>>Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump.
My name is Rick Archer and my guest today
is Dr. John Hagelin.
John Hagelin is a world-renowned quantum physicist,
educator, author and leading proponent of
peace.
Dr. Hagelin has conducted pioneering research
at CERN � the European center for particle
physics and the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center.
He is responsible for the development of a
highly successful grand unified field theory
based on the Superstring, a theory which was
featured in a cover story of Discover Magazine.
In addition, Dr. Hagelin has spent much of
the past quarter century leading a scientific
investigation into the foundations of human
consciousness.
He is one of the world's preeminent researchers
on the effects of meditation on brain development,
and the use of collective meditation to diffuse
societal stress, and to reduce crime and social
violence.
In recognition of his outstanding achievements,
Dr. Hagelin was named winner of the prestigious
Kilby Award, which recognizes scientists who
have made "major contributions to society
through their applied research in the fields
of science and technology."
The award recognized Dr. Hagelin as a � quote
� "a scientist in the tradition of Einstein,
Jeans, Bohr, and Eddington."
Dr. Hagelin was featured in the hit movies
What the Bleep Do We Know? and The Secret,
for his cutting edge research in physics,
higher states of consciousness, and the peace
promoting effects of large meditation groups.
Dr. Hagelin has appeared many times on ABC's
Nightline, NBC's Meet the Press, CNN's Larry
King Live! and Inside Politics, CNBC's Hardball
with Chris Matthews, and others.
He has also been regularly featured in the
Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall
Street Journal, USA Today, and other major
metropolitan newspapers.
John and I first met 42 years ago?
>>John: Well, I think yes, actually, in many
moons � 514 moons to be precise.
>>Rick: Quick math!
And that was in the infirmary in the Taft
Prep School in Watertown, Connecticut.
>>John: That's right.
>>Rick: Where John was in a body cast and
I was sleeping while teaching a course in
Transcendental Meditation.
After graduating from Taft, John received
his A.B. summa cum laude from Dartmouth College
in 1975, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University
in 1981.
He is currently Director of the Institute
of Science, Technology and Public Policy,
Professor of physics at Maharishi University
of Management, and President of the Global
Union of Scientists for Peace.
And also you are President of the David Lynch
Foundation.
>>John: That's true.
>>Rick: And aren't you, sort of, administratively
the head of the TM Organization in the US?
>>John: I am now, head of the organization
that oversees the teaching of TM in the United
States.
>>Rick: Okay, great.
Most of you who listen to this show know that
I learned TM in 1968 and haven't missed a
meditation since.
>>John: Wonderful, good for you!
>>Rick: It was one night where it was questionable
but...
>>John: You have me beat by a small margin.
That's really good.
>>Rick: So, by my reckoning it's been over
a quarter century since you first published
a paper equating consciousness and the unified
field.
And I suspect that a lot has happened in the
world of physics in that quarter century,
and I also suspect - and I'll have you elaborate
on this - that whereas you may have gone out
on a limb in publishing that paper, you've
been vindicated, to a great extent.
The physics community as a whole, you were
an outlier, but they've been catching up,
and also your own experience, I'm sure has
deepened.
So, comment on what has transpired in all
this time in the field of physics to corroborate
your theory.
And in process, please define consciousness
in the unified field.
>>John: Well, that's a lot before lunch.
>>Rick: It's just a snack.
>>John: Oh, good.
Well first of all, definitely I was an outlier
in those days, because back then if you were
a physicist - and to some degree a medical
scientist, certainly an engineer � you weren't
really supposed to talk about consciousness,
at all.
Consciousness was almost a taboo.
And it's because physicists are brought up
under the assumption that we're studying physical
reality, or "reality," as physicists call
it, which are things you can see, touch, smell,
taste, measure, and consciousness is something
that can't be seen; it's the seer!
And for that reason there's just never been
a slot or word in science for � in physics
anyway � for consciousness.
Since that time, consciousness has been emerging
more and more as a subject, not only of dignified
discussion, but of a central discussion.
And there are conferences, scientific conferences,
held every year, that are dedicated to moving
forward the cutting-edge of understanding
about consciousness - like towards the science
of consciousness, in Tucson.
So it is now an area where some of the really
great, innovative, most innovative neuroscientists,
physicists, medical physicists, get together
and really start to push this frontier forward.
So still, I would have to say, consciousness
is at the very least cutting-edge, and maybe
even beyond the edge, of what a run-of-the-mill
physical scientist is likely to talk about.
They may understand today that it's important,
but they probably don't know much about it.
Now of course, as you asked with your question
about consciousness and the unified field,
a lot has been learned � a little bit about
consciousness, and a lot about the unified
field.
So now physics has to accept the near-fact
- nearly established fact, certainly accepted
by leaders in the field - that at the basis
of the physical universe, far beneath the
atom, even beneath the nucleus of the atom,
there are deeper levels of reality that are
increasingly unified, increasingly subtle,
certainly more and more abstract, more holistic,
more comprehensive, more powerful in a sense.
And that inward exploration of deeper and
deeper levels of nature culminates in the
discovery of unified field theory, in particular,
Superstring Theory and M-Theory, which are
two versions � one a little more sophisticated
- of the same thing.
So now if you asked a leader in physics, certainly
a theoretical physicist, �Is there a universal
field of intelligence at the basis of all
forms and phenomena in the universe, at the
basis of the four forces of nature and all
the particles in which they act?' they would
say, undoubtedly, �Yes!'
There's still very interesting progress and
discussions about the precise details and
the mathematics of that ultimate unity and
unified field, but the fact that there is
such a unified source to the diversified universe
is well accepted within the leadership of
physics.
That's new.
Because when I wrote that article, Is Consciousness
the Unified Field?, not only was consciousness
completely novel, and it remains novel right
now, the unified field was also completely
novel at the time!
The leading theory of it was called �Super
Gravity' and that theory had great strength,
but it certainly had its limitations and is
ultimately replaced by Superstring Theory
and by M-Theory.
And with those far more successful theories,
even more mind-blowing theories, honestly
� what they tell us about the nature of
reality � the unified field is very established.
Not so established that every run-of-the-mill
physicist or solid-state theorist, or fluid-dynamics
... that they would all know about it.
They've heard of it but they wouldn't have
much conviction or knowledge about it.
But certainly the theorists who work in the
world of fundamental forces and elementary
particles; the theorists, absolutely, experimentalists
move a little more slowly, but they're involved
in a very important process of subjecting
these theories to experimental tests, at CERN
especially, today, in Geneva, at the so-called
large "hadron collider".
And so far, there are certain types of evidence
that support this fundamental unified field,
but there's very key types of evidence we're
still waiting for.
And hopefully when that machine goes back
online in about a year, at twice the energy
that it was running, we'll have the energies
required to produce the more massive particles.
That will be the smoking gun for what's called
Super Symmetry, and on that basis Superstring
Theory and M-Theory.
So unified field theory has come a long way
since I wrote that paper, understanding of
consciousness is coming along, but it is still
be very nature an utterly abstract reality.
Consciousness is the most abstract possible
reality, the most abstract experience.
In fact, it really almost defied what we normally
mean by experience, which typically means
there's something, some substance, some structure,
some quality, some flavor, some taste, associated
with an object of experience.
All of those specifics are transcended when
consciousness is left on its own, in its pure
state, Samadhi state.
And it's that pure consciousness, that Samadhi,
that's the core of consciousness, the essence
of what it fundamentally is.
It's the inner life, the inner light, the
inner seer.
And that's still so abstract that even many
of the scientists who are involved in exploring
it - neuroscientists, even physicists - don't
quite all get it, but it's moving in that
direction.
>>Rick: As you're speaking I'm reminded of
what you say about "Virtual universes popping
up and then bubbling down," because that's
what happens in my mind when I hear something
like that.
Little questions start to come up: �Which
one shall become manifest?!"
>>John: Yeah, there are many.
>>Rick: But a couple of things, so I guess
when we say unified field, we're talking about
sort of the ultimate foundation of everything,
you can't go any deeper than that.
This would be the sort of essential constituent
of reality or the universe, if you want to
call it that.
>>John: Right.
>>Rick: When we talk about consciousness,
at least from the Vedic perspective, they
say pretty much the same thing.
And whereas it may be abstract from the perspective
of someone who isn't experiencing it, from
the perspective of someone who is established
as that, there's nothing more concrete.
In fact, it's called the �rock-like tatasta'
in Sanskrit.
So we have things kind of turned around...
>>John: An interesting rock, isn't it?
Because that rock, to quote Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi, "Pure consciousness is structured in
nonconcreteness."
I mean yes, we become familiar with it, it
becomes familiar with itself, it begins to
stand on its own as an unperturbable, immutable
reality that witnesses all the activities
of mind and speech and action.
But even then, it is in a sense abstract in
that � you could say attributeless.
It is devoid of relative specifics and yet
it is concrete in the sense that we experience
that to be the self, or a vantage point from
which we see everything else.
So yes, it is the rock, it is the one unchangeable,
immutable aspect of our nature.
Everything else is changing, typically for
the worst.
>>Rick: Now we say that it is nonconcrete
and so on, but so is this (pointing to his
hand), you know?
