ON BEING AND CREATION
Copyright 2008 by Vincent E. Giuliano – all rights
reserved
Original notes: in the 1960s, first draft August,
1990, re-written 2001
Current
Version November 7, 2008, including April 10, 2008 dialog with Jim Seltzer
Update Nov 8, 2008: To illustrate a process of reality creation as it is now unfolding, I have updated one of my personal reality-creation stories, The Cruncher Longevity Test.
INTRODUCTION
This treatise is a summary of my personal philosophy and
beliefs regarding the universe and its origins, creation, science, my purpose
in life, and the game of life. I put
forth a model for the creation of realities that goes beyond planning and
acting. I relate this Macroscopic Reality Creation model to
models for creation at the quantum scale and argue that the models are
virtually identical. In this latest
version I show how the model conforms to at least two major approaches to
interpreting quantum phenomena. I suggest
how an individual can practically generate creations using this model and
describe a number of examples from my life.
Many of the ideas here can be found in the philosophies of contemporary
science, in existing religious traditions, and in New-Age philosophies. The particular synthesis here is my own. I begin making notes on these subjects back
in the 1960s. I systematically drafted
much of the material here in 1990 as a way of explaining to myself how I
functioned to create the realities of my life. Over the intervening years I have revisited
the paper from time to time, seeking to clarify key points and fill in
details. This latest draft includes several
major revisions and extensions.
This version embodies an e-mail dialog with Jim Seltzer
(jseltzer@nbn.net). Jim’s comments at
various points are shown in red, indented with
the prefix JS.
My responses to Jim’s comments are shown in green,
indented with the prefix VG. In some cases distinctions are discussed in
this dialog before they are introduced in the main text which shows like this
in black.
The philosophy is aimed at more than just
understanding. It is intended to be actionable. There are ways to be and things to do to
create the world I want to live in. I
believe they will work for you too. So
this treatise is also a practical manual for getting the results you want in life. I have explicitly lived according to this
philosophy for most of my life and stand by it today,
PREAMBLE
-- WINNERS AND LOOSERS
Some people have all the luck. They naturally attract good company, lead
wonderful lives, have money and friendship, and enjoy fame. Their lives seem charmed. Others attract wonderful human feelings but
no wealth. Some attract money but not
happiness. Others yet are accident-prone,
sickness-prone, or are prone to having certain things happen to them, such as
repeatedly being robbed, or betrayed by the opposite sex. Others lead the life of martyrs -- Gandhi,
Martin Luther King and even Christ of Galilee -- and, sure enough, sooner or
later someone assassinates them.
Borrowing a concept from modern chaos theory, people seem to
be "strange attractors," able to attract to themselves experiences
that confirm that they are who they believe themselves to be, that the universe
is in fact as they believe it to be.
Often, people who are known to those around them as being
such a "strange attractor" of a certain kind of experience manage to
have those experiences come to them through non-obvious means, since the
experiences seem to happen as a result of dumb luck or the action of
unconnected strangers. Yet, we are used
to such people. We speak of "lucky sonovabitches," "victims,"
"winners," "losers, and
"Bad-luck Charlies." What causes people to fall in such categories:
is it dumb luck; is it the result of how they behave; or is there something
more basic going on?
There is a school of belief that a human's experience of
life is a direct consequence of what that human believes. Positive thinking produces positive results;
negative thinking produces negative results. This belief is the premise of some new-age
schools of life philosophy, has roots in philosophical thoughts going back to
the most ancient of times, and is a root postulate of many contemporary
approaches to self-improvement.
Moreover, the belief that mental attitude determines
experience seems to have empirical validity and be consistent with our
day-to-day experience. People who have
mostly positive attitudes towards life usually lead better and happier lives
than those who think negatively. Yet,
this belief has struck me as questionably scientific. What causes what? One could argue equally that a history of
good experiences leads to a positive set of attitudes about life. Also, exactly what is "positive"
and "negative" thinking? Are
not "negative" thinkers just being realistic about their lives? Even if we accept that positive thinking
produces positive results in life, there is a question of what the mechanisms
are that make this happen. Is it that
positive thinkers get better results because they do more, communicate better,
are trusted more -- or is something more involved?
I suggest that positive thinking indeed produces positive
results (as does negative thinking produce negative
results), and that this comes about through two sets of mechanisms:
·
causation, which
involves the cause-and-effect mechanisms of ordinary life, and
·
creation, which is a process that actually operates through
real and powerful means that are not understood or acknowledged in our mainstream
culture.
My thesis is that those people who experience success in
life -- and I define this as leading the lives they consciously choose to lead
-- do so through creation as well as causation.
This treatise is concerned with laying out a model of how creation
happens and showing how this model is completely consistent with science and
our ordinary experiences. I relate a few
stories of how I have created situations in my life, and I tell how to do it.
I. OUR UNIVERSE, SCIENCE, AND CREATION
I start this document by introducing certain important
distinctions like /Our Universe, Everything-Nothing,/
/Source/, and /Creation/. These distinctions
are further clarified and refined in later parts of the document.
A. OUR UNIVERSE
Our Universe is the domain of ordinary observable reality, described by
our traditional sciences but excluding what goes on at the quantum scale. Things in the Universe can be characterized,
measured, and described, and these characterizations, measurements, and descriptions
are "objective" in the sense that they can be repeated and fit in
more or less coherent scientific frameworks.
Space, time, energy, the traditional laws of physics,
chemistry and biology, the stars, stones, snakes and atoms -- all are part of
Our Universe. Doings, actions and processes all take place
in the space-time of Our Universe.
Beginnings and endings mark boundaries in Our Universe. I sometimes refer to Our Universe simply as the universe.
Our Universe appears to be governed by the laws of science,
although we know that at any given time the laws we believe to be true are approximations
to more refined and powerful laws yet to be discovered. Assertions about the universe are verifiable
through the scientific method, e.g., hypothesis formulation and experimental
validation.
B. EVERYTHING-NOTHING
I assert that there is a domain of all possibilities for
things that could exist - objects, processes, abstractions and
what-have-you. This domain is not in Our
Universe as a physical entity, nor in any other particular Universe. It is non-observable, outside of space and
time, everywhere and nowhere, always and never.
I call this domain of possibilities Everything-Nothing (EN).
There are neither space, time,
energy, matter nor forces in EN. Nothing
is differentiated in EN; it contains no things (as well as all things in potentiality). EN is a domain of pure and unbounded
possibility, of all things conceivable, things conceivably conceivable, and
things inconceivable. Like the number
One, this domain exists as a mathematical abstraction. As such, it is not in itself observable.
Because EN, like all mathematical abstractions, is outside
of our Universe, assertions about it cannot be validated through the scientific
method. We all know what the number One
is, but we cannot point to it, hold, hide, squeeze, stretch, measure, heat or
freeze it. We can't point to all
instances of it. Its existence is a
matter of definition and declaration.
I declare that, like the number One, EN exists as a useful
abstraction, one that gives understanding and that can assist in providing a framework
for action. Later, I will develop the
notion that EN can be expanded into an infinity of
possible parallel universes, each of which contains a different mix of what is
and what isn't.
C. SOURCE
I declare that there is some organized *will* or *being* or
set of *principles of organization* capable of manifesting the existence of things,
processes or conditions in at least one physical Universe (ours) out of
EN. It accomplishes this manifestation
through systematic setting and modifications of possibilities and probabilities
for processes, things and events. I call
this will or being or set of principles (he/she/it/I/thou/we) by the name Source. Source is not the laws of nature; those laws
are arbitrary, sourced by something else, that something being Source.
JS:
Source is a manifold which contains all possible sets of laws.
VG: Not quite my intended
definition. EN can admit all possible
sets of laws. Source is defined in the
first sentence of the above paragraph and the sentence directly following this
comment.
Source consists of
the generating principles according to which a universe and all things in it
are created and constantly being recreated or uncreated. Source produces the intentionality behind all
the probability distributions that limit and channel the possibilities inherent
in the EN flux so as to create what is.
Source's actions in manifesting reality in our Universe have
resulted in a stable Universe of great complexity, governed by laws which
ultimately reflect a carefully contrived and balanced web of probabilities for
what can exist, when and how.
JS:
One of infinite possibilities in EN?
VG: Right. Given that what exists or even existence as
we know it is only one of the infinite possibilities in EN. Principles of organization or design leading
to this particular possibility must exist.
I call these principles Source.
Source's actions
reflect design, organization, intentionality and planning of the very highest
order, for we know from our sciences that just slight alteration of countless
"laws" of the Universe would make life or existence as we know it
unfeasible. In this sense, I assert that
there is evidence in the observable Universe of the existence of Source. Given our universe as an outcome, there must
be Source.
JS:
This does not follow since it implies purpose or intent, something akin
to the teleological argument.
VG:
It may appear that my argument for the existence of Source is a version
of the ancient Argument From Design used to prove the
existence of God. There are important differences however. The usual steps of the Argument From Design are 1. The properties of the universe and the
conditions allowing the support of life are so complex and fine-tuned that the
probability of these arising through pure randomness is zero. 2. Since these properties and conditions
could not arise randomly they must reflect design, very sophisticated design. 3.
Given the existence of design there must be a designer; call that
designer God. 4. This God is the same as Jehovah of the Old
Testament; a study of the scriptures and Book of Revelation and ancient wisdom
establishes that.
My argument for the existence of
Source starts out with the same 1. The properties of the universe and the
conditions allowing the support of life are so complex and fine-tuned that the
probability of these arising through pure randomness is zero. (Note that if there is an infinite set of
conditions and physical parameters that do not support life, then the
probability of random occurrence of the particular existing set of conditions
and parameters is zero, the reciprocal of infinity. This point is refined in a later comment.) The
subsequent steps of argument are different however: 2. For the universe we know to exist, there must
have been and must continue to be principles of organization at work to allow
this situation of zero or near-zero a-priori probability to emerge and continue
to exist. I call these principles
Source. I do not try to anthropomorphize
Source by talking about a “designer” nor do I try and build a link with any
existing religion.
We can discover and know in the domain of science, but we shall
never know all science, that is, everything about the universe, for it is constantly
being created and uncreated. Science is
of the Universe. To the extent we can
discover and know Source, we might be able to know more about the source of science.
While there is no time before the Big Bang in the sense of
time as we understand it, Source is prior to it, or, perhaps more accurately stated,
outside of it. Source has access to the
past of the universe as well as its future.
Source is what gave shape to the Big Bang and all the events that
followed it, to the Universe we know today and all life in it. This Source is Source to Our Universe and
possibly to others as well. And there
may be other Sources to other Universes.
These are not knowable matters using the tools of science which are the
tools for studying this universe.
JS: If not knowable by perception,
knowable at all?
VG: Yes, I think so, at least in
terms of our being able to build a model of its operation as I start doing
here.
Because these statements are not verifiable using the tools
of science they belong to the domain of philosophy, not science, and cannot be proven
by rigorous experiment or observation.
JS: Bertrand Russell:
“Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and
what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.”
Wittgenstein: “Whereof one cannot
speak, thereof one must be silent"
VG: Right about what these guys
would say. I know that having been a
strong logical positivist in my early university years. However, many major advancements of science
were not discovered by the Scientific Method.
They were first formulated as abstract theories that did not violate
known observations and only later were validated by experiment, often only
partially. I am talking about relativity
theory, quantum chromodynamics, string
and brane theory. Many postulated
phenomena have never been the object of observation, like the Higgs Boson and
dark matter.
Since Source, as I describe he/she/it/I/thou/we, exists
outside of time, space and ordinary experience as we know it, there are no good
words to describe either Source or its relationship to the universe. "*Creator*" and “*God*” are
traditional words that encompass a central aspect of Source but they carry many
other irrelevant cultural and religious connotations and imperatives. I also speak of Source as possessing consciousness
of some kind. That is, its results are
of the kind we would expect from exercise of great intentionality. This is not to say that Source plans, designs
or thinks as we do or is intentional in ways we can fathom.
The total consciousness of Source may or may not resemble
our own, but I later argue it subsumes our own individual consciousnesses. Being also outside of our Universe, Source is
not subject to proof, discovery or validation using the scientific method. His/her's/it's/my/your/our existence is also
a matter of declaration. The evidence
for the existence of Source I cite here is not proof.
JS: Good!
D. CREATION
I assert that *Creation* is a process of altering or fixing
the probabilities relating to space, time and matter, so as to alter the course
of our Universe, that is, to cause things, processes, events to come into
manifest being or go out of manifest being.
JS: Wave function collapse?
VG: Yes, related to that but I
prefer not to use that particular terminology.
An excellent guess at where I am going here! The Macroscopic Reality Creation theory
proposed here is discussed mainly in the conceptual framework of the Parallel
Universes Interpretation of quantum mechanics.
The idea of a wave function collapse is found in the so-called Copenhagen
Interpretation of quantum mechanics. I
discuss this point later and in a final section just added to this document I
show how Macroscopic Reality Creation can be formulated in the framework of a
third interpretation of quantum mechanics, known as the Transactional Interaction
Interpretation. Since I believe
Macroscopic Reality Creation is a scaled-up version of well-established
quantum-level reality creation, I would bet that this theory could be explained
using any interpretational framework that explains quantum mechanics.
