going to embark on a 10 to 20 year scientific experiment
here in which I am going to lead you systematically to be able to experience the same thing I am
experiencing and then we'll have a couple dozen of you who have empirically corroborated my experience.
So he would be flying or something like that? Or whatever, even just experiencing enlightenment,
you know, experiencing pure consciousness as its true nature.
Physical theory would be like, "Okay, I'm glad you're happy."
If there wasn't some phenomenon, physical science is about phenomena.
Empirical physical science is about phenomena.
If there's no phenomenon that can be third-party corroborated,
then it has nothing to say about it.
And it doesn't mean that it didn't happen at all.
It simply means it's outside the domain of physical science.
science. Now that doesn't mean we can't be scientific about it. We can be rigorous.
The term scientific means more broadly than just physical science. We can be
responsible psychologists, we can be responsible sociologists, we can be
quantitative and document people's experiences, but it wouldn't enter the
domain of physical science. Well, that's what I mean. Yeah, it is tricky, but it cuts
both ways. I mean, that's why physical scientists do not have the authority, they do not have the
standing to say, "No, you didn't have that experience and what you're saying is wrong,
and it didn't happen." They don't have the standing to say that.
The folks at the Large Hadron Collider say they've found the Higgs boson, and I believe them. I have
no idea what the Higgs boson is, and I would have to explain...
Well, that's also interpretation. Again, you know, they have phenomena, they have some data.
That's the key. Do you have phenomenal data that everyone can look at? Okay, well, we've got some
data. Now, by a bunch of auxiliary inferences, we conclude that we saw the Higgs boson. Well,
are you, I don't know. I'm not going to dispute the data. You know, they've got third party data,
but then again, the conclusions. But the vast majority of humanity has to sort of take their
word for it and say, well, if they say there is, they found it, then maybe they found it.
I don't know what it is. So, like that, I'm suggesting that the materialist scientists,
if we flip the tables on them, would have to admit, if they were honest and open,
that all these saints and yogis and spiritual people throughout the ages who say they've been
experiencing this, that, and the other thing, and there's a lot of commonality between what they all
describe, might actually be onto something that is as real as anything we study, but beyond our
methods for studying things. Right, yeah, I agree. They can't just dismiss it. Experiences that
don't result in third-party data of the kind you get, you know, with the colliders and so on,
there's no third-party corroborated data. However, there's a preponderance of experiences,
and that is a kind of data, but it's not physical theory data, but in a broader scientific sense,
they can't just dismiss it. In other words, they can't dismiss it on the basis of, "Oh, you didn't
give me any empirical data." They can't say, "Therefore, what you're saying is not a valid
claim." They can just say, "Well, I don't believe you," but they can't invoke physical science as a
reason to refute what you're saying. Let's take the example of dreams. Most people dream, and they
know they dream. I mean, everybody dreams. Most people remember their dreams a little bit, at
at least when they wake up, and we know that there are certain neurophysiological correlates
to dreams, you know, rapid eye movement, certain brain waves and so on.
It's a universal enough phenomenon that everybody accepts it, even though it's an entirely subjective
thing.
You know, I've never experienced your dreams, there's no way I could.
What did Bob Dylan say?
He said, "I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours."
But anyway, so like that, let's say that enlightenment was nearly as common as dreams are, and there
certain physiological correlates to enlightenment, which I believe there are, certain brain waves and
other measures, then it could be part of the zeitgeist, and it could be part of the mainstream
human endeavor for gaining knowledge, and it's respected just as much as a physical scientist's
findings are respected on the basis of which we can build bridges or send rockets to the moon,
and so on. Yeah, it's definitely part of a scientific inquiry and can be and again
I guess the point here is that physics is really a very limited kind of science.
It's very powerful but also very tightly constrained in terms of what it can
count as data and so on. So it's kind of in this tight little box but as a
specialty science but definitely you can be scientific about these kinds of
experiences. I totally agree with that. But it sounds like what physics does, or many
physicists anyway, not all, is they're saying, "Well, if it doesn't fit into our
box, it can't really exist." And that's a metaphysical choice to say that if
something doesn't yield third-party corroborated data, then it is not real.
