Today I was in the process of trying to source a book entitled Replay by a writer called Ken Grimwood. This book is profoundly itladian in that it gives a fictional account of a person who lives his entire life over again, but this time he "remembers" what happens. In itladian terms what this describes is an Eidolon who is aware of its own Daemonic memories of the previous run-through the Bohmian IMAX.

I succeeded in my search and I will be receiving a copy in the next few days. However, in doing a Google-search on "reliving one's life" I came across a simply amazing letter published in the periodical The American Journal of Psychiatry (143:3, March 1986). The letter was sent by an extremely puzzled and very intrigued psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Jerome M. Schneck. If ever I needed empirical (albeit clearly subjective) proof that I am really onto something significant in my ITLAD/CTF hypothesis this is it. Dr. Schneck wrote:


SIR: I would like to describe a patient's delusion that is unlike anything I have encountered before.
Ms. A, a 36-year-old woman, was sent by her employer for a medical examination because she was said to be uncooperative with her co-workers. The examining physician referred her for psychiatric evaluation.The patient was schizophrenic, was vague about any history of inpatient or outpatient psychiatric treatment, and had been advised to take haloperidol and other medications but never filled in her prescriptions. She was loquacious, at times irrelevant, and yet was coherent and capable of offering direct answers to specific questions. She described having hallucinations in which she saw tents and thrones "inhabited by God."She denied having any feelings of depression or anxiety. Her attention and concentration somewhat wavered. She seemed fascinated by her unusual claims. Despite having had previous psychiatric contacts, she denied having psychological problems. She had occasional ideas of reference but declined to describe them in detail.The patient spontaneously revealed the delusion she harbored that she relived her life from moment to moment, each day, week, month and year. She did not claim that she had lived other types of lives in the past or that she would relive this one in the future, after her death. But she insisted that this life was a thorough duplication of her past life. She denied experiencing reincarnation in the sense of having previously lived in some other way or form, nor did she necessarily expect a reincarnation in the future. Her experiences were not the usual well-known deja vu but the re-living of a life span in specific and exact sequence, one event after another in proper order. She claimed that her ability to fortell events because of her reliving often frightened her as well as others. She said her facility to recall past events in detail also frightened others, but she asserted that her recollections were valid and accurate, even for time periods in infancy that are not ordinarily remembered. She claimed that other individuals confirmed her recollections, but she presented no evidence for this claim
I report this case to alert others to this delusion type and to encourage others to report on any similar patients they might have treated.

For me this report is absolutely fascinating and probably one of the most crucial cases regarding ITLAD/CTF. I have tried to trace Dr. Schneck but thus far with no success. He was based in New York so it is my intention to try and trace him, and possibly speak with him whilst I am in that city in August.

It is interesting to observe that this lady had been diagnosed as schizophrenic. Could it be that her odd perceptions themselves had brought about this diagnosis? If so then by implication anybody who may perceive elements of the Bohmian IMAX will be quickly labelled with this "illness". However what if this is not an illness but a glimpse of the true nature of existence? I am sure that Dr. Rick Strassman would agree with my position on this having tested out such a proposition with his work on DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine).

A careful reading of this report begs some strong questions .... for example, did nobody think to test out the woman's claims that she could perceive the future? Surely this would have been easily tested? But it seems that nobody bothered (of course, if one accepts what many deja TLErs have told me, that the very communication of what is about to happen to another human being will ensure that that the universe splits and a new future is created to accommodate the change from what happened "last time" - i.e. last time the subject would not have made the prediction and as such the very verbalisation of the fact changes peoples actions and reactions).
She was also quite precise in her point that this was not a form of reincarnation but a "reliving" of the same life. Something that I have stressed many times in my lectures when people assume that I am talking about a form of "reincarnation".

I am interested in any comments anybody may have with regard to this case ..... and even more interested if anybody has access to any further material to do with this case, or any similar.

Nick Bostrum - "Ancestor Simulations"

In 2003 Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom had an article published in the journal Philosophical Quarterly. In this article he suggested that at least one of these three propositions must be true:

i. We humans will become extinct before we can develop into a 'posthuman' stage of civilisation.

ii. Any posthuman civilisation will have access to computer power so vast that time travel will be routine using computer-generated simulations of the past. (Bostrom calls these ancestor simulations ).

iii. That we are all living in one of these ancestor simulations.