Creation thus refers to the relationship between Source and
matter and energy in our Universe. We
know the results of creation; we see it happening. Altering probabilities relating to space,
time and matter is not itself a physical process subject to or explainable by
the laws of our universe. In fact, I
contend the laws of the universe are the results of the alteration of
probabilities.
It is meaningless to speak of creation of EN or creation of
Source; both are prior to the Universe.
JS: Outside of the
Universe?
VG: Yes, and being outside of they
are also prior to and subsequent to any time-based event.
In classical quantum physics we talk about an Operator
operating on a Wave Function to produce an Observable Result (such as the
position of a particle). The analogy is
this: Source operates on EN to produce
our Universe. There are many different
quantum operators and each produces its own characteristic observable results
when applied (like operators for momentum, spin or energy of a particle). In the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum
physics, the position of a particle associated with a wave function does not
exist until the moment that operator is applied, that is, a measurement of
position is made. It is unknowable
beforehand. Up to that point the
position of the particle does not exist; its position is just a probability
distribution. Later I argue that as part
of Source, when a human creates a clear belief, that belief
operates on EN to shift the reality context that human lives in. That shifted reality context does not exist until
there is the belief even though that reality context may be viewed by us as
having originated in the past. This will
all become clearer as we proceed.
JS: Until there is the observation?
Was there a “reality context” before there was a human, that is, before there
was a belief?
VG: There was some
kind of reality context all along reflecting what had been created up to that
point. Later in this document I argue
that the reality context consists of a manifold of highly-similar parallel
universes. This reality context was the
result of Source, whatever form it had, operating on EN.
JS:
Is your Schrödinger’s cat still neither dead nor alive if someone peaks
into the box but doesn’t tell you what he sees?
VG:
A good question about that cat that exists apart from this discussion. Perhaps this is the most discussed cat in
science!. I prefer the parallel universes interpretation
which says the cat was alive in some universes, dead in others and when
somebody tells me what he saw when he peeked
(say the cat is alive) I get switches into the sub-manifold of universes where
the cat is alive. That reality is then
created. As discussed later, it is the same
thing that happens when I make an unbounded declaration of what’s so as part of
macroscopic reality creation.
JS:
Is a “reality context” a personal thing, or can it belong
to an entire society or even be a universal attribute of the physical universe?
VG:
Parallel universes are again the best way to look at this question
though it can also be done in terms of wave functions. A reality context can be any of these you
mention, each corresponding to a sub-manifold of existing universes.
What happens to a human being may of course be determined by
more than consciously-formulated beliefs of that being. A person may die of smallpox although they
never recognized the distinction “smallpox.”
A person may believe in an antibiotic and still not be cured by it. Christian Scientists die of diseases despite
their beliefs. So, a shift in reality
context may affect the probability of an outcome but by no means guarantees an
outcome.
I return to the distinctions of Universe and Creation in
more detail in Section III of this document below.
E. CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE
The beginning applies to the Universe; not
to EN nor to Source since they do not exist in time, and since we know
now that time, space and matter require each other for existence. According to the latest view of the Big Bang,
in the beginning a bubble of improbability burst out of nothing, in a way that
led to creation of space, matter, time and all we know. Physicists and Cosmologists believe that this
process is fairly well understood after the first ten to the minus fortieth of
a second (that is, the fraction of a second represented by a decimal point followed
by thirty-nine zeros and then a one).
The key thing is that the different laws of physics and science we know
today came into play at successive times in the process, as the universe cooled
and expanded, starting as a point of intense temperature and containing all
energy and matter in the universe today.
Ever since, the history has been one of emergence of ever-greater
complexity, new laws, new relationships. The process continues today.
In the process, there were countless branches, starting out
from EN, differentiating what could-have-been from what became. The vast and overwhelming majority of
possibilities associated with the high-order infinity of such branches would
have led to a universe that is non life-sustaining. In fact, the odds were stacked overwhelmingly
against us getting the Universe we know today, which is stable and life-sustaining,
at least right now right here. The
probability this could just happen starting with
EN? I believe it is Zilch raised to the Zilch
power, Zilch times over. Imagine that
among all the grains of sand in the world there is one and only one grain
somewhere mixed in with all the others that is
microscopically labeled "life-sustaining." Now imagine that you picked out some beach at
random, went there, picked up one grain of sand at random, and that it turned
out to be that particular grain of sand.
The probability of this happening is very very small, but still vastly
bigger than the probability of us getting a life-sustaining universe out of
chaos without a principle such as Source.
JS: How can one speak of probabilities
in an infinite probability space? EN contains all possible events. Certainly an
infinite number of stable solutions are contained in EN not merely the one that
was realized in our universe. Further, there must exist in EN an infinite
number of identical representations of our universe. I find it impossible to
talk about drawing a red ball from an urn containing an infinite number of
balls of various colors each with an infinite representation in the urn. It seems
to me that you are back to a
teleological argument.
VG; Yes to your comments. This discussion shortcuts many complexities
though I think it is basically correct.
As you may know there is an infinity of
different orders of infinities (aleph0, aleph1, aleph2, etc.) and you cannot
map a lower-order infinity into a higher-order one. Now EN must allow an infinity of infinite
rank of configurations (corresponding to functions of functions of functions,
etc. indefinitely). What is the rank of
the infinity of universes corresponding to a life-supporting universe like we
have? I don’t know how to start to think
abut this but my intuition says it must be less.
JS: Further thoughts: If time and space are
quantized, then is not the set of all space-time configurations denumerable
(comprised of discrete points in probability space, therefore isomorphic to the
set of natural numbers)?
"The Planck time is the time it would take a
photon traveling at the speed of light to across a distance equal to the Planck
length. This is the 'quantum of time', the smallest
measurement of time that has any meaning, and is equal to 10-43 seconds."
If every possible universe in the EN manifold is
so constituted (i.e., quantized space-time) then the cardinality of EN is
aleph-nul. Similarly, the "stable and
life-sustaining" set also has cardinality aleph-nul.
EN is then isomorphic to the set of "stable and life-sustaining"
universes.
Hence, the probability of drawing a "stable
and life-sustaining" universe from the EN urn is undefined, but success of
such a draw cannot be classified as "improbable."
On the other hand, one could argue that EN is
comprised of both quantized and un-quantized space-time configurations
(therefore has a higher cardinality in probability space). To do so, however,
is similar to arguing that whatever universe can be conceived to exist must
have a representation in the EN probability space. This is not unlike the
ontological argument posited by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, to prove
the existence of God.
VG: Yes.
Your point is that there is an aleph-nul set of
universes that satisfy our good-old-physics laws given discretely quantized
space-time, and I don't argue that point at the moment. However, if we allow
schemes of quantization corresponding to functions of basic quanta, functions
of functions, etc., we can up the cardinality of the entire set of quantized
universes beyond aleph-null to whatever we want even without the existence of
non-quantized space-time configurations. Ex-definito as a
purely mathematical construct, EN has all those "universes" and more.
And I don't underestimate the immense neuronal
power that has gone into trying to prove the existence of God. Many steps of most of the ontological
arguments I have seen for the existence of God smell to me strongly of hopeful
bullshit. When the good ArchBishop declares "Unless I first believe, I shall
not understand" he is asserting the antithesis of logical positivism. But what he is asserting is at the heart of
all views of quantum theory, relativity theory, string
and brane theory - and at the heart of the framework I am proposing. The positron and neutrino are among many
particles that were long believed-in before they were seen. They were only seen because somebody believed
in them enough to keep looking for them. Dirac postulated the
existence of the positron based on a number of wave-function and relativistic
abstractions including the existence of a quantum-sea model of physical reality
- unobserved abstractions based on other abstractions based on others yet. By the time the positron was observed
experimentally in 1932, it was already well believed-in. Just like dark-matter and dark-energy are
believed in today though never directly observed. And now legions of physicists are spending
billions of dollars looking for the Higgs particle which they believe in but
have not yet seen. I think the
Archbishop was our kind of guy. If he
were alive today and knew some physics he could well be participating in this
conversation, perhaps running intellectual circles around me. Dirac once said
something like "If you have a really beautiful theory but it seems to be
incompatible with what is observed in the universe, don't worry, the universe
will come around."
JS: Just a rambling thought...
VG:
But a damn good and provocative one!
In an earlier draft of this treatise, I used the name
"God" instead of "Source," since God for me is Source as I
describe it here. I prefer using
"Source" since it is relatively free of the enormous amount of meaning
baggage carried by "God."
Occasionally I do refer to God, however, and when I do I mean
Source. My argument for existence of Source
can be recognized as similar to the current “fine-tuning” variant of the “Argument from
Design” long
used to “prove” the existence of God. .
By allowing that Source may consist of principles of organization that
produce results we would normally ascribe to intentionality, I hope to strip away
many of the theistic attributes normally ascribed to God. Again, unlike the case for God, we know what Source does, not what Source is. Of what is attributed to God in our mainline
religions, almost all of that is extraneous to the concept of Source laid out
here. Source is a highly-distilled contemporary
version of God compatible with science and freed of the immense baggage of any
institutionalized religion.
JS:
I recall Joseph Campbell’s
retelling of the Upanishads story about the conceit of the god Indra:
The beautiful blue boy says to Indra, "Indras before you. I
have seen them come and go, come and go. Just think, Vishnu sleeps in the
cosmic ocean, and the lotus of the universe grows from his navel. On the lotus
sits Brahma, the creator. Brahma opens his eyes, and a world comes into being,
governed by an Indra. Brahma closes his eyes, and a
world goes out of being. The life of a Brahma is 432,000 years. When he dies,
the lotus goes back, and another lotus is formed, and another Brahma. Then think
of the galaxies beyond galaxies in infinite space, each a lotus, with a Brahma
sitting on it, opening his eyes, closing his eyes. And Indras? There
may be wise men in your court who would volunteer to count the drops of water
in the oceans or the grains of sand on the beaches, but no one would count
those Brahmin, let alone those Indras."
VG: A beautiful analog! And each of us is Brahma-like.
II. SCIENCE AND THE EDGE OF CREATION
Science consists of the principles according to which our
universe (including the playing field we know) is organized. Science consists of approximate rules of the
game of existence in the Universe. Each
rule is valid only within limits; each describes only some aspects of what is. There are probably an infinite number of such
rules; we as people can at best only keep learning more and more of them and
refining the ones we already have.
Moreover, what there is in the universe that the rules describe is
itself undergoing constant creation. As
the universe cooled there was a time when there were atomic nuclei but no
molecules. No rules of chemistry were
working or knowable at that time. Later there
were primitive molecules, but no viruses or microbes yet. No rules of biology or microbiology were
working at that time. It is likely that
phenomena in the universe requiring brand new rules of science are emerging
right now.
JS:
Hmm… interesting thought! Is this a parallel to Bergson’s creative
evolution but extended beyond life to the entire physical universe?
VG:
Well said. That is indeed what I
intend to say.
For me, learning about science is very useful for
understanding:
·
the limits and inconsistencies of scientific
knowledge,
·
the incompatibility of science carried to the
very-big or very-small with everyday experience,
·
explanations of quantum reality given by quantum
physicists that are about the relationship of Everything-Nothing to the
physical universe,
·
how our Source role in creating the reality we have
is in fact completely consistent with
our understanding of science, because explanations of equal novelty are required to
reconcile quantum paradoxes, and
·
possibilities that
science leaves open or even suggests for us as human beings.
The philosophy espoused here is not provable; it just
is. You can’t prove it any more than you
can prove a potato. Like a potato,
though, you can derive sustenance from it.
Although not provable, what I have described is remarkably akin to
current scientific thinkings about the known
frontiers of the Universe, about the quantum boundaries where creation of the
physical world took place and is still taking place.
These understandings relate to what happened at the time of
origination of the Universe, and to the physics of very high energies and
subatomic particles. The fields of
science involved are respectively Cosmology (in particular, how the Big Bang
happened), Quantum Physics and Relativity Theory. And, for those with the necessary
mathematical skills and backgrounds in physics, today there are String Theories
and Brane Theory which are attempts at a unified theory of everything. Several excellent books have been written on
these subjects for laypeople, incidentally.
Here are some of the things those bodies of science tell us:
The process of creation during the
first second of existence of the Universe is fairly well agreed-upon -- that is back to the first ten to the minus
forty three parts of a second (e.g. 10(-43), a fraction of a second described
by a decimal point followed by forty two zeroes and then a one), at which time
the entire Universe was a ball of undifferentiated energy having a temperature
of ten to the 32nd power Kelvin (e.g. the number of degrees is a number
consisting of a one followed by thirty two zeroes before the decimal
point). The Universe at that time was
10(-50) centimeters across, infinitesimal compared to the size of the smallest
subatomic particle that exists today.
The Universe was very rapidly expanding then, but not into empty space around
it. That tiny bundle contained all the
mass and energy in the Universe today -- in the form of radiation since matter
did not then exist. The only space that
existed then (or that exists now) was space contained in the Universe itself.
