These are the basic axioms of the quantum world, not the strangest perhaps nor the latest, but certainly some of the more thought provoking. These thoughts lead the world of physics to develop two different paths in the thinking.

One being the primary particle people, those who asserted that we could understand it all, if we could just find the primary building block of matter. We could theorize through mathematical models that in order that what we understood to be true, to work, there had to be more. We needed higher amounts of energy to reveal the “ holy grail” at this time, the quark. That required a cyclotron and lots of money.

There is a dirty little secret about science and scientists that they don’t like to talk about. Deep Throat could have been talking about big science when he said, “follow the money”. There is no conspiracy to unravel, but the facts are that researchers go to where the money is. How many of the physicists on the Manhattan Project were opposed to what they were doing, but could not resist unlimited funds to determine if it can be done?

The step child for many years was a group who asserted that the secrets weren’t held in the matter itself but in the idea that matter and consciousness were not a duality but one in the same. This thinking proposed that, yes, there would be the quark, but only after huge amounts of energy, both mental and physical were exerted in order that the new particle revealed itself. That perhaps this enormous focus of consciousness was actually creating a self predicting model. That there would be another “primary object” as long as we continued to seek one and were willing to expend energy to look for them.

Well as it turned out, the quark was found, if the trail of an object which wasn’t there, now its coming into existence and disappearing at the same time on a piece of film. First came Fermier, then CERN and now they are constructing a bigger more powerful instrument at CERN. They found the quark, but every discovery sent the theorists back to a position of predicting another, in order that what we learned continued to make the models work. They have predicted and found so many new particles that you might say that the quark is old hat, like that pair of bell bottom pants and your platform shoes.

Interesting things began to happen in astro physics; dark matter, dark energy and black holes. The work in these areas began to reveal a correlation to the quantum world. These two had always been regarded as working with no real connection, Newton appeared to explain the macro, while it took quantum to explain the very small. This duality of physical laws drove most physicists crazy. There has to be a way to bring these two realities together, a theory of everything. STRING THEORY

Now, I would never attempt to explain the workings of string, read a book. I would like to point out one “fact” of string, in fact it possibly is the only “fact”. String Theory is entirely a construct of the mind. It exists only using the symbols of mathematics. When humans first painted on walls of caves and cliffs they used symbols to communicate their understanding of the world around them. We really haven’t progressed that far.

I needed a personal experience, to substantiate my intuitions about this. I began to look for the most elegant usage's of symbols in cultures around the world. I use the word elegant because it is the word most commonly used by physicists when talking about string. The mathematical models of string are really elegant in their explanation of everything. I found my cultural use of symbols in the Hopi and Tibetan cultures. These cultures have evolved symbols and their usage into a language expressing an understanding of what exists beyond our very limited perception of reality. This understanding runs so deep in these cultures that it permeates not just a few but the entire population.

Thus, really began my quest to integrate this new esoteric view of the world with the esoteric knowledge of cultures that had viewed matter and consciousness as a singular.

Just a short thought for contemplation: if you could bisect the earth, you would find the traditional home of the Hopis and the land of Tibet are exactly opposite each other. Another dry high plateau, the Hopi word for day, nyma, is the Tibetan word for night. The word for moon in Tibetan, dawa, is the Hopi word for sun.

For the purpose to start to assemble a argument. there are more aspects of the quantum world that I need to present for your consideration.

The first is perhaps the most mind bending of the implications to come from research into the nature of matter. A physicists named John Wheeler conducted a experiment that solidifies the role of “participant” as the incontrovertible new concept of quantum mechanics. This new concept states that consciousness is embedded in the process it perceives, continually changing them while it is changed by them.

Wheeler set up an apparatus which split light and then could measure the photons as particles as they take a single pathway. or as probabilistic waves that travels both routes at the same time. After the beam was split the experimenters chose which property to measure. This choice seemed to have a retroactive effect on the beam , as it still demonstrated both wave and particle, depending on the scientist’s choice. It demonstrated that the quantum phenomena exists only in potentia, until a decision is made by conscious choice as how they are to be perceived---even if the choice is made retroactively. Although this immediate and non local effect happens beyond the speed of light and because it was thought that no signal could be transmitted in that way, Wheeler was left to wonder, “ May the universe in some sense be brought into being by the participation of those who participate?”

