Explanations for Everything

The amazing promises of the Zero Point Field

Tijn Touber This article appeared in Ode issue: 8

The story that you’re about to read has created quite a stir among our editorial staff. The subject touches upon everything, literally everything that we humans do in our lives. And this is confrontational, disturbing and hopeful all at once. But that wasn’t the only reason for the commotion. There was also a continual discussion about the way this topic should be introduced. After all, writing about an energy field that connects man and matter and continually affects everything and everyone is not as quite as simple as the average article. Tijn Touber, who locked himself away for weeks to write this amazing story, must have come close to desperation. Not only because of the comments we made and the continual discussions we had with one another, but also and especially because of the complexity of the issue. The words of Niels Bohr, the renowned Danish scientist, should have been a warning to us: ‘Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.’ Hence, dear readers, you are forewarned. But there is some consolation: if at any time you cannot follow the story, you are in good company. Hold on tight. (Or better yet, let go.) – The editors

Shireen Strooker is standing motionless in the middle of a large field, surrounded by 600 people. The gorgeous landscape under the mist of powerful Mount Rainier in the upper northwest of the United States is invisible to her. Shireen is blindfolded, as are all the others in the field. That morning they all made a drawing. The hundreds of drawings are now hanging on the fence along the edge of the field. The assignment: find your own drawing blindfolded. Shireen does a meditation exercise, pictures her drawing and thinks: ‘I am the creator of the drawing and the spectator, I only have to become one with the drawing and it will automatically pull me towards it.’ Then, without bumping into anyone, she walks straight across the field and… picks out her drawing straightaway from among the 600. Coincidence? Pure luck? You’d think so. But Shireen was not the only one to perform this implausible act that day. The results of this exercise involving the students of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment violate the laws of empirical probability theory. Apparently, humans are capable of ‘communicating’ with matter intangibly. The curriculum of this unusual school aims to prove that phenomena such as telepathy and clairvoyance are not wondrous mysteries, but gifts that every human being possesses and can develop. The unwritten slogan of the Ramtha’s school’s curriculum could be that there is more to the world than meets the eye. There are other schools and movements that have proclaimed this message in recent decades. In fact, the New Time Movement was founded on it. But the exciting thing is that the hard science of modern physics is starting to lend proof to the existence of a ubiquitous energy field, which could offer an explanation for the miracle of a blindfolded woman who finds her drawing amidst 600 others.

In her book The Field (HarperCollins, 2001), investigative journalist Lynne McTaggart provides an overview of recent scientific discoveries that demonstrate that there is an all-encompassing energy field connecting man and matter. In their search for the heart of the matter (no pun intended) – for the smallest particle – scientists discovered the field’s special characteristics and potential. The so-called Zero Point Field (the name comes from the fact that even at the absolute zero point, energy can still be measured) appears to provide the explanation for countless known phenomena and processes that had stumped the scientific community for generations. Gravity, electromagnetism, clairvoyance, telepathy and the spontaneous healing of wounds: the origins of these diverse phenomena can all be traced back to this quantum field. McTaggart writes: ‘Researchers discovered that the Zero Point Field contains the blueprint for our existence. Everything and everyone is connected with one another through this field in which all information from all time is said to be stored. Ultimately, everything – from man to matter – can be traced back to a collection of electric charges that are continually in contact with this endless sea of energy. Our interaction with this field determines who we are, will become and have been. The field is the alpha and omega of our existence.’

A connection between matter and mind runs counter to the scientific foundations upon which modern society is based. Our perspective on life is still greatly influenced by the mechanistic worldview introduced by Isaac Newton in the 17th century. Newton saw the universe as a machine with separate parts that have a limited influence on one another. René Descartes added his vision to the mix, that the human mind is separate from the lifeless matter we call ‘body’. In Newton and Descartes’ way of thinking the world simply keeps turning, whether we humans are there or not. We don’t particularly matter. Darwin’s evolutionary theory reinforced the image of the lonely, isolated human being. It was all about eating and getting eaten. Humans appeared to be an evolutionary accident without any particular meaning. But huge questions remained: how does life begin, how does our mind work, why do we get sick, how does a single cell develop into a complete human being, and so forth. Many scientists looked for answers to these questions in religion, but that brought them into conflict with themselves. The first indications of a possible bridge between spirituality and science came – interestingly enough – from physics discoveries made at the beginning of the last century. In 1911 the German physicist Max Planck demonstrated that there is an energetic ‘empty space’ between atoms. But because he established that this energy field is everywhere at all times, he considered it a constant that did not influence material existence. Other pioneers in quantum physics discovered that the most elementary building blocks of matter couldn’t actually even be called ‘matter’. Sometimes these building blocks behaved like particles, then like waves and sometimes like both at once. In 1927, Werner Heisenberg dubbed this the ‘principle of uncertainty’. It appeared that subatomic particles were not solid objects but vibrating little packets of energy that couldn't be quantified or understood as separate parts. A more significant break with Newtonian thought was hardly conceivable. At this elementary level, nothing appeared to be certain. There were only endless possibilities. Moreover, these particles appeared only to take a specific shape if a spectator observed them. If a person noticed a particle, it ‘froze’. The researchers came to the startling conclusion that consciousness creates reality and Einstein wondered whether the moon would actually exist if we didn’t look at it. The physicists also noted that particles that at one time were connected to one another – within a molecule for example – remain connected always and everywhere, and influence each other instantly, that is faster than the speed of light and over great distances. This so-called ‘non-locale phenomenon’ indicates that the dimensions of time and space do not apply at an elementary level. Einstein spoke of ‘distant ghostlike connections’. Einstein and his contemporaries were unable to reconcile the new discoveries in quantum physics with the Newtonian reality they could see and touch around them. Their solution was a scientific monster: different laws applied to the world of small particles than for larger matter. At the same time these scientists sought meaningful refuge in spiritual and religious texts. Erwin Schrödinger, for example, studied Hinduism, Heisenberg looked into Plato’s theory of the ancient Greeks, Niels Bohr was drawn to the Tao and Wolfgang Pauli to the Cabala.