We do not know what happened prior
to that time, except that there was one universal "superforce" at work, that everything was the same as everything else, e.g.
everything was symmetric, and none of the laws of physics we know today were
operable. The laws of physics that make
the universe we know work were inoperable; they did not exist. That is, the "strong" and
"weak" forces that bind subatomic particles together and the
electromagnetic force on which all chemistry is based came into play only as
the universe expanded and cooled. It is
fairly well agreed that Gravity separated out from the superforce at the first
10(-43) of a second. The Strong Force
separated out at 10(-35) second, the Weak Force at 10(-10) second, and the
Electromagnetic Force at 10(-4) second.
The Universe thus came into being
through successive breaking of the symmetries inherent in the superforce
flux. The entire Universe as we know it
seems to have emerged as a quantum fluctuation in pure nothingness; both time
and space came into being along with the matter in the Universe; there was no
empty space or time beforehand. That’s how
it looks from the framework of classical cosmology.
JS:
Not in the sense that these can be tracked by us beyond the singularity.
Yet some hypothesize a time before time and a space before space embedded in a
cycle of collapse and expansion – an accordion universe.
VG:
Yes. Brane theory and some of the
string theories admit the time-before-time possibility, way beyond what logical
positivism allows us to contemplate.
This brings us back away from the Genesis story to the Vedic story of
Brahma you summarize above. The lord
Shiva presides over the the Tandava,
the dance in which the universe is created, maintained, and destroyed in
cycles. By the way, my science fiction story Supercollider deals
with this theme.
In terms of the creation framework I described above, the
Big Bang is simply the original transition from pure possibility, e.g. Everything-Nothing,
to the something that that has continued to evolve into the something else that
exists now. My framework addresses two major
questions that arise in contemplating the Big Bang scenario:
First, why did the Universe blink
into existence in the first place? Note
that science tells us that it makes no sense to ask what came before it or what
caused it in a time-process sense, since there was no time until it blinked
into existence. I come back to a
speculation on this “why” question a bit later.
Second, what if anything guided
the process of differentiation and creation of the laws that make the Universe
we know feasible? Perhaps
nothing. Perhaps what we have is
just luck, the result of a random probabilistic process. However, just slightly alter any of the
billions of billions of billions of choices that ball of energy made in cooling
down -- choices that translate into initial conditions, physical constants and
physical laws as we know them -- and the very fabric of our existence
would turn into unfeasible moosh. So that is why I postulate Source as having
something like intentionality.
JS: Again, the mind balks at this: probabilities
defined in a transfinite probability space with no time grain setting limits on
number of tries.
VG:
Yes, my mind boggles for sure. And
some argue that since we are here we must have been the result of that one
lucky roll of the cosmic dice, no matter how improbable that roll was. Note that I do not claim to prove that Source
has intentionality. Rather, I define and
postulate Source as focused intentionality because the existence of this
distinction facilitates this framework for understanding the process of
creation.
The physics of the very-small or the very-energetic requires
rejection of the idea of objective reality as we usually know it. The founders of quantum physics thought there
had to be a cozy and highly intertwined relationship between observed physical
reality and the state of the observer of that reality. This relationship has been the subject of
much thought and inquiry examining the underpinnings of both quantum and
relativistic physics, the underpinnings of all contemporary theories of basic
physical reality. Some theorists claim
that, for the very small or very fast, reality only comes into existence when
it is observed. Others say that reality
jumps instantly from one state to another when observed. Others say that there is a constantly
unfolding infinite manifold
of parallel universes, and that each time we make an observation or a choice,
we shunt ourselves from one such universe to another. Others yet hold that there indeed can be
descriptions where the observer is not necessary for creation of reality. I keep coming back to these issues throughout
this paper.
JS:
Once again, does it matter who does the observing? What if I leave my
unattended camera to record the slot the photon passes through, but I never
check my camera?
VG: These questions have been on the
mind of quantum-theoreticians since the 1920s.
I prefer the parallel universes approach to explanation. I have added more discussion on this topic
below. In this framework if you never
check your camera then your universe manifold contains universes where the
photon went through the slot and other universes where the photon did not go
through the slot.
III. A MODEL FOR PERSONAL CREATION OF REALITY
My intent is to address the central question of what this
all has to do with me or you and how I can create matters or situations in my
own universe. And the
same for you.
JS:
Speak for yourself, Vince! You may think you are a solipsist, but you
are living in MY universe!
VG:
The way I look at it there is the you in my
universe sub-manifold and the me in your universe sub-manifold. I am talking to the former. You are talking to the latter.
The next step in the process is to clarify a few additional
distinctions including consciousness,
being, experience, and experience
records.
A. Some Key Distinctions
By consciousnes,
I mean that which experiences, records, and creates.
By a *being*, I mean an entity that has consciousness. We know of human beings. Human beings are manifest in time and
space. They can also take actions in
time and space. There may well be other
beings besides humans, conceivably ones that have consciousness but that cannot
or do not act in time and space as we do.
JS:
How about strong AI? I suspect Alan Turing would suggest that today’s
computers can not only emulate consciousness, but may even be conscious.
VG: Don’t know how to take
that on. I was an early contributor to
AI and had many arguments with Minsky and others over
the years. Up to this point my tale is
that we have perhaps been successful in creating Artificial Stupidity but not
artificial intelligence.
More seriously, I think consciousness has to be interpreted much
more broadly than as manifest in humans.
As such, yes: plants, insects and even computers may exhibit it.
Experience is a
primitive in this discussion; it is that which a being experiences in the
ordinary sense of meaning. Human beings
experience experiences as a function of time.
As time progresses, a human has more experiences of the universe.
About
experience records
By the experience
record of a human being at a particular time, I mean to includes everything
that has happened to or impacted on that being up to that time that he or she
is conscious of or capable of being conscious of. Included in the experience record is all
knowledge, physical consequences, recollectable perceptions, intuitions,
emotions, thoughts and beliefs that human has had, whether consciously
recollected at a given moment or not.
The experience record of an individual is the sum total of impact the
universe has had on the consciousness of that individual. If your mother is dead or you have lost a
finger it is part of your experience record.
If you think your brother-in-law is a lazy fool, that
is part of your experience record. If
you think that Joseph Stalin was a brutal dictator, that
is part of your experience record. If
you think the city of
JS: Does my experience record include my remote
ancestor’s (perhaps a bacteria) experiences that were incorporated in its DNA
and passed on to me?
VG:
Your experience record incorporates everything you know or think you
know or believe that can impact on your intentionality, either consciously or
unconsciously. It includes beliefs about
DNA if you have any. This experience
record applies to the manifold of universes in which you are in at the
moment. In some of those universes you
have inherited a defective NF2 gene. In
others you have not. When genetic
testing reveals a faulty inherited NF2 gene, then you are switched into the
sub-manifold of universes where this is so.
It’s just like the Schrödinger’s cat situation.
Note that an individual's experience record far
under-determines the state of the universe.
Most details of most people's lives have no impact on my experience
record at this moment. I don’t know
whether George Washington was scratching his nose at
In other words, there are many-many possible past and
present events that are compatible with the experience record I have.
This does not mean that all past events outside of my
experience record will always be of no consequence to me. Most will probably be of no consequence, but
some could well have major consequence.
Suppose my boss has put me in for a large bonus without telling me? Suppose someone has left a banana peel on my
sidewalk at home that I will slip on and hurt myself when I go home
tonight? Suppose my car has a tire ready
to blow out? Suppose an airplane up in
the sky had an engine explode 3 minutes ago, and is now spiraling down out of
the sky and will destroy the house next door?
Now and any time, operation of the causal mechanisms of the universe may
lead to something in the past not in my experience record causing something to
happen that indeed impacts my experience record from that point forward. The Macroscopic
Reality Creation model I am suggesting is about how to affect the probabilities
connected with those uncertainties.
JS:
One can visualize personal experience as comprised of cones of events
tied at the vertices (an hourglass) with the inflow of all past events to a
fixity at the present to the expanding cone of future possibilities. Only the
present is fixed, and the present is the immeasurably small instant.
VG:
Exactly, exactly, exactly. What I am claiming is that our experience
records vastly under-determine what is either in the past cone or the future
one. That is, we live at every instant
in an immense manifold of possible universes consistent with our experience
records. An act of creation such as I
define later narrows that mainfold, past and future,
down to a sub-manifold where the desired creation is manifest.
B. Ordinary and
Extraordinary ways for determining the future
1. Surface mechanisms of creation
The central question I am concerned with here is "What
determines the future?" In other
words, what determines what one experiences?
I assert that on the surface there are three mechanisms, but on a deeper
level there is only one -- and that is the deliberate choice of consciousness,
which is in fact creation. Regarding the
three surface mechanisms:
a.
The first appears to be the consequence of luck or
random event: something appears to just
happen that impacts on the direction of a human's life, perhaps an auto
accident, an illness, winning the lottery or an "act of God" like a
tornado.
b. The second appears to be the cause-and-effect
workings of ordinary reality. A bullet
fired from a gun aimed at a person's head an instant before it hits. A virus contracted a few days earlier causes
a cold, a good job done at work causes the boss to complement you. Exposure of disgraceful sexual conducts leads
to a political situation that forces the governor of
b.
The human being makes a choice, acts, and produces a
result as a consequence of the action.
In the first two mechanisms above, the human being appears
to be passive -- something is done to him or something happens to him. Only in the third mechanism is he
proactive. He takes conscious action and
gets results through a chain of cause and effect. Most behavior in the civilized world is
predicated on these mechanisms being the only choices. You study hard to get a good degree from a
good college to get a good job. You take
an antibiotic to cure a strep infection.
You drive with caution to avoid accidents. Note that the third option, choice followed
by action, may not work in many cases due to unforeseen factors. E.g. the company with your good job goes
bankrupt, you get in accident anyway due to somebody else’s fault, the strep is resistant to your antibiotic.
The conventional wisdom is too take
charge of your life you must take conscious action (the third
choice) and thereby hope to minimize the negative consequences of the other two
mechanisms (luck, and events already in motion).
JS:
You are aware that this possibility has its detractors. That which makes
decisions might simply be a brain’s neuronal connections (the “wetware”) which
are configured as they are by genetics and past experience, and as now
configured are as deterministic in relating input to output as my Dell PC.
VG:
Right on! Some brains may have
even contracted “malware” installed by parents or the
media.
This thinking and way of proceeding is on the level of causation. While necessary and important, I assert that
causation by itself is insufficient to provide a complete and satisfying
life. I assert there is a much more
powerful means of taking charge, but to get to it one has to go to the deeper
level, and that is the level of creation,
a level that sets chains of causation into motion.
2. Basic creation
*Creation* by a human being is a process of bringing
something forward into the universe that did not exist before. Creation in the normal sense of the term can
certainly be manifest through cause-and-effect actions. A painter buys paints and canvas and
physically paints to create a painting.
I type on a computer keyboard to create this treatise. I can see a lawyer and communicate with him
to create a trust for my children. In
fact, most of what is created can be explained, after the fact, as the working
of cause-and-effect, and seen to be the working of ordinary reality, the result
of interactions of physical entities. These
examples are ones where the creator also provides the physical agency for
creation. I believe there is also
personal creation where most or all of the action of creation happens apart
from the human being, where the human may not be involved in the action at all,
where the chain of causation is initiated and takes place apart from the human.
In my ontology:
·
I speculate that Source encompasses all consciousness
in the Universe though it itself is beyond the Universe.
·
Given that a human being expresses consciousness and
that Source represents the totality of consciousness in the Universe, a human
being is part of Source whether he or she knows this or not. Although I am a part of Source, Source is
indefinitely vaster than what my own consciousness encompasses.
·
Personal creation can come about through the self
expressing Source. Being part of source,
within certain limits I can do what Source does: alter the probabilities
relating to space, time and matter so as to initiate chains of causation and
alter the course of our Universe. That
is, I can cause things, processes, and events to come into manifest being.
·
Creation starts as a state of being, an intention and
a commitment, expressed as a declaration to the self. Doing, if any, comes
afterwards.
I suggest a model here of how humans contribute to creating
the experiences they have, be these good or bad. In preparation, I continue with a number of
additional declarations, definitions and observations. I then describe how an individual can go about
creating something -- the steps that the person can take.
Key points are:
·
What exists in the universe - what was, is and will
be – is created by Source acting on Everything-Nothing
JS:
I suppose a Panentheist would call God “EN,” whereas a Pantheist would
call God “Source.”
VG: Right.
I fall in the second category.
·
My consciousness is part of the larger consciousness
of Source. As such I can participate in the creative
actions of source, operating on EN so as to affect what is above and beyond any
physical actions I may take.
·
The universe I am in is objective. It exists, it contains far more things,
processes and developments than I could ever know about, past, present or
future; I call these *creations*.
·
*Creations are the result of Source and more directly
the operation of the normal laws of reality.
For example, Source set up principles of physics, chemistry and biology
that allow trees to grow; these are part of the laws of normal reality. Trees grow according to those laws. Some creations, particularly physical ones
like a tree or rock can have apparent permanence, can persist in the
universe. Others, like a thought, are
recognized as fleeting. Actually nothing
ever stays the same. Everything is changing,
though sometimes imperceptivity.
Creations we generate are all initially abstractions. They are based on concepts we hold which
relate to distinctions we have drawn.