With the potential advances of computer power offered by quantum computing such simulations are entirely possible. Bostrom suggests that the computing power available in a few million years will be so advanced that the human beings simulated in these programmes will be conscious!

Of course this idea is not absolutely original - the 1999 movie The Thirteenth Floor suggested something very similar. However Dr. Bostrum attempts to explain how such a circumstance could come about and is a very well respected academic. I am delighted to see that such ideas are now taken seriously.

Of course this has elements of the "Brain In a Vat" thought experiment of Hilary Putnam as discussed in a previous posting of mine:

http://cheatingtheferryman.blogspot.com/2008/03/brain-in-vat.html

So could it be that the 'designers' of my Bohmian IMAX may, in fact, be future software engineers?

Some of you, Ed in particular, have long suggested that consciousness works like a computer programme so could it be that the living of our lives over and over again is taking place in some super version of the computer game The Sims?

Warping the Bohmian IMAX

As many of you may be aware I am now back working in my alternate career as a Compensation and Benefits Consultant (don't ask). This involves a very different set of skills to writing but it will help to fill up the coffers to allow me the time and freedom to write book three in due course. In the meantime I do intend to work closely with KLLM on our exercises of mutual interest.

Now as my journey to work can be easily done (but very time-consuming) by public transport I have a wonderful opportunity to do more reading. Stimulated by some fascinating posts by Susan Marie I am improving my understanding of modern philosophy, particularly the philosophy of mind. I am reading a primer book on the subject at the moment before I delve deeper into the works of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Satre (no Karl, I didn't get round to reading "Being And Nothingness" whilst on holiday - I kept myself to more entertaining tomes such as Mobius Dick), Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, John Searle etc.

In this book (Philosophy of Mind by Mel Thompson) I came across a fascinating physical exercise that implies that Berkeley and the Idealists were not that crazy .... and that my idea that a process of recording of reality is taking place within the brain, Thompson suggests the following:

" Look around you, for a moment keeping your head very still. Be aware of colours, shapes, perhaps the touch of things close to you. See all these things 'out there', beyond that great window between your ears through which you experience your vision of the world. Then close one eye and gently press on one side of your other eyeball. Everything you see shifts a little. Hold that for a moment. Can you tell it shifted? Touch something and your experience of touch exactly matches your 'shifted' vision, as though giving confirmation that the shifted vision is in fact correct. Remove the pressure on the eyeball; the world shifts back to 'normal' and your touch confirmed that view as well. Imaginatively enter into the sense that that there is an 'internal theatre' in which you actually experience as the external world."

For Mel Thompson's "internal theatre" read "Bohmian IMAX" and we are on very itladian ground!

Laying Down the Bohmian IMAX

I was very interested in the question asked by Woodsprite in terms of itlad/ctf and life assurance. We have discussed the nature of the how the recordings are made and KLLM has wonderfully expanded this concept into his "Virgin Life" VL theory. In order to possibly clarify my position on this I would just like to refer to the following section from ITLAD:

This book, its words and ideas and everything around you is an internally generated version of reality, a copy projected in front of you like an unbelievably complex sensurround, virtual reality computer game. This is generated by the manipulation of hologram-like images and using the processing power of the greatest computer in the universe – your brain.

Here you are reading this book, or should I say perceiving an image that contains this book. Look up and take in what is around you. Its all an illusion, a series of inwardly generated holographic images. You are not here at all, you are being fooled into thinking you are. You are somewhere else entirely. From this place you are generating the world around you, re-creating it piece by piece and second by second. We already know this from the evidence of quantum physics. As Hugh Everett proposed, there are literally trillions of universes, you exist in just one, a version of John Wheeler’s ‘participatory universe’ creating it as you go along, each micro-decision that you make causing ever-increasing new timelines, like the branches of some magical tree.