What didn’t work a century ago now appears possible. The theory of the all-encompassing Zero Point Field could span a definitive bridge between spirituality and science. Einstein couldn’t prove it, but suspected it, when he said the ‘the field is the only reality’. The field could explain the instantaneous, ‘ghostlike’ transfer of information between quantum particles. Divergent scientific discoveries point in the same direction. Biologist Paul Pietsch of the University of Indiana in the United States wanted to know where memories are stored in the brain. Pietsch conducted experiments with salamanders. First he taught them specific patterns of behaviour. Then, to destroy their memory, he removed their brains and milled them in a meat grinder. Finally, he put the remainders of the brains back in the salamanders’ heads. The result? After awhile the salamanders re-exhibited the learned behaviour. Put another way, their brains were shattered, but their memory lived on. Pietsch concluded that memory was not a local phenomenon, but is somehow linked to something – an energy field? – outside the salamanders where they ‘collect’ their memory. Neuroanatomist Harold Burr of Yale University discovered the field in a different way. During the 1940s he researched energy fields around living organisms and discovered that young salamanders have a light field around them in the shape of an adult salamander. This ‘blueprint’ appears to be already present around the unfertilised egg. Burr also saw light fields around plant seeds that took the shape of mature plants. These fields could explain why you can amputate a salamander’s leg, jaw or even the lens of their eye, only to see the body part grow back. Salamanders may have an unusually strong connection with the energy field around them, but this phenomenon can also be seen in humans. Amputees can sometimes feel (phantom) pain in the amputated body part. Burr’s work also demonstrates that bodies – matter – are connected to an enveloping energy field.

And where do clairvoyants get their visions? Physicist Hall Puthoff of Stanford University in the United States asked himself that very question. He conducted various experiments with two clairvoyants in which he gave them the coordinates of a place on earth they had never been. Independent from one another, the clairvoyants were able to describe these places in detail. To measure the extent of their clairvoyance Puthoff asked them to describe Jupiter before Nasa’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft had charted the planet. Somewhat embarrassed, clairvoyant Ingo Swann said he saw a ring around the planet. ‘Perhaps,’ he told Puthoff, ‘I may have accidentally directed my attention to Saturn.’ No one took the drawing seriously until some time later when Nasa released images from the spacecraft showing that, indeed, Jupiter had a ring. The CIA has since shown interest in the extraordinary results of Puthoff’s research, which could potentially be used for espionage. As an experiment, CIA agent Christopher Green was sent up in an aeroplane with a piece of paper in his pocket on which three numbers were written. This was no problem for clairvoyant Pat Price, who was able to recite the numbers accurately, and in the right order. However, he said he felt a little nauseated. It later appeared that Green’s flight had run in to heavy turbulence. Puthoff then conducted experiments in which he sent people to random coordinates and asked them to photograph the location in 15 minutes and fill in a list of questions he gave them. In nearly all cases, the clairvoyants were able to clearly describe the locations based on the coordinates they were given. Puthoff went a step further. He asked the clairvoyants to describe the location before the test subjects arrived. And they did. The clairvoyants appeared capable of describing the destination a half-hour to five days before the travellers arrived. Puthoff concluded that time and space do not exist on the level of the Zero Point Field. The information is apparently already available before the actual events occur. Puthoff conducted a total of 336 comparable experiments proving it made very little difference to the clairvoyants whether or not the subjects were at the location in question.

Physicist Helmut Schmidt conducted another remarkable experiment that points to the timelessness of the energy field. He had his test subjects put on headphones and listen to bleeps produced by a machine. The sounds were random and equally distributed over the left and right ears. Their assignment was to have more sounds go into one of the ears. Nearly all the subjects were successful. In other words, people were capable of influencing the machine without directly touching it. Schmidt concluded there must be a field that connects man and machine. His next experiment reinforced this once more in a rather bizarre way. He gave a test subject a tape with bleeps to take home and asked him to influence the tape so that more bleeps would be sent to the left ear. Schmidt made a copy of the tape for himself. The next day the bleeps had indeed shifted, with more going to the left ear. To his amazement Schmidt discovered that his copy had also changed, although as far as he knew the machine – as usual – had evenly distributed the bleeps over both ears. The only possible conclusion for Schmidt was that the future intention of the test subjects influenced the tape when it was actually recorded. Just as the little salamander knows that he must grow up to be a big salamander, Schmidt’s test subjects know that they will influence the recording of the bleeps before he actually asks them to do so. Past, present and future apparently flow together in the energy field. In another type of experiment, Harvard University psychologist Ellen Langer demonstrated that time is a relative notion. A group of people over age 70 was taken to an isolated area where a scene from 1959 was exactly replicated. The furniture dated to that year, they were shown films from 1959 and even the newspapers and magazines they were given came from that period. Within a week the group’s actual symptoms of ageing had reversed. The joints in their fingers were more flexible and their eyesight improved. Langer concluded that because the participants were given the same mental information as in 1959, their bodies began to adapt to the physical situation at that time. One of the possible explanations is that these people in their 70s made contact with their own energetic blueprint from 1959, and their bodies followed suit. The American doctor and author Deepak Chopra puts it this way: ‘Time is dependent on our perceptions. No experiment has ever proven the existence of the continual movement of linear time and the concept has never been expressed in a mathematical formula. The experience of the continual movement of linear time is a phenomenon that was created by our nervous system. In fact, the past, present and future exist simultaneously, side by side, in a field of endless possibilities. The experience of linear time is the way in which nature protects us from experiencing everything at the same time. But that is what actually happens.’ Einstein put it more concisely: ‘Space and time are modes in which we think, not conditions in which we live.’ In the field there is no difference between a memory and a new experience. The brain retrieves ‘old’ and ‘new’ information the same way. This explains the salamanders’ remarkable recovery. Their brains were largely destroyed, but the ‘memory’ had not been lost; it was stored in the field. Just as intuition, clairvoyance, premonitions, telepathy and other ‘inexplicable’ phenomena can be understood if the Zero Point Field is seen as a storage place for information to which anyone can tune in at any time. Is that what Nostradamus was doing when he ‘saw’ the future? One of the first scientists to recognise that the Zero Point Field could be the missing link for our understanding of the universe was the Hungarian systems expert Ervin Laszlo (see page XX). In his book ‘The Creative Cosmos’ written in 1993 he writes that the field is more than a mass of shimmering energy in the background of our existence. According to Laszlo, the Zero Point Field is an information carrier. ‘This quantum vacuum is the origin of mind and matter – a blueprint of the universe. Even our own memories are not stored in our brains, but are stockpiled like holographic information in the field. Our brains are mainly receivers and processors of this information. When they resonate with certain frequencies they gain access to specific information.’