They are essential for us but never fully characterize what is out there
in the universe.
JS:
At one time I conceived of humans as being God’s pseudopods – as though
God were blind and needed the experiences of created entities to reach into the
void and know itself.
VG:
I think there is a lot of validity to that. In fact it is a central theme of this
document. But I allow that there may be
many other forms of consciousness through which Source (God) manifests itself.
·
I do not have distinctions (creations) for most of
what exists and never will, although I can continue drawing distinction as long
as I am alive. Creations may vary
according to state of cultural knowledge.
For example, suppose a person observes having a sudden
fever, light-headedness, sniffly
nose and not feeling well. The creations that could be used to described the
cause of this condition could include: “being punished for a sin,” “being possessed
by a evil spirit,” “having the grippe,” “having a common cold,” “having Acute
Viral Nasopharyngitis due to an andovirus,” etc..
·
Creations I am unaware of can affect me, whether
initiated past present or future. Many
of these may be undistinguished by me, e.g Jane may
not have a distinction for a rare genetic disease that is affecting her, yet it
may affects her. Mary may not know of a
person who will call her tomorrow with important bad news about her father.
·
Humans are constantly creating, and among the things
they create are their experiences of reality.
·
What a human creates is an expression of who that
human believe himself to be, of what he believes and declares to be so.
IV. CREATION AND UNIVERSES
I need to say more about Our Universe in order to lead up to a discussions of the cookbook how-to of creation and the
conditions for and the limitations of creation.
I wish here to establish how the process of creation I suggest is
compatible with the laws of physics and ordinary reality. I introduce and use the concept of *multiple
parallel universes*. I know that some of
the assertions that follow are absurd from the conventional cause-and-effect
ways of thinking. Richard Feynman, Nobel
Prize winner and creator of Quantum Chromodynamics said “So I hope you can accept nature as She is -
absurd.” I believe my assertions are in fact not only completely consistent
with science, but also part of a newly emerging mainstream of
scientific/philosophical thought being engaged in by serious physicists and
cosmologists.
A. Under-determinism and scientific laws
Let’s start out with a fairly supportable proposition: the cause-and-effect workings of known
scientific laws vastly under-determines
what happens. Most everywhere we look,
the laws if science describe how things can happen, but don't say what will happen. What
happens, with limited exceptions, is inherently emergent and unpredictable, even
though it happens in conformity with scientific "laws." This is a message of Chaos Theory.
JS:
“Minnesota Fats” would have disagreed – when he hit a cue ball it did
exactly what the laws of physics predicted (at least in his macro world of the
pool table). If my pocket calculator doesn’t get 2 when I add 1 + 1, there is
something very wrong.
VG:
Right, we humans pride ourselves for the few areas in which we have been
able to create high predictability. The
operation of the computer I am using to write this is an example. My point stands however. When Minnesota Fats drinks too much his hands
wobble a little and the cue ball might not do exactly what it is supposed to
do. My shelf has three pocket
calculators that don’t work any more. I
don’t know what will happen tomorrow morning right after I wake up, assuming
that I do wake up. And sometimes my
computer completely balks,
Electromagnetic laws limits how electrons move through
computer circuits, but these laws don't give the designs of computer
circuits. Computer circuits limit how
bits are stored and flow, but do not determine the software that can be
run. Word processing software may limit
the efficiency with which I write, but does not determine what I write.
Biological laws limit the kinds of organisms that can
survive, but don't determine what those organisms are. Laws of nuclear physics determine how
subatomic particles interact, but don't tell what particles will in fact
interact where. Laws of gravitation tell
how astronomic bodies are constrained to move with respect to each other, but
don't tell which bodies are to be found in which movement patterns where. The point is that starting with any situation
of complexity, lots of different things can happen in ways that conform with known scientific laws.
JS:
Some argue that even the roll of a die is a deterministic event, and it
is only our ignorance of all the hidden variables that make it seem random.
VG:
Right, some do argue that. But I
think determinism went out the window 90 years ago with the rise of quantum
theory which is inherently probabilistic.
Hidden variables don’t get much credit in theories of physics nowadays. Bell’s Theorem destroyed
enthusiasm for them.
B. The act of creation
The physical processes of creation should not be confused
with the act of creation in Macroscopic
Reality Creation. The artist
painting is giving physical expression to something else.
The act if
creation is an unbounded declaration of a being of what is so in the universe
that the being lives in.
I will get to what I mean by "unbounded" when I
discuss limits of creation. For now
think of unbounded as authentically meaning “this is so for me starting right
now,” not meaning simply “this is how I would like it to be,” or “I want this
to be so but I am not quite sure it is possible.” Such a declaration takes
place at a given time, but once it is made there is a profound shift in the
universe for that person -- a shift to where what was declared to be so *is* in
effect so. The shift is not only in
present and future, but in the past as well.
The part of the past that is affected is not in the being's experience
record, and was indeterminate up to that point.
So there is no observable shift whatsoever in history or past as far as
the individual is concerned, no discontinuity, no apparent change whatsoever. In fact, the whole universe has re-aligned
itself.
Let's take an example, creation of a state of health. If I can and do make an unbounded declaration
"I am healthy and free of all but minor illnesses," all kinds of
factors in the past of which I am unaware may shift to contribute to making me
healthy now. They can shift because they
were unknown, not part of my experience record or anybody’s as far as I
know. For example, there may be a shift
in my parent's genetic makeup defending their offspring against diabetes; there
may be a shift in the diseases I was exposed to as a child; there may be
decreases in the toxic substances my mother was exposed to while she was
pregnant with me. There may be a
decrease in my exposure to lead fumes as a child. There may be a drug now in development that
will save my life in the future. They
are shifts that create healthiness for me now and in the future, in
cause-and-effect ways that will be understandable to science and medicine. These shifts in the past or unknown-present
are not part of my experience record and are unperceived by me. They are in the previously indeterminate part
of My Universe.
JS:
You are saying that your current decisions affect past events (something
akin to Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation of quantum events)?
VG: Yes, I am saying that current acts of creation (different than decisions) can affect past events that are not in your experience record or determined by other events in your experience record. I do not know about Cramer’s transactional interpretation of quantum events but have glanced at the reference you provided me and intend soon to bury myself in it. (Reader please note: this comment by Jim Seltzer led me to look into this interpretation and I have written a section at the end of this document describing Macroscopic Reality Creation from the viewpoint of Cramer’s interpretation.) I have long known that quantum operators can be read backwards as well as forward with interpretation being a quantum wave that goes backwards in time. (E.g. in Dirac notation going from ket> to <bra instead of <bra to ket>).
JS:
How about the case where your father’s DNA contained a defective allele
(known to his physician but unknown to you)? Does your decision alter your
father’s medical record?
VG:
If my experience record has nothing whatsoever in it relating to this
defective allele, then in some of the universes in my current manifold my
father’s DNA has the defective allele (say it is one that surely leads to Parkinson’s Disease) and his medical records may show
that. In other universes in my universe manifold
his DNA did not have the allele.and his medical
records did not mention any such thing.
If my father lived till 90 and I make an unbounded declaration that my
father was completely free of Parkinson’s Disease all
his life, then I would be routed into the universe sub-manifold where there was
no such alle in my dad’s DNA. If his body were dug up and genetically
tested his DNA would not contain the allele and if his medical records were
checked they would not show presence of the allele.
JS: I suppose the parallel universe
theory accepts your interpretation insofar as the future track shifts to a past
that conforms to your belief – nothing then in this switched track is incompatible
with the past.
VG:
Exactly. That’s why what
a-priori appear to be miraculous creations appear after the fact to be the
results of normal cause-and-effect.
Next, let's take creation of art. Say I can and do make an unbounded declaration
"I am a talented painter and produce wonderful works of art," and
suppose I have never in fact painted before.
The past shifts so I either already have or can easily develop a good
sense of form and color and motor-sensory hand-eye coordination. It shifts so that the "reality"
conditions that in the past never gave me enough time to start painting now
allow it. Situations in the past turn
out to have existed so that soon my current job comes to an end, but enough
money appears so I don't any longer have to work at a regular job. It appears that these situations existed all
along, or that I came to the necessary money through luck. No shift in the universe is visible, but soon
I am painting away, improving my art work by leaps and bounds. (Personal
Note: April 2008: When I wrote this in 1990 I must have also intended the
result because becoming an active artist has indeed unfolded for me. See my art website http://www.giulianoart.com and the
website of the art movement I started Artkoukou http://www.artkoukou.com.)
Everything always seems to have happened after-the-fact
through innate undiscovered talent, cause-and-effect, hard work and good
luck. In a universe I used to live in,
if I suggested to anyone that I could create myself as a talented artist in an
instant, that my creating something now creates a past that can make that
something appear, I ran the risk of ridicule.
In the universe I have created now, the one in which this paper is being
written, my intent is that these ideas will be taken seriously.
C. MULTIPLE UNIVERSES AND CREATION
The assertions I have made leave open a number of
questions. On the surface of it, the
idea that anybody can go around creating anything he or she wants seems
absurd. Would this not immediately lead
to contradictions -- If I create A and someone else
creates not-A, what happens? How does shifting
things around in the past through the power of a personal intention work? I offer a model that makes my above
assertions plausible, a model that draws on the notion of parallel universes.
Parallel
Universes was one of the possible interpretive frameworks put forward about
eighty years ago to explain the strange realities of quantum physics. This theory remains no more off-the-wall than
the other theories suggested to explain the completely weird phenomena of
quantum mechanics. In fact it is more
satisfying in many ways. It has survived
the test of time. And the latest
theories of physics, String Theories and Brane Theory, recognize parallel
universes. Parallel universes also figure
importantly in works of philosophy, cosmology, religion and science fiction.
By *a universe* I
mean that which would be described by a complete description of what exists:
past, present, future, from the beginning of time to the end of time, in
infinite detail.
A universe is characterized by a complete detailed
description of the behavior of all matter, all energy in all space and all time
(granted that actually creating such a characterization would be impossible). There are lots and lots of universes. There are universes in which Napoleon was a
nice guy, in which bananas are four feet long, in which dogs write papers for
the New England Journal of Medicine.
Consider a universe, and then vary it a teeny weenie
almost-imperceptible bit to get a second one.
Now vary this one a teeny-weeny almost-imperceptible bit to get a third
universe. This can be done over and
over, an infinite number of times, still keeping all the universes fairly similar. Such an infinite collection of rather similar
universes can be thought of as a manifold
of universes, to loosely apply a mathematical concept. There are infinities of manifolds of
universes, perhaps a continuous manifolds of
manifolds, nested infinitely deep. In
these universes everything is possible.
The set of all these manifolds of universes is sometimes called the *multiverse.
JS:
If there is an infinity of such universes, in
which of these do you exist? If you exist in an infinite subset of these, is
the YOU in each the same? If not, is the YOU in any of
these accessible to the YOU in another?
VG:
I exist in an infinite manifold of universes and may be slightly
different or even more than slightly different in some. In some I may be strikingly different, so
much so that I would not recognize that entity as me. Since I am simultaneously in a vast manifold
of universes, a point made soon below, these are all accessible to me, some
requiring acts of creation to manifest themselves. Are the almost-me entities accessible? I think so in some sense but am not completely
clear about this.
All universes are simultaneously present, the sea of all
possibilities, the Everything-Nothing of EN.
I am mainly concerned with the sub-manifold of universes
that behave according to the laws of ordinary reality; I call these ordinary universes. Those are the universes in which all the laws
of the sciences as we know them hold, in which "cause and effect"
relationships can be attributed, e.g. in which certain (but by no means all or
even most) situations can be explained after the fact as having been
"caused" by earlier conditions and events. A universe behaving according to the laws of
ordinary reality has within it well-behaved space and time, as we are
accustomed to their being. Many but by
no means all ordinary universes are ones that would seem more familiar to us if
we could visit them. They don’t allow
the fantasy or discontinuous happenings of dreams or myths. Myths, dreams and fantasy worlds are imagined
excursions into universes of non-ordinary reality.
Focusing on a particular human being at a particular time in
a particular universe with a particular experience record there is clearly an infinite manifold of very high dimension of other
parallel ordinary universes in which there is an identical human being with an identical
experience record. These include
universes with pasts that are different outside of that being's experience
record, e.g. a universe only different in that there was one less Cherio in the
bowl of Cherios I had for breakfast
Rather than thinking of a different human being in each of
infinitely many universes, it is simpler to assert that a human being at a given point of time exists simultaneously in the
manifold of ordinary universes that are consistent with his experience set. This idea of simultaneous existence in
multiple universes is also found in contemporary physics. Going back to the example of a particle, it exists
with different positions in an infinity of different
universes right up to the time when its position is measured.
Hoping I can become more precise about this later, a human can be defined by a resonance of
consciousness among all those parallel universes consistent with his experience
record. According to the multiple-universe theory of quantum physics,
physical existence itself depends on existence in parallel universes.
JS:
I notice that some of my questions are being answered as I proceed
further in your essay. Nonetheless. I am left to ponder whether there is a
linkage (resonance of consciousness) that bundles these YOUs together.
