by Robert Lanza
limit is not being violated because nobody can use EPR correlations
to send information because the behavior of the sending particle is
always random. Current research is directed toward practical rather
than philosophical concerns: the aim is to harness this bizarre
behavior to create new ultra-powerful quantum computers that, as
Wineland put it, “carry all the weird baggage that comes with quan-
tum mechanics.”
Through it all, the experiments of the past decade truly seem to
prove that Einstein’s insistence on “locality”—meaning that nothing
w H e N T o m o r r o w C o m e s b e f o r e y e s T e r d a y 5 3
can influence anything else at superluminal speeds—is wrong.
Rather, the entities we observe are floating in a field—a field of
mind, biocentrism maintains—that is not limited by the external
space-time Einstein theorized a century ago.
No one should imagine that when biocentrism points to quan-
tum theory as one major area of support, it is just a single aspect of
quantum phenomena. Bell’s Theorem of 1964, shown experimen-
tally to be true over and over in the intervening years, does more
than merely demolish all vestiges of Einstein’s (and others’) hopes
that locality can be maintained.
Before Bell, it was still considered possible (though increas-
ingly iffy) that local realism—an objective independent universe—
could be the truth. Before Bell, many still clung to the millennia-old
assumption that physical states exist before they are measured. Before Bell, it was still widely believed that particles have definite attributes and values independent of the act of measuring. And, finally,
thanks to Einstein’s demonstrations that no information can travel
faster than light, it was assumed that if observers are sufficiently far
apart, a measurement by one has no effect on the measurement by
the other.
All of the above are now finished, for keeps.
In addition to the above, three separate major areas of quantum
theory make sense biocentrically but are bewildering otherwise.
We’ll discuss much of this at greater length in a moment, but let’s
begin simply by listing them. The first is the entanglement just cited,
which is a connectedness between two objects so intimate that they
behave as one, instantaneously and forever, even if they are sepa-
rated by the width of galaxies. Its spookiness becomes clearer in the
classical two-slit experiment.
The second is complementarity. This means that small objects
can display themselves in one way or another but not both, depend-
ing on what the observer does; indeed, the object doesn’t have an
existence in a specific location and with a particular motion. Only
the observer’s knowledge and actions cause it to come into existence
in some place or with some particular animation. Many pairs of such
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complementary attributes exist. An object can be a wave or a particle
but not both, it can inhabit a specific position or display motion but
not both, and so on. Its reality depends solely on the observer and
his experiment.
The third quantum theory attribute that supports biocentrism
is wave-function collapse, that is, the idea that a physical particle or
bit of light only exists in a blurry state of possibility until its wave-
function collapses at the time of observation, and only then actu-
ally assumes a definite existence. This is the standard understanding
of what goes on in quantum theory experiments according to the
Copenhagen interpretation, although competing ideas still exist, as
we’ll see shortly.
The experiments of Heisenberg, Bell, Gisin, and Wineland, for-
tunately, call us back to experience itself, the immediacy of the here
and now. Before matter can peep forth—as a pebble, a snowflake, or
even a subatomic particle—it has to be observed by a living creature.
This “act of observation” becomes vivid in the famous two-hole
experiment, which in turn goes straight to the core of quantum phys-
ics. It’s been performed so many times, with so many variations, it’s
conclusively proven that if one watches a subatomic particle or a bit
of light pass through slits on a barrier, it behaves like a particle, and
creates solid-looking bam-bam-bam hits behind the individual slits
on the final barrier that measures the impacts. Like a tiny bullet, it
logically passes through one or the other hole. But if the scientists
do not observe the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of waves
that retain the right to exhibit all possibilities, including somehow passing through both holes at the same time (even though it cannot split
itself up)—and then creating the kind of rippling pattern that only
waves produce.
Dubbed quantum weirdness, this wave–particle duality has befud-
dled scientists for decades. Some of the greatest physicists have
described it as impossible to intuit, impossible to formulate into
words, impossible to visualize, and as invalidating common sense
and ordinary perception. Science has essentially conceded that quan-
tum physics is incomprehensible outside of complex mathematics.
w H e N T o m o r r o w C o m e s b e f o r e y e s T e r d a y 5 5
How can quantum physics be so impervious to metaphor, visualiza-
tion, and language?