Are you still there? You have just read that time doesn’t exist and that human beings can influence machines. All this in a world that says computers are always right because they are indisputably logical. Yet we are still talking about verifiable physical and scientific experiments. All these experiments and phenomena point to the fact that the ghostlike discoveries in the area of quantum physics have substantially more influence on our daily reality than the pioneers of a century ago originally thought. Does the universe according to Newton’s laws still exist? Or is the world proving to be a dynamic web in which everything and everyone are connected? Does that imply that my life means something radically different than I thought?

My life? Does an ‘I’ even exist?

Does the concept of individuality still have meaning if everything is connected and even our own memories are accessible to everyone? An even more exciting thought: the atoms that are in contact with one another and with the universe in a myriad of ways temporarily and intermittently shape our body. Every seven years all the cells in our body are regenerated; no atom is the same again. And who knows what kind of information those new atoms are carrying when they nestle into our bodies? ‘Individuality’, ‘I’ and ‘mine’ become very limited concepts when viewed this way. Our separate existence, which we believe to be the basis of our daily experiences, is no longer the central issue. It is replaced by the all-encompassing connection. These scientific discoveries can also explain the peculiar phenomenon that people in hospitals heal more quickly when random people in random locations around the world pray for them daily, as research has proven. And the connection with the Zero Point Field also appears to be clear thanks to the similarly bizarre fact that people who have undergone organ transplants take on certain ‘memories’ from the organ donor (see page XX). When I pray for people, they get better. Surely, the reverse is also true. I realise that it is in my own interest to treat my environment with care and respect. One way or another, we all carry the responsibility for the field that connects us all. And for the reality that we create together.

For my life, the second implication of the Zero Point Field is just as radical as the insight that separation actually does not exist:

I create my own reality.

Just as I can apparently influence a machine, I can influence all matter around me. More to the point: I do it all the time, including influencing the matter in my own body. If I create reality, then the world is not as it is, but as I perceive it. My thoughts determine reality. Roy Martina, a doctor and karate champion, was at a party once when a friend attacked him from behind as a joke. His natural reaction was to put the man in a hold, whereby he broke his friend’s finger. Under the motto of ‘you break it, you fix it’ they decided to conduct an experiment. They had heard that Aboriginals were able to heal broken bones nearly instantaneously. Martina: ‘We thought, if they can do it, we can too. We tuned into the “Aboriginal field” and sent that energy to the broken hand. A couple of days later my friend was back playing volleyball. X-rays showed no trace of a fracture.’ In his famous book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ written in 1937, Napoleon Hill explains that those who make it big mainly succeed because, at the very deepest level, they are convinced they will. Successful people, Hill concludes, solemnly believe in their aim and simply know they will achieve it. Because they focus all their attention on the aim, it materialises – just as in physics experiments all particles that are given attention become visible.

The third life lesson from the field is that in principle, everything is possible.

All information is available in the Zero Point Field. It is my challenge – and that of us all – to glean the best from it. As Michelangelo once said about sculpture: ‘The image is already in the marble, all I do is cut away everything that is not the image.’ I sometimes experience the same thing when I’m writing a story and I see words appear on the screen that I’m barely conscious of thinking. Just like that, I get sentences that I don’t consciously know or think of – from the field? It’s called inspiration. But in fact ‘inspiration’ is no longer an inexplicable circumstance, but a demonstrable physical phenomenon. During his visit to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, Mozart heard Allegri’s famous Miserere. That piece of music is only heard once a year, during Holy Week, after which it disappears behind lock and key for another year. After hearing it only once, Mozart was able to register it in his mind and thus able to break the secret spell around the work. Ervin Laszlo comments: ‘Mozart and other composers of his calibre were not alone. They had access to the field and thus were in contact with masterpieces.’ Artists are interpreters and translators rather than creators. Their talent is not a miracle, but something that in principle everyone can learn. It is a question of tuning into the field.