But there is one huge problem with this personal universe. If you have always only existed within your own self-created version of reality, how have you created such a rich and varied environment? If this universe is all you have known how have you created giraffes, quasars and rap music? In order to create such concepts you must, at some time or other, known of these things and projected them into your version of reality. How can it be otherwise? You are like a baby who is abandoned on a desert island. As the baby grows up he has no knowledge of anything external to the island. How could that baby mentally visualize anything outside of his direct experience, a glacier for example. So it is for you. It is likely that within your universe exists the Eiffel Tower. You may even visit Paris and take in the view from the top. Now here is the weird thing; I am writing these words at my home in Harrogate, England, on a beautiful June morning. This is my version of Harrogate and my idea of what a beautiful June morning should look like. I have chosen the Eiffel Tower as an example of a well-known man-made feature. You now read these words in your version of the universe, surrounded by objects and weather conditions of your own creation. But strangely you immediately visualize Paris with the Tower dominating all around it. How can we both have a similar vision in our heads? How can we both have inwardly created an object that we both can agree on in terms of size, shape and location when we have never met and exist in totally different versions of reality? Sometime in both our pasts there must have been a real world populated by real objects, animals and buildings. Indeed this original ‘objective’ universe may be analogous to the biblical Garden of Eden, a place were we all perceived the original blueprint of objective reality, a place were the original Eiffel Tower stood in all its glory. This internally generated world is a facsimile, a copy, but as with all facsimiles and copies there must be an original – a first edition if you like.

And so there is. There was a time in both our distant pasts where we first perceived not only the Eiffel Tower but also all the wonderful objects, concepts and structures that we now populate our illusory world with. This very fact is one of the major clues as to what is really going on.

My position in this has never really changed. For me there has to have been some form of initial 'reality' state' by which the Bohmian IMAX was recorded. Indeed I suggest that each human being 'records' their life in a unique and personal phaneron that in some way 'overlaps' with other individual phanerons. How this mechanism works is the next big challenge and I know that there are some simply fantastic suggestions being made.

There have been few criticisms of CTF and ITLAD but the major one, which I have a good deal of sympathy with, is that I mix together the Copenhagen Interpretation, Everett's Many Worlds (Minds) and Bohm's Implicate/Explicate Order - all of which are, on the face of it, mutually exclusive. MWI was postulated as an alternative to Copenhagen and the Implicate Order was a post-Einsteinian attempt to explain quantum behaviour in slightly more classical terms. However I genuinely believe that within each one is part of the answer ... for me they are not mutually exclusive but, in some bizzare way, complementary. Indeed had I left well alone and gone with either of these three as the bedrock of scientific support for CTF I would not have been criticised. Each one supports my theory - but all three together make the theory really work.

But remember, as I bang on and one about, this is only a theory. it may be right and it may be wrong ... but I have placed it in the public domain for one reason and one reason only ... to generate debate!

The PHI Experiment

Those of you who have read my book will know that I make great play upon a phenomenon known as the PHI Effect.

In 1910 Czech psychologist Max Wertheimer noted that two lights flashed through small apertures in a darkened room at short intervals would appear to be one light in motion; this perception of movement in a stationary object he termed ‘the PHI phenomenon’ and this in turn became the basis of a whole school of psychology, Gestalt. Together with two assistants, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka, he began to study the PHI phenomenon in earnest. Although they spent many years looking into the subject it was to become something of an oddity within human perception. That did not mean that the phenomenon did not continue to intrigue and beguile all that encountered it.

In 1977, the philosopher Nelson Goodman asked psychologists Paul Kolers and Michael von Grunau what would happen if, in the PHI phenomenon, the two illuminated spots were of different colours. This was so simple but revolutionary that the two psychologists immediately set up an experiment. They had a good idea of what to expect; either that two flashing spots would replace the single spot, or an illusory spot would change from one colour to another working its way through all the hues between. What actually happened was astounding. Two different coloured spots were illuminated for 150 milliseconds each (with a 50-millisecond interval); the first spot seemed to begin moving and then change colour abruptly in the middle of its illusory passage toward the second location. Goodman wondered:

How are we able to fill in the spot at the intervening place-times along a path running from the first and second flash before the second flash occurs?

For Daniel Dennett the mind somehow holds back the full perception of this experience until it is fully understood. The colour change is experienced by consciousness after the exercise has been completed. Dennett says:

Suppose the first spot is red and the second, displaced, spot is green. Unless there is ‘precognition’ in the brain (an extravagant hypothesis we will postpone indefinitely), the illusory content, red switching to-green-in-midcourse cannot be created until after some identification of the second, green spot occurs in the brain. But if the second spot is already ‘in conscious experience’ would it not be too late to interpose the illusory content between the conscious experience of the red spot and the conscious experience of the green spot? How does the brain accommodate this sleight of hand?

