Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (34 page)

The nonlocal space of probability waves, the so-called phase space or nonlocal space, contains no matter; everything inside it is uncertain, and physicists cannot carry out any measurements or observations. However, nonlocal space can be influenced from outside. After a deliberate measurement or observation, the probability waves in nonlocal space collapse statistically into physically measurable particles.
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If and how this collapse occurs remains a moot point. Quantum physics is essentially statistical, and the statistical element is by definition rooted in nonlocal space. A number of fundamental fields in nature, such as the weak and strong nuclear forces, have a quantum aspect and are thus connected to nonlocal space. This means that all molecular and submolecular processes are influenced from nonlocal space. And while the underlying causes of these processes are unfathomable to physicists and chemists, their effects can be demonstrated. The gravitational fields possibly and the electromagnetic force fields probably have their basis in nonlocal space. Here too the fields themselves are by definition invisible, unlike their physical effects. The conclusion that most fundamental fields and forces in the universe seem to have their basis in nonlocal space is important for our later discussion and understanding of the nonlocal aspects of consciousness that are experienced during an NDE, and for our understanding of the relationship between consciousness and our physical body. Is it possible to consider this relationship more than just an analogy?

Nonlocal space harbors a hidden reality that exerts a constant influence on our physical world. Everything in our physical world, which is also known as space-time, is subject to time and distance. But everything is based on constant interaction between quantum states and this invisible nonlocal space. Everything visible emanates from the invisible. Again this is a matter of complementarity, just like the wave and the particle. The visible particle complements the invisible wave function. The visible, physical world, space-time, complements the invisible and imperceptible nonlocal space. The physical world is influenced at quantum level by nonlocal space, just as our physical body at all levels seems to be influenced by our consciousness. The foundation of our physical universe seems by definition not measurable.

Interference pattern in water.

Interference pattern in water. Photo by Martin Dohrn / Photo Researchers, Inc.

The Quantum Hologram

In a holographic, two-dimensional photo, that is, a photo in a flat plane, a three-dimensional image is conveyed with the help of a coherent laser light. If this photographic plate smashes into a hundred pieces, the total three-dimensional image will, in principle, be present in each shard. The information of the overall image exists in each segment of the plate as an interference pattern.

Interference is what you see when you throw pebbles into a pond (see figure). Waves interact, and the resulting interference creates a pattern of weaker or stronger waves.

Information can be stored in this interference pattern. In a coherent field, where waves are interacting to form a particular pattern, the interference patterns are distributed across the physical medium of the field, for instance, in water or on a photographic plate. The holographic information in a hologram is therefore not stored in the field itself but in the field’s physical medium, and the holographic principle means that the stored information in its totality can be retrieved from each location in this physical medium.

Both quantum physics and holography are based on the principle of coherence. Wave functions that cohere, or together form a particular pattern, carry the information in a quantum hologram. A practical example of the principle of the quantum hologram, and a technique that proves the concept of nonlocal information exchange, is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
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Contrary to classical physics, in quantum physics, a nonlocal connection cannot be described with a field. As described before, nonlocal connections are established instantaneously, that is, faster than the speed of light, which is possible only in a nonlocal space. In a nonlocal space all parts of that space react en masse to all events. The interaction or correlation here does not depend on time and distance and happens at the very smallest subatomic level up to the biggest level of cosmological time and space. A disturbance of space is seen as the carrier of the information that connects or correlates all different parts nonlocally and instantaneously. But what is true for the field also applies to the hologram, namely that a nonlocal connection can never be described with a hologram. The information in a hologram—encoded as an interference pattern in the physical medium of a field with at most the speed of light—can be retrieved from any location in that field. In quantum physics the information is not encoded in a medium but is stored nonlocally as wave functions in nonlocal space, which also means that all information is always and everywhere immediately available. So in both a nonlocal space and in a hologram all information is available from all locations, but the method of information storage and the speed of information retrieval are fundamentally different.

Dutch Nobel laureate Gerard ’t Hooft believes that the entire universe might be based on the holographic principle, a view he sees as compatible with string theory.
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In this theory the strings are one-dimensional oscillating lines (wave functions) floating in space-time. The idea of a holographic universe is based on an as-yet-unknown medium, believed to be strings or branes (this medium used to be known as the ether); in a nonlocal universe everything is encoded as wave functions in nonlocal space. Scientists now know that a vacuum is not empty; at absolute zero, -273.15 degrees Celsius, it is full of energy (a “plenum”), and at the subatomic level it undergoes constant quantum fluctuations that create new quanta “from nothing,” which then immediately disappear again. What we see here is a kind of universal process of constant creation and annihilation. These quantum fluctuations are also known as the vacuum’s zero-point energy. It can generate virtual particles (with antiparticles) that instantly destroy one another. The same pertains to the appearance and disappearance of virtual energy (waves).
Virtual
means that which is seemingly real or a possibility. There is general agreement about the (extremely short) existence of virtual particles and virtual waves (energy). In two recent and accessible books,
The Connectivity Hypothesis
and
Science and the Akashic Field,
systems theorist Ervin Laszlo uses holographic field theory to argue that the entire universe is a fully interconnected holographic information field. His ideas are based on the theory of a zero-point field in the quantum vacuum or “cosmic plenum.”
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Consciousness and Nonlocal Space

Perhaps nonlocal space could also be called the absolute vacuum: it lacks structure, has no time, and is an empty space in which quarks (elementary particles and fundamental constituents of matter), electrons, gravity, and electricity have all become one and as such do not exist. This space forms the foundation for an infinite number of possibilities.