VG:
That seems to me to be a good way to think about it. I am the resonance crossing over a manifold
of universes. There is no individual me
separate from it. This resonance is a
part of Source operating on EN. My
senses tell me that I am having experiences in a single universe but the
reality is that there is a constant narrowing of my universe manifold. Perhaps my perception of this narrowing is
what we call time.
At any given time, then, a human has his universe manifold
which is vastly underdetermined with respect to past, present and future. Looking backwards, this means very different
things have happened in different universes in his manifold, things which have
not yet impacted on his experience record.
Many such things will never impact on his experience record. Some will, though. The same is true looking out in the
present. Looking forward, there are all
kinds of alternatives.
As time progresses, a human moves
progressively at each instant into a sub-manifold of the universe manifold
present at that instant. For example,
consider a human at a given instant, and then 5 seconds later. The universe manifold of that human at the end
of 5 second is the sub-manifold of the universe manifold he started with that
includes only universes with the actual experience record of the last 5
seconds. Universes with other unrealized
experiences (like ones where the person was killed by a gas main explosion) are
excluded. So as time progresses, a human moves to a narrower and narrower (and hence more
defined) manifold of all possible universes.
Since we are dealing with infinities raised to the power of infinite
exponents, there are still plenty enough universes to go around as this process
goes forward. What I have previously characterized
as My Universe is actually the manifold of universes I exist in at a given
time.
JS:
Hmm… I visualize an expansion of possibilities with time rather than a
narrowing. Anyway, what should I care living here in Universe 6231 what fate
befalls the ME living in Universe 4983.
VG: As I see it, creation
is continuing differentiation from EN and therefore is indeed a narrowing
process. At the singularity point of
creation of the universe, there was no structure or differentiation
whatsoever. Countless creations since
have yielded what we know exists – an infinitesimally tiny fraction of the
possibilities in EN.
You should care about the you in Universe
4983 because he IS you, just like the you in Universe 6231 is. Your paths are bound up together,
you are correlated resonances of each other.
As of now, your fates have been completely intertwined. But at some point in the future if one of you
makes a creation the other one does not, then the two of you will split off to
being in different universe sub-manifolds.
A correlation will still exist, but not as strong a one. One of you will be an “almost me” with
respect to the other.
Now its possible to look at the act
of creation in a new light.
When a human being makes an unbounded declaration of
what is so, he or she is simply selecting a sub-manifold of universes into
which he or she then passes.
The sub-manifold consists of universes in which what was
declared to be so is actually so. The
shift into the sub-manifold is effortless and seamless; it does not involve
mobilization of energy in any particular universe. The human being is acting as part of Source,
and making a shift of creation with the same degree of incredibleness as was the
creation of anything else. My Universe
shifts. It’s that simple,
philosophically at least.
D. MACROSCOPIC REALITY CREATION AND QUANTUM
PHYSICS
The reader with a physics background may notice that there
is an extensive analogy between the macro-scale reality-creation process I have
described and quantum mechanics on the subatomic scale. I suggest that another step can be taken
which is to say the macroscopic processes
of creation I am suggesting and creation of reality on the quantum level are essentially
the same, except as have to be adjusted for scale. Substitute the quantum physics action of applying a measurement operator for my
action of making an unbounded declaration of what is so, and
essentially everything in my discussion of reality creation remains the
same. In both
frameworks. An action
rather-mysteriously results in the creation of a reality – such as the
“collapse” of a wave function for a photon into an actual photon particle when
a measurement event takes place.
Earlier I mentioned that in the classical interpretation of
quantum physics (The Copehhagen Interpretation propounded by Niels Bohr around 1927) the position of a particle
associated with a wave function does not exist until the moment that a position
measurement is made. It is unknowable beforehand. Up to that point the position of the particle
does not exist; its position is just a probability distribution called a
quantum wave-function. The way of interpreting
this is that when a measurement is made the wave-function collapses and the
particle shows up somewhere. Looked at
another way (the Parallel
Universes Interpretation), the particle exists in an infinity of
alternative universes with a different position in each. Once the measurement is made there is an instantaneous
switch of reality into the sub-manifold of universes that have the position
measurement observed. Likewise my past,
present and future lies in an infinity of parallel
universes of very high order. Making an
unbounded declaration of what is so (an intention) switches me into the
sub-manifold of universes where the intention is reality.
JS: If you are unfamiliar with The Transactional
Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, by John Cramer, you may find it
interesting: http://www.npl.washington.edu/ti/
VG:
Thank you. Thank you. It will take me some time to plow through the
essay and grasp the interpretation. My cursory
initial look suggests that the theory of creation proposed here can probably be
recast in Cramer’s interpretational framework. Crudely put, macroscopic-level creation in
this framework would be the transactional outcome of quantum-like waves going
both backwards and forwards in time from the instant of creation, essentially
negotiating between past and future situations so that the creation comes about
through causality. The “how-to” would be
the same as here. (Subsequent to this
reply I have studied the Transactional Interaction Interpretation further and
have outlined how
Marcoscopic Reality Creation an be formulated in the
framework of this Interpretation in Section VIII of this document). In some ways, quantum interpretations are a
matter of taste: is it less ridiculous to think in terms of quantum waves going
back and forth in time to conduct transactions with each other, or to think in
terms of multiple parallel universes?
You may not know that when I took my
Ph.D. at Harvard eons ago one of my three areas of pre-doc concentration was
quantum physics. I studied with Wendell
Furry among others, an important contributor to the field. Grasping it was very difficult and the
process rewired my brain in some crazy way.
I remember one morning when I woke up and realized that this had
happened. My faith in singular objective
reality had been completely crushed. Years
later I had an opportunity to have an exciting one-on-one discussion with Richard
Feynman about the underlying philosophy of quantum phenomena. That conversation helped me refine some of
the key concepts in this paper. I have
always preferred the multiple-universe interpretation to the Copenhagen
interpretation as you can surmise here. It has been a very long time sine I
have delved deeply into the mathematical physics of it, though. And in no-way have I ever contributed to the
basic theory itself. I drafted a paper
long ago that applies quantum-theory concepts to the interpretations of
meanings in language. In the press of my
business activities I put that paper aside in incomplete form twenty years ago
and it was never published. It still
sits in a moldy box in my back attic.
Complementarity and uncertainty
To start, I loosely identify and discuss what I believe are
two fundamental constraints on reality creation:
1.
The more mobilization of mass and energy required for
a creation to be materialized, the more can be the time required for
materialization. In plain terms, big
creations can take longer. You can ask
for a small creation in a short specified time frame but an immense one may
take years or more. Remember the sign
you often see on repair-shop counters “Reasonable requests will be handled immediately;
impossible ones take longer.”
2.
The more specific you are as to the “what” details of
a desired creation, the less specific you can be about the “how” details of it
coming about. And the less specific you
can be as to how fast the creation will be changing when it shows up. Also the other way around, the more specific
you are about how a creation comes about, the less specific you can be about
exactly what the creation consists of.
From a common sense viewpoint these constraints seem
reasonable. Reality creation as I have
defined it is inherently an unreasonable process. I ask the universe to materialize a creation
without physically doing anything myself to make that
happen, and then the universe materializes the creation. Further, the universe disguises the miracle
that occurred by making the creation look like the result of ordinary
cause-and-effect. The two constraints
cut the universe a little needed slack.
Big creations take longer because the universe needs more time to
re-arrange the matter and energy. If you
want a complicated creation, don’t try to also tell the universe exactly how to
make it, and the other way around
Looking a little deeper, readers with a physics background
will recognize that these two constraints are loosely-worded expressions of the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In
classical quantum theory, certain quantum measurement operators are conjugates
of each other
and exhibit complementarity which means that the more precisely you know the
value of one variable, the less precisely you can know its paired complementary
variable. Thus, for example, the Heisenberg uncertainty
formula for position and momentum of a particle being observed is
which states
that standard deviation of position times standard deviation of momentum is
greater or equal than the constant on the right, a small fixed multiple of Planck's constant. If you absolutely know the
momentum of the particle being observed you can know nothing about the position,
and the other way around. This position-momentum complementrity
corresponds to the second constraint of reality creation identified above. I have no ideas as how to quantify the
variables or constant involved for creation on a macroscopic level. Building-up the mathematics from the quantum
level would be impossibly complex, at least for me.
Time and energy are another well-established
pair of complementary variables in quantum mechanics subject to a similar
uncertainty formula. Since mass and energy
are inter-convertible, time-energy complementarity corresponds to the first constraint on
creation identified above: big creations can take longer.
Entanglement
and interference
Creations can become entangled,
in the sense that one requires another for its existence and that you cannot
fully characterize one without mentioning the other. For example, suppose the intention of one creation
is that my new female beagle puppy will mother at least 25 puppies, that the
intention of the second creation is that one of these puppies will be a female
beagle with predominantly white fur and that the third creation is that the
white-fur female will give birth to a male beagle puppy with normal beagle
markings. These creations require that
the fates of the three dogs are quite entangled with each other and with other
objects. The mother dogs must mate with
beagles and the third creation presumes the second. The characteristics of the dogs are entangled with each other.
Applying the constraints of reality creation mentioned above
the creation process could happen through many different events since intended
consequences are fairly clear but I have put no constraints on the mating
processes required, e.g. when or where with what male dogs. And it could take some time for this all to
happen. If I add an additional third creation, that every dog will be an
excellent hunter and live to age of at least 15, there is further entanglement
of the creations and the time and energy conditions are such that all of these things
might not happen..
Entanglement in a quantum system exists when two objects,
say particles, have linked quantum states making them, in some respect, aspects
of some super-entity. See the discussion
of non-locality below. You can’t fully
describe one without mentioning the other.
In the parallel universes interpretation every possible state of
entanglement lives in a separate universe.
In terms of the creation-process example involving beagles, if the creation
process is successful what ends up is a sub-manifold of universes which is the
logical intersection of the sub-manifolds for each of the three creations taken
individually.
Two creations can be such that one requires a mobilization
of matter and energy that is contradictory to the mobilization required by the
other or that makes that mobilization more complex. In this case they can be said to interfere with each other possibly
resulting in one or both of the creations remaining unrealized. Physical impossibilities fall in this
category, such as my being in
Quantum interference results from the superposition of two
quantum wave functions and is a well-studied though still-puzzling
phenomenon. Quantum interference has been
observed between light waves, electrons, and atomic beams. Both quantum entanglement and quantum
interference show up on a macroscopic level in electrical currents in solid
superconductors and even in super-cooled liquids. Current research could result in practical technologies
based on quantum entanglement and interference - such as light-based computers
and the construction of nano-devices.
Non-locality
Non-locality
is a very puzzling aspect of quantum physics where particles widely separated
in time and space have entangled quantum states and seem to know instantly what
the other one is doing without possible communication between them. For example, two particles created from a
spin-neutral particle may be zooming off in opposite directions from a common
interaction. We know that the spin of either
of these particles is indeterminate until measured. The probability of the spin being measured +
or – is equal. But sure as heck if the
spin of one is measured as + the spin of the other will be measured as –, and visa
versa. That is because the sum of the
spins of the two particles must always be zero.
And this is what is always observed even if the particles are so far
apart that a signal moving at the speed of light could not have crossed from
one particle to another before the measurements were made. This kind of experiment was proposed in 1935
by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen and later actually
conducted. It was initially thought that
there might be a “hidden variable” that determined the spin of each particle at
the onset when they were created, but this was disproved later by John Bell and
others. From the viewpoint of the
Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum mechanics, the wave functions of the two
particles are correlated in some way even though they are significantly
separated in time and space; it appears that they are part of one overall
non-local wave function. Einstein
proposed the experiment because this non-locality was too far out for him to
accept. From the viewpoint of this article:
1. It is an example of Source operating
on EN from outside time and space, and 2.
In the parallel universe view the situation is simple. Once a spin measurement is made on one of the
particles there is an instantaneous shift into a subset of universes in which
the spin of both particles is correctly fixed.
My discussion of the analogy between reality creation and quantum-level phenomena
is necessarily superficial. Besides the
Classical Copenhagen and the Multiple Universes approaches to interpretation of
quantum mechanics there are now several other interpretations, all strange and
implausible-seeming in their own ways. And
they come in multiple flavors. One school of thought started by
Karl Popper, for example, denies the very existence of subatomic particles
whether they have specific properties or not.
According to this school there is no underlying reality, only
“propensity fields” which satisfy certain equations. Other theories talk about reality consisting
of “tendencies.” I discuss macroscopic
Reality creation from the viewpoint of another school of thought, the
Transactional Interpretation, in Section VIII here. What is important from the viewpoint of
reality creation:
·
To
the extent that I have looked at and have been able to understand different
interpretations of quantum phenomena, it appears to me that the discussion of macroscopic
reality creation in this paper could be formulated in terms of any of them.
·
All
interpretations of quantum physics are bizarre and test our credulity to the
utmost. We have to give up the idea of
separate objects living in separate regions of time and space and even that of
objective reality. Our human senses that
were developed by evolution to allow us to survive as hunter-gatherers don’t
work in this domain. And our minds can
visit that domain only with great difficulty.
·
Quantum
physics describes what is going on at the sub-atomic but it is not just a set
of theoretical constructs. Whole areas of
our technology depend on quantum behavior including radiology, atomic energy,
lasers, superconducting fluids and practically any computer or solid-state
device including the wrist watch I am now wearing.