It seems concrete, you look at my hand and
it [seems] pretty solid, I wouldn't want you
to stick a knife in it or anything.
But you go deeper...
>>John: Well said.
>>Rick: ...And the deeper you go, the less
there is there, to the point where there is
no hand.
I mean even at the molecular level there is
no hand anymore, the atomic level there is
no molecules, on the subatomic level there's
no atoms, and down you go.
>>John: No, that's true.
>>Rick: And so, I don't know the analogy but
it's something like: if an atom were the size
of a pea or something, the next atom would
be two football fields away.
So we're 99.99999% empty space.
>>John: Yes, and even the very concept of
the pea, the atom, that turns out to be wrong.
That so called nucleus at the center of the
atom is just wave of an abstract field, so
called the Universal Proton Field, or basically
�field of pure potential proton-ness,' and
just a fluctuation of that we call the proton.
So you try to get your handle on the elementary
particles, they slip through your fingers.
Actually, take it a step further, if you try
to really say, "Okay, there are no particles,
just abstract, all-pervading fields," you
try to get a handle on those fields � like
the proton field or the quark field, or the
electron field, even the fields slip through
your fingers because the concept of a classical
field is too gross to describe what is a quantum
field.
Because a classical field, like the surface
of a pond, has some shape, whether it's flat
or whether it's wavy, whereas a quantum field
can't exist in any specific shape at any instant;
it has to exist in a quantum co-existence
of superposition of all possible shapes.
So you try to get a handle on the shape of
the field, and even the field slips through
your fingers.
All the concepts the intellect can come up
with fail to grasp the remarkably subtle nature
of reality.
So you're quite right, if you look at the
history of physics over the last century,
it's been an effort to reach deeply to grasp
the ultimate building blocks of the universe,
which used to be molecules, then atoms, then
nuclei.
And you just keep on reaching it and it keeps
on slipping through your fingers and ultimately
you get to the superstring field, or unified
field, which is abstract, unbounded, unchanging,
immortal.
>>Rick: If there's all these levels of manifestation,
more and more complex, diverse, concrete,
if you will, levels of manifestation, the
question is: for whom are they manifest?
Ramana Maharishi said that when the mind is
destroyed - meaning, I guess, utterly transcended
- the universe disappears, and of course we
understand that in terms of transcending,
where all sensory input ceases, but I think
he also meant it in terms of waking experience;
that you know, he was sort of apprehending
the universe at a level prior to its manifestation,
while in the waking state.
Maharishi said, "Nothing ever happened," then
in the next breath he went on acting as if
something had happened.
In fact, that was also a title of Papagi's
biography, Nothing Ever Happened.
And you know the old saying, if a tree falls
in the forest and there's no one there to
hear it, does it make a sound?
There are many people in the spiritual community
who say there is no forest and no tree, unless
there's someone there to perceive it.
And yet, we have this consistency to things.
If you go carve your initials in a tree and
then come back 30 years later, somehow those
initials were retained.
>>John: Not only that, but another person
passing by will recognize the existence of
those initials too.
So there is that.
>>Rick: Yeah, so to me it doesn't hold much
weight when people say, "The universe only
manifests when it's perceived," because there
seems to be a larger consistency to it.
And I was wondering actually ...
>>John: I agree with that.
>>Rick: I don't even know, perhaps this ties
in with something physicists have said, Von
Newman said, "The wave function collapses
in the consciousness of human beings," and
I don't know if that relates to the point
I was just making.
>>John: It does relate to the point.
The wave function does collapse due to the
observation of, in perhaps in the consciousness
of human beings.
I think most physicists, most scholars, most
quantum mechanics would say that in the absence
of human perceivers, there are other perceivers.
And to some degree, the broader environment
acts as a perceiver.
So that for example, when a photon travels
from the sun to the earth and falls upon a
clump of trees, even a single tree which has
a thousand leaves, or a million leaves, that
photon, which is a spread out wave function,
almost like a flashlight coming in as a wave,
that individual photon which is spread out
in this quantum mechanical sense of a wave
function, will collapse when it strikes one
of the leaves.
Because that leaf is going to stay green -it's
capturing the energy, the light is able to
transform, create energy, keep chlorophyll;
the other leaves will turn brown.
>>Rick: So when you say collapses, it becomes
a particle?
>>John: Yes, its position which was unlocalized
will now get localized to within the individual
molecule in chlorophyll, and so forth, where
it's going to be transferred into energy,
transformed into chemical energy.
So a collapse is taking place and somebody
could argue, "...well wait a second, so one
of those leaves stays healthy, the others
turn brown, maybe that doesn't happen until
an observer strolls by and glances at it."
Most physicists would say, "No, the existence
of the leaf and the tree to which it is connected
is enough to collapse the wave function from
nonlocalized to localized, enough to collapse
the particle from a wave to a particle."
And it's hard to prove that because in the
absence of any observer, who's to tell?
But it becomes quite awkward to push that
too far.
So it seems to be the case that the simplest
way of thinking about it is that the environment
itself, the macroscopic environment, if that
leaf weren't a leaf but was just a molecule,
floating in empty space, and the photon wave
function went past it, would it absorb, or
collapse, the particle or not?
And the answer is probably, not.
That molecule would both absorb and not absorb
the particle, and that molecule would be in
a quantum coexistence, basically, of green
and brown � in a quantum coexistence, a
superposition.
When that molecule is embedded in a broader
environment, in a pool of water, or something
that otherwise connects to the broader macroscopic
world, that kind of quantum coexistence or
quantum superposition doesn't seem to survive
- it doesn't survive - and the collapse occurs.
Does it take a human observer?
Probably not.
>>Rick: And, if Big Bang theory is correct
and it was billions of years before stars
had formed and exploded, and formed heavy
elements, and eventually there were life forms
that could actually have some perceptual mechanism,
so somehow all that evolution of the universe
took place without any sentient observers
as we would understand them.
>>John: You're right, and perhaps in my short
response before I sold something short.
Something is collapsing the wave function,
even if human consciousness isn't.
That something is not a "thing" like a molecule,
because you know, that molecule would be in
a coexistence if it were allowed to be.
There is apparently some kind of universal
level of mind, universal consciousness, who
is observing when we're not.
It's a question of, �who is the first to
observe something?'
Does it happen to be a human observer?
It could be!
Does it happen to be the broader environment
and the intelligence or consciousness at the
basis of that?
It typically is, can be.
So the reason, I guess, I would say that it's
a universal intelligence that's doing that
kind of collapse in the absence of a human
observer is because we know the mechanics
of the collapse of a wave function is nonlocal
and acausal.
That it is simultaneously everywhere, and
no local real thing, object, molecule, leaf
or tree, is capable of collapsing anything
universally, instantaneously.
So there is an element in this equation, if
it's not human consciousness, it's some kind
of universal consciousness that's involved
in that observing process and the choices
that come out of that kind of observing process.
>>Rick: This leads us into something very
interesting.
You know the Upanishads say, "Tatvamasi,"
� that thou art, and "Sarvam Khalvidam Brahma"
� Brahman is all there really is.
So you know, we make concessions with relativity,
with limited values - and we talk about human
beings and trees, and chlorophyll and suns,
and all of that - but again, in the same breath,
you can almost boil it right back down to
its fundamental reality, which is, "that alone
is."
And so, what's really going on here?
Maharishi talked a lot about self-referral
or self-interacting nature of consciousness,
and he spent years elaborating on how that
self-interaction sequentially gives rise to
manifestation, or at least apparent manifestation.
So, riff on that a little bit.
>>John: Well it's interesting, because everything
in a discussion sort of depends upon what
perspective you're taking, in terms of what
level of consciousness we're addressing it
from.
And ultimately, in waking consciousness, our
experience of life is very localized and very
individualized, and expression like �thou
art that,' �I am that,' is a little bit
hard to grasp.
In samadhi, transcendental consciousness,
the mind isn't functional; just awareness
alone exists.
And awareness therefore isn't necessarily
having the thought, �I am universal, I am
unbounded, I am that, I am all that there
is,' but it's having the experience of it,
whether it's reflecting on the experience
or not.
It typically will reflect on the experience
after the fact, when the intellect is able
to look back and recall what just happened.
That's a different state of consciousness.
In a more established, permanent samadhi,
what Maharishi calls "cosmic consciousness,"
and almost every tradition has a name for
it too, you have the stabilization of inner
unboundedness, inner universality, sort of
distant from, in a sense, and witness to all
the activities of mind, body, speaking, action.
So that's a different state, in which case
you could say, the mind could say, "I am universal,
I am immortal, I am that," on the inside,
and on the outside I don't seem to be that.
I seem to be very local, very small, I'm aging,
you know, I have good days, I have bad hair
days.
But in the ultimate state of enlightenment
described in the Vedic literature, for example,
the Yoga Sutras of Patangali, the Upanishads
certainly, from Maharishi's description of
higher states of consciousness, we'll call
it unity consciousness or Brahman consciousness,
in there, what has happened is that from the
state of absolute abstraction of the unbounded
nature of the Self in samadhi emerging into
activity, and then submerging back into the
silence and emerging into activity, you get
more familiar with the fine mechanics through
which one's abstract consciousness manifests
into precipitated thoughts.