I suggest that this proof that the brain 'buffers', and therefore by implication, 'records' sensory information before it is presented to consciousness. In this way I believe that I show how it can be that at the point of death a full recording of ones life can be re-shown as the 'Panoramic Life Review' as it is termed by NDE researchers.

On-line is a fascinating example of how the PHI phenomenon actually works. Follow this link and check it out:

http://www.rpi.edu/~brings/PHI/phi3.html

Let me know what you think.

Daemonic Awareness and Schizophrenia (2)

I contacted Professor Nasrallah with regard to his theory. Not only did Henry respond but he was also kind enough to send me a pdf of the original 1985 paper. I have now read this and it contains a great deal of supportive material with regard to my contention that there is 'leakage' of daemonic perception across the corpus callosum into eidolonic consciousness. The greater this information transfer the more confused and lost the Eidolon becomes. Perceiving the world through the senses of the Daemon is to access the 'reality behind the reality' - the Bohmian IMAX - in all its holographic intensity.

I intend to place a more detailed posting on Henry's paper in due course. However for now Henry has agreed to me publishing on this blog his response to my email. I asked if the quote I had used in my previous posting was correct and did he still hold that position. He replied:

'The quote is accurate and was taken from a paper I wrote over 20 years ago to explain the Schneiderian delusions of schizophrenia in which afflicted individuals are convinced that someone is inserting thoughts into their heads or withdrawing thoughts or that their thoughts are broadcast to the whole world. They also have the delusion that their behavior, motility and will are controlled by “an outside force”.

I postulated that the verbally dominant left hemisphere [which is used for communications in right handed people ] in schizophrenia is actually describing the effects of the disinhibition of the right hemisphere resulting in DYSCONNECTION [not DISCONNECTION] with the left hemisphere. I postulate that a callosotomy would actually cure these symptoms because the two hemispheres would no longer communicate and the “intrusions” by the right hemisphere would no longer occur into the left hemispheric consciousness.'

Thanks Henry.

Perception lagging behind time

On awaking this morning I heard a news item on the radio (BBC Radio 5 Live) about a group of German scientists who had 'discovered' that awareness lags behind 'reality' be a few seconds. Readers of my book will know that this is a crucial part of the itladian jigsaw because it is evidence that perception is 'recorded' before being presented to consciousness. This recording is then stored and used again in the last second of life in the guise of my Bohmian IMAX. In the book I cite various experimental proofs of this from the 1980's (Cutaneous Rabbit, Kornhuber Experiment, PHI Phenomenon - and later the work of Dick Beirman and Dean Radin). However this is 'breaking news' and contemporary and as such we could ride on the back of this to get itlad noticed in the media. Unfortunately I was not fully awake and I missed the names of the researchers or any other details. Did any of you guys pick up on this? - and if so could you let me know the names, university, details etc?

Jill Bolte Taylor discovers her Daemonic Consciousness

I would like to thank Dr. Art Funkhouser, Ed Gilchrist and Gary Plunkett who all contacted me at almost exactly the same time with regard to this wonderful piece of itladian science.

One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor's brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness ... Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the "Singin' Scientist."

"How many brain scientists have been able to study the brain from the inside out? I've gotten as much out of this experience of losing my left mind as I have in my entire academic career." Jill Bolte Taylor

A video of Jill describing her encounter can be viewed via the right hand column of this blog. Please note that for some reason you will only get half a picture. However the sound works fine. If you wish to watch it with the whole picture click http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

When watching it please recall how I suggest that the non-dominant hemisphere of the brain contains a consciousness that I term the 'Daemon'. Our everyday consciousness (that which knows itself as 'I' or 'me') inhabits the dominant hemisphere. This I call the the Eidolon. What I think happened to Jill is that her stroke gave her access to the perceptions of her own Daemon. As William Blake termed it, she opened up her "Doors of Perception" and for a short time perceived the true nature of reality - the "Bohmian IMAX". Of course some individuals (such as TLErs) have regular access to this alternative reality.

Another interesting point is that Jill's experience also mirrored many of the elements of the classic Near-Death Experience. If my theory is correct then that is exactly what should happen.

Yet more evidence, if it was needed, that ITLAD and CTF are real paradigm changing concepts.

Brain in a VAT

Subsequent to the suggestion made by Susan Marie a few days ago I am in the process of designing a book synopsis for my publisher. It is my intention to write a book discussing the philosophical underpinnings and subsequent implications of CTF. We have touched upon this subject many times on this blog and I am of the opinion that a really fascinating book could be written on this subject.