On a Greek island, Shireen Strooker is sitting with her husband Bram Vermeulen at a table at an outdoor cafe in the sun. In the middle of the table a briefcase blocks their view of one another. Bram is looking at a piece of paper in front of him and slowly counts: ‘One, two, three, four…’ On every count Shireen writes down a plus or a minus after the number on her sheet. She tries to ignore the surprised glances from onlookers so she can fully concentrate on what Bram is ‘sending’ her: a plus or a minus. When the sheet is full, they switch. They are both trying to get a plus or minus after the same number. That day they play the game a total of 11 times. According to the laws of probability, Bram and Shireen should have the same plusses and minuses 50% of the time. But that day their score is 70%. They know it’s no coincidence. They’ve had similar results before. Bram and Shireen know that you can reach each other if you tune in correctly. But we often get in the way of our ability to tune in. Shireen: ‘There is a clear difference between concentrating and tuning in. If I concentrate, I try with all my might to achieve something with my thoughts. Usually you achieve just the opposite. What we call “thinking”, is actually mainly about doubting. You wind up in all kinds of emotions – “I can’t do this, what am I doing here?” – and you don’t achieve your aim. Tuning in means not thinking and making contact with the information that’s already there. You become one with the information and resonate with it.’ Shireen describes an exercise she did with an overweight man. They stood opposite one another and stared hard into each other’s eyes. Then they both walked to opposite ends of the room and Shireen had to pick up on the man’s favourite food. Her first image was a chocolate bar. But – given the man’s size – she began to doubt. ‘It must be a hamburger,’ she thought. She drew a hamburger and walked back to the man. Wrong, it was a chocolate bar. Shireen: ‘That’s what I mean by thinking.’ Children are naturals at tuning in. It is amazing how successful small children are at Shireen’s drawing game with which this story began. I also remember playing hide and seek with my little sister. She counted to 10 outside the living room, came back in and walked directly to where I was hiding, regardless of which curtain or chair I was crouched behind. Nor are animals hampered by thoughts. The British biochemist Rupert Sheldrake (see page XX) describes numerous extraordinary phenomena. A cat that that ‘answers the phone’, but only when her owner calls. All other calls are ignored. Or horses that refuse to take another step over a path that will shortly be buried under an avalanche. Dogs that try – to no avail – to get their owners to leave the house before they are involved in a serious accident. There are also stories involving animals that manage to leave town before an earthquake hits.

Learning to tune into the Zero Point Field enables us to create consciously.

When at one point I needed to move, I created an image of the house I wanted. I visualised a house by the ocean with woods nearby, high up, lots of light and affordable. For a few weeks I paid a moment’s attention to that visualisation every day, which anchored the energetic image in the Zero Point Field. It was just a matter of time before it would materialise. That happened two months later. Now I live in the home that I once envisioned. Using my visualisation I actually tuned into the Zero Point Field. By paying attention to an image, that image – my house – could become reality, exactly as physicists’ small particles manifest themselves when given attention. Dreamers used to be laughed at by people who considered themselves sensible, who had both feet planted firmly on the ground. Now those dreamers have science on their side. Dreams are where reality begins. The future is created by seeing that future, by tuning into it. In principle, anything is possible. Science is presenting a reality that my rational mind can scarcely comprehend. How can a person influence a machine? How can time not exist? How can I make something intangible, tangible? But I am living in my house and Shireen found her drawing. My doubts must have to do with the quantum leap that my rational mind must now make. There’s a good reason why physicist Niels Bohr said that ‘Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.’

One evening Shireen arrives home to find a yellowing envelope from her mother containing copies of the Gospel of St. Thomas discovered in 1947. In this gospel Jesus tells Thomas: ‘I am not your Master, but you have drunk. You have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring, which I have measured out.’ For Shireen it is clear that Jesus drew from the same well – the same field – as she is now learning to ‘drink’. Enlightened learned people like Jesus see through the story of creation. They didn’t need science for their ‘knowledge’ of the Zero Point Field. Thousands of years later science and spirituality are on the point of converging. The consequences and possibilities are immense. The miracle of Jesus and other enlightened thinkers was their ability to see and help shape a better world. They understood: if I want another world, I have to learn to think differently. Or, as Gandhi put it: ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ Anyone who thinks that only the Mahatma or the Saviour can do that, now has scientific evidence of the contrary. Each one of us is capable. Each one of us is a creator. Each one of us can change the world. And that doesn’t have to be an endless, difficult process – just think of the Aboriginals’ ability to heal broken bones. It can happen today. It can happen now. After all, what is time?

What is the True Nature of Reality? The Basics of Quantum Healing by Deepak Chopra, M.D.

What I hope to do this morning is to give you a brief glimpse into the quantum mechanical body-mind, to at least attempt to understand the exact nature of what the human body is like and also the exact nature of what the Cosmic Body is like. We use terms like mind and body and universe, but what really is the exact nature of these things? What is the mind, what is the body, what's the exact nature of physical reality? As children, we always had questions like, "Where was I before I was born? What am I doing here? What happens after death? Am I confined to my physical body? Am I just a skin encapsulated ego in a bag of flesh and bones? What really happens to me? Do I have a local address? Where do I live in this universe?"

And it's interesting that science today is beginning to ask the same questions. After all science is the quest for the truth and if you're a real scientist, these are the questions that are most critical to us. One of the interesting things that science has found, this should have been obvious all along, is that what we call perception, what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, is really the least reliable test of what reality really is. We cannot trust our senses at all!

After all, the senses tell us that the earth is flat and we don't believe that anymore. The senses tell us that the ground that we stand on is stationary and we know it's spinning at dizzying speeds and hurtling through outer space at thousands of miles an hour. The senses tell us things have a certain taste, smell, size, texture. Maybe that's not the way they really are.

There was an experiment done at Harvard Medical School about 20 years ago. A group of scientists took some kittens and brought them up in a room that had only horizontal stripes. All the visual stimuli in the room were horizontal. Another group of kittens was brought up in a room that had only vertical stripes. And when these kittens grew up to be wise old cats, it turns out that one group of cats could see only a horizontal world. The other group of cats could see only a vertical world. And this had nothing to do with the belief system of these cats.