And the more familiar � the physicists could
go through the same routine using mathematics,
in a rational, intellectual way - experientially
get more familiar with the mechanics of how
thought emerges, how the Self, which is unified
and indivisible starts to divide itself to
a knower and a known.
And the moment you have this Self observing
the Self, this state of Self awareness, you
already have, in a sense, the beginnings of
the emergence of the diversity of mind, an
intellect that can discriminate Self from
Self, in this case a knower from known.
So the whole diversity of intellect and mind
emerge, but at the same time see it for its
reality.
But wait, the Self, the knower is me, and
the known is also me.
The process of knowing is me, it's all consciousness.
And going through that rigmarole many, many
times, it starts to dawn on you that all of
this world of thought, and ultimately this
world of perception, this whole universe,
is just precipitated states of consciousness.
And there you could say, "I am that," and
"Thou art that," and "All of us is that,"
and "That alone is."
So it's interesting to reflect on that, we
could if you want, in terms of cosmology and
the Big Bang and what have you.
>>Rick: That's what I was thinking, because
leaving aside human experience of all this,
I always got the impression that Maharishi
was talking about the manifestation of the
universe itself and, you know, SCI Lesson
8, when existence becomes conscious, then
consciousness becomes intelligence and assumes
the role of creative intelligence.
And so there's this self-interacting dynamic
that in his cosmology, or philosophical understanding,
presumably experiential understanding, actually
is responsible for manifestation.
And I've heard you describe it, what was it
called... spontaneous sequential symmetry
breaking ... where because of the innate or
inherent nature of pure existence to be self-referral,
to be aware of itself, that sets up this whole
dynamic which results in all the diversity
that we see.
>>John: Yeah, so the Big Bang theory, which
we'll update in a minute to what is called
"Inflationary Cosmology," you start with a
bubble universe, which is infinitesimally
small.
Where it comes from, we've only started to
understand now with Superstring theory and
M-theory, but you start with a tiny bubble
universe.
We don't know where it came from but due to
its initial momentum of expansion, it expands
and even continues to expand unitl this day.
And as that bubble universe expands, all the
incredible energy � heat within it � simply
gets diluted, and diluted and diluted, and
the universe becomes cooler and cooler and
cooler, from what was an astronomically inconceivably
high temperature in the beginning, to about
2.7 degrees above absolute zero today.
Of course the sun is hotter than that, the
earth is hotter than that, but on average,
the temperature of empty space is 2.7 degrees
above absolute zero.
In the process of cooling, you could say the
universe freezes in stages, and the laws of
nature, actually kind of freeze from a, you
could say, gaseous phase to a liquid phase
to a solid phase.
Not literally gas liquid and solid, but what
I'm saying is the appearance, the function,
the structure of the laws of nature go through
these types of phases.
Phase transitions in which we end up ... we
start with a universe that is unified, where
all the particles and all the forces are one,
basically only one unified field, but the
appearance of that one starts to become fragmented
into separate gravity, and strong force, and
electromagnetism, and radioactivity.
And the particles start to fragment into certain
types of electrons, neutrinos and quarks and
everything.
>>Rick: And that's because of cooling that
it happens, at that level?
>>John: Cooling, yes.
>>Rick: Hmm, I didn't realize it had anything
to do with temperature.
Or maybe it just correlates � there's a
cooling going on but there's also this sort
of ...
>>John: The cooling causes the transition,
just like when you cool steam, it will become
water, and that cool water will become ice.
Just like that, the temperature causes it.
And that's still correct, but what the inflationary
cosmology and string theory, unified field
theory sheds light on is, how did this get
started?
And, did it actually ever happen?
So firstly, how it gets started?
It gets started because you have a universal
field, all-pervading field, which in the Vedic
sciences [is] ultimately the field of universal
consciousness.
In the physical science it's just some field
of pure existence, maybe pure intelligence,
not necessarily wakefulness, because physicists
don't talk about wakefulness, but intelligence,
yes.
Intelligence because, that is the one field
that is the origin of all the laws of nature
that govern the universe, and uphold order
throughout the universe, and because it's
the source of all order in the universe, it's
what makes the universe knowable, intelligible,
it, in a sense, is a very concentrated field
of intelligence.
But quantum mechanics tells us something that
we already know from the consciousness's perspective,
that this ocean of pure existence, or at best
� pure intelligence, is a lively ocean,
it's a lively field.
It is not static, it's not dead, it's not
inert, because quantum mechanics is about
more and more dynamism at deeper and deeper
levels.
That's the uncertainty principle.
The more you can find a particle, you take
its wave function and you squeeze it with
a pair of pliers, in a sense localizing the
electron by squeezing its wave function, that
wave function now becomes extremely squeezed
and very sharp, you could say, and that means
there is more energy in that wave function.
That's kind of the org to the uncertainty
principle, which says, the deeper you go,
the smaller you get, the more dynamic nature
becomes.
So we're talking about quantum now � quantum
field theory � and when you add �quantum'
to this discussion of the universal field,
you know that field is fundamentally dynamic,
especially if you look at it either on a small
scale, or through a high-speed camera.
High-speed means, again, you're getting to
very small time scales, small distance scales,
and at those small time scales, we know this
unified field is not static but it's fluctuating
wildly, wildly.
So this universal ocean is fundamentally dynamic.
So dynamic that it's actually in a state of
continuous eruption, boiling � it's called
�the boiling of the unified field.'
>>Rick: And when we say it's fluctuating wildly,
we're really talking about it fluctuating
within itself, because at that level there's
nothing other than that, right?
>>John: It's all that there is.
>>Rick: So somehow, it, within itself, is
just really going at it.
>>John: Broiling and boiling, sometimes called
�space-time foam.'
But every once in a while, this universal
field essentially effervesces bubbles, you
could say, and these bubbles either take the
form of superstrings, which means that they
correspond to bubbling electrons and quarks,
and things like that, but, you can actually
bubble whole baby universes, little baby universes.
And most of those baby universes are duds
� they just pop! - and they're gone in the
briefest of instants.
But given the right start, the right direction,
some of those bubbles will undergo what is
called inflation � exponential expansion,
and in a very short instant of time will grow
by hundreds of powers of ten, in magnitude.
So these bubbles basically, they emerge with
this initial momentum, this enormous momentum
of expansion.
We are the occupants of one such bubble universe
that has grown big.
They sprout galaxies and each galaxy with
hundreds of billions of suns.
They sprout billions of galaxies and maybe
even an infinite number of galaxies, as the
evidence currently suggests.
But any case, now we know where the Big Bang
comes from.
It's this process of spontaneous percolation
of universes, like ginger ale percolates effervescent
bubbles.
Some of those universes grow, others don't.
>>Rick: Do you have any idea what the ration
is, of duds to takers?
>>John: Not a good idea; we could do a guesstimate.
I don't know how small, I'd have to really
sit down and figure that out, but a small
fraction will be takers.
But you have this infinite ocean of bubbling
effervescent bubbles, and you'll get plenty
- in fact, what's called �an uncountable
infinity' of actual universes - percolating
out of this.
>>Rick: You've thrown in the word �intelligence'
a few times, and whenever you did I kept thinking,
"Are physicists really comfortable with that
word?"
Because, I mean, it sounds a lot like intelligent
design which I actually looked up and it said,
"The theory that life or the universe cannot
have arisen by chance, and was designed or
created by some intelligent entity."
Now there the word �entity' manages to poke
a hole ...
>>John: Yeah, that's an interesting area of
discussion I'd be happy to go into, but I
mean intelligence not necessarily � at this
point ...
>>Rick: Entity as localized, vocalized, not
as a �guy with a beard,' but ...
>>John: It implies sentient also, which means
consciousness.
Now, I'm talking, at least up to this point,
in this particular question about what a physicist
would think, and a physicist would be comfortable
with the word �intelligence' provided you
don't mean conscious.
>>Rick: Could you be intelligent without being
conscious?
>>John: Because intelligence, [from] a mathematician's
perspective ... does it contain orderly information
or is it just a random bunch of garbage?
>>Rick: So a rock can, a crystal let's say
contains orderly information ...
>>John: A crystal or a rock less?
>>Rick: But we wouldn't say it was conscious
just because it is orderly?
>>John: Correct.
Okay.
Now if you ask a physicist whether it's consciousness
he'd probably say, "Well, I don't know."
If he were honest he'd say, "I've never thought
about that."
He shouldn't say, no it's not, because there's
no evidence from a physicist to say there
is or isn't.
So I'm using the word �intelligence.'
But when you think about it, you've got an
ocean of intelligence that is dynamic, so
it's not flat intelligence; dynamic intelligence.
And it's self-directing, self-aware to the
extent that it interacts directly with itself,
and it's that dynamical self-interaction that
allows it to create stuff.
So for example, light is an example of a field
that is absolutely unaware of itself.
>>Rick: How so?
>>John: Take two flashlight beams and they'll
pass right through each other � you can
do this experiment at home - and they will
have no interaction, no awareness at all of
each others' presence.
>>Rick: Aha!
Then why, in Ghostbusters, when they crossed
the beams did all hell break loose and it
prompted Bill Murray to say, "This chick is
toast"?
