Of all the thoughts that cross our mind during the
course of the day, 'what if’ intrigues us the most. 'What if’ implies
possibility. What if things were different? They most definitely will be
in the next moment, the next hour, the next year. Possibility is the stuff of which lives
and worlds are made.
The nature of possibility is a philosophical issue that
goes back to the first introspective thoughts humans ever had. This is a
possibility, or that is a possibility. We only experience one possibility
of a set at any given time, in any given space. If we flip a coin, it will
be either heads or tails, not both at the same time. We assume that when
one possibility is manifested and becomes an actuality, all of the other
possibilities that could have been cease to exist. In this manner, most
possibility is always just out of reach. We cannot have our cake and eat
it, too.
Actually, this is all quite wrong in an odd sort of
way. Isaac Newton worked within the space-time sensory realm of
possibility. As time passed and the industrial revolution forced men to
look deeper and think harder to solve problems unresolved by Newton's
mathematics, humanity took note of equivalents of the infamous double-slit
experiment in which apparently isolated photons form interference patterns
with photons that didn't seem to exist and discovered what we today call
quantum theory, the cornerstone of seventy percent of modern technology
and one-third of our economy.
Quantum theory says, in essence, that all possibilities
are 'superpositioned' at the heart of reality. They coexist. No one is any
more real than another, although from the space-time perspective of one
manifested possibility, another is no longer possible. We live in one such
space-time structure. We share it in common to some degree. We are
'entangled' within it. We assume it stands apart from our consciousness of
it. In doing so, we become an epiphenomenon existing within it, trapped in
a human brain, focused in that mysterious moment
of present time that bridges the future and the past.
But space-time structures close to one another in the
'multiverse', the superpositioned arena within which an infinite of
space-time structures exist, interfere with one another. By virtue
of this interference, the ability to perform a special kind of computation
lurks at the core of our nuts and bolts reality and can be tapped at will
to process information in ways new to our understanding of how the world
works. Quantum computers are machines, but atoms of machines do not differ
from the atoms of biological organisms. The brain operates at the level of
calcium ions, well within the microcosm, and quantum effects in biology
have become a new field of study. Photosynthesis, after all, depends upon
quantum processes deep within the cells of plants, as does the process of
a star turning supernova at the end of its lifespan. Too hot in a human
brain for quantum effects to play a role in our thought processes? Try
sticking a thermometer in heart of a five million mile diameter star on the
verge of outshining its galaxy for a temperature reading.
Within machines, superpositioned states of a very few
atoms can be used as numerical registers factoring a large prime number in
a relative heartbeat, a feat that would take the worlds existing computers
working in parallel billions of years to complete. More atomic states
would be utilized in factoring a large prime number than exist in the
known universe, and yet the atomic states of very few atoms suffice, if we
access their superpositioned states, because they are superpositioned
in a continuum of infinite depth.
The first crude quantum computers have been built. The first
qubits have been employed using the mathematics of quantum information
processing, and the first test calculations have been rendered. Commercial
quantum encryption, which exploits the strange phenomenon of quantum
entanglement, is already a reality. Everything works as advertised.
Quantum theory and its astounding implications are based on fact and solid
evidence that hold up against careful scrutiny. Remember that theories
remain theories in the field of science only because they may be added to
at a later date, or even reinterpreted, not because work done to date is
in doubt or lacks supporting evidence.
Access to the multiverse by virtue of quantum
interference allows access to that realm of infinite possibility. Possibilities exist in a
space-time reality only as space-time potential. Flip a coin and one of
two possibilities will manifest, aside from landing on its edge. In the
multiverse, all possibilities coexist like the colors of a spectrum,
each in its own space-time framework. Using the coin toss as an example,
a 'rainbow' toss of the coin includes the edge landing, the
kind of coin flipped, when it was flipped, by whom, and where.
