Also visit Dr. Wolf at www.FredAlanWolf.com

OK, already, so now I'm a film star, I guess I should put on my sunglasses and put up my nose. Just kidding. I’m appearing in a new movie, WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW. (You can see me in a couple of movie trailers at www.WhatTheBleep.biz. The site also features an excellent synopsis, reviews, and screening schedule.)

I was asked by the producers to appear at the premiere in March 2004 in Portland, Oregon, to answer questions posed to me by audience members after the screening. I’ll be appearing again at the Los Angeles opening on June 18th and 19th, to do the same. Fans tell me that they enjoyed my sense of humor in the movie (I have the closing lines of the film) and I did have fun being a part of making it.

Being in a movie---going Hollywood as they say---has been a kind of dream fantasy of mine ever since I was a kid. Maybe we all have that fantasy for, after all, movies play a profound role in our lives. I generally enjoyed the experience of being filmed---the production crew was great to work with and the people who made this movie are very competent and highly conscious. 

WHAT THE BLEEP should have a profound effect on our collective consciousness and hopefully will enable this "new age" to become mainstream. The film is both a documentary and a drama combined in an unusual and original way (see Synopsis on www.WhatTheBleep.biz). I really recommend that you see this movie, not just once, but twice or three times, for it has a lot of mind-blowing information in it, posed in interesting and highly visual ways. Even though this is true, it is a movie and it is designed to make you feel, as all good movies should.

(Click here for an interesting review of the movie.)

Posted March 2003

Question from a reader: I am skeptical about believing in anything spiritual. How can you prove God exists?

Answer: I'll shoot straight with you re: God and the universe. You’re right to respond that the questions (What is the source of the quantum wave function that underlies all matter? What is the cause of the big bang? What is the cause of electricity? Why is there something rather than nothing?) don't have answers simply because science at this time has no way to deal with such questions. Science mainly deals with objective materially-based facts and has little to do with concepts that are unprovable through the use of objective experimentation. However, as any scientist will admit, there are certain basic conceptual "objects" that do not fit within this scheme. The quantum wave function is one of these---it is absolutely necessary for the understanding of the physical world---yet it has no physical qualities like mass or charge or momentum or energy at all but is purely a field of probability. Hence is runs exceptional to the whole scheme of science. That doesn't make it God certainly, but it introduces mystery.

Also, try to understand that space and time are not absolute and the notion that they "bend" or are alterable at all, while logical, is extremely difficult to prove experimentally. God cannot be proven, of course, and maybe Satan did cause the big bang, so what? The idea that the Jolly Green Giant caused the big bang may be a joke, but then so what? The idea of God making the big bang has sociological and spiritual implications that fit with people's intuitions, not their reasoning logical minds. The idea that Satan of the Green Giant made the big bang may be an idea, but you would need to go into details as to how and why you think such an idea.

Explanation of one theory by a new theory always involves expanding of the concept, like relativity making time appear as an imaginary spatial dimension, or spacetime as one thing rather than two separable concepts. But quantum physics goes even farther. It indicates that observation or cognition "causes" events to occur in a manner that cannot be predicted by any cause-effect math model. Many have tried to generate such a model and most of these attempts introduce more speculation than they resolve. Hence it is not detrimental to rational thought to accept mystery and attempt to go beyond current scientific thinking. This has been my goal for some time.

I cannot prove the existence of God, but I can experience the awe and mystery and beauty of love and sense the presence of something beyond my materially based thinking. I hope that you can do the same regardless of what you believe. Just don't go on automatic pilot like so many brain-dead scientists who knee-jerk to the tune of "God is dead" and all is mechanical meat. Be an agnostic. Believe as little as you can in anything but try and experience as much as you can of everything.

(For an in-depth exploration of this idea, may I suggest you take a look at my book The Spiritual Universe.)