>>John: Because they weren't using light.
>>Rick: Aaaaah.
>>John: They were using other types of ... and
gluons also are self-aware, to a certain exent.
>>Rick: So maybe those were gluon beams.
>>John: Yes.
So, but anyway, the unified field, it's a
good thing it interacts with itself because
as you know, there's nothing else down there
for it to interact with, and it's that self-interaction
that causes universes to bubble forth.
Now the big question �we're stepping back,
and we'll get back to more questions, but
� does this actually happen - I mean this
"bubbling of the universes" � and then all
of a sudden we find ourselves born into one
of them?
And then back to intelligent design, how many
of these universes are inhabitable?
>>Rick: Let me throw one other thing in the
soup here, because it'll be part of this answer.
I was talking to our friend Menas Kafatos
and he was saying that some people say, some
physicists perhaps, that there's so many infinite
number of attempted universes that the fact
that we happen to be in one that seems to
have worked out, is very much like the infinite
number of monkeys hitting typewriters and
producing Shakespeare.
We're just in the Shakespeare universe but
it doesn't say anything about intelligence,
whatsoever ... that it's all chance.
>>John: Right, well ... that's a really good
question.
I love that question, we'll come back to it
in a minute.
I just wanted to say that this idea of the
universe percolating universes, and the fact
that we happen to be the inhabitants of one
such universe, it sounds like there's a lot
happening there!
And from our experience, there is a lot happening
there, but I think from the ultimate experience,
people who are involved with what's called
�quantum cosmology' or �quantum gravity,'
they would have to say, "Well actually, you
have to observe this whole thing from a quantum
mechanical perspective.
And from a quantum mechanical perspective
you've got this unified field, this ocean
of intelligence in a state of fluctuation,
and creating virtual universes, but it's all
virtual!
It's all virtual, and that you ultimately
have this simultaneous coexistence of an infinite
number of virtual universes in which we virtually
live.
But it really is all the stuff of dreams,
you could say.
This is all just really ... and quantum mechanics
is very much the world of mind.
We have to come back to that, it's an important
statement.
Quantum mechanics has really nothing to do
with matter, not directly.
It makes predictions about matter, but it
really has to do with the world of mind.
So when you look at this bubbling of universes
from its ultimate quantum, quantum cosmology
perspective, these universes that are bubbling
up are really all conceptual realities, and
the whole thing is one big, huge dream.
>>Rick: In whose mind?
>>John: In the mind of this universal intelligence,
universal consciousness.
And if you look at the Vedic literature ...
>>Rick: Which is a concept that you and I
are comfortable with, but maybe not your run-of-the-mill
physicist.
>>John: No, but run-of-the-mill physicists
don't tend to be working in a world of quantum
cosmology, you know, it really takes a certain
type.
>>Rick: So if you took the whole club of quantum
cosmologists, they would be pretty cool with
what we're saying right now?
>>John: I think so, mostly, yes.
>>Rick: Okay.
>>John: They'd be nervous to be caught on
camera.
>>Rick: Okay guys, you're off camera.
Don't worry about it.
>>John: So intelligent design, just to play
with it a little bit, as Menas made the point
that one of the challenges of Superstring
theory today is that it gives rise to such
a vast, almost limitless realm of possibilities
of the nature of our universe.
Bubbling out of this ocean of intelligence,
the possibilities are really so endless that
most of those bubble universes, which we could
have been born into, wouldn't support anything
like life, and that's why we're not born into
them.
But there are quite a few, maybe very small
in comparison to the full number of universes
that perhaps are bubbling forth, a relative
handful will be suitable for life.
And naturally, we're holding this discussion
today in one such universe.
And somebody might say - I think Menas feels
this way, everybody feels this way to some
degree � what a wasteful approach to creation!
You have to produce ten to the one-hundredth
universes to get one that would support habitable
life.
And not just support habitable life, one universe
that may survive, like ours did, for billions
of years, others may be born and gone in an
instant.
So it seems like a very inefficient process
and not one with a great deal of intelligence,
not a whole lot of intelligence or purposefulness
in it because it's so random.
It does, as string theory, seem to have that
element, but all of those universes are filled
with intelligence, all those universes are
full of order, all of those universes are
brilliant, fascinating ones.
And yeah, biological life would only exist,
as we know it anyway, in a very relative handful.
What are we wasting anyway?
I mean, these are all free.
It's the nature of this unified [field], just
by its very existence to percolate universes,
so we're not wasting anything.
>>Rick: Yeah, seems to be the way God operates.
I mean, only one sperm reaches the egg, you
know?
>>John: Right, that's a really very good analogy,
and what's the intelligent design in that?
Well, I don't know.
>>Rick: Survival of the fittest, and also,
I mean, we're kind of thinking anthropomorphically
I guess, here.
You know, we're defining life in terms of
biological and universes in terms of livable,
and so on, but there are many forms of life,
perhaps other than biological, which we may
talk about before we're finished here.
And if we're talking about intelligence as
being ubiquitous, omnipresent, then the sun
in alive, the moon is alive.
There is, on some level, everything is as
alive as everything else.
>>John: Well that's right, on some level everything
is alive as everything else, because you can
take the substance of the sun or the substance
of the moon, you can trace it back to its
core essence.
>>Rick: And there you have pure intelligence
>>John: Pure intelligence, the unified field.
So then becomes the question of how much of
that life, how much of the core intelligence,
how much core dynamism, how much life is expressed
in a rock, or in a moon, or in a sun, or in
Rick Archer?
>>Rick: Not much.
>>John: And certainly in comparison to a rock,
there's a huge amount of vitality and intelligence,
and flexibility and adaptability expressed
in human life, we are just a better conduit.
The human nervous system is a wonderful pipeline
that takes the dynamism and order and intelligence
at the molecular - the level of DNA, its sub-DNA
that lies deep within, even all the way to
the unified field � and funnels that out
into the macroscopic world of the human senses,
human mind, human speech.
Rocks don't' have the kind of nervous system
that will allow you to take that core life
that's at the basis of them and bring it out
onto the surface in any meaningful way.
I suspect though, that the sun is very much
alive � what type of life?
Can we really comprehend it? � you know,
it's a very, very different type of life.
>>Rick: Yeah, but so many ancient cultures
revere the sun as a great being, you know,
surya, and the moon.
And we speak of Gaia, the earth, as being
a conscious entity and we're just little fleas
on it.
>>John: I believe it is.
Remember the world, as you said, it's really
all consciousness, means all unified field,
expressed in such a huge diversity of forms,
from suns to people.
And so it is all consciousness, and I think
pretty much, all conscious to varying degrees.
I guess it's ... how that manifests that consciousness?
Is there a sense of �I?'
Is there what we would normally consider to
be emotion?
That's difficult to comprehend but to, I'm
sure, some form or other, yes.
>>Rick: But it brings up an interesting point,
which is that if we think of all material
things as reflectors of consciousness and
having the ability to express consciousness
to differing degrees.
Then, when we get to the human level we have
the exciting possibility of the human nervous
system as a scientific instrument for deep
exploration.
A single cell in our body is vastly more complex
than the hadron collider.
>>John: Probably so.
>>Rick: What to say of all the trillions of
cells put together in the way they are?
And I've heard you talk about the kind of
correlation between the nervous system and
the 192 something or others, and how that
correlates with something in physics, and
how we seem to be tailor-made for founding
the full range of creation.
>>John: That's a really interesting question,
and you might even say it could lead you back
to a reconsideration of intelligent design.
But it is as though this particular species,
the human species, has the capability for
enlightenment, which means has the ability
for direct fathoming, and experiencing, and
stabilizing universal consciousness, and reverberating
in the structure of universal consciousness.
Universal consciousness does have a structure,
and it's available in spiritual traditions,
it's certainly available in the structure
of the Vedic tradition, in the Rig Veda, it's
available from modern science now [in] exploring
the mathematics, the mathematical structure
and dynamics of the unified field.
And those structures really look pretty much
the same.
And that structure, as you said, seems to
mirrored in various ways throughout the human
physiology and human nervous system, where
for example, as you mentioned, there are 192
gateways to consciousness, or 192 fundamental
nerve endings that go from the subtle nervous
system out to the various extremes, function
� operating the limbs and organs and senses.
So that 192 does correspond, numerically at
least, to the number of reverberant frequencies
in the vibrational spectrum or structure of
the unified field, as seen in the superstring.
And that's one of many remarkable coincidences
which suggest that, hey, it's almost as thought
the brain is set up, designed to resonate
in that structure of totality, to experience
the field of unity as the meditative traditions
of the world, and enlightened traditions of
the world have emphasized.
The question comes up, "Well, if so, how?
Why?
How did that come to be?"
And somebody might say, "Well, it's meant
to be, it's intelligent design, and the universe
is set up to lead to the evolution and emergence
of species like ours, that have that ability."
Or you could take a more mundane, Darwinistic
approach to it, perhaps, and say that, "Well,
having more intelligence, having more awareness,
having more strength of consciousness is evolutionarily
advantageous.
That's when we begin to really distinguish
ourselves as a species.