·
The
interpretations I am offering for reality creation are essentially the same
ones used in quantum physics. I present them essentially stripped of
mathematical complexity, first because I don’t know how to scale up the
mathematics from a quantum to a macro scale, and second, if I did know how to
do that most people would not be able to read this paper.
E. LIMITS AND CONDITIONS OF CREATION
A question that rises immediately is what
are the limits of creation through the process of an act of creation --
an unbounded declaration of a being of what is so in the universe. Can I grow wings and fly tomorrow? Can I grow younger again? Can I disappear the
moon, or Jupiter? Can I be President of
the
·
I cannot
create something contradictory to something created previously in My Universe (e.g.
whatever I create must be consistent with previous creations so as not to
violate the common-sense principles of ordinary reality), without discreating the original something first. E.g. If I weigh 380 pounds I cannot create
being skinny without discreating being fat first. Trying to do so would require jumping out of
the manifold of universes I am in into a different manifold, a discontinuity.
·
My total
being must be vested in the declaration -- it is something I must be able
to declare and let loose in the universe without reservation, without a secret
belief that it won’t work.
·
It must be
possible for the creation to come into being in a way that is consistent with
the operation of the laws of ordinary day-to-day reality, given my experience
set and my associated beliefs
. E.g. I cannot create myself as 25 feet tall or
as having six arms tomorrow morning.
This also would be an issue of trying for a discontinuous jump out of
the My Universe manifold. Another way of
saying this is that the laws of ordinary reality are previous creations. I can’t create something that contradicts the ordinary
laws of day-to-day reality unless I were willing to modify or get rid of them
first.
An *unbound declaration* is one for which these three
conditions are satisfied.
Let’s run through some examples starting with wanting to
grow wings and fly tomorrow. I simply
can't (or perhaps won't) make an unbound declaration of myself for this one.
·
I have already created a comprehensive reality in
which humans don't have wings and can't fly.
The My Universe manifold does not include humans having wings;
·
I am unwilling to vest my being in this declaration,
first because it is not something I truly and deeply want,
second because I feel foolish asking for it, and given my experience set and
associated beliefs, I don't think I could grow wings tomorrow and fly without ordinary
reality becoming very strange.
Disappearing the moon, making my wife suddenly 40 years
younger, and being President of the
The parallel universe framework also lends light on what I
can and cannot uncreate. I can uncreate some
existing creations but not others that would require jumping into a universe
outside the manifold of universes I am in now, e.g. violate the complementarity
principle.
JS: I don’t appreciate this “jumping” thing at
all. Your other self in the other universe probably doesn’t appreciate getting
displaced either. How would you (existing as you do in your pleasant
circumstances) like to get knocked aside by some vagrant slob of a you who decides to invade your turf? Perhaps you are the plenary YOU who has the
singular option to decide the fates of all the other YOUs scattered about in
other universes?
VG:
No problem, Since I am a resonance of the “me”s
in my manifold of universes at any instant I am they and they are me. We are us. When we make a declaration resulting in a
creation, it is the cross-universe committee of me that is doing that The whole
essence here is to get away from the idea that there is only a singular me in a
singular universe.
For example, I cannot violate the creations which define the
ground rules of my existence as a physical being on this planet. More exactly, if I succeed in violating them
I would blow myself out of this existence.
I cannot create a creation that violates:
·
The laws and rules of ordinary reality (e.g. I cannot
repeal the laws of inertia and gravity unless I am willing to have everything fly
apart and end this physical existence)
·
Creations deeply held in my experience record (e.g. I
cannot uncreate the past and present existence of the
city of Detroit where I was born without
making a discontinuous jump to a new manifold of universes that vastly alters
who I am.)
I can uncreate other creations,
some fairly easily. Suppose I am no good
at remembering names or birthdays or have no talent in composing music or have
an angry disposition. These can be
uncreated using a similar process to that for creation. I may also be able to uncreate
the reality that follows from judgments, e.g. “It is impossible to reason with
my mother.” In my mid-years of life I
uncreated many negative aspects of how my mother was so it was possible for us
to enjoy an intimate friendship through the middle and later years of her
life. Did my mother change or was it
just my attitude towards her that changed?
Both I believe. She really was
awful in some ways to me when I was a kid and she openly acknowledged that to
me with apologies in her later years.
Can I create wealth, a great family, extended longevity and
even a wonderful world environment in which my children and their children can thrive? Yes.
No discontinuities from my experience record would be required. These universes along with a lot of awful
ones are in the manifold of My Universe.
All I need to do is muster the intentionality to do so without being
sabotaged with the little voice of “That’s impossible.” My declaration must be unbound.
JS:
Creating and discreating would seem to play
havoc with your memories, therefore your synaptic connections, therefore the
REAL YOU!!
VG:
Fact is, a strongly held memory can make it
very difficult to make an unbound declaration. And an unbound declaration may
be impossible if it contradicts memories which are part of my experience
record. I would have to uncreate too many memories to be able to realize a reality
that I was born in
One simple way of knowing that a declaration is bound is
that a little voice appears in your head when you make the declaration saying something
that sabotages the declaration, be this a "Yes, but.. " thought, or a
thought that "Of course this is not possible." or a thought that
attaches some condition to the declaration.
See Section VI below on the “how-to” of making unbound declarations.
V. SOME
PERSONAL-REALITY-CREATION ADVENTURES
I have been deliberately creating reality all of my
life. I mention a few examples or
professional reality creation and then describe several more in story
form. In each of these cases I went
through some variant of a explicit reality-creating
intent with reality materializing afterwards.
·
Getting into the
·
Excelling at math at the
·
Serving a pleasant, relaxed and productive career
after being drafted into the
·
Getting accepted into Harvard graduate school with
all expenses for me and my wife covered
·
Being exposed to early innovators leaders in the
computer revolution starting in 1951
·
Becoming one of the pioneers in the
computer-communications field and making significant contributions over a large
number of years
·
Becoming a prominent consultant, writer and speaker
·
Being both businessman and scientist
·
Having always varying, interesting and exciting work
·
Being highly productive as a longevity researcher,
writer, artist and videographer now in my late 70s
These can all be characterized as accomplishments resulting
from hard work and luck. That is true.
It is also true that they emerged from reality-creating intentions I started
formulating early in my life. I don’t
exactly know when I started. Perhaps at the age of 5, perhaps much earlier. I know I formulated my intention to work in
the computer field when I was 14 after I read an article in Popular Mechanics
about a “giant brain” at Harvard, the Mark I electromagnetic computer. I declared to myself I will be part of that
“giant brain” line of development and I want to work in that place with that
man who built the machine, Howard Aiken. That was in 1944. In
1956 Aiken took me in as a doctoral graduate student. I did my thesis research on a Univac I
computer which was in the same room with the Mark I which was still running.
Here are a few personal reality-creation stories:
A. Getting to
be a university professor without passing go
After receiving my Ph. D. from Harvard in 1959 I took a job
with the Arthur D. Little Inc, consulting firm, fulfilling an earlier intention
to become an ace scientist-businessman consultant. My work, again by intention, involved
dividing my time between basic research on problems of artificial intelligence
and practical business consulting with major corporations of how to incorporate
computers into their businesses. It was
a very productive period from both viewpoints. I cranked out numerous
scientific publications and was often invited to speak at international
conferences. And from time to time I found myself sitting in corporate
boardrooms. Seeing my success, near the
end of 1966 I begin thinking “If I am so smart, why aren’t I at a major
university where my other scientific colleagues are.” So I formed the intention to be a University
professor. But I didn’t want to have to
claw myself up through the academic ranks.
It usually took ten or fifteen years of very hard work and faculty
politics to go from Instructor to Assistant Professor to Associate Professor,
to Full Professor. Most who entered this
teach-like-crazy and publish-or-parish ladder never made it to the top and the
pay did not get decent until the end of the process. My thought was “screw that.” My intention was to start out as a full professor
with excellent pay.
I shared this intention with only a couple of people, one
being a blind scientist I knew at Bell Laboratories[JS1] .[VG2]
JS:
Did you get to know S.O. Rice? One of my personal
heroes.
VG:
No I did not know Rice. But I did
get to interact with a lot or really great people there like William Shockley (the
transistor) Gordon Moore (of
I did not put out any
resumes or publicize the intention in any way.
One day a couple of months later I “happened” to get two telephone calls
out of the blue. One was from a new
Provost at the State University of New York in
B. Creating a
great extended family
In 1971 I had an incredible family and personal intimacy
mess on my hands. I was married to my
second wife and was raising four children with her. I had divorced my first wife with whom I had
had another two children. A lover, a
woman who would become my third wife, had for several years been living in the
house with me, my second wife and that family.
A fourth woman friend of mine showed up with a baby that I had sired;
she was to become my fourth wife. Then
my third wife decided to have another baby with me and I concurred. I loved all of these women and children. I was telling the truth to everyone but there
was a lot of anger and distrust among the three women. And at the time I was regularly
sleeping with each of them. How could I
sort it out so it would work? How could
I fulfill my commitment to be a father present while the two new small children
were raised?
JS:
You should have been a Mormon. A little discreating
could have fixed that.
VG:
I indeed had to do a fair amount of discreating
to fix the situation. But being a
scientist at heart, becoming a Mormon would have meant too much bullshit for my
taste.
Fortunately by then I had been exposed to some of the tools
of reality creation and put them to work.
I formed an unbounded intention to create a harmonious extended family
characterized by love, compassion and generosity – one that works for
everybody. Within three or four years
that family materialized and has endured since.
We regularly celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas and other holidays with
all the extended family members who live in our part of the country. There is friendship and love all around, and
no remaining conflict. We brought a large
house in the suburbs in 1985. My wife
and our son and I lived on one floor, my third wife and my son with her lived
on the second floor. We shared many
dinner and family events as an extended family.
Both my boys grew up living with their father and mother and are now
close brothers as adults. They are off on their own but the two mothers and I remain
in the family house as a close supportive unit.
People ask me “How did you pull that off Vince?” I didn’t pull anything off. I created an unbounded intention that served
the interest of all concerned, and the results of the intention
materialized. A lot had to do with what
I did to make this possible, but a lot more had to do
with what people would call “good fortune" and the generosity of the women
concerned. My intentions with respect
to family and intimacy have existed as reality since about 1973.
C. Creating
ideal work with my wife
In 1993 my job as Chief Scientist of a software company was
coming to an end and I was doing a lot of thinking about what I might want to
do next. I had a number of discussions
about this with my wife Melody and we decided it would be very nice if we could
work together as a team and if our work could involve significant travel in
I had no idea about how this intention could be realized
when I formulated it. Neither of us knew any Spanish or Portuguese. Neither of us had any work contacts in
E. The Cruncher
Longevity Test
In 1994 I decided to put my theory of creation to a real
cruncher of a test – by declaring that my future would have a characteristic
unknown previously in recorded history.
The bottom line is not in yet but I will share what the declaration of
intention was and what has happened with respect to it since.
While pursuing consulting work in
So the way out of my funk was to declare the future I
intended to live in, not see myself as victim of circumstances. The basic declaration came to me suddenly but
it took me several hours to clarify it in detail and assure myself it was an
unbounded declaration that reflected my full commitment. It went something like this: “In the universe in which I live I shall live
a happy and productive life for another 165 years, mostly in the healthy
physical body of a person 30-40 years old.
This will take place with continuity of my consciousness and continuity
of my relationships through the operation of ordinary reality. I will continue working and creating.” I made extensive computer notes. Since then until now this has not been just
an intention; it is a becoming reality in which I live. And it is the basis of
a new career for the next phase of my life.
In my experience record at the time of making this
declaration, humans in history never lived to be more than 110 years old, give
or take a few. I was declaring I would
live until 230. There were no developments
in science that I knew of that even remotely suggested the possibility. I knew that ordinary reality ruled out
selling my soul to the Devil or becoming a vampire, but I had no inkling as to
how this reality could possibly materialize.
I knew this would be a very tough test of my approach to creation. Yet I reasoned that reality creation had
served me many times earlier in my life, so why not take this approach
now? And I did not think that living
that long would necessarily violate any of the laws of ordinary reality.
After making the declaration, elements of the required reality started to materialize. In 1996 I “accidentally” came across a seminal book on genetics and longevity suggesting that my intention could be more than fantasy. I have since been in touch with Michael Fossel the author. Starting then and increasingly until today I have been following biotechnology research related to longevity and identifying promising approaches. I started researching substances that could contribute to extending my lifespan. In 1995 there were possibly tens of researchers in genetics and biomolecular research applicable to longevity. By the year 2000 there were hundreds. And now there are probably thousands. A significant number of longevity researchers now agree that technology for achieving human life-spans of 200-400 years is likely to be available within a decade or two.
Over ten years ago I came to realize that my personal longevity program would have
to occur in two Phases.
The anticipated Second Phase, not available then,
would be a period of running the aging clock backwards utilizing newly-discovered techniques
of molecular biplogy and genetics. The result would be a reset of my main body organs and
my internal cellular clocks and patterns of gene expression
to a more youthful state, one perhaps characteristic of a 35 year-old. I had no idea at the time of how this might be accomplished except through discoveries yet to be made. In 1996, I thought this Phase might be available in 10-20 years.