It's a phenomenon that psychologists call Premature Cognitive Commitment. Premature, because we make it at a very early stage of our development. Cognitive, because that's how they cognize or see the world. And commitment, because it fixes us to a particular reality, it imprisons us in a fixed mode of perception.

There are many variations of these experiments. In India, when they train elephants, they take the baby elephant and tie it with an iron chain to a huge tree. Then they start cutting the size of the chain and the tree. Ultimately you can tie the elephant which a big animal now, with a flimsy rope to a green plant but the elephant is unable to escape. It's made a commitment in its body-mind that it's in a prison!

Or you can do another simple experiment. Take some flies and put them in a jar. After a while remove the lid from the jar and you'll find that most of the flies, except for a couple of pioneers, will not be able to escape. They make a commitment in their body-mind that they're in a prison. People will tell you who work in aquariums that you can separate fish from each other. They're in big glass tanks and the separations are transparent glass partitions. You can remove the glass partition after a while. The fish will swim to the edge of where the partition was and return . They made a commitment that that's as far as they can go. All these experiments, and there are many variations of these, are pointing to a very crucial fact as far as the mechanics of perception is concerned. And that is that our initial sensory experiences and how we interpret them or how they are interpreted for us actually structure the very anatomy and physiology of our nervous system in such a way that ultimately the nervous system serves only one function: to keep reinforcing the initial interpretation. Anything that doesn't reinforce the initial interpretation doesn't even get into the nervous system. So if you don't have a concept or a notion or an idea that something exists, then your nervous system won't even take it in.

That's a very peculiar fact because it tells us that with bits of sensory experience, we'll never be able to comprehend the whole. We never will be! After all the human eye can see only between 380 and 500 billionths of a meter. There's nothing sacred between 360 and 370. It doesn't exist for us.

And so too for the other senses. This is true not only of the human species but of all species. A honeybee, for example, doesn't have the apparatus to see the usual wavelengths that you and I perceive. It senses ultra-violet. When a honeybee looks at a flower at a distance it doesn't see a flower. It sees honey from a distance but it misses the flower altogether. A snake would experience the same thing as infrared radiation which means nothing to you and me. A bat would experience that as the echo of ultra-sound which also means nothing to you and me. And a chameleon's eyeballs swivel on two different axis. You can't even remotely imagine what this would look like to a chameleon.

So what's the real nature of the world? What's it really like? We can't trust the senses. They give us a very distorted view. They break up that wholeness into a small fragment and we call it reality. We happen to agree about it. We even call it "objective reality" and we have a whole methodology that we call "science" to explore that . If you really understand what science is, then science at least until now has not been a method for exploring the truth. Science has been a method for exploring our current map of what we think the truth is. And the map is not the territory. The territory that we explore is really an extension of the map we have. If we don't have the complete map then we will not explore the territory that is not within the framework of that map.

Sir John Eckles who won the Nobel prize in physiology and medicine several years ago made the statement, "I want you to understand that there are no colors in the real world. That there are no textures in the real world. There are no fragrances in the real world. There is no beauty, there is no ugliness. Nothing of the sort. Out there is a chaos of energy soup and energy fields. Literally. We take that and somewhere inside ourselves we create a world. Somewhere inside ourselves it all happens."

It's not out there at all! Go to a physicist and ask him what's this made up of? And he'll tell you there are just four basic forces: gravity, strong interaction, weak interaction and electromagnetism that make up everything that exists. Gravity is that which holds us to the ground, makes the planets move and holds them together. The strong interaction holds the nucleus of an atom together. If you disrupt it you get a nuclear explosion. The weak interaction is a force that is responsible for transmutation of elements and radioactive decay. And electromagnetism is that which we experience as light, heat and electricity. Ask a scientist, "Is there anything else?" and they'll say, "No, there isn't anything else. Everything that exists out there is made up of these forces." And ultimately even these forces come from one unified force which scientists today call the Unified Field. And everything that is there, all stars, all galaxies, all flowers, all human beings, everything that exists is just these forces of nature.

So what is the material world then? The material world is a cord that comes out of these forces and the cords of intelligence that structure particulate matter in fact exist inside us. We are the creators of this world. Literally.

There was an interesting conversation I once heard between a spiritual master and his student in India. At one point the student looked at this master and he said, "I don't know about you. You must live in a different world." And the master said, "No. We live in exactly the same world. The only difference is you see yourself in the world, and I see the whole world in myself. It's a minor perceptual shift that you need to make."

So let's talk about this minor perceptual shift. Because our current understanding is that this world is made up of matter that exists in space and time. That even human bodies are nothing other than bits and pieces of matter. That the human body is a physical machine that has somehow learned to think. That it's the dance of molecules that creates the epi-phenomenon of consciousness: thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, concepts, ideas, philosophies, dogma, religion. All these. Poetry is the expression of the dance of molecules. Somehow these molecules move around and we get this epi-phenomenon called thought. We have physical machines that have learned how to think. And of course this superstition is very pervasive in the world of contemporary medicine also. We are basically bogged down in the superstition of materialism which says that sensory experience is the crucial test of reality. Therefore, all our healing methodologies are also based on this superstition. We have magic bullets for the treatment of illness. And we have the expressions like, "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is." Or if you can't believe you ate the whole thing you can have a couple of Alka Seltzers. If you can't sleep at night there's a sleeping pill. It will cure insomnia. You're feeling anxious? There's a tranquilizer. It will give you tranquillity. You have an infection? Take an antibiotic. It will cure the problem of infection. You have cancer? There's chemotherapy, radiation, surgery. If you have chest pain, you can pop some nitroglycerin. Better still, have a bypass operation.