As part of my research I have started to re-read the fascinating The Matrix & Philosophy book edited by Professor William Irwin of Kings College Pennsylvania. (I know that Bill is an occasional reader of this blog so if you are out there in cyberspace, Bill, maybe post a comment). As we are all very aware The Matrix movies are profoundly itladian in their philosophy so a book on this subject will be full of fascinating parallels. One that particularly caught my attention last time I read the book is a thought experiment suggested by retired Harvard philosopher professor Hilary Putnam.

Professor Putnam's 'brains in a vat' proposal can be found in his "Reason, Truth & History" (Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp 1-21). He proposes a scenario:

"Imagine that a human being (you can imagine this to be yourself) has been subjected to an operation by an evil scientist. The person's brain (your brain) has been removed from the body and placed in a vat of nutrients which keeps the brain alive. The nerve endings have been connected to a super-scientific computer which causes the person whose brain it is to have the illusion that everything is perfectly normal. There seem to be people, objects, the sky, etc.; but really, all the person (you) is experiencing is the result of electronic impulses travelling from the computer to the nerve endings. The computer is so clever that if the person tries to raise his hand, the feedback from the computer will cause him to 'see' and 'feel' the hand being raised. Moreover, by varying the program, the evil scientist can cause the victim to 'experience' (or hallucinate) any situation or environment the evil scientist wishes. He can also obliterate the memory of the brain operation, so that the victim will seem to himself to have always been in this environment. It can even seem to the victim that he is sitting and reading these very words about the amusing but quite absurd supposition that there is an evil scientist who removes people's brains from their bodies and places them in a vat of nutrients which keep the brains alive. The nerve endings are supposed to be connected to a super-scientific computer which causes the person whose brain it is to have the illusion that..."

Putnam then adds an interesting twist on this scenario. He adds:

"This time let us suppose that the automatic machinery is programmed to give us all a collective hallucination, rather than a number of separate unrelated hallucinations. Thus, when I seem to myself to be talking to you, you seem to yourself to be hearing my words. Of course, it is not the case that my words actually reach your ears — for you don't have (real) ears, nor do I have a real mouth and tongue. Rather, when I produce my words, what happens is that the efferent impulses travel from my brain to the computer, which both causes me to 'hear' my own voice uttering those words and 'feel' my tongue moving, etc., and causes you to 'hear' my words, 'see' me speaking, etc. In this case, we are, in a sense, actually in communication. I am not mistaken about your real existence (only about the existence of your body and the 'external world', apart from brains). From a certain point of view, it doesn't even matter that 'the whole world' is a collective hallucination; for you do, after all, really hear my words when I speak to you, even if the mechanism isn't what we suppose it to be. (Of course, if we were two lovers making love, rather than just two people carrying on a conversation, then the suggestion that it was just two brains in a vat might be disturbing.) "

Is this not exactly what I suggest is happening in my Bohmian IMAX? However unlike Putnam (and, by implication the writers of the Matrix - the Wachowski Brothers) I suggest a neurological scenario by which this may be an actuality and not a speculative fiction. I present evidence that for most of those reading these words (specifically those who experience deja vu) this life, this 'phaneron', is an illusion, a Maya, created by the brain itself.

I do not need bizarre 'brains in vats' or malevolent aliens to bring about my thought experiment - just observed neurological science and subjective experiences as reported by many of my readers and thousands of others around the world - and in doing so present not only an alternative paradigm of existence but also a potential explanation of why mortality may be an illusion.

Of course, as I continue to stress, this is just a theory ......

The Terminator and altering the future/past

I remember having a discussion about the plausibility of one aspect of the movie, The Terminator. A man appears and saves Sarah Conner and ends up being the father of her child, John. That child, in the future, sends the man back in time to save Sarah Conner. However, I had the scenario wrong and I was arguing that the child went back in time and was his own father. (This is not really a post about the Oedipus complex. Bear with me.) Viewed in linear-time, you have something like the following (and track left to right with your eyes):

_______\/_______/\_____

where \/ is a man who was not born yet appearing out of no where and /\ is a man disappearing into no where. So, the question is: How can a man who has not been born yet appear at some point in time. And if he can't appear then how can be ever be born?