If the human brain processes information quantum
mechanically, we have access to conscious experience not contained in one
space-time universe. The
size of the human brain is, in effect, infinite, and the conscious selves
it generates and the worlds each of these selves have common roots. Those calcium ions plying the spaces
between the synapses of our neurons have a broader choice of
destinations than we could ever have imagined.
Thoughts and actions are space-time affairs with beginnings and
endings. The information from which they are derived transcends any
specific space-time. Consciousness, in fact, generates space-time
in its wake of experience.
Imagine reality to consist of a single, primal,
asymmetrical, conscious entity. Call it a bit of information
ensconced in a multidimensional realm that allows it to interact with itself in binary
fashion. Consciousness is born of quantum interference between that primal quantum state's
interaction with its own reflection. That interactivity instantaneously generates
infinite structures in a rising hierarchy of complexity. Each step
of the way is a quantum state in its own
right, up to and including the multiverse and any given universe within it.
By virtue of their self-awareness, these conscious
space-time structures acquire 'histories' founded upon 'value', 'meaning', and 'significance'
born of early random variations. If we are aware of a pattern that catches
our attention, we have the ability to volitionally focus upon
that pattern to the exclusion of others. Every possible choice is
derived from a superpositioned realm, but manifested as a space-time
structure, a train of
choices accumulating into a unique quantum unity that becomes both a conscious
individual and its history. The two are aspects of one another. An infinity of such space-time
selves of unimaginable
variation and complexity exist even as the primal quantum 'bit' maintains
its identity unaltered.
Reality consists of an infinite number of self-aware quantum
'moments'. Each moment interacts with another to generate change and the
illusion of moving in sequential 'time' and in an associative
information processing 'space'. Value and subsequent meaning and
significance eventually indelibly marks each evolving quantum self as
inviolate, capable of interacting with others like itself, but without
losing its sense of identity. Each is the center of its own universe, its
own history, its own perspective.
To reiterate, the infamous mind-body problem offers no
real resolution at all, because we split reality into two complementary
realms within our own psyche, the mental and the 'physical'. We confuse
the razor edge of conscious focus as 'self' and the larger conscious
structure of our self as direct access to an exterior objective physical
reality. Even when we know intellectually that we are a conscious
structure that has no direct access to what may be out there by virtue of
the brain and the nerves and impulses leading into it, we do not commit to
this 'knowing' on an emotional level.
But what we see of reality is not what we get in
the field of quantum mechanics. Only through the abstract reasoning of the neocortex are we able to 'see' the
so-called 'multiverse' at all. It is the emotional reactivity of the
limbic system that has stood against the acceptance of the most profound
implications of quantum theory for human existence. Based upon observations limited to our
senses, these implications of quantum
theory are not at all visible or credible. They are counterintuitive. Until we can
find a way to integrate and accept them on a gut level, we will tend to
distrust the validity of an understanding of the foundation to science manifest in our everyday technology. We
employ intellectualization, justification, and rationalization to support
an emotional contention that would not otherwise stand against a truly
balanced thought process.
And what is implied by quantum theory applied to the
functioning of the human mind? That we are acausal at heart and thereby
immortal and eternal in a realm that knows neither time nor space? They
are startling and inescapable ideas when a few simple and proven concepts
are understood. They are like a potent drug that will never be approved by
our political, cultural and religious establishments as we know them. They
open floodgates of fresh energy into the human imagination, and they take us
into entirely new and unlimited arenas of possibility.
The point would be moot if living our lives in the
'wrong' universe did not have dire repercussions and well as untapped
resources awaiting our discovery. Our unrecognized
suffering, however, is but an evolutionary pressure driving us into the
unknown as all life is driven into unanticipated realms of being. Some
evolutionary bridges are fragile, however. The longer we dwell upon them,
the greater the possibility that we may fail to sustain our focus and fall
back into archaic ways of being.
This is where entire worlds part ways with one another,
because birth and death are the horizons to the world of the sensorium and
they are the illusions. There far more distant horizons waiting to be explored by each of
us.