These are the magic bullets that are supposed to get rid of disease and improve our health but in fact all these magic bullets are symptomatic approaches. They relieve symptoms or at best mask symptoms while the underlying process remains unchanged. Sometimes they interfere with mechanisms of disease. And mostly scientific research today is basically elucidating mechanisms at disease. So if we know how bacteria multiply, we can kill them and then we'll get rid of infection. If we know how cancer cells multiply, we can kill them and then we'll get rid of cancer. It doesn't work because mechanisms of disease aren't origins of disease. We can interfere with mechanisms of disease and disease finds an alternative way of expressing itself.

For example, one of the leading causes of death is not the AIDS virus or HIV disease but from antibiotic resistant organisms that are acquired in hospitals. Several years ago, the California Medical Association did a study which revealed that over 100,000 people die in the United States from antibiotic resistant organisms acquired only in hospitals. The number one cause of drug addiction in the world is not the street drugs of Colombia, but legal medical prescriptions. And despite the fact that more people have done research on cancer in this country than have cancer, despite the fact the incidence of cancer in fact has increased in the last 3 decades, anywhere from 30-300%, depending on the type of cancer you're talking about. 36% of all patients in a university hospital, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, were suffering from iatrogenic disease which means disease as a result of biotechnical medical intervention: disease a patient had because they happen to see a doctor.

So something is wrong. Something is wrong. I don't mean to really give the impression that biotechnical medical intervention is not useful. It's extremely useful in acute illness. But it does not alter the overall expression of disease in a population. It merely changes its expression. We no longer have epidemics of polio, tuberculosis, measles, diphtheria and smallpox. But in their place we have higher incidence of cancer, heart disease, degenerative disorders and obesity. The overall picture hasn't changed because the model that we've structured of the human body is not the correct model. The human body is not a frozen sculpture fixed in space and time. The human body is a dynamic bundle of energy, information and intelligence that constantly is renewing itself and is in exchange with the larger field of energy, information and intelligence that we call the universe. That in fact if we could really see the human body as it is, not through the artifact of sensory experience, you would see it to be much more exciting.

The Greek philosopher Heraculutus compared the human body to a river. He said a river is a very mysterious thing. When you look at a river it looks the same to you in every second of its existence but in fact it's not the same river. He said you cannot step into the same river twice because new water flows in all the time.

And it's true also of the human body. If you could understand your body as it really is, you would see that the real you cannot step into the same flesh and bones twice because in every second of your existence you're renewing your body, changing it more rapidly, more effortlessly, more spontaneously and more easily than you can change your clothes. We can take a number of processes: eating, breathing, digestion, metabolism, elimination, but most fundamentally the movement of consciousness which expresses itself as these processes, and you would see how effortlessly, how easily you can change your body and in fact are doing so all the time.

The physical bodies that you're using to sit on these chairs, for example, aren't the ones that you walked in with a little while ago. Even with one breath you take in 10 to the power of 22 atoms. An astronomical amount of raw material that ends up as your heart, brain and kidney cells, your neurons, your DNA. With each breath you breathe out 10 to the power of 22 atoms. It's an astronomical amount of raw materials that is coming from every bit of your body. You are literally breathing out bits and pieces of your brain tissue and heart and kidney. Actually, technically speaking, we are intimately sharing our organs with each other all the time.

The American poet Walt Whitman said, "Every atom belonging to you as well belongs to me." And this isn't a metaphorical statement at all. "Every atom belonging to you as well belongs to me." I can't even call my personal body my own. And I try calling everything else my own. I can't even claim a copyright on my own physical body. Right this moment in your body you have a million atoms that were once in the body of Christ. Based on radioactive isotope studies and mathematical computations it can easily be shown that in this moment of your existence you have a million atoms that were once in the body of Christ, in the body of Gautama Buddha or Leonardo Da Vinci or Michelangelo or Mr. Saddam Hussein. You can't separate yourself from anything physically or anybody that has ever existed.

In just the last 3 weeks, a quadrillion atoms, 10 to the power of 15 atoms have gone through your body that have gone through the body of every other species on this planet. And if you do radioactive isotope studies which have been done very elegantly, you can prove beyond a shadow of doubt that you replace 98% of all the atoms in your body in less than one year. You make a new liver every 6 weeks, a new skin once a month, a new stomach lining every 5 days, a new skeleton - it seems so hard and solid, but the skeleton you have now you didn't have three months ago. Even the brain cells that you think with as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, as those basic elements, they weren't there one year ago. And the DNA that holds memories of millions of years of evolutionary time, in fact hundreds of millions of years; the actual raw material of it comes and goes every six weeks. Those atoms drift in and out like migratory birds every six weeks.

And if you want to be a real stickler about it and account for the last atom and every little sinew and collagen and cartilage, then in less than two and a half years you replace every atom in your body down to the last single atom. So if you think you are your material body then you certainly have a dilemma. Which one are you talking about? The 1991 model is not the same as the 1990 model or even the one from a few months ago. So here I stand before you with my l991 model and yet I don't feel that I wasn't here last year. Yet I don't feel that I wasn't here 2 years ago. Maybe there's a deeper reality to the physical body. Maybe the physical body is what the Rishis of India call maya, illusion, that which gives us the appearance of something but in fact there is something else behind the mask of mortality. Behind that facade of mortality there's something else which outlasts the physical expression of the physical body.

I stand here with a physical body but I have memories and hopes and aspirations and ideas and dreams that were there last year, that were there 2 years ago. They also change but not so rapidly as my physical body. The shelf life of my emotions is a little longer than the shelf life of my molecules.