Posted October 2002

Question from a reader: In your books Matter into Feeling and Mind into Matter you indicate that by ignoring one mental form, a complementary form arises. Does that mean if you ignore the absence of something, then it will be present? Can it also mean "be the effect and the cause will follow"?

Answer: The world appears to each of us through our senses, intuitions, feelings, and thoughts. Any objective measure must include one or more of these subjective qualities. Just as all objective measures show a complementarity---that is the inability to measure simultaneously certain physical attributes (such as the momentum and the position of any object)---a similar complementarity exists within our subjective experiences. Hence we cannot think about and feel something about anything at the same time. Any subjective experience has a form, brought forward by the means we choose to have the experience. (If I choose to feel about a thing, then the feeling form emerges; if I choose to think about a thing, then the thinking form emerges). Subjective experiences can be mapped in space and time, but not all of them are necessarily coordinated in space-time. For example, feelings do not have a necessary space-time coordination---they don't depend on when and where events occur. (They can arise at anytime anywhere.) Hence cause and effect---events that must have space-time coordination---can only refer to subjective experiences that require space-time coordination, such as thoughts and body sensations. When you use your feelings and intuitions, cause and effect have no role. When you use your thoughts or have body sensations, they do.

I have no idea how you can ignore or, for that matter, picture the absence of something. As far as I know whatever you ignore must first be recognized--made into a thought---and then put aside. Like the proverbial statement, Do not think of a pink elephant. Of course you can't do this without first picturing a pink elephant!

Posted May 2002

Question from a reader: In Mind Into Matter, when you refer to emotions (from StarWave, chapter 3, p. 46) you say:

"Hate, for example, is explained as a quantum statistical property of electrons ---and no two electrons will ever exist in the same quantum state. While love, on the other hand, is explained in terms of quantum statistical behavior of photons---and all photons tend to move into the same state if given the chance. Thus, in a physical sense, the phrase "light is love" is more than a metaphor."

Can you say more about the fact that no two electrons will ever exist in the same quantum state and more about the dynamics of light moving into the same state if given the chance?

Answer: I'll have more to say about this in my forthcoming book Matter into Feeling (available July 2002). Here is a brief discussion:

Everything obeys statistical laws. Ordinary (classical) objects that are free of any interaction with each other, will move in such a manner that they eventually fit a curve called the bell-shaped curve. You are familiar with this curve, since, more than likely, your teacher used it to grade you in comparison with other students. This curve describes how likely any object will be found to possess a certain attribute.

For example, suppose you open a barrel of baseballs. Suppose a "normal" (in fact the word normal comes from this curve, it means the center value) baseball has a circumference (C) of 8 inches. Next you simply count how many of them have a 8" C plus or minus .01 inches, for example (I don't know if these numbers are exact). You will find most of them fit this description. You will find that there will be very few baseballs with a 7 inch C and very few with a 9 inch C. Most will have a C between 7.99 and 8.01 inches. Fewer will have circumferences of 7.98 plus or minus .01 inch and about the same number with 8.02" + or - .01". Continuing this way when you plot the number of balls versus the C you will get a bell-shaped curve centered at 8", the normal value.

Quantum objects because of the nonlocal quality they all possess do not fit this curve. They follow either one or the other of the following two statistical laws: (1) they all possess the same attribute or tend to move in such a way that this becomes the case; or (2) they all exclude each other from possessing the same attribute or tend to move in such a way that this becomes the case. I call (1) "loving" because they tend to go into the same state, if given the chance, and (2) hating because they tend to avoid the same state, if given the chance.

For example, suppose there were quantum baseballs, with C being a measurable quantum state of each baseball, and we attempted to measure the C of each ball. For "hating" baseballs, each ball would have its own C and no two of them would ever be found with the same C. For "loving" baseballs, all of them would have exactly the same C.

Electrons behave like "hating" baseballs and photons behave like "loving" baseballs, regardless of the attribute measured, so long as it constitutes a measurable state.