But if we take the view of time as stations along a train track, as Anthony discusses in ITLAD, then you have something more like the following (and look at the whole picture at once):

         __________
        |        /|\
_______\|/________|_____

So, you can see that it makes more sense. The man goes back in time and is capable of being a father and meets a woman and they have a baby. That baby happens to grow up to go back in time and is capable of being a father ... Cause and effect are removed from the equation because all the pieces are there, always will be there, always have been there. This would be the view that time is an artifact of our perception. Nothing really changes in this view. Things happen and it's harder to assign cause and effect to the various pieces.

Now think about events where death was averted (such as in not taking our usual train because of a strong feeling that we should wait and the train crashes). To say that we avoided death or that our life was changed implies a linear time concept with cause and effect. What happens now changes what happens in the future. But if we think about the events in our life as static and we are merely tracking through them, then what we do now does not alter the future because the future has already been mapped out. So, we chose not to take the A train and thus avoided the fatal crash because that's what we do -- present tense.

I realize this all seems very boring and deterministic and does not leave room for free will, chance, randomness, whatever. But I've been thinking about our BIMAX and what if the recording was made at the Big Bang? What if the flow of time REALLY is an artifact and our DVD has always existed and we are simply watching a pre-recorded recording? I'm not quite finished ITLAD yet but Anthony spends quite some time on the nature of time and I'm wondering why since all the BIMAX, Many Worlds, etc. pieces seem to rely on time moving forwarded with the future unknown.

If any of this makes a lick of sense to you, comments are appreciated. Thank you and "I know you are going to say that" ;-)

Questions

I am now on page 103 of ITLAD and loving the ride so far. As someone who has had some exposure to the ideas of collapsing wave functions but as a "newbie" in pondering the ramifications of such quantum events, here are some questions floating about in my gray matter. Don't feel obliged to answer all of these as I'm sure many of them will be answered as I continue ITLAD and do some extra-curricular reading. But if you fancy a comment or two, they will all be read with relish (and perhaps some mustard). Also, some may not be very well formulated questions as I probably don't understand enough to even ask the question intelligently. But, in any event, here goes in no particular order (the numbering is merely a convenience for responding to them) ...

1) How do you get from the two-slit experiment to the effect on me? I.e., how does the wave function collapse on the quantum level effect the macroscopic world?

2) Why does that rock over there always appear over there? If I stop observing it and then start again, it always appears exactly the same as if the wave function collapses the same way every time. If I observe it differently --- e.g. if I touch it with my eyes closed --- it still seems to be the same.

3) If each and every possibility occurs in one of the many worlds, then doesn't that mean that good and bad balance each other with the result being an indifferent universe? So, not only are children who die as infants born healthy in other worlds, but in some worlds, I die as an infant.

4) Related to #3: Does the macro-world probability of an event derive from the wave function (or vice versa)? E.g. in mothers who are of such an age with certain factors, a certain percentage (say, P) of births result in a child with Down Syndrome. So, would such a child be born with Down Syndrome in P percent of the many worlds and born without Down Syndrome in (100-P) percent of the many worlds?

5) Does Cygnus X-1 exist in the world of someone who has never heard or observed it? How does my world differ from the world of someone who is blind since they cannot "observe" things in the same way that I do?

6) Does the need for "conscious observing" explain the exponential growth in scientific discoveries? As we look for things, our looking "creates" them so the more we look the more we find?

7) When someone is sick in our world, are they only sick in "our" world but healthy in their own world? When we interact with someone who is sick in our world and they admit that they are sick, who is doing the admission if they are not sick in there own world?

8) How does all of this jive with the Buddhist/mystical idea that we are all the same; that we are really God playing a game? Doesn't this imply a unique, impartial, supra-reality?

9) How does all of this jive with reincarnation and karma?

10) Doesn't this obliterate evolution? If there takes conscious observers to create the world, how did we evolve? We could never be unconscious pond scum because there would not be a world in which the scum could evolve into conscious beings.

Many Worlds Interpretation & Copenhagen Interpretation - Incompatibility?

I have recently swapped a couple of emails with Dr Christian de Quincey, Professor of Consciousness Studies at John F Kennedy University in California. Christian has not read ITLAD but he has read the article I had published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies a few years back. (for those of you who have not read this a downloadable pdf is available from my website). I was introduced to Christian's work by Dr. Alan Roberts. Christian is interested in my work and on his next visit to the UK we intend to try and meet up. However in his email to me he asked a very interesting - and challenging - question with regard to my using Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation and Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation in support of CTF. Christian argues, quite rightly, to imply that these are somehow complementary by using them in this way is incorrect; MWI was suggested by Everett as an alternative to, not in support of, Copenhagen.