The existence of a four-dimensional space-time continuum means that what we perceive as the linear direction of time is only an illusion created by our particular perspective. As the physicists Arthur Eddington put it, “events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them”. Wheeler put it bluntly, “there is no space-time, there is no time, there is no before, there is no after. The question what happens next is without meaning.” Nietzche wrote, “every power draws its ultimate consequences at every moment”.

Looking at all of this, and more, I began to realize the nature of matter that interested me occurred outside of my perceptions. I began to realize that I would have to combine my understanding of the science with the mystical or shamanic understandings of reality. The perspective of space-time of modern physics matches the Hopi perspective which states that all time is present now, and events unfold according to a preset pattern. The modern model put forward by physics is of a, “timeless space of a higher dimension”, this idea is echoed in many mystical traditions. Eddington was one of the first physicist to propose that relativity theory suggested,”the stuff og the world is mind stuff” and that this “mind stuff is not spread out in space-time; these are part of the cyclic scheme ultimately derived from it”.

The final push for this combining came for me with the reading of a 2000 year old quote from a Buddhist sage Ashvaghosha: “Suchness is neither that which is existence, nor that which is nonexistence, not that which is at once existence and nonexistence, nor that which is not at once existence and nonexistence”. Now “suchness” (Thathagatta) refers to the eastern tradition of enlightenment, the individual experience of reconnecting with the ultimate ground of being that supersedes all dualisms.

Besides the fact that this quote sounded identical to the paradoxical expressions of physicists attempt to grasp the existence of quantum objects, which are neither wave nor particle, do not exist yet do not not exist. He was expressing these concepts 2000 years ago, this was a sign on where to look and a kick in the butt. I was at least 2000 years behind in my thinking.

When Einstein proposed, in his theory of relativity, that space and time were not separate domains but deeply interrelated, the world shifted. He discovered that the gravitational pull of physical objects actually curved space and bent time as well. Laying out his hypothesis in an elegant mathematical formulae that contradicted the core of Newtonian thinking of the world that held that space and time were absolute dimensions with no connection to each other. In the place of these absolutes, Einstein proposed a four dimensional space-time continuum in which no perspective is privileged. The physicist Sachs stated, “Relativity theory implies that the space and time coordinates are only the elements of a language that is used by an observer to describe his environment “ The shock of this upon the scientific community was quickly compounded by other shocks.

The roots of physics can be found in the thought of the ancient Greeks who made inquiries into “physis” the essential nature of things. When modern physicists developed the analytical and experimental tools to probe into the fundamental building blocks of matter, they were surprised even appalled - by what they found. They found that matter was largely composed of empty space. If you were to blow an atom up to the size of St. Peters Cathedral in Rome, the neutron at its center would be the size of a grain of salt. the electrons whizzing around the neutron cannot be considered objects in the traditional sense of the term They do not exist the way matter exists, but only evince “tendencies to exist”.

At this quantum level, physicists discovered that their attempts to measure the phenomena affected the phenomena, which led them to realize that consciousness had to be integrated into their understanding of matter. The perceiving subject could no longer be separated from the object under investigation, this concept was codified by the physicist Heisenberg in his Uncertainty Principle. With quantum objects, such as photons and electrons, it is impossible to determine both their position and their momentum. If one chooses to measure the momentum the object will appear as a wave. If it is the determination of position to be measured the object appears as a particle. But in actual fact, it was neither, or both at the same time. Heisenberg wrote, “that the path of the electron comes into existence when we observe it”. Neils Bohr wrote, “isolated material objects are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interactions with other systems”.