Amazingly, if we accept a life-created reality at face value, it all
becomes simple and straightforward to understand. The key ques-
tion is “waves of what?” Back in 1926, German physicist Max Born
demonstrated that quantum waves are waves of probability, not waves
of material, as his colleague Schrödinger had theorized . They are
statistical predictions. Thus, a wave of probability is nothing but a
likely outcome. In fact, outside of that idea, the wave is not there!
It’s intangible. As Nobel physicist John Wheeler once said, “No phe-
nomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.”
Note that we are talking about discrete objects like photons or
electrons, rather than collections of myriad objects, such as, say, a
train. Obviously, we can get a schedule and arrive to pick up a friend
at a station and be fairly confident that his train actually existed
during our absence, even if we did not personally observe it. (One
reason for this is that as the considered object gets bigger, its wave-
length gets smaller. Once we get into the macroscopic realm, the
waves are too close together to be noticed or measured. They are still
there, however.)
With small discrete particles, however, if they are not being
observed, they cannot be thought of as having any real existence—
either duration or a position in space. Until the mind sets the scaf-
folding of an object in place, until it actually lays down the threads
(somewhere in the haze of probabilities that represent the object’s
range of possible values), it cannot be thought of as being either here
or there. Thus, quantum waves merely define the potential location a particle can occupy. When a scientist observe
s a particle, it will
be found within the statistical probability for that event to occur.
That’s what the wave defines. A wave of probability isn’t an event
or a phenomenon, it is a description of the likelihood of an event or phenomenon occurring. Nothing happens until the event is actually
observed.
In our double-slit experiment, it is easy to insist that each pho-
ton or electron—because both these objects are indivisible—must
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go through one slit or the other and ask, which way does a particu-
lar photon really go? Many brilliant physicists have devised experi-
ments that proposed to measure the “which-way” information of a
particle’s path on its route to contributing to an interference pattern.
They all arrived at the astonishing conclusion, however, that it is not
possible to observe both which-way information and the interference
pattern. One can set up a measurement to watch which slit a photon
goes through, and find that the photon goes through one slit and
not the other. However, once this is kind of measurement is set up,
the photons instead strike the screen in one spot, and totally lack
the ripple-interference design; in short, they will demonstrate them-
selves to be particles, not waves. The entire double-slit experiment
and all its true amazing weirdness will be laid out with illustrations
in the next chapter.
Apparently, watching it go through the barrier makes the wave-
function collapse then and there, and the particle loses its freedom
to probabilistically take both choices available to it instead of having
to choose one or the other.
And it still gets screwier. Once we accept that it is not possible to gain both the which-way information and the interference pattern,
we might take it even further. Let’s say we now work with sets of
photons that are entangled. They can travel far from each other, but
their behavior will never lose their correlation.
So now we let the two photons, call them y and z, go off in
two different directions, and we’ll set up the double-slit experi-
ment again. We already know that photon y will mysteriously pass
through both slits and create an interference pattern if we measure
nothing about it before it reaches the detection screen. Except, in
our new setup, we’ve created an apparatus that lets us measure the
which-way path of its twin, photon z, miles away. Bingo: As soon as
we activate this apparatus for measuring its twin, photon y instantly
“knows” that we can deduce its own path (because it will always do
the opposite or complementary thing as its twin). Photon y suddenly
stops showing an interference pattern the instant we turn on the
measuring apparatus for far-away photon z, even though we didn’t
w H e N T o m o r r o w C o m e s b e f o r e y e s T e r d a y 5 7
bother y in the least. And this would be true—instantly, in real
time—even if y and z lay on opposite sides of the galaxy.
And, though it doesn’t seem possible, it gets spookier still. If we
now let photon y hit the slits and the measuring screen first, and a split second later measure its twin far away, we should have fooled
the quantum laws. The first photon already ran its course before
we troubled its distant twin. We should therefore be able to learn
both photons’ polarization and been treated to an interference pat-
tern. Right? Wrong. When this experiment is performed, we get a
non-interference pattern. The y-photon stops taking paths through
both slits retroactively; the interference is gone. Apparently, photon y somehow knew that we would eventually find out its polarization, even though its twin had not yet encountered our polarization-detection apparatus.