And to maximize that intelligence and alertness,
we should become a more and more pure conduit
for that ocean of intelligence and alertness
within, and it may be natural that our brains
would mirror that."
Another perspective on the same thing, twist
on the same thing is, it's been a long time
since we've lived in an enlightened society,
and it's been a long time �you can look
back in history, you'll find that there may
be good evidence of past golden ages where
enlightenment was far more commonplace, and
when yoga and transcending were part of education,
but it's been a long time since enlightenment
was widespread � but when periods of enlightenment
come, during those periods where many people
become enlightened, you're really exercising
the capability of the human brain to live
enlightenment, live unity.
And during those periods, we're really ... survival
of the fittest is going to be strongly supportive
of those individuals who can be enlightened,
because they're the ones that accomplish huge
things.
They're the ones that change society, they're
the ones that are perhaps successful biologically.
Now it's been a long time since we've exercised
our transcending genes, so to speak - we've
exercised the ability to transcend.
Now, these days, perhaps more than ever, people
are opening up to techniques that will allow
transcending, TM [is] a certain one, and we're
starting to exercise those genes again.
But I would have to say, as a species, we're
a little rusty.
The fact it takes years of regular practice
to work out the kinks, and the fact that experiences
are - with the siddhis, the supernormal abilities
- are rusty, at best; coming along but rusty,
suggests that it's just in time that this
revival of awakening, of enlightenment seems
to be coming in the world.
Because probably before too much longer, we
would breed those capabilities out in favor
of something else, like bigger muscles.
So many generations of not utilizing that
ability to transcend to evolutionary advantage,
it may basically go away, especially now with
genetic engineering.
The possibility of human genetic engineering,
which is taking place here and there, even
though in most cases it's against the law
for government to pay for it; it's probably
taking place not just within the US borders,
but other borders.
Very, very easy in principle to monkey with
the human genome to the point where a very
subtle, a very holistic ability � the ability
to transcend � could simply be bred out
of us.
>>Rick: Some are saying that might have advantages
in terms of like, growing your own new liver,
you know, or something like that, but that's
a whole realm that we probably don't have
time to get into.
Apropos to what you were saying, I was watching
a NOVA show last night and the guy was saying,
"Hey, sharks have been around for 400 million
years and yet their brains are still the size
of peas.
Why haven't those brains grown?"
And his conclusion was: well, sharks don't
need them to be sharks; that's all you need
>>John: They need teeth.
>>Rick: Yeah, they probably wouldn't do so
well with a human sized brain.
�Why am I stuck in this body?'
So, but we obviously have a different function
than a shark.
>>John: A different path.
>>Rick: A different path, yeah, so our brain
has been evolving.
>>John: That's right.
>>Rick: And who knows where it could go?
I once asked Maharishi a question about omniscience
and he said, "...not for human nervous system,"
he said, "You have to have a celestial nervous
system for that," which would help if we could
touch on that before we finish here.
I was listening to a talk by a guy named Robert
Lanza, do you know who he is?
>>John: Don't think so.
>>Rick: Anyway, he was talking about � I'm
sure you're familiar with this point � that
there are at least 200 different variables
that had they been slightly different, life
as we know it, or even the entire universe
couldn't have arisen.
He called this biocentrism.
This kind of comes back to our whole theme
about intelligence and how the universe seems
anything but coincidental or accidental.
You know, there are any number of things could
have been off by just that much ...
>>John: Our universe anyway.
>>Rick: Yeah, so maybe that's our whole thing
about all the duds and this one got all 200
just right.
>>John: Mm-hmm.
That's a perspective that's emerging from
Superstring theory and M-theory, and I don't
find it hugely attractive that there could
be, you know, in a sense, such an abundance
of dud-universes � dud in terms of biological
life - because it doesn't seem that efficient.
But I, nor anybody else at the moment, has
anything better to offer.
Superstring theory, you know, works.
Actually, it's a successful quantum theory
of gravity that you can calculate with.
You can ask and answer: what's going on inside
a black hole?
You can ask and answer: what's going on at
the time of the Big Bang?
You can address questions we've never been
able to address before, you can explain the
emergence of the fundamental forces of nature
and the particles.
You know, it's a tremendous success, even
though in some respects it's a developing
area, for sure.
So if we believe in gravity, and if we believe
in the transistor - in quantum mechanics - and
they're both true, they both have to be consistent
with each other, that requires what's called
a quantum theory of gravity, and after 70
years of trying, that points us in the direction
of Superstring theory.
And a couple of alternatives that you could
say are twists on it, [the] so-called �loop
gravity theory,' which have something to offer,
but I don't think as much to offer as Superstring
theory.
But what those theories tell us as you just
said, is the ... right now an embarrassment
of riches, an abundance of possible universes
that could all be very different from each
other, and very few of those would have all
those different values required for the existence,
either of a universe that lives very long
or for biological life.
So that may be the answer to that: there's
just so many universes that you're bound to
get one right.
>>Rick: One more thing just to throw in here
and I don't know whether as a physicist you
have any comments, but boy, life sure does
seem to be ubiquitous.
I mean, you go to the depths of the Mariana's
Trench, you go to the ice core in Antarctica,
you go to the most inhospitable places, you
know, boiling volcanic vents, life is there.
And if the laws of nature which govern our
world are universal, one could assume that
there's going to be life everywhere throughout
the universe.
>>John: Throughout this universe?
Everywhere.
Hard to imagine, for example, that the waters
beneath the crusty, icy surface of some of
the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, where you
go deeper down and the water starts getting
warmer and warmer, be hard to imagine that
they would not contain not only some form
of life, but probably DNA-based life, because
DNA is relatively easy to form.
Once you form one of them, the fact that it's
self-replicating, it soon takes over.
And so you're right, life seems to be very
robust.
But still, I'd have to say, despite its newfound
robustness as far as science is concerned,
it's still going to be a small minority of
universes that are going to support it.
Because you need a universe that's going to
have atoms, you need a universe that's going
to have particles that stick together and
form water, and nuclei protons.
So it turns out that those are relatively
rare among all these universes.
>>Rick: Yeah, but if you have infinite energy
and infinite time, then you're gonna create
a lot of them.
>>John: Yep.
>>Rick: There are a lot of sort of spiritual
concepts that are bandied about; one of them
is that everything is one.
And I often get flack from people because
I'm always talking about levels, and a lot
of times people kind of lock into an absolute
view.
And in my opinion they don't give justice
to the relative world, which you know, admittedly
can be boiled down to nothingness in any moment
you want to do it, but try running in front
of a bus and boiling it down to nothingness
then.
So there's that, and we've kind of covered
that.
But another one is time, and you know, Eckhart
Tolle most famously popularized the notion
of �living in the now,' and Maharishi said
that, "Time is a concept that man uses to
measure eternity," meaning it's only conceptual,
and yet physics seems to give it a lot more
substantiality than that.
We talk about space-time, Einstein talked
about relativistic time dilation, in fact,
the GPS in our car works by virtue of relativistic
time dilation.
One more thing to thrown in, I interviewed
this woman named Anita Moorjani who had a
profound near-death experience, and one of
the things she experienced then was that she
felt that time isn't linear; it's now.
And that if we have past lives, which she
actually remembered having, we're actually
living them now but just in sort of another
dimension of time, or something; but they're
actually is, technically speaking, no past,
no future; it's all just now.
But again, back to relativistic time dilation
� twin goes out, approaches the speed of
light, comes back, he's much younger than
his other twin.
So go on that for a bit ... power of now.
>>John: Yes, Einstein put it out that time
is very much a matter of perspective.
It really is something that is highly observer
dependant.
And for example, different observers in relative
states of motion will experience time very
differently, and space very differently.
Length �that's relativistic, time dilation
� relativistic, length contraction...
If you happen to be able to move at the speed
of light, which certain particles can only
move at the speed of light, like photons,
and a little earlier in the history of our
universe, all particles could move only at
the speed of light because no particles had
mass till relatively late in the history of
the universe.
So what is the experience of the universe
like for somebody who is traveling at the
speed of light?
For them there is no experience of time.
For example, we could do this experiment if
we had the money, we could take a rocket ship,
start accelerating toward the Andromeda Galaxy.
And with that one G of acceleration � that's
not all that much �could probably take 2
or 3 Gs � that one G of acceleration in
about a year, you'll be very close to the
speed of light - takes a while to get there.
>>Rick: You mean a constant one G?
>>John: A constant one G, faster and faster
and faster faster ...keep your rockets blazing,
and that's why it's expensive.
>>Rick: Except it gets heavier as you get
closer to the speed of light, right?
>>John: Well, in a manner of speaking you
might say that, right.
But what you could say is this: yes, your
ability to accelerate further becomes tougher
and tougher as you approach the speed of light,
because even if you keep your rockets blazing,
you're never going to pass the speed of light,
but in some respects you don't have to.
Because the Andromeda Galaxy is 2 million
light years away, it's the only thing in the
sky you can see - it's beautiful this time
of year, it's right overhead � the only
thing you can see that's not in our own galaxy,
with our naked eye, is our sister galaxy,
the Andromeda Galaxy that's 2 million light
years away.
So you might think that it's going to take
� even if you're very close to the speed
of light � 2 million years to get there,
or more.