This absolute vacuum, this nonlocal space, could be a basis or foundation for consciousness. I support the interpretation of the aforementioned researchers von Neumann, Wigner, Josephson, Wheeler, and Stapp that this nonlocal space is more than a mathematical description; it is also a metaphysical space in which consciousness can exert influence because it has phenomenal properties.
Phenomenal
means based on subjective perception, or literally “subjective perception in the mind.” According to this interpretation, consciousness has a primary presence in the universe, and all matter possesses subjective properties or consciousness. In this view, consciousness is nonlocal and the origin or foundation of everything: all matter, or physical reality, is shaped by nonlocal consciousness. There is no longer any distinction between nonlocal space and consciousness. This is not a new insight. As far back as the seventeenth century, Newton held that the omnipresent space might be filled with a “spiritual substance” he called space the “divine observatory.”
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The philosopher David Chalmers, who specializes in questions of consciousness, calls this approach monism or panpsychism. He seems to share the belief in the fundamental relationship between consciousness and matter. In this view, physical systems have phenomenal properties at a fundamental or intrinsic level (nonlocal space) and therefore possess subjectivity or a certain degree of consciousness. Phenomenal or subjective properties can be found at the most fundamental level of physical reality and form the basis of physical reality itself. According to this theory, the intrinsic properties of the physical world are themselves phenomenal properties (consciousness). Chalmers thus gives consciousness a clearly causal role in the physical world.
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Not everybody will be able to endorse this view, but it is certainly worth exploring in more detail. I will come back to this in the next chapter.

The Complementarity of Nonlocal Space

Light behaves either like a particle or like a wave, depending on the environment, but never like both at the same time. Particles and waves are complementary aspects of light; they are incompatible and never visible at the same time, but they are intrinsically linked together. At the speed of light, the speed of a particle equals the phase speed of the particle’s corresponding wave function. The particle’s speed ranges from zero to the speed of light, and the phase speed of the corresponding wave function ranges from the speed of light to infinity because speed in the quantum-mechanical phase is the opposite of speed in normal space-time, our physical world. The slower the particle, the faster its corresponding phase speed. And when the particle’s speed slows to zero, as it does during an observation in a photographic emulsion, its corresponding phase speed is infinite. This results in an instantaneous entanglement (nonlocality) with everything in the universe, including nonlocal aspects of consciousness.

As mentioned, on theoretical grounds physicists cannot carry out observations within this nonlocal space. The gravitational field itself cannot therefore be made visible or measurable. It is possible to exert an external influence by manipulating the wave or localizing the particle. However, as soon as an observation takes place, this multidimensional nonlocal space is once again reduced to our three-dimensional physical world, space-time. An observation reduces the countless possibilities (probability waves) to a single fact, that is, the particle’s position at that moment in time. Mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose has called this collapse of the wave function “objective reduction.”
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If no observations take place in the nonlocal space, the phase speed can range from the speed of light to infinity. In other words, not everything in nonlocal space is constantly entangled—only during an observation.

Nonlocal space resembles the “implicate order” of quantum physicist David Bohm. He viewed the implicate order as a basic and multidimensional field of information with holographic principles, in which observation-induced collapse (objective reduction) plays no role. In his vision, “information” is the subtle influence that only affects, or “forms,” the phase of a wave, a process in which consciousness plays an essential part. “Information” thus has an effect in the physical, visible world without any energy transfer: it “informs,” or “forms,” the physical system receiving the information.
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Field Theories in Living Systems

The concept of coherent fields is used not only in physics but also in biology. In the 1920s biologist Paul Weiss drew on limb regeneration in amphibians to formulate the concept of morphogenetic fields, which are organizing fields of formative information that guide the development of the particular form of a living structure or being. And the biologist and medical scientist Alexander Gurwitsch postulated that neither the cell’s individual properties nor its relationship with adjacent cells could explain the role of individual cells during embryogenesis (the process by which an embryo is formed and develops), but that a factor external to the embryo appeared to determine overall development. He called this factor a force field or an embryonic field.
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Information transfer from fields takes place via resonance, that is, vibration with the same frequency and phase. Resonance is not limited to acoustic resonance in sound or to the electromagnetic resonance we get when tuning in to a radio or television station, but it also exists at the smallest subcellular level as electron spin resonance and nuclear magnetic resonance. Morphogenetic (formative) fields feature nonenergetic information transfer, and these fields, like the probability fields in quantum physics, are based on probability. It is this property that makes these fields difficult to describe. As living systems, all organisms have a rhythmic oscillation, vibration, or periodic motion, each with its specific and characteristic frequency. Each living cell has countless vibrating molecular structures, which in turn have specific oscillations. The reciprocal information transfer between the field and the living cell structures takes place via resonance with these specific frequencies. The English biologist Rupert Sheldrake developed the concept of morphogenetic (formative) fields quite brilliantly in his books
A New Science of Life
and
The Presence of the Past.
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