So maybe the body is merely the place my memories are calling home for the time being. Maybe the DNA is also just that place that my evolutionary memory is calling home for the time being. Maybe I'm not physical molecules that have created the machine or created the epi-phenomenon of consciousness. Maybe I'm consciousness itself that has learned how to create the physical machine. Maybe I am a force of intelligence coming out of that same unified field that makes stars and galaxies and rain forests. Maybe I come from that same place too. And maybe that place was never born and never died and in fact was always there. I've just forgotten for the moment.

And this is exactly what scientists are beginning to see. Scientists are beginning to see that it is not thoughts which are a product of molecules, but in fact molecules are structured out of fluctuations of information in a field of infinite information. That it is consciousness which is the phenomenon and matter which is the epi-phenomenon. It is consciousness which conceives, governs, constructs and actually becomes physical matter.

In the last few years we've seen some extraordinary research in this field coming out of prestigious universities and medical schools and places like the National Institute of Health. About 20 years ago it was discovered, for example, that our thoughts and our feelings have physical substrate to them. When you think a thought you make a molecule. To think is to practice brain chemistry. And in fact these thoughts are translated into very precise molecules known as neuropeptides. '"Neuro"' because they were first found in the brain. And 'peptides' because they're protein-like molecules. And thoughts, feelings, emotions and desires translate into the flux of neuropeptides in the brain.

You can think of these neuro-peptides like little keys that fit into very precise locks called receptors on the cell walls or other neurons. So the way this part of the brain speaks to another part of the brain is not necessarily in English with an Indian accent, but in the precise language of these neuropeptides.

What was found subsequently, which was absolutely fascinating was that there were receptors to neuropeptides not only in brain cells but other parts of the body. So when scientists started looking for receptors to neuropeptides in cells of the immune system, for example: T cells, B cells, monocytes and macrophages - when they started looking at them, they found that on the cell walls of all these there were receptors for the same neuropeptides which are the molecular substrate of thought. So your immune cells are in fact constantly eavesdropping on your internal dialogue. Nothing that you say to yourself, which you're doing all the time, even in sleep, escapes the attention of the immune cells. Not only that, the immune cells, it was subsequently discovered, can make the same peptides that the brain makes when it thinks. Now here we come to a startling finding, because if the immune cell is making the same chemicals that the brain is making when it thinks, then the immune cell is a thinking cell. It's a conscious little being.

In fact, the more you look at it, the more you find that it behaves just like a neuron. It makes the same chemical cords that the brain uses for emotion, thought, feeling and desire. An immune cell has emotions. It has desires. It has an intellect. It knows how to discriminate and remember. It has to decide when it sees a carcinogen, "Is this a carcinogen? Should I go after it? Should I leave it alone? Is this a friendly bacteria? Should I go after it or leave it alone?" It has to remember the last time it encountered something. In fact it remembers the last time somebody else encountered the same thing.

Your immune cells can immediately recognize anything that has ever been encountered by any living species. If you are exposed to pneumococus for the first time in your life, your immune cells still remember the last time somebody somewhere in prehistoric time encountered a pneumococus and knows how to make the precise antibody to it. It's not only a thinking cell but it remembers way back into the evolutionary history of not only the human species but other species as well. So you ask a good neurologist the difference between an immune cell and a neuron and they'll say there isn't any. The immune cell is a circulating nervous system.

Now if that wasn't enough of a startling discovery, the subsequent discoveries in science have been even more interesting, because when scientists started looking elsewhere in the body they found the same phenomenon. When they looked at stomach cells and intestinal cells they found the same peptides. The stomach cells make the same chemical cords that the brain makes when it thinks. Of course they're not verbally as elite as the brain, in that they don't think in English or Swahili, but nevertheless, they are thinking cells. When you say, "I have a gut feeling about such and such," you're not speaking metaphorically anymore. You're speaking quite literally because you're gut makes the same chemicals as the brain makes when it thinks. In fact your gut feelings may be a little more accurate because gut cells haven't yet evolved to the stage of self doubt.

What science is discovering is that we have a thinking body. Every cell in our body thinks. Every cell in our body is actually a mind. Every cell has its own desires and it communicates with every other cell. The new word is not mind and body connection, we have a body-mind simultaneously everywhere.

So when you say, "I have a sad heart," then you literally have a sad heart. If a scientist was looking inside the heart, he'd find it heavy with sadness. He'll find it heavy with sad molecules. If you say, "I'm bursting with joy," a scientist could look at your skin. He'll find it loaded with emipramine which is an antidepressant which in fact, has been used in the treatment of depression by psychiatrists. If you say, "I feel exhilarated, unbounded and joyful," and I was to examine your blood, I would find high levels of interluken and interferon which are powerful anticancer drugs.

About two years ago, interlukens and interferons were released for the treatment of kidney cancer and melanoma. The only problem is they're extremely expensive. An initial course of interluken can cost you something like $40,000. But you could take a joyride on "Magic Mountain" and make a few million dollars of interluken too. Of course, if that was your idea of fun. In fact it isn't the joyride at all, it's your interpretation of it. Because if you panicked on that joyride you wouldn't make interluken, you'd make cortisol adrenaline which is completely the opposite. It destroys the immune system.

When you have the experience of tranquility, you're body makes Valium and it's identical to the Valium that Hoffman LaRouch makes except it's made in precise doses for the right target organs. It doesn't make you feel like a zombie. It is an immuno-modulator. It modulates the activity of the immune system. Even little white cells know how to make Valium. If you are jittery then your body makes jittery molecules, adrenaline, more adrenaline, cortisol. And they're not made just by the adrenal glands. They're made everywhere in the body. Little platelets make adrenaline and they huddle together in their fright. That's how the clotting cascade starts.