What gives? What does this say about time, about any real exis-
tence of sequence, about present and future? What does it say about
space and separation? What must we conclude about our own roles
and how our knowledge influences actual events miles away, with-
out any passage of time? How can these bits of light know what will
happen in their future? How can they communicate instantaneously,
faster than light? Obviously, the twins are connected in a special
way that doesn’t break no matter how far apart they are, and in a
way that is independent of time, space, or even causality. And, more
to our point, what does this say about observation and the “field of
mind” in which all these experiments occur?
meaning . . . ?
The Copenhagen interpretation, born in the 1920s in the fever-
ish minds of Heisenberg and Bohr, bravely set out to explain the
bizarre results of the quantum theory experiments, sort of. But, for
most, it was too unsettling a shift in worldview to accept in full.
In a nutshell, the Copenhagen interpretation was the first to claim
what John Bell and others substantiated some forty years later: that
before a measurement is made, a subatomic particle doesn’t really
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b i o C e N T r i s m
exist in a definite place or have an actual motion. Instead, it dwells
in a strange nether realm without actually being anywhere in partic-
ular. This blurry indeterminate existence ends only when its wave-
function collapses. It took only a few years before Copenhagen adher-
ents were realizing that nothing is real unless it’s perceived. Copenhagen makes perfect sense if biocentrism is reality; otherwise, it’s a
total enigma.
If we want some sort of alternative to the idea of an object’s wave-
function collapsing just because someone looked at it, and avoid that
kind of spooky action at a distance, we might jump aboard Copen-
hagen’s competitor, the “Many Worlds Interpretation” (MWI), which
says that everything that can happen, does happen. The universe
continually branches out like budding yeast into an infinitude of
universes that contain every possibility, no matter how remote. You
now occupy one of the universes. But there are innumerable other
universes in which another “you,” who once studied photography
instead of accounting, did indeed move to Paris and marry that girl
you once met while hitchhiking. According to this view, embraced
by such modern theorists as Stephen Hawking, our universe has no
superpositions or contradictions at all, no spooky action, and no
non-locality: seemingly contradictory quantum phenomena, along
with all the personal choices you think you didn’t make, exist today
in countless parallel universes.
Which is true? All the entangled experiments of the past decades
point increasingly toward confirming Copenhagen more than any-
thing else. And this, as we’ve said, strongly supports biocentrism.
Some physicists, like Einstein, have suggested that “hidden vari-
ables” (that is, things not yet discovered or understood) might ulti-
mately explain the strange counterlogical quantum behavior. Maybe
the experimental apparatus itself contaminates the behavior of the
objects being observed, in ways no one has yet conceived. Obviously,
there’s no possible rebuttal to a suggestion that an u
nknown variable
is producing some result because the phrase itself is as unhelpful as
a politician’s election promise.
w H e N T o m o r r o w C o m e s b e f o r e y e s T e r d a y 5 9
At present, the implications of these experiments are conve-
niently downplayed in the public mind because, until recently,
quantum behavior was limited to the microscopic world. However,
this has no basis in reason, and more importantly, it is starting to
be challenged in laboratories around the world. New experiments
carried out with huge molecules called buckyballs show that quan-
tum reality extends into the macroscopic world we live in. In 2005,
KHCO crystals exhibited quantum entanglement ridges one-half
3
inch high—visible signs of behavior nudging into everyday levels
of discernment. In fact, an exciting new experiment has just been
proposed (so-called scaled-up superposition) that would furnish the
most powerful evidence to date that the biocentric view of the world
is correct at the level of living organisms.
To which we would say—of course.
And so we add a third principle of Biocentrism:
First Principle of Biocentrism: What we perceive as reality is a
process that involves our consciousness.
Second Principle of Biocentrism: Our external and internal per-
ceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the
same coin and cannot be separated.
Third Principle of Biocentrism: The behavior of subatomic
particles—indeed all particles and objects—is inextricably
linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a
conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state
of probability waves.
the most AmAzIng
8
experIment
Quantum theory has unfortunately become a catch-all phrase
for trying to prove various kinds of New Age nonsense. It’s
unlikely that the authors of the many books making wacky
claims of time travel or mind control, and who use quantum theory
as “proof” have the slightest knowledge of physics or could explain
even the rudiments of quantum theory. The popular 2004 film, What
the Bleep Do We Know? is a good case in point. The movie starts out claiming quantum theory has revolutionized our thinking—which