Copenhagen suggests that an act of observation by a conscious mind 'collapses the wave function' and changes a 'probability wave' into a particle with precise location in time and space. MWI suggests the total opposite - that the probability wave does not collapse because each possible location of the particle occurs in one of trillions of alternative universes. In this way the act of observation is taken out of the equation. In other words MWI does not need consciousness to work whereas for Copenhagen it is crucial.

Those of you who have attended my Quantum Physics talks will know that I acknowledge this difference when presenting the Schrodinger's Cat section. I am therefore very aware of the conflict with regard to these two theories and in the first draft of ITLAD I only focused in on Copenhagen. MWI was introduced later almost an alternative to explain one of the most widely criticised implications of CTF.

The philosopher Heinrich Heine made the following observation:

'Time is infinite, but the things in time, the concrete bodies, are finite. They may indeed disperse into the smallest particles; but these particles, the atoms, have their determinate numbers, and the numbers of the configurations which, all of themselves, are formed out of them is also determinate. Now, however long a time may pass, according to the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal play of repetition, all configurations which have previously existed on this earth must yet meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again.'

When Friedrich Nietzsche came across this quotation he was both horrified and beguiled. He wrote in his book The Gay Science the following famous few lines:

What, if at some day or night a demon were to steal after you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more" ... would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him "You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine."

In the original draft of CTF this is exactly what the evidence seemed to suggest - that we live our lives over and over again in the Bohmian IMAX. This is a recording and as such can never be changed. You live the same life without any opportunity to change it. You live a literal 'eternal reccurence' . The same life over and over again. This I found both terrifying and morally repugnant. I suppose that I have a certain belief in teleology - that things and circumstances have to have a reason behind them - such repetition seems pointless. This is not what happens to Conner's in Groundhog Day - he can change things. But there was something even more horrible about this suggestion and that is that if everybody only has one life which is then repeated what about those poor people who have terrible infirmities, babies born severely retarded. Children that die as infants. Do they just go round and round as well? I know I was being non-scientific in that this is what the evidence implied but I simply did not want to accept this as the only option. I then came across Everett's Many-Worlds. Here was a theory that proposed that all possibilities that can happen will happen in one of the multiverses. This was what I needed. A more hopeful and, dare I say it, teleological, proposition. Each 'return' can be different, subtly or massively (as suggested in the movie The Butterfly Effect). I hoped that this may imply that in their universes people avoid suffering and, by some mechanism I don't pretend to understand, are born without deformities or illnesses - they only have them in our 'observer based' universe. But I still needed Copenhagen to explain the uniqueness of each personal Everett Universe. On reflection maybe I don't. Maybe MWI itself can explain the uniqueness of each phaneron without resorting to any observer instigated 'collapse of the wave function'.

Indeed the reason I then introduced Bohm's Implicate Order was to avoid the accusation of solipsism. Simply if this is my universe then for whom am I writing this posting? You guys out there are simply illusions of my brain - nothing more. But for sanity - and cruelty - to not occur we have to accept that those beings we encounter are real, self motivated, conscious beings. To assume otherwise is a very dangerous step to make. The solution to this existential nightmare is that we are all part of the same collective consciousness that functions within Bohm's Implicate Order. We all interact within all our individual universes.

However maybe MWI (or more accurately MMI - the Many Minds Interpretation Dieter Zeh, David Albert and B. Loewer) may also accommodate the problem of 'other minds'. As such maybe in a refined version of CTF all I really need is MMI.

In fact is this not exactly what Max Tegmark suggests in his paper on quantum suicide?
(see http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9709032/ or pages 20 to 47 of The Universe Next Door by Marcus Chown (isbn 0-7472-3528-7)

If you wish to check out Christian and his work follow the following link:

http://www.deepspirit.com/

How we see - Social Programming

In the movie "What The Bleep" it was claimed that the Maya of Central America simply did not see Cortez's ships as they sailed into view. Sailing ships were simpy unknown to them and their brains could not process what they were seeing. I am not so sure about this claim but it does highlight some interesting issues with regard to knowledge and perception. When I was at university I studed a phenomenon known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This suggests that language itself structures the way in which we perceive the world. Again quite interesting when discussed in the light of ITLAD. An example of how knowledge controls perception can be seen above. Most adults see a mildly erotic scene on the vase. This is because they have prior memory of such a scene. Children, apparently, see nine dolphins.