So I think the first major breakthrough in medicine, if that's what we're going to call it, is that the mind has escaped the confines of the brain. It's not confined to the brain, it's everywhere in our body. And if that wasn't enough, it seems that now it's breaking the confines of the body - out there. Our mind is not even imprisoned in our body. It's completely non-local. It's everywhere in space and time. In fact, our mind is part of a non-local field of information that we can only call the cosmic mind. The German philosopher Nietzsche said, "We live on the presumption that we think when it's equally possible that we are being thought." And, there may be something to that. What we call our Cosmic Body of the universe may be in fact a projection of our collective consciousness. We've learned to create that too. Just like we've learned how to create the body, we've learned how to create the universe.

A few years ago, scientists got interested in a group of hormones called pheromones that were produced by plants. So if you infect a plant, for example, with gypsy moth, the plants will give off hormones into the atmosphere called pheromones that immediately inform the rest of the forest that there's gypsy moth around - be careful. And the rest of the forest will immediately make the appropriate antibodies to protect itself. A plant is aware. It's got a mind. it informs the others, "This is what's happening. Watch out!"

Insects communicate through pheromones too. You've seen termites build perfect columns in the dark with arches that meet at the top, perfect architectural designs. How do they do it? They communicate through pheromones. Sexual and mating behavior is influenced through pheromones.

But recently it's been found that these pheromones in fact may also be the molecular substrate of our emotions. An experiment was done at Stanford, a particularly cruel experiment, where mice were taken and were given electric shocks. After a while the mice were removed from the room. Other mice are brought into the room and as soon they enter the room they panic. They release stress hormones and cortisol because they have inhaled the pheromones of fear.

And now it's known that in fact for every single emotion that we have there is a counterpart, a molecular event that happens not only inside our body but in fact we release those pheromones as information substrates into the environment. So now when you say, "l went into this room and I felt that the atmosphere was really tense." That's physiological. When you say, "I went to this holy shrine and I felt peace, love and compassion." That's completely understandable from a physiological point of view. You say, "I don't know what it is about this chap, but he certainly gives me the creeps." That's also completely understandable.

Emerson, the philosopher, said, "Who you are shouts so loudly in my ears, I cannot hear what you're saying." And he was making a physiological statement, completely understandable from the dynamics of how neurobiology operates. What we will call the universe is in fact a Cosmic Body that we have created in exactly the same way that we have created our physical body.

And in fact, even though the artifact of sensory experience said, "There's a world out there separate from me and there's something here that's my body that's separate from that," that's not physiologically true. We are not skin-encapsulated egos confined to a bag of skin and bones. We may be the Universal Mind itself. There 's a Universal Body that we have, there's a Cosmic Body that we have and we share our personal body and our Cosmic Body with each other all the time. And we have learned to create both in exactly the same way, and our Cosmic Bodies are as crucial to our survival as our personal bodies. They're equally our own. So, this is the teaching that comes to me, at least I can't take any credit for this incidentally. I'm just a messenger of a very ancient form of teaching that is known as the Veda, and Ayurveda is the part of Veda that deals with health, the health of nature. And Veda says that if you just remember who you are, you'll suddenly recognize that you, in fact, are the Creator.

At one time a fundamentalist preacher met a Vedantist, and the two were talking for a while. After a while the fundamentalist looked at the Vedantist and he said, "It seems to me that you're an atheist." And the Vedantist looked back at the fundamentalist and he said, "I used to be one until I realized I was God." And of course this offended the fundamentalist who said, "Are you denying the divinity of Jesus Christ?" And the Vedantist said, "Heavens! I've never denied anybody their divinity. Why would I do it to Jesus Christ ?"

This is the essential teaching of the Vedic tradition, and it has very practical applications. The Veda says, "As is the atom, so is the universe; as is the microcosm so is the macrocosm; as is the human body, so is the Cosmic Body; as is the human mind, so is the Cosmic Mind." And if you feel uncomfortable with the word "Cosmic Mind," we can simply call it a "non-local field of information with self referral cybernetic feedback loops." I give talks these days at medical schools and people are very comfortable with that definition.

Our bodies are literally the music of nature. We have here a symphony which is part of a symphony that has been there forever. The Veda says, "Behind the mask of mortality is that quantum mechanical body, that subtle Causal Body, it's something you always had. You always had that. Fire cannot burn it. Water cannot wet it. Wind cannot dry it. Weapons cannot cleave it. It was never born and it never dies."

Is there any basis for that? Today we are seeing that in fact there is basis. If you could see the body again as a physicist could see it, all you'd see is atoms. And if you could see the atoms as they really are, not through the artifact of sensory experience, you'd see these atoms of particles that are moving at lightning speeds around huge empty spaces. These particles aren't material objects at all. They are fluctuations of energy and information in a huge void of energy and information. If I could see your body not through this sensory artifact, I'd see a huge empty void with a few scattered dots and a few random electrical discharges here and there 99.999999% of your body is empty space! And the .000001% of it that appears as matter is also empty space.

So, it's all empty space. The question is what is this empty space? Is it an emptiness of nothing or a fullness of non-material intelligence? In fact it is a fullness of non-material intelligence...or information that influences its own expression. And with that definition, it's very obvious that this empty space is not an emptiness of nothing but a womb of creation. And nature goes back exactly to that same place, to fashion a galaxy and a rain forest, as it goes to fashion a thought. It's the same place. And it's inside us, it's our inner space which gives rise with amazing fertility to all these things that are so crucial to us: right, wrong, God, Heaven, sin, salvation, damnation, grace. All this comes from the same place. We are it! It's ri