And for somebody watching you from home, waiting
for you to get there, yeah, it's going to
take 2 million years for you get there.
But for the observer in the rocket ship, as
you start approaching the speed of light,
by the time you've been out there for a year
or so, you're very close to the speed of light.
And because of relativistic length contraction,
the distance to your target, the Andromeda
Galaxy, the length between you and your target
starts to shrink and your target looms right
in your face.
By the time you actually travel at the speed
of light or even just really close to it,
you�re there instantly.
And if you're a photon, you were going at
the speed of light from the very beginning;
you don't have to accelerate in a rocket ship.
You're already going at the speed of light,
which means if you're a photon, you're already
there.
>>Rick: So from a photon's perspective, so
to speak, all the light we see from the stars
got here instantaneously, if you're riding
on a photon.
But for us obviously, sitting here, it's taking
millions and billions of years.
>>John: That's right.
So this is an example of Einstein's special
relativity for massless particles, and we
were all massless particles once - there is
simply no time.
So time becomes a very observer dependent
phenomenon.
So how time is experienced, even for a physicist,
depends very much upon one's state of motion.
So there's something very ephemeral about
time.
And now when you go to quantum cosmology and
you look at the wave function of the whole
universe, and how the universe emerges and
submerges, from that perspective you come
back to a Vedantic point of view to where
nothing happens.
Nothing happens.
You have a simultaneity, if you wish.
Well it's not that the birth of the universe,
the course of the universe, and the end of
the universe are all in a sense at the same
time; there simply is no time.
It is all just one.
But the mathematician can look at that structure,
the wave function of the universe, and see
how a variable could arise, in your mind,
that would behave like time, and that would
give you a perspective from which you could
take the simultaneity of everything and unpack
it into a sequence of events.
So you can see that from a mathematical perspective,
from quantum cosmology and quantum gravity,
the possibility of the emergence of a concept
of time.
How we as humans latch on to that and really
all live it, and all have a consensus on it,
is a very interesting thing, it's not very
well understood.
>>Rick: So we're like filters in a way, which
attribute levels to something which is really
all one, which attribute linearity to something
which is all now.
We kind of like ... the way a prism breaks
up the light into colors, we're like a filter
which kind of gives all this diversity some
apparent substance.
>>John: Yeah, well apparently yes and somehow
it's a concept that we've all learned and
we all share.
But with a completely different style of education,
for example, could it be completely different?
Could it be completely otherwise?
Would we perhaps not have an experience like
time?
And here is a related thing from Superstring
theory that provides some support for these
discussions, it's called �String Duality.'
But it turns out that this way of viewing
ourselves, as 3-dimensional creatures living
in 4-dimensional space � 3 of space plus
time � is absolutely equivalent to, the
physics of it, everything about it is absolutely
equivalent to and indistinguishable from a
completely different point of view, in which
we are 2-dimensional creatures living on a
certain 2-dimensional geometry; a very specific
2-dimensional geometry that's topologically
not trivial, multi-connected, in a universe
without gravity, but with a different set
of particles and forces called a �4-dimensional
maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory.'
And basically, what I'm saying is that there
are two ways of looking at what is going on
right now � at least one in which we are
3-dimensional creatures moving around in a
4-dimensional world with gravity - identical
to it, with respect to every possible prediction
and every possible detail would be somebody
else looking at us and saying, "No, no, no,
no.
You are 2-dimensional creatures swimming on
the surface of a 2-dimensional surface, in
a world without gravity at asymptotically
high temperatures."
And so why is it, since they're both absolutely
equivalent, that nobody around us thinks of
us as 2-dimensional creatures swimming around
on this 2-dimensional surface, at asymptotically
high temperatures, when we are as much that
as we are this?
Why do we latch into the 3-d concept and not
the 2-d concept of ourselves?
Would a different educational system have
caused us all, collectively, to think we were
2-dimensional creatures living on a multiply
connected, 2-dimensional space, in a world
without gravity?
Maybe.
Why is it we favor one over the other?
>>Rick: Brings up an interesting question
and I don't know if this question actually
relates, but it's a good segue.
I heard you say in something I was listening
to, you were talking about hidden sector matter.
And you were talking about subtle bodies,
and you were saying that subtle bodies would
be cold one degree above absolute zero, and
correct me if I'm getting this wrong.
It kind of reminded me of The Sixth Sense,
you know, [that] M. Night Shyamalan movie,
when they felt cold if some dead person walked
by.
>>John: Interesting.
>>Rick: Maybe those are the 2-dimensional
creatures that see us as very hot, by comparison.
But I have friends - you do too, whether you
know it or not, and you've talked to some
- who routinely see subtle beings, as regularly
as you and I see people at the mall.
I mean, they're all over the place.
By subtle beings we mean angels, or whatever
names traditionally they have been called.
And these are very sane, level-headed, down-to-earth,
practical, productive people who just happen
to have that sort of refined perception, that
they see all these subtle realms which are
teeming with life, but not life that we can
perceive with our ordinary gross senses.
>>John: Right, exactly.
>>Rick: So, let's talk about that a little
bit.
I don't know if it relates to what you were
just saying, about the 2-dimensional thing..?
>>John: Well, not so directly, but it's certainly
a very interesting and I think scientifically
sound concept.
And you know, I don't see angles; I certainly
feel the presence sometimes of entities benign,
fortunately, typically.
The nasty ones don't seem to be drawn to me
very strongly... bored with me or whatever,
because I don't do anything fun, but anyone
who has for a variety of reasons, and it can
happen for a variety of reasons, finds themselves
projected outside their physical body, and
are seeing and perceiving and functioning
from a different place, where you could literally
turn around and observe your physical body
sitting there, can't deny the existence of
levels of our human, say subtle physiology,
that are independent of the gross physical
physiology, connected, to a degree, but more
or less independent.
So I must say from a physics perspective,
that has been very difficult to accept for
physicists, because what we know about the
universe, what most physicists know about
the universe, is that it's comprised of 4
forces � light, gravity, etcetera � it's
comprised of known particles � like quarks
and leptons, electrons, protons and neutrons
� and we pretty much know nothing else.
Whatever this subtle body is made of ...
>>Rick: Some kind of subtle matter.
>>John: Some kind of subtle matter, you can
almost rule it out, from the standpoint of
physics and experiments that have been done.
But there's a loophole, and the loophole is,
there is a certain type of matter predicted
by Superstring theory, never predicted before
Superstring theory, to exist, and it's called
�Hidden Sector matter'.
You're starting to hear reference to it as
�shadow reference matter' in the scientific
literature, but it is a whole other category
of matter with its own set of forces and its
own set of particles of a very different kind,
and that exists almost independently of us,
fills this room - this is what has been thought
� only interacting with us by virtue of
whatever gravitational mass it might have,
and due to its mass, any gravitational influence.
But the gravitational influence between things
of ordinary size, between you and me even
at this proximity, is essentially zero, negligible,
you'd never measure it.
>>Rick: You have a little bit more gravity
than I do.
>>John: Twice the gravity, in every respect.
But the loopholes in these calculations pointed
out by I don't know whom, but still relatively
unknown fact, is that this extra set of matter,
extra forces, extra particles - and we don't
know a whole lot about the details of what
those are like, but the caveat has now shown
that in most cases, in addition to its negligible
gravitational influence upon us, and vice
versa - there will be a weak electromagnetic
tie, a weak electromagnetic influence, for
reasons that are too complex to go into.
And because of that electromagnetic influence
on us, we could subtly see and feel the presence
of these things.
But because their influence is rather weak,
it's probably not something that the human
eye is going to see; well it's not something
that particle detectors have yet been able
to discern, although we're looking.
There are a variety of tests right now looking
mostly for what's called �dark matter,'
and this hidden sector matter is, in a form,
dark matter; a specific form, predicted by
Superstring theory.
So we're looking for dark matter, we may find
evidence of this stuff, but the interesting
thing about it is, because it interacts with
us electromagnetically, it is really through
a subtle, I'd say an alternate form of light,
that it could be perceived in principle; dimly
perceived, dimly perceived.
Now the eyes?
Maybe too dim for the eyes.
However, through complicated mechanisms, this
stuff, because it's attracted to us electromagnetically,
it's a little bit like cling wrap.
There is an electrostatic attraction, a faint
electrostatic attraction between this stuff
and ourselves.
So for example, it's very easy to take, relatively
easy to take a piece of Glad wrap off of a
cantaloupe.
Even though it tends to cling, it's removable.
Like that, this subtle body, through it were
made of this hidden sector matter, shadow
matter, could be removed from our physical
body; it could live quite independently of
it.
Hidden sector matter would be very cold, cold
is relative thing, but it would be less than
2 degrees above absolute zero, which is a
good thing in a sense, because it means it
would be a deeply quantum mechanical world.
It would be a world that's governed by quantum
mechanics and if these hidden sector particles
happen to be bosons, and there almost certainly
would be some, they would be super fluid bosons,
and that they would have all kinds of properties
that would be very reminiscent of mind.
These bodies might be very much an aid to
the physical human brain in the process of
thinking, maybe even in the process of transcending.
So could a body made of this stuff firstly
cling together into a body, and not just a
pile of gas?