How many other strikingly obvious things are out there that we cannot 'see' because we simply are not educated to do so.

Is this again evidence for the Bohmian IMAX theory?

Self Fulfilling Prophesies

Susan Marie has requested my opinion with regard to the above concept. I thank Susan for this and I feel that this is such an important topic that it should have a thread all to itself. It refers to the comments made with regard to the posting Groundhog Christmas with particular reference to Johar's comment about her husband and father.

If CTF is correct then many of us - particularly those of us who experience psychic phenomenon such as deja vu, precognition etc - are living our lives again. We do this in an internally generated holographic projection similar to that proposed in the movie The Matrix. This illusion (known as Maya by the Hindus) I call The Bohmian IMAX and I am of the opinion that there is strong evidence to relate this 'illusion' to David Bohm's Implicate Order and Holomovement , Hugh Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation, and Niels Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation - the implications of the last two so wonderfully described by Jim Al Khalili in the recent BBC TV series Atom.

Depending upon our position in a new concept that I will describe in some detail in my next book - I call this The Scale of Transcendence - will facilitate foreknowledge of the present life based upon the subliminal (Daemon-accessed) memories of the previous life-run. These can be interpreted as a type 1 deja vu (short-term knowledge similar to the Precogs as described in various stories by Philip K Dick) or longer-term and more detailed such as type 2 deja vu or precognition.

Now I am of the opinion that sometimes we have subliminal memories of future events that may be years in the future. These manifest as 'hunches' or simply vague ideas. As such I would suggest that for Johar in her Virgin Life, (as A Dark Philosopher terms it), both events regarding her father and her husband happened as tragic and sad coincidences but mere coincidences nevertheless. However as Johar lives her life again with the subliminal knowledge of this impending coincidence, the coincidence, when it again takes place, is imbued with precognitive significance because the two events are linked by Johar's prior knowledge of the later one. As such the first event did not 'bring about' the second one as such because the only real link is Johar as the 'observer' as per the Copenhagen Interpretation.

Does this make sense?

Charles Bonnet Syndrome

A few months back I received a phone call from my mother. She was very concerned and thought she was going mad.

A little background. Around 20 years ago my mother lost her left eye. A doctor had noticed something strange at the back of that eye. He was so concerned he had the local hospital do an urgent biopsy that very day. The next day it was confirmed that my mother had a malignant melanoma on the back of her eye. So potentially lethal was this small patch that the next day they took her eye out in order to save her life. Fortunately the operation was a great success and she has now liveed to the ripe old age of 83. She has this amazing glass eye that looks so real that people have no idea that she is totally blind on one side. And that is why she became worried.

She started to 'see' things on her left side that were not there. One day a little boy ran past her and for hours she 'saw' the same boy run past her, again and again in a kind of time-loop. Things then became stranger. She would see things 'moving' across the field of vision of her non-existent left eye. She saw trees, flowers, plants, even her own fingers. She knew that this was not possible so only one conclusion was possible. She was getting Altzheimers or something similar.

When she told me of this I was fascinated because ITLAD discusses in some detail the relationship between consciousness and reality and the way the mind processes visual stimulation. I was particularly interested in the 'Julian Barbour -like' repetition of images ( Julian Barbour has written a fascinating book called The End of Time).

Two days ago she was diagnosed with a psychological 'state' called Bonnet's Syndrome. It seems that far from going mad she is experiencing something that is recognised by orthodox medicine and yet remains completely inexplicable.

A recent paper on the syndrome opens with this:

"Neighbours brought an 87 year old white widower—who lived alone in a flat—to the medical assessment unit of a district general hospital. They were concerned that he was becoming demented. Apparently he had reported seeing people and animals in his house—including bears and Highland cattle. He verified these statements and said he had been seeing them for the previous six weeks. He had also often seen swarms of flies and blue fish darting across the room."

I am not exactly sure what my mother's hallucinations and the case described above mean in relation to CTF but one thing is for sure - what we 'perceive' and what is really 'out there' are two different things. Could it be that what 'sufferers' of Bonnet Syndrome really perceive is the Bohmian IMAX?