A year ago I thought this "reset" phase could possibly
be available for selected test subjects in as little as 5 more
years. Now, I think I might already
have entered into the initial part of that Second Phase.
The First Phase was to adopt a
program that would allow me to live long enough and in good enough health until
the Second Phase treatment became available. I have been in the First Phase for most of the past ten years. I exercise daily, minimize stress, eat well and get
plenty of sleep. I have been taking over a hundred
supplement pills a day and some of those substances extend the life of
laboratory animals by as much as 30%. I
am not yet in the body of a 30-40 year old but am in fine health with excellent
mental energy. About to turn 79, I estimate that
most of the organs in my body have the biological age of a person 10-15 years
younger. I currently devote 30-40 hours
per month in the research literature related to new genetic and biomolecular
developments relating to aging. I have written
professional papers in the longevity supplements field. And I have written a feature film screenplay
with my wife related to setting back the aging clock. The final results of the Cruncher Longevity
Test are not yet in but the reality of my intention is continuing to
materialize around me. It has helped
organize my life. The nature of the
intention is that it will take 152 more years before I can demonstrate the full
intended results. A thorough description on what I have been doing for life extension, the science behind it, and why I may have already entered the Second Phase is in my treatise Anti-Aging Firewalls.
In this example I started with no known-agreement in the world
as to the possibility of my intention becoming real. Now I experience considerable agreement among
highly-knowledgeable people. Moreover, I am
begenning to experience symptoms of a more youthful state in my own body. Would this have
happened if I had not declared the intention?
Would the necessary biomolecular and genetics research have been done? Would Elizabeth Blackburn have discovered
telomerase; would she even have been born?
These are unanswerable questions.
Looking backwards from beyond 2100, my having lived that long will be
explained by looking at the cause-and-effect history of biomolecular and genetics longevity
research. My intention of 1994 will be
discarded as having nothing to do with what happened to make my long life
possible. That will be fine for me. I will be able to point to this document if
anybody is interested in reading it. We shall
see.
D Creating a
Connection to my Grandfather’s Family
You are probably getting the point by now that all of these
stories of intentions-realized can be explained away (after-the-fact) by
accident and good fortune. True. Here is another recent example. In late 2006 I decided I would like to do
something with my two youngest sons, Joe 27 and Mike 29 that brought us closer
and perhaps connects them with our family history in some way. My grandparents were from
We agreed to research the possibilities further. However I found myself formulating an
intention to connect us all more directly with our family roots – to discover
whether there are any Giulianos directly related to my grandfather and if so
connect with those people while sharing the experience with my sons. My grandfather was born and raised in
Here is what happened after declaring the intention. I half-heartedly started searching for
Giuliano relatives in
Nicola also happened
to be warm and welcoming of a relationship with me and my sons and Joe and Mike
and I ended up staying at his house in San Pietro a Maida. Nicola put us in touch with a rich network of
other Giuliano cousins who happened
to be either in town or visiting. The first
evening we arrived Nicola had happened
to have arranged a Giuliano family reunion of 96 people in a local
restaurant. I happened to be warmly welcomed as the surrogate of my grandfather
with the same name who had left the town 105 years earlier. Nicola and I happened to be able to forge a powerful bond together. The trip made and left a powerful emotional
impact, and now Joe, Mike and I are in touch with a previously-unknown branch
of the family in
From a common-sense viewpoint what was involved here was a
combination of intentionality and luck, call it happenstance. Was it that, or the creation of an intended
reality? I think it was both. The intentionality
expresses itself through what looks after-the-fact as luck and propitious
circumstances. It's always that way. In
quantum physics, we would say that reality creation preserves causality.
JS:
As a computer scientists how do you relate your use of the word
“intentionality” to the artificial intelligence and philosophy of mind use of
the same term?
As to philosophy of mind I do
believe that each of consists of multiple interacting personalities, sometimes
called “voices.” One or several of these
personalities are managers, playing the role of an operating system. An example: I am in a subway car and a woman sitting
next to me says “Would you please stop crowding me?.” Control is automatically shifted to the scared and shamed little boy in me and I
respond “I am very sorry, I will move across the aisle.” As I move I feel anger swelling up in me and
a judgemental-defensive me takes
control and says to myself “Who the hell does she think she is. She weighs at least 350 pounds and then
complains I am crowding her.” Then
control is passed to the loving
compassionate me as I remember my intention of contribution to others. Looking in her face, the dominant bitch I saw
a few seconds ago now appears as an unfortunate person with many signs of
suffering in her place. I see the woman
has a bad cold and is coughing into a dirty handkerchief. I understand that getting me to move was a concealed
gift to me because it reduced my chance of getting infected. I reach into my briefcase where I have an
unopened packet of Kleenex. I walk
across the aisle, smile at her` and say “Please take this.” She takes it, smiles back and thanks me. My operating
system me says to myself “Damn good job,
transforming this negative-sum game to a positive-sum one.”
Marvin Minsky,
godfather of AI, wrote a book on the multiple-personality framework called Community of Mind. I speculate that some of these voices are
stronger or weaker in the various parallel universes in my reality
manifold. Further, I speculate that the
probability distributions of voices across universes conditions which one that
comes up and when. I will be thinking
further about this topic and may write a separate essay on it.
As I think about it now, a number of other compelling
reality-creating stories are coming to mind.
Some of the characteristics of all the successful reality-creating
initiatives I have taken are:
·
Looking forward from when I made the intention, I had
no inkling of how the intention could be realized. There was no action plan, approach, no notion
of how or where to get into action, only pure intentionality.
Many people have told me that it
is ridiculous to formulate an intention without some action plan to make it
real. They say things like “An intention
without an action plan is meaningless.”
The opposite is true for me. The
best approach has been to declare the intention leaving the “how to” wide
open. And then let the universe guide me
through whatever tortuous paths that are required to
getting my intended results. Given the complementarity I have mentioned between the
what of creation and the how it happens, this approach makes the
creation job a lot easier for the universe.
·
After declaring the intention all kinds of things
started to happen: relevant unknown past events were discovered, “accidental” or
unforeseen things “happened,” and other processes occurred in the path of
materializing my intention into reality.
Events and circumstances over which I had no control combined in unpredictable
ways to help me get what I want. That
is, the universe took over the how to
part for me.
·
Looking backwards from when an intention is already realized,
it can always be seen that there was a cause-and-effect chain of circumstances,
happenings and luck that made the intention possible. Most people would leave it by saying: “He
wanted something and by intelligence, hard work and luck he managed to get
it.” Yeah. Right.
Why does it appear this way?
Because a new creation is made in the presence of profound set of prior
creations, namely the laws of ordinary reality which include cause-and-effect.
VI. THE HOW-TO OF CREATION
How I create is relatively simple. I can happen anywhere. It is helpful if it is quiet and I am not
distracted. I envisage the situation I
want to create, attempting to formulate it in as simple and clear terms as
possible. Say it is X. I don’t allow myself to get thrown by the
facts that I have no idea of how X can come about and that I don’t know what to
do to make X happen. I then pause a bit to see if the creation X would create any
contradiction with my past or present reality.
If so, I recast it so as to remove the contradiction. I may mull the possibility of X around for a
while to see if I am fully willing to be committed to it being my reality. When I am ready to create it I simply declare
“In the universe in which I exist, X is so.” I don’t say “X will be so.” Creation happens in the present instant even
though the created situation might not be manifest for some time. If I am clear at that point and nothing comes
up, I have created X and just need to wait for it to materialize. If a voice comes up that says “Yes, but what
about something else, say Y,” then the declaration of reality is not unbounded
and I have to go back either to discreating Y first or reformulating X to work
around Y. I may discreate
Y and find out there is something else Z in the way that I have to discreate or work around.
I continue with the processes of reformulation and discreation until I
am clear. Depending on the complexity
and profoundness of X and what comes up, the whole process can take anywhere
from a few minutes to a few hours.
Normally I do not experience any change at all in my current reality
even though I have shunted myself into a sub-manifold of universes.
Long after I started practicing reality creation and long
after I formulated and wrote down most of what is in this document, I learned
of an organization called AVATAR
that systematically teaches practical processes of reality creation and discreation. One way to look at it is that I created
AVATAR in My Universe to give me philosophical company. I took the basic AVATAR course in 2003 and
found it largely compatible with my philosophy as expounded here. The AVATAR techniques for reality creation
and discreation are proprietary to that organization and I cannot reveal them
here. There are a number of them and
they are taught in a systematic manner.
Also a philosophical background is taught compatible with the one laid out here but in nowhere as great depth. If you would like to pursue reality creation
for yourself seriously in a context of others who believe in and practice it,
taking the AVATAR Course could be a good way to kick-start the process.
VII. PURPOSE OF LIFE AND MORALITY
The idea system I am laying forth leads me directly to a
moral framework and a view of my mission in life. This Section is focused on morality and
spirituality and my arguments are necessarily more personal and less rigorous
or science-compatible than those in Sections I – V.
A. PURPOSE OF LIFE
I find it useful to look at Life is a cosmic game the
purpose of which, for me as a player, is to /discover and know how I am part of
Source. Our western religions would say
the purpose of life is to know God. Like
all games, it has a limited playing field, rules of the game, other players,
hazards, blind alleys and a limited time to be played in. From an anthropomorphic viewpoint, the
purpose of creating the universe was to create the playing field. Or perhaps more accurately the playing fields
since the vastness f the universe undoubtedly supports millions or billions of
forms of life outside those we know on our planet.
Taking from a deep concept of Western religion, I think the
game also has winners and losers -- those who begin to know Source and those
who don't. I am deeply committed to that
game, and saying what is said here is part of my playing it.
JS:
The so-called Axial Model which underlies most western religions seeks
to prepare for existence in the after-life. It is premised on the idea that we
do not really belong to the place we are at now. Christianity’s heaven and
Islam’s paradise are typical of axial religions.
VG:
True. I take a Marxian view of
those religions. They were philosophies
designed to help a ruling class maintain a structured society in which most
people had to live in filth and poverty under tyrannical control with no hope
of escape. What could be more effective
than to tell people that they will get their rewards in an afterlife? Evolution, a major tool for the operation of
Source, works on the societal level by evolving myth and belief frameworks that
are required to support the society at had.
I assert that it is possible for me and you as humans to
participate in creation -- the process of altering probabilities to give form
to matter in space and time. This
assertion is close to the classic assertion that humans have "free
will." I assert, further, that this
participation in creation is tantamount to knowing Source (knowing God), to the extent that such knowing is open to us.
Knowing how we are part of Source consists of giving
expression to Source, becoming part of Source as force of intentionality,
creating, bringing forth something from nothing, creating real differences in
the universe that did not exist before.
B. WINNERS AND LOSERS IN LIFE
Creating
and Winning in Life
So the winners in the game of life are those who know Source
through creating as part of and on behalf of Source, and the losers are those who
don't.
What about the looser, poor slob? The looser either doesn't create much or
doesn't know that he can create, or creates chaos. He doesn't grasp his own special connection
with Source, with the rest of the Universe, his own utter improbability, his
own magnificence. That's the penalty of
losing. It is isolation, not knowing
Source. Note that this is a lot like
what religious philosophers have had to say about knowing God.
C. ABOUT GOOD AND EVIL
Suppose your or my intention and commitment is to drive a
Jaguar, to have a large harem of beautiful women, to bring revenge against an ex-spouse,
to become a multi-billionaire no matter who you have crush on the way, or to
drive enemies into poverty and subjugation. -- . Creation can come from such intentionality as
well as from intentionality motivated by loftier ideals or morals. Is such a creation giving expression to
Source, knowing Source? If not, what is
it?
An excellent question, and one for which I have no full
answer. This, it is easy to recognize,
is the ancient question of Good and Evil.
One traditional answer is that we are endowed with free will and
therefore with the power to create, and it is up to us if we serve Source or create
chaos (serve the Devil in traditional parlance). In my ontology, I suppose the Devil would
consist of destruction, randomness, more entropy, less organization. A key observation is that without evil there
can be no good, and both are part of the game of life we have set up for
ourselves. Source and Devil, Creation
and Destruction, Positive and Negative, Light and Dark exist in our collective
unconscious, and in most of the religions of the world. We have the two sides of Shiva in Hinduism,
Yin and Yang in the Confucius-derived religions, and the Light Side and Dark
Side of The Force in the Star Wars movies.
Back to the question, my answer is that we have the power to
create something out of nothing through a process that starts with intentionality,
regardless of whether that intentionality is self-serving or
humankind-serving. There is a
Source-like power vested in each of us to use as we may while we are here. Whether we are serving Source or not is a
matter of degree, depending on the degree to which our intention is aligned
with Source's purpose of creating more order, intentionality and aliveness in
the Universe. This answer is of course
not terribly different from that given by many of the main religions in the
world. Why does Source allow evil; why
does evil exist in the first place?
Because without it there would be no contrast, no basic distinction, no
game of life to play, all order, no chaos -- dullsville.