Yes, it could.
Could such a body be a vehicle of thought?
That is, it could think independently of the
human brain if the human brain were to have
a problem?
Maybe it even brings elements to the human
brain's ability to think, that the human brain
wouldn't be very good at by itself, including
possibly the ability to transcend?
Yeah, so there's very little known about it,
it's a speculative area that not a lot of
people are thinking about it, besides myself.
But provided such people are seeking such
things, and for anybody who has ever found
themselves outside the physical body, as a
physicist, if you're willing to admit such
experiences exist, and you kind of have to,
then as a physicist you should know right
away that this must be a body made of shadow
matter, hidden sector matter.
>>Rick: Well, I don't know about all that,
but I do know from talking to my friends that
these are very conscious entities.
There are probably some in the room with us
here now, they're so common.
In fact, when I first discovered that this
friend of mine was perceiving this stuff,
I'd known him for some time and hadn't known
this, you know, I got really curious.
And we were at the Science & Nonduality Conference
and he said, "They're all over the place here."
Remember how we were eating outdoors there?
And he said, "They're in like clusters attending
to people, doing something, helping people."
And later on we were at the airport in an
elevator and I asked, "They're in here?"
And he kind of just smiled and afterwards
he got out and he said, "They just told me,
�Don't point us out to people; if they're
meant to see us, they'll see us.'"
And then later on he said, "There were three!"
But anyway, it fascinates me and I have a
curious mind, and when you hear stuff like
this from reasonable, sensible people whom
you respect, you think, �Whoa, this opens
a whole realm of possibility.
It's something I would like to understand
and experience in my own life.'
And Maharishi predicted it, in talking about
God-consciousness and all the celestial levels
and all that stuff.
And one reason I find it fascinating is [that]
as an interviewer of hundreds of people in
the sort of contemporary spiritual scene,
I feel a need in the contemporary spiritual
scene for a broadening of perspective, for
a deepening of perspective.
I kind of feel like sometimes enlightenment
gets dumbed down a little bit, and people
have a simple awakening of some kind, which
is probably very preliminary, and they mistake
it for something final, and get up on a podium
and start teaching and giving satsang.
>>John: Happens all the time.
>>Rick: Yeah, and so I sort of think that
it would be valuable as a culture, for our
understanding of the full range of human potential,
from ignorance to enlightenment, to be fleshed
out, you know.
Because like right now, we sort of have the
map that Christopher Columbus gave us of North
America, in terms of spirituality, and you
can be in New Jersey and think you're in California.
But in a more evolved culture, I think it
would be more like the mapping that we have
now done of North America, down to every little
square inch.
We really understand what all the fine gradations
of development are and where we might be on
that range, so as not to confuse ourselves
and to give up when we had barely begun.
>>John: Yeah, and one thing in the meantime
that's worth remembering is that knowledge
� one's perspective, one's truth � is
completely different in different states of
consciousness.
Even between waking and enlightenment in the
limited sense � still profound, but limited
sense � of being continuously awake to one's
cosmic nature: waking, dreaming, sleeping.
Even between there there's a huge range, huge
range of understanding, comprehension, capability,
and then that's just the beginning.
Maharishi once said, "Life begins at enlightenment."
He didn't even want to think about it very
much because it pales in comparison to the
levels of unfoldment that follow - much, much
richer God-consciousness, or glorified cosmic
consciousness, far richer, unity in Brahmin
consciousness - it was for the ... enlightenment
was just basically, basic human life.
>>Rick: And by enlightenment he meant cosmic
consciousness?
>>John: Cosmic consciousness.
>>Rick: Or maintenance of pure awareness in
the midst of waking, dreaming, sleeping.
>>John: Right.
When he says, "Life begins at enlightenment,"
that's almost true, literally true � that
before that, life is without life, because
the field of life, field of light, field of
consciousness, is completely hidden from us
in waking consciousness.
It's there, we have enough light of consciousness
to be a waking perceiver, but the consciousness
itself evades our grasp until finally it's
there and stable, and unmistakable and undeniable.
So you could say life, as opposed to death,
begins at cosmic consciousness, but there's
so much more.
So everybody who is at whatever level of experience,
has a right to feel good about what they have
achieved through their efforts and their righteous
living, but should also know that long-coming,
long before us, even here with us for all
future times, there are going to be many,
many people who are far along the path of
evolution that they would look back at us
and say, "Well that's a good amateur."
>>Rick: One of my motivations for starting
this whole show, was that I was running into
friends in Fairfield who had woken up to what
we would define as cosmic consciousness, pure
awareness 24/7, things like that, and they
would tell their friends - and even sometimes
higher states � and they would tell their
friends.
And very often they would get shutdown for
saying it, you know, "Well, you don't look
like you can float," or "Well, maybe you're
going to be renting a helicopter and dropping
leaflets on the Dome next," which is something
some guy actually did, he went a little off
kilter.
And so I thought, �Alright, well let me
start interviewing people just to show people
that their peers are actually awakening, because
I think it would help them, kind of be more
confident about their own experience.'
And initially I conceived of it as a local
radio show here on CREW FM, and then it just
kind of expanded.
But what I'm seeing these days is that there's
sort of an epidemic taking place, not only
in the TM movement, where I think there are
a lot more people who are awakened to profound
degrees than is known even within the TM movement,
because they're kind of shy about it ...
>>John: Should be.
>>Rick: Yeah.
Should be, but on the other hand, if it's
really going to become a societal norm, you
don't have to get up on a soap box and beat
your chest ...
>>John: Well that's just it.
>>Rick: But on the other hand, we should begin
to mature to the point where it's like, "Okay,
great, no big deal.
Let's go to lunch," you know?
>>John: That's right, but traditionally, even
in Biblical times, you know the advice was
"Don't cast your pearls before swine," because
it's so ...
>>Rick: But there was also, "Don't hide your
light under a bushel."
>>John: Well that's true, yes.
So don't get on a soap box because you may
be speaking to an audience that are far beyond
you, but certainly to be able to talk about
one's experiences in a matter-of-fact way
can be useful.
>>Rick: And I know that at the Dome there's
a lot of, every day there are reports of profound
experiences.
I'm not hearing them first hand but I kind
of hear that there's a little bit of a stigma
against proclaiming something permanent, or
�I had this experience, I had this experience,'
but you know, as many people in spiritual
circles will say, that any experience which
comes, can go; whereas what we're really aiming
at is that which never comes or goes.
>>John: Mm-hmm.
I have a beautiful experience shared to me
by somebody in the Dome, that I shared when
I gave a talk on the mechanics of the siddhis
and sunyama at the SAND Conference, whenever
it was last, this fall.
And it was a beautiful experience, and one
of many, of somebody who has just, you know,
came out of the Dome one day, the meditation
hall, and it had just ... that was the day
that it had dawned, and it has remained with
him ever since, described very sweetly, very
innocently.
Just his innocent experience of life supported
by that continuous nourishing cushion of pure
consciousness, 24/7, and there are many like
that.
>>Rick: That happened to your friend who was
on the back of your motorcycle when you had
that accident.
He came out of the Dome one day, something
popped, never unpopped.
>>John: Fantastic, and that's how it is.
You know, "Cosmic consciousness," Maharishi
said, "sneaks up on you like a thief in the
night."
You just don't know when that last stress,
that's just sort of obstructing one's perception
of the true nature of one's own self will
get unwound.
You know, life before stabilization of that,
Maharishi really likened � very compassionate
to everybody but really kind of scratched
his head � it's like a disease, because
you don't even know what you are, you don't
even know what you are; you got this huge
inner dignity...
But I think you're right, I think that there's
a community here, we're really lucky to be
surrounded by a fair number of people, mostly
very quiet and unassuming, some brilliant
and towering, but mostly you know, very innocent
and very unassuming, who have stabilized that.
One way of seeing it if you want, if somebody's
willing, is to look at the EEG and see, "Wow!
24/7, tremendous EEG coherence."
But you know, you're right, outside of those
Dome experiences - and those experiences you
can certainly talk about that � but you
don't hear a lot of discussion of experiences
typically around town.
I don't know why not.
>>Rick: Well, people do get into little gatherings
and stuff, and discuss it.
We don't want to be myopic here, I mean, I
know that TM is a very profound thing and
has had a huge impact on the world, but there
are all sorts of people from all sorts of
backgrounds and traditions who are having
these sorts of awakenings, some from no background
or tradition.
And I talk to people who were just walking
down the street and all of a sudden, boom!
>>John: I met on at SAND.
In fact, you knew him too, I believe.
He had really no practice in the past; he's
now started to meditate because he's really
interested in going beyond mere enlightenment.
But he's been very, very stable.
He had no practice; it just dawned on him.
>>Rick: It just happens, which we could explain
in terms of past life development, and so
on, but it's interesting.
You were talking earlier just by way of analogy
of being able to travel on a photon, but what
do you think about the possibility of new
age technologies, and even extraterrestrial
technologies?
Like I was listening to Nassim Haramein a
little bit, I interviewed the Thrive people,
Foster and Kimberly Gamble, and they were
talking about Taurus energy devices, and you
see all kinds of YouTube videos about people
who have supposedly developed devices to generate
infinite amounts of energy from the vacuum
state.