Which is presumptuous. No, you didn't derive that from any scientific
finding, you just decided to think it. Right? So it's an optional premise that they want
to shove on other people, which is again a problem.
Yeah. Okay. Moving on. Let me just throw a few of these things out and see if you feel
like commenting on them. There's string theory, which some people who don't understand string
theory used to argue that everything is interconnected.
Well I think string theory is one of those theories that was explored to try to come
up with solutions for problems that aren't problems in the transactional picture.
I'm not sure we even need it.
It's one of these things that was explored to try to surmount certain anomalies and weaknesses
in standard cosmology.
It's highly speculative and yeah, so I'm, I don't really, you know, beyond that I have
And I should add that I think everything is interconnected, just from my own spiritual
explorations, but what I don't want to do is use an example from physics which actually
doesn't support my belief. I'd rather say, I can't think of an example, there are no
examples or something.
Well, quantum theory already does do that at the submerged level, especially in this
direct action picture of fields, then literally certain kinds of systems, and maybe all systems
depending on their properties, have a relationality that's intrinsic to them. And there's no definable
distance or separation. There's no definable identity in a sense. So quantum theory already
supports that picture. Earlier on you're using the game metaphor to suggest that we're like an
an interface. Well, it's almost like the graphical user interface of a computer. There aren't
actually little files on my desktop and all that stuff. It's all just zeros and ones,
but we have an interface that we can interact with. And some people say they might reference
Einstein's idea of time dilation to support this idea that time is really malleable and
that in fact everything is simultaneous. I've heard a number of people say that all of our
multiple past lives aren't actually past, they're simultaneous, but that we impose a linearity
on the world and have this concept of time in order to function in this human reality that we
find ourselves in. Well, I would say that in the transactional picture, and especially in the
relativistic form, the only sense in which there is a concrete flow of time is at the tip of the
iceberg. It's a process that happens, but again it's sort of at the level of the
user interface and at the submerged level, at the level of behind the scenes
of the users themselves, there's a form of time but it's more of a potential time,
it's more of a vibration, it's like a pulse. It's actually the de Broglie wave,
the so-called, you can look it up, but it's a quantum aspect to matter, it's
the wave nature of matter. It's more of a pulse that it doesn't have a temporal direction,
it's just a pulse that is the potential to define a temporal separation between possible
events. So that's kind of where we are in the behind the scenes, quantum land submerged
portion of the iceberg. So in that sense, it's a kind of an eternal now, but it does
have this pulse that is the potential to manifest as a transaction and as, if you will, the
rope turning into a snake. Mix metaphors here a bit. It's the skin of the snake. So the real
snake is in there and it's changing. Things can change in quantum land. Things can happen.
It's dynamical. But there's a point where the skin is shed. Those are like the events that
are realized. Something's really happening. Okay, something happened. A piece of skin went
off as if you will, there's like a record of a particular stage of the snake's existence,
if you will. But that's not the snake. It's a phenomenon that the snake gave rise to.
So I don't know if that addresses the temporal.
Nathan: So are you saying that time as we experience it is just a concept that we can
function within, whereas in the ultimate reality of things, what time actually is does really
not resemble at all what we experience? Like, for instance, I've heard that...
Dr. Anne: Yeah, at the phenomenal level, yeah.
Nathan: Yeah, from the perspective of a photon, I've heard that there is really no time. It
gets transferred from here to the Andromeda Galaxy instantly.
That's right. Eckhart Tolle talks about now, the power of now. Well, in my picture, that's
because systems are always in the now. So we're in the now and we experience a flow of time
in that with our senses and so on, we experience events falling away from us. Events are actualized
and they fall away from us. So we experience change. We experience change, but we are not
the change. It's the phenomena that are changing.
Right.
You know, and I think that's all consistent with quantum theory. It's just that the standard
approach doesn't want to go that direction, because they want everything to be kind of
be Newtonian Yang only. And they also want to live in a space-time container.