One final question -- given no-end of evil-intending types
around, if I intend niceness and good, sweetness, kindness and light, won't my intentions
conflict with the intentions of the bad guys like Dr. Strangelove, Ghengis
Kahn, Chemical Ali or Saddam Hussein?
Yes. That’s fairly evident given
the world as it is.
D. ENTROPY AND EVIL
On one level, creation can happen independently of whether
it is for good or evil, making something new or destroying something that is. Since there is a distinction, though, I have a
choice as to how I orient my creations.
Among my options for creation available to us are to create
death and destruction, to create less aliveness, less consciousness, less humaneness
in the universe. Put differently, it is
to create more chaos, more of what physicists call entropy, less of design,
less of intentionality, less of the manifestation of Source's creativity. More traditionally, we can create evil.
JS:
You equate entropy with evil, yet there is a time vector pointing to
increased entropy. Does this mean that evil will also increase with time?
VG:
Good question. Source operates on
EN to create structure, reducing entropy.
I am not sure whether entropy is increasing in the totality of Our
Universe, although many cosmologists think it is. The universe is spreading itself thinner and
thinner and into eventual nothingness according to them. Yet, the historical evolution of the universe
has been to more and more complex structures and corresponding laws. We started with the ultimate entropy of EN,
and look at where we are now.
Your question is a good one,
however, and I intend o do some further thinking about how information and
entropy fit into my basic framework for creation. We know from physics that where there is
non-locality, like Source operating on EN, there can be no transfer of
information. So, information as we know
it can neither cross universes or go backward in
time. So, exactly where does information
fit in then?
I don't think that represents Source's direction for humans
at this time. We, humans with the
intelligence and science we have, are very extremely improbable, as are the
laws of nature that exist -- incalculably improbable unless there is some
meta-principle that governs the creation of the laws of nature, e.g., the rules
of the game. It is all so far-fetched
and improbable that I, like countless thinkers before me, conclude that we and
the rules of the game must be the expression of a purpose in Source's creation
– a purpose that only we -- of all the things in the universe we know of now --
can express.
JS:
Or a way-sign on a path to a destiny that excludes us and our progeny –
a destiny that our progeny can only watch from a distance the same as the
Neanderthals watched the Cro-Magnons take over.
VG:
Yes. I loved Arthur C Clarke’s
Childhood End, the next leap in Creative Evolution – the idea of transition of
humanity to a higher plane of existence.
Perhaps it is happening now.
E. PURPOSE OF THE UNIVERSE
That purpose is the application of consciousness,
intelligence, values, knowledge, wisdom and organization to the processes of
creation, and to the creation of ever-higher forms of consciousness,
intelligence, values, knowledge, wisdom and organization. In other words, to establish
the playground for the game of life.
No other things we know of -- beasts, mineral or chemical or electronic
entities -- have the potential we have now to express Source's direction
already expressed in us and in our societies.
JS: How about computers? Kurzweil:
“So will computers be smarter than humans? It depends on what you consider to
be a computer and what you consider to be human. By the second half of the 21st
century, there will be no clear distinction between the two.” Computers are
evolving faster than humans.
VG:
I tend to agree with Kurtzweil as our
real-world and virtual-world existences continue to become more
intertwined. But as yet we are far from where
individual machines have what we would call consciousness. What I do see is humans becoming more closely
interlinked by cell phones, instant messaging and the like and new cybercommunities evolving.
We could have new forms of collective consciousness emerging as we
become more cyber-entangled with machines, software and communications
networks. I have written an essay on cybercommunity.
F. MY
As a part of and agent for the rest of Source, I hold myself
responsible, directly responsible, for the well being of all beings and things
in the universe I can impact on, and for creating the conditions on this planet
to assure the continuation of loving conscious life. In particular, I will give, communicate, and
make real visions of a world in which each of us discovers more and more our
connection with Source, in which we increasingly know Source.
I believe this has to be a world of increasingly greater
organization; that we must create:
·
a shared philosophy in the word that reconciles
science and religion, leading to
·
a world of caring, love and brotherhood of all
peoples, which is
·
a world with less and less war, starvation, poverty,
cruelty and other behaviors born of survival..
I am talking here about my belief system. As should be clear, my belief system also
holds open the possibility that you may have a quite different belief system,
and be equally potent to create reality on the basis of this system.
G. PLAYING TO WIN IN LIFE
Another way of saying this is that Source's intent in
creating everything is/was and will be so we could play the game of life in a
way that we could win -- that is, to know Source through giving expression to
Source. So I'm for playing the game to
win. Winning for me means furthering
Source's purpose for the Universe, that is, creating conditions in which life
in this world can go on, in which the pursuit of the game of life can go on
with dignity and success, in which aliveness and intentionality increases.
VIII. Macroscopic Reality Creation in the Transactional
Interaction Interpretation
In earlier sections of this
paper I suggested a process of Macroscopic Reality Creation (MRC) that can be
interpreted using the Parallel Universes Interpretation (PUI) of quantum
physics. A question can be raised,
then, as to whether the processes of reality creation are just highly similar
on both the macroscopic and quantum level, or are they in fact the same. If they are essentially the same, it would be
expected that MRC could be explained in other quantum interpretational
frameworks as well. Here I look at how
MRC could be interpreted using the the Transactional Interpretation
of Quantum Mechanics of John G. Cramer
First some general comments about quantum dynamics and
interpretational frameworks:
1.
Quantum Physics is a body of mathematical formalisms that is
coupled with observed physical behavior.
Quantum Physics both explains and predicts many phenomena on both the
subatomic and macroscopic level.
Established some 90 years ago and at an early point called quantum
mechanics, the theory has been extended mathematically and tested physically
over the years. It now constitutes a
comprehensive and robust framework that has become a bedrock
of physics. It has many practical applications and much of our electronic
technology was developed based on understanding quantum effects.
2.
Explaining how Quantum Physics work with matter, time and
energy is another matter. Our senses and
macroscopic understandings of science, location, time and place and causality
do not allow us to explain many quantum phenomena such as wave-particle
duality, non-locality complementarity and many
seeming-paradoxes. We have the
equations. We know they work. But do not know for sure how to interpret
them physically in terms of normal reality.
3.
Therefore various interpretations of quantum theory have
been propounded. They are ways of
explaining quantum behavior that give interpretations to the equations that are
palatable to our intuitions, useful models of reality, ways to help us think
about the otherwise-unthinkable.
4.
The main interpretations I will be concerned with here are
the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI), the Parallel Universes Interpretation (PUI)
and the Transactional Interaction Interpretation (TI). These come in various flavors and there are
others as well, all presumably equivalent.
I will not bother explaining CI or PUI for they are historically
well-documented.
5.
Each interpretation has its own conceptual framework,
strengths and advantages. Each
hypothesizes the existence of basically strange and unintuitive entities and
happenings, e.g., quantum wave functions, collapse of the wave function,
parallel universes, wave-function signaling that moves backwards in time. And each requires us to think in terms of its
own entities and ground rules.
6.
Since quantum phenomena can be explained from the viewpoint
of each of these interpretational frameworks, the same should be true for Macroscopic
Reality Creation if what is going on behind the curtain is indeed basically the
same. In fact, if MRC can be interpreted
using other interpretational frameworks besides the PUI used in my On Being and
Creation paper, additional insights about MRC mighty be
possible.
This is a
first-look at applying TI to MRC:
I have long known about the backwards-in-time interpretation
of certain quantum-mechanical wave functions and have wondered how they really
worked. As pointed out in Cramer’s paper, these
time-reversed waves were known to Dirac, Wheeler,
Feynman and others and have been around for a long time. But are these wave functions “real” or merely
mathematical artifacts? Cramer’s TI appears
to be a comprehensive interpretational framework for quantum physics that
postulates actual existence of wave functions that can go backward as well as
forward in time. TI can be used to
explain most traditional quantum paradoxes.
Further TI like PUI does not seem to demand a central role for a
conscious human observer as does CI.
Here is simplified description of how I understand of how TI
works:
The possible states of a system are described by its State
Vector which is interpreted in a statistical sense. The State Vector is the vehicle for
describing probabilities of various possible outcomes (eigenstates)
of a quantum event. The state vector is
also identified with “knowledge of the system.”
The state vector is represented as the “ket”
in Dirac notation. /S>. In TI, the state vector is seen to be a
physically-existing wave that propagates from a source and travels through
space at the speed of light. The state
vector is a mathematically complex function having both real and imaginary
parts. Reversing the sign of the
imaginary part reverses the time-direction of the wave, sending it back into
the past. In TI unlike CI there is no
special role of an observer or even observation itself. An event about to happen sends out an Offer
Wave (OW) both forward and backward in time stating probabilities of possible
outcomes. This wave interacts with other
events in the past and future which send back conjugate Response Waves
(RW). Subject to physical boundary
conditions one or none of these RWs could be
accepted, which means that it combines with the OW in a transaction. The product of an OW and a RW is an actual
state of the system (eigenstate) which is then
realized. The process is essentially
non-local and the RWs could come from long in the
past or future or far away, and TI is compatible with relativity theory. The OWs and RWs do not have energy.
So, TI seems to work for Ordinary Reality Creation this way.
An act of creation (an unbounded declaration of what is so
as in my paper) sends out OW quantum waves both forward in backwards in
time. These waves partially specify
probability distributions of the possible eigenstates
of the creation desired. The waves
physically exist according to the TI theory, and travel at the speed of light. They do not have energy associated with them
and are therefore not yet part of actualized “reality.” These waves are
essentially requests for EN in the past and in the future to see if events
could exist that satisfy any of the eigenstates (possible outcomes) of what is intended to be
created. EN sends conjugate RW waves
back in the opposite time direction from the request waves, stating willingness
to create events that were requested and providing eigenstate
probability values. If the responses
satisfy physical conditions such as complementarity,
the outgoing waves and returning waves combine in a transaction to make the
creation, and the waves disappear.
Exactly what is created depends on the probability distributions
inherent in OW and RW. Transactions at
the time of creation are instantaneous since time is always flowing in two
directions (either present to future back to present or present to past back to
present), so OWs and RWs
meet up right now. (Although from another viewpoint, creation took place over
the entire past and future time intervals spanned by the OW and RW that made
the transaction.). Future and past are
instantly fixed to be in accordance with the creation at the instant of
creation, e.g. the wave function collapses, though not in the sense of the
CI. It is important to recognize that
the instant of creation may be different than when the creation is scheduled to
show up which may be years later. In
this view a creation happens in the now.
However as the waves travel back and forth in time it may have been
brewing for many years in the past and will be happening in the future until it
is finally manifest. No energy exchange
is involved. Causality is preserved as a
condition of the transactions. Since the
wave into the past starts at the present, only responses from the past that are
consistent with the present are allowable. That is, the present situation is
seen to be the caused by past events.
The TI interpretation helps see how in MRC the act of
creation and the manifestation of the creation may be years apart and how past
as well as future events mobilize themselves to eventually allow manifestation
of the creation. The idea of an
underdetermined past exists in TI as it does in the PUI. TI also elucidates the time arrow involved in
creation and the need for preservation of causality. One of the most difficult aspects to sell of
my MRC framework is the idea that creation of something affects the past at the
time of creation as well as in the future. It is hard to swallow the idea that
to create something in the future I have also to create a bunch of stuff in the
past that is needed to help cause that future something. Dirac notation
clearly shows a time-reversed wave component, but it is very hard to interpret
what this means from the viewpoint of the CI.
PUI allows multiple universes with different pasts so by allowing the
concept of universe manifolds it is possible to explain present-affecting-past
in a way that preserves causality. TI
goes further and suggests an actual physical mechanism through which the
present can negotiate the existence of a previously-unknown something in the
past.
One final far-out speculation. Various
writers including Roger Penrose have talked
about the brain as a “quantum-computer” and about “quantum consciousness.” Further, they have suggested physical
mechanisms by means of which quantum-level processing could happen in the brain.
If intentions created in the brain indeed show up as
physically-present state vector waves going off into the past and future and TI
is correct, then MRC could be completely explained by the processes of
physics. This is a fascinating
possibility but one beyond what I can treat here.
More to Read and Look At - April 2008.
Creation and existence in alternative universes fascinates
me as much today as ever. Last month I
wrote a Science Fiction story related to that topic called Supercollider You can read it by clicking
here.
Some of my declarations sound almost religious in nature,
and this document itself is as a statement of my own personal religion. I have written an essay called Religion and
Evil which summarizes my stand on various strains of religion. You can read it by clicking here
The theme of alternative universes and alternative
interpretations of reality can be found in many of my art works. It is at the philosophical center of the ArtKouKou movement which I founded. It is also expressed in many of the galleries
of my art web site, like Places
That Never, Reality
Check, Surreal
Passages, Epoxy
Art, , Surrealistic
Scapes, and Formidable
Floribunda.
/I have written a number of other works which touch on
themes in this paper from various viewpoints, both serious treatises and
fiction stories. I encourage you to look
over the items I have online by goingto my Writings Index Web Page.
Also the theme of alternative realities as might be seen in
parallel universes underlies most of my art.
A number of the art galleries located in my art web site are concerned with alternative
expressions of reality and that is the organizing theme of the Art KouKou movement
which I founded.