Do you think any of that holds any water?
>>John: Yeah, okay, well here's what I would
say: I do not believe such devices have been
developed yet.
I've spent a lot of time chasing around the
world, investing time and even some money
in seeing and examining and evaluating, and
every time I've been disappointed because
every time you get there the excuse is, "Well,
the flywheel is warped now and it's not working
anymore, but for $20,000 we could not only
get it working, but we could really improve
it!"
And that's just has happened time and time
again.
I've gone to conferences, energy conferences
about that, and spoken to, visited booths
of dozens, even hundreds of people, and nothing.
This is where all those people would go, but
nothing was working.
>>Rick: You always see these conspiracy theories
that the fossil fuel industry is oppressing
them and killing them ...
>>John: Shutting them down.
>>Rick: And suing the patents and all of that.
>>John: Yeah, and there's a huge amount of
conspiracy theories about how knowledge is
suppressed.
In today's academic community, and especially
in an Internet empowered community, it's very
hard to suppress something.
You can try it, [but] it's very hard to suppress
knowledge.
There are a lot of things you can suppress,
but the spread of knowledge, when something
can go viral in an instant, it's very hard
to suppress.
But I would say this: first of all, we can,
in practice and in principle, extract tiny
amounts of energy from the vacuum, with current
technology, but it's nothing that's remotely
practical at the present.
Secondly though, with Superstring theory I
think we're going to see, and we've seen evidence
of it this week, we're going to start to see
a better understanding of, and then perhaps
an application of advanced technologies that
could involve space travel, for example.
This is very speculative at current I must
say.
But the idea of what are called �Einstein-Rosen
bridges,' or wormholes, connecting different
parts of the galaxy, different parts of the
universe, that are basically shortcuts through
space - it's almost instantaneous shortcuts
through space - these have been believed to
exist as a theoretical possibility; what's
happened in string theory over the past weeks
is that people have been able to show in certain,
simple cases that there are space-time wormholes
possibly connecting many, many things.
That this whole phenomenon of quantum entanglement,
for example, where distantly separated particles
are somehow intertwined � the nonlocality
caused by quantum entanglement � that those
two particles, the fact that an observation
of one will create an instantaneous, corresponding
change in the other, even halfway across the
universe!
These entangled particles - has been shown
explicitly, at least in simple cases - are
entangled because of and are connected by
space-time wormholes.
So that if something that happens here could
instantaneously have an effect halfway across
the universe, even though that escapes Einstein's
bounds of the speed of light causality.
So if space-time wormholes are coming in to
save the day and helping us understand very
mysterious things like entanglement, well
that means that they're everywhere.
And if space-time is crisscrossed by such
wormholes, it's not inconceivable, and it's
very much an open question, that we couldn't
exploit such a wormhole as a technique for
traveling instantaneously across vast distances.
And once you have that, the possibility of
levitation and things like that also opens
up.
>>Rick: Maharishi used to talk about infinite
correlation all the time, and as I understood
it, it was that every bit of creation is infinitely
correlated with every other bit of creation.
In fact, Nassim Haramein says that every atom
is actually connected, in some sense, to every
other atom.
He goes into all kinds of other stuff about
atoms being mini-black holes and stuff, which
we won't get into.
>>John: You know, I believe, although I certainly
couldn't tell you how, I have some ideas possibly
how, to do with curvature of space-time and
quantum gravity, technologies for instantaneous
travel and potentially related to that, technologies
for energy generation.
Maybe in our future, I wouldn't rule them
out; I just don't think they're in our present.
>>Rick: Yeah, and presumably there are civilizations,
millions of years more advanced than ours,
that have had this down for a long time and
personally, I think they've been visiting
us, but I don't want to attribute any more
woo-woo to you than you may have already gotten.
>>John: Maybe.
>>Rick: There's a lot of evidence.
>>John: Well, I certainly believe that there
are civilizations, and if there are civilizations
out there, they could just as easily be billions
of years older than we are, certainly millions.
And any civilization that has survived for
hundreds of thousands or millions of years
is going to have technology far superior to
ours, so I don't doubt it.
Whether they would have necessarily found
us, given the vastness of our own galaxy,
let alone the vastness of the universe?
Maybe, maybe not.
>>Rick: Well if they can reach us they can
probably find us.
I know we're running out of time but siddhis,
we've eluded to them in this talk, I've heard
you say in talks that if any of the historical
accounts of siddhis � Jesus walking on water,
Saint Joseph of Cupertino flying, any of these
things, and there are hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of them in all different cultures
� if any of them actually are true, then
it completely revolutionizes physics and the
understanding of the relationship between
a human being and the laws of nature.
Why don't we close on a little bit of discussion
of that as a vision of possibility?
>>John: Mm-hm, mm-hm.
I would have said 20 years ago that it would
have revolutionized physics, but actually,
physics today, with quantum gravity even in
its current stage of development, the siddhis
are not difficult to understand.
What would be surprising to a physicist is
maybe not that they're possible, but that
human beings can access these capabilities
through a technology of consciousness.
But indeed if levitation, something that is
happening today or has ever happened, whether
by Shankara, or it doesn't matter when, if
it has ever happened as a result of the activity
of a human being and a human mind, that automatically
and unambiguously proves the capability of
the human mind, human awareness, human consciousness
to access the world, the field, of quantum
gravity, which is the level of the unified
field.
So that would mean [that] if anybody has ever
levitated, for example walked on water, it
would mean that human beings � at least
some, with appropriate development � have
the capability of experiencing, accessing,
harnessing the unified field.
Once you can do that, in principle you can
do anything, in principle you can do anything.
>>Rick: Well you know, it might not revolutionize
physics, but it would revolutionize the public
understanding of what's possible, which at
this point is, for the large majority of the
population - still Newtonian, and for a significant
percentage of the population - still medieval!
I mean, there are people who think the world
is 6,000 years old and dinosaurs walked the
earth along with human beings.
There's a museum in Ohio where they show pictures
of people riding dinosaurs, so I mean, it
would really blow some minds if people were
starting to levitate in public.
And you know, there [would] obviously have
to be all sorts of proof it wasn't something
that David Copperfield could do.
But you know, just as they say in the UFO
circles, "Well, we're not going to land on
the White House lawn until people are ready
for it because they'll shoot us down, or people
will freak out too much," it seems like there's
something there with collective consciousness
having to be ready before this kind of thing
can happen on a world stage.
Maybe it's not quite the time yet, or something.
>>John: Getting closer, it's getting closer.
First of all, any practical person who with
the capability, would probably be very concerned
about demonstrating it publicly - fear of
getting stoned, for example, which would have
been something that might have happened centuries
past.
>>Rick: Oh yeah, a few centuries ago a guy
got burned at the stake for translating the
Bible into English, so you better watch out.
>>John: Yeah, exactly, but also at that level
we're able to expand the mind and take it
to such a level of great depth and comprehension
that you can move the laws of nature by mere
a impulse of the mind, that very expanded
state of awareness, expanded state of comprehension,
is going to be really well-tuned into what's
appropriate and what's not appropriate, into
what's useful and what's not useful.
>>Rick: Hmm, good point.
>>John: If it's useful, I think somebody like
that with that capability may decide it's
time to show it.
>>Rick: And they would know.
>>John: And they would know.
>>Rick: Since that cosmic intelligence is
really running the show, it seems like it
wouldn't even be possible until it was useful.
Not useful in terms of human intellect figuring
out, "Okay, it's useful now," but in terms
of just the governing intelligence of nature,
which I think you and I feel is really running
things.
All is well and wisely put, and things will
happen when they're meant to happen, but the
pace seems to be accelerating.
>>John: It does, it unquestionably does.
And I think we're still young enough that
we're going to witness some remarkable things
in our lifetime.
>>Rick: Great!
Well that's a good note to end on.
It's fascinating talking to you, I could probably
sit here all afternoon and maybe we'll do
another one some time.
You know, there will probably be in a couple
of years from now a whole new set of ideas
to discuss, or maybe when somebody flies,
there will be a desire to know how that happened.
>>John: Yes, yes.
That sounds great.
>>Rick: Yeah, well let me make a few wrap
up points.
I've been talking with Dr. John Hagelin, you
know that by now if you've been watching this
video.
I'll be putting up a page on BATGAP.com which
links to his various websites and books, and
things that are of importance to him, as well
as his bio.
This interview has been one in an ongoing
series.
If you go to BATGAP.com you'll see them all.
There's an alphabetical index and a chronological
index of all the interviews.
There's a discussion group there that is set
up for each individual interview � try to
keep it relevant to the topic if possible,
please.
It usually meanders off.
There's a donate button which I appreciate
people clicking and donating if they have
the wherewithal, it enables me to do this
and I hope to move to doing it fulltime.
There's a place to sign up to be notified
by email every time a new interview is posted,
and there's a link to an audio podcast on
iTunes so that you can subscribe and not have
to sit in front of your computer for two hours
to listen to things; you can just listen while
you're commuting, or something.
So thanks a lot for listening or watching,
thanks to John ...
>>John: Thanks Rick, it's really a pleasure.
>>Rick: Great fun and we'll see you next time.