Okay, you know there's a guy, Nassim Haramein and others who talk about zero-point energy
and you know we could power the whole society if we could come up with zero-point energy
devices and so on and maybe the space aliens already have them or might give them to us
and that kind of thing.
What do you think about all that?
Well you know zero-point energy is actually an artifact of standard quantum field theory
and in the transactional formulation you don't have zero-point energy. You have force. Force
is not the same as energy. This is a technical issue, but because of the way quantum field
theory was developed, it's the bucket brigade local causal approach, and it has to posit
certain systems that I think aren't really there. And these systems seem to have energy,
it's like a mechanical tinker toy apparatus that's created to keep
everything local. In the transactional picture fields you don't need any of
that and you actually get all this correct predictions and you don't have
zero point energy which is actually a problem and an anomaly for the standard
theory because you know why can't we measure this it's kind of embarrassing
but still there can be a lot of force so there's definitely something happening
that's analogous to the zero-point energy.
There's this continual interaction, this relationality, this direct interaction, but it's force.
So energy is technically force transferred over a distance, or force acting over a distance.
But in the direct action picture, there's force acting, but it's not acting over a distance.
So it's like infinite force.
So make of that what you will.
Maybe it's powerful in some way.
So speaking of space aliens, with your understanding of the sort of unmanifest realm and quantum
objects within the unmanifest realm, can you conceive of the possibility of some technology
which would enable beings to create some kind of interdimensional means of travel to cross
hundreds of light years almost instantly or anything like that?
You think there could be a physics to those technologies that a society a million years
more advanced than ours may have mastered? Well, technically there are certain theorems that
would seem to suggest that you can't exploit the quantum realm in that way, in that you can't,
you know, there are definitely these non-local connections, but they can't be exploited to
transmit energy. Now there are theorems to that effect, any theorem has assumptions.
Now, if some of those assumptions turn out to not hold, then maybe it would be possible.
I'm not good at imagining technology, so I'm not sure how much more I can offer.
In principle, under quantum theory, it seems to suggest you can't, but again, it's sort of like,
well, they said you couldn't fly, and we could, so I would never rule it out personally.
There may be aspects we haven't thought of, and again, there may be these deeper laws
that we don't even know about. Yeah, there was a conference down in Mexico some years ago,
it was moderated by Dan Harris of ABC News and Sam Harris was there and he was debating Deepak
Chopra and Gene Houston. I saw some of that. Did you see that? Yeah. And Deepak was spouting his
physics ideas and so on and there was a guy in the audience named Leonard Mladenow. I remember that.
Who challenged Deepak and they ended up becoming friends and writing a book together
called "The War of the Worldviews." And I have a few summary points from that book that I want to
bounce off you. There's five chapters in the book and they each focus on a different topic. One is
the cosmos in which Deepak argues that the universe is a conscious being, while Maladna argues that the
universe is a product of chance and necessity. What are your thoughts on that? I don't feel
qualified to weigh in on that. That's really nice that they are collaborating in that way and having
having this diversity of views. My sense is that volition is a fundamental part of reality,
that we can't pretend like volition isn't in there. My own opinion, though, reality is
fundamentally creative and creativity involves volition. In my opinion, if you don't have that,
then things are kind of meaningless and we are just a row of dominoes falling down. I'd like to think
there's intent and volition and creativity at the deepest levels. Yeah, actually Irene just passed
me a note which is that if we don't wrap it up now the dogs aren't going to get a walk and we've
been going for two hours. Oh we can't have that and I might get kicked out of this room very soon.
So like as PT Barnum said we'll leave them wanting more. Okay.
and take these things up another time. But it's been delightful talking to you, very stimulating
conversation and it kind of makes me a little bit smarter by osmosis to talk to someone like you.
Well, thank you. It's always fun. Great questions from you and the listeners and
really appreciate the opportunity. So enjoy your dog walk.
Yes, thank you so much Ruth. And thanks to those who've been listening or watching.
My next interview will be with a fellow named Jem Bendel who has written a book called
breaking together. I won't go into the details right now, but stay tuned. I think you might
find it interesting. So, thanks Ruth. Okay, take care. Thank you again. You're welcome. Bye.
Thank you.