Physicists found that in the quantum world disregarded the classic physics in startling ways: as probability waves spreading through space, photon and electron “wave packets” are found at more than one place at the same time only manifesting as a particle when observations are made.
They were also confronted by “quantum jumps”, electrons vanishing from one point and appearing at another without passing through the space in between. They also discovered quantum non locality or Action at a Distance: once correlated quantum objects remain linked even when separated by great distances. If the probability wave of one object is collapsed to make a particular observation, the other object is affected as well. The change happens immediately, with no time lag for the message to be transmitted through space, indicating that the objects are connected through a transcendent domain.

Now, one needs to stop here and contemplate this, for this indicates that time, space and consciousness are intimately interrelated and inseparable, and there exists a higher dimension, outside our perceptions of space-time, in which everything is interconnected. Bohr once declared: “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.”

I think this is a good spot to stop for now. People of our culture need some time to integrate this, I know this blew me away. So I’ll stop here before I introduce some of the really strange implications that physics indicates for our existence.

The concept of an imminent cataclysmic earth destruction and apocalypse have always and continue to grip the imagination of our culture. Movies and television spread the image of destruction by polar shift, alien attack, flood, flame, comet or nuclear wipe-out.

For some the literal return of Christ is eagerly anticipated. Millions of fundamentalists across America and the White House consider themselves rapture ready, living out the script of the book of Revelation. Best selling novels predict the return of a Rambo-like Messiah who is going to put the hurt on all non-believers. Why reduce carbon emissions or preserve resources when the "end of days" is just around the corner. Why not, instead, accelerate the process. While these fundamentalists might seem to contradict their sacred texts, they believe that no harm can come to those already saved, even though in that same text of Revelation the angel promises to, "destroy them which destroy the earth".

The world denying and transcendent emphasis of our patriarchal (this point is worth noting) major religions is reaching a fever pitch. God is thought to cast his blessings on imperialist wars, territorial violence and acts of terrorism; to condone free market capitalism and its exploitation of the resources, to uphold the integrity of the nuclear family, while opposing abortion and same sex unions.

Those on the other side of the fence, secular believers in science and technology and the progress of the two, still expect that the future will continue the pattern of the last century; sleeker machines, virtual worlds, longer life spans and further ecological deterioration. They accept the projections of 4% growth ad infinitum and reject or ignore other figures indicating depletion and devastation. Faced with terrorists threats, most are willing to forfeit a degree of freedom for the feeling of security. They avoid or ignore the underlying aspects of our situation that contradict their hopes and plans for the future.

I propose a kind of extravagant thought experiment, an "all in" poker type gamble played in the realm of ideas. To accept this wager no belief is required and none desired. What is required is what the philosopher Nietzche called "uninhibited fingers for the unfathomable." He noted that much of what we take for knowledge even science is actually a projection of our psychology onto the world, our thinking tends to circle around established conventions whose basis is forgotten or obscure. Nietzche proposes the attainment of knowledge requires "a granite foundation of ignorance...the will to knowledge on the foundation of far more powerful will; the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its opposite..but its refinement."

The myth and traditional view even the development of individual capacities and the evolution of our self awareness derive from the capacities contained in the potential of the natural world. We are capable of sensible, intelligent thought because nature is sensible and intelligent. The aboriginal mentality recognizes no ultimate distinction between matter and spirit...no dualistic split between mind and world. A view of the world shared by the cutting edge of physics. By this logic, an evolutionary process on the level of human consciousness should be comprehensible to us, if we can stretch our minds toward it.

If we have reached the time of prophecy, then the process should have a logic behind it...even an empirical basis. It should conform to natural laws. Of course, this logic and these laws could be radically different from the ones upheld by the narrowly defined materialistic paradigm. What might help is a perspective that is open to radical possibilities, yet at the same time is logical, sensible and calm.

It is my thesis in this poker hand, that the rapid development of technology and the destruction of the biosphere are by-products of a psycho-spiritual process taking place on a planetary scale. We have created this crisis to force our own accelerated transformation...on an unconscious level we have willed it into being. Human consciousness, the sentient element is in the process of self-organizing to a more intensified state of being and knowing...what some call a higher octave, the Hopi talk of a Fifth World, the Aztecs anticipated a Sixth Sun, St. John foresees the descent of heaven to New Jerusalem, they are describing the same thing; a shift in the nature of consciousness.