Posted January 2002

Question from a reader: I recall from the first time that I read The Spiritual Universe that right around the time I was reading the chapter on "Resurrection Physics," the announcement was made that the then current scientific thinking was that the universe will continue to expand infinitely, hence, no big crunch. I actually stopped reading the book at that point and have wanted to resume, but have stumbled somewhat at this point.

I was wondering how the new, infinitely expanding universe thinking changes or influences your idea of resurrection physics.

Answer: Things change, including models of the universe. The whole question of the final fate of the universe is by no means a resolved issue. The chapter you read in The Spiritual Universe had mainly to do with the work and model of the big crunch resurrection given by physicist Frank Tipler in his book The Physics of Immortality. You needn't be concerned about whether it is right or not, it is just a model. Current scientific thinking can never be "current" enough as new things are coming into view all of the time. At any rate, I put that chapter in to refer to Tipler's work, not my own thinking, even though at the time I found his ideas interesting. If you read further on, you will see how my ideas go beyond Tipler's model.

My concern remains: how can quantum physics and the human soul be reconciled? Even though my model of the soul refers to a universe that initially expands and finally contracts, little would be needed to take into account the final state of the universe going on forever into expansion. See footnote 1, chapter 6 of The Spiritual Universe. In brief, all that would change is how the wave reflected backward-through-time starts. An open-ended universe, much like an open-ended organ pipe, still has waves reflecting from the open end of the pipe due to a mismatch of the pipe's ending boundary and the open air. I would suggest that even an open-ended universe would behave in a similar manner as far as the quantum waves reflecting from the future backward through time are concerned.

Posted November 1, 2001

Question from a reader: I have just read MIND INTO MATTER, and find it, as you might expect, fascinating and mind-boggling. Of the many questions which come to mind, two stand out:

1. Is it possible AND worthwhile to succinctly summarize the essential insight or insights which you expect a serious reader to assimilate?
2. In your understanding of the "new alchemy", is there a place for "love" as expounded by mystics such as J. Krishnamurti, Nisargadata Maharaj, and Ramana Maharshi?

Answer: Thank you for your email. In MIND INTO MATTER my goal was to show that within your own mind and body lay a majestic story filled with drama, pathos, humor, intelligence, fantasy, and fact. While it is certainly your own story, it is, nevertheless, the story of the entire universe, particularly its own creation, transformation, and ultimate purpose. I showed how this story called "you" unfolds into a panorama of life, literally a "you-niverse." I explored how the basic operations of what I call the new alchemy: thought, sense, feeling, and intuition form and shape the primary material of our conscious and unconscious life. Reshaping this primary material gives rise to the forces that transform the world and ourselves, namely: creation, animation, resistance, vitality, replication, chance, unification, structure, and transformation. The ultimate goal of all this was and is the transmutation of information into matter.

You may consider MIND INTO MATTER to be "BOOK I" as it explores the beginning of what the ancients called the "great work" of new alchemy. That is not where the story ends, however. While MIND INTO MATTER laid out the groundwork of the "great work," much remains to be answered. For example, we might ask How do I use these tools found in MIND INTO MATTER to change myself? And, how do I realize these transformational forces? How do I live a more creative and fruitful spiritual life?

I am currently at work on MATTER INTO FEELING: THE WAVE OF LIFE---BOOK II OF A NEW ALCHEMY OF SCIENCE AND SPIRIT. In it I hope to deal with the questions you raise, including what love is all about and how it fits into the story you call your life. MIND INTO MATTER dealt with the preparation the God-mind goes through to bring that first seed of life into being; MATTER INTO FEELING will deal with the growth and fruition of that seed. You can also expect in the next few years books III and IV in which I will deal with the transformation of feeling into spirit and spirit into mind respectively.

Another reader writes: As you know, for many years it has been found that the time passing in the dream world is very different from the real world. I have a question about this. I had a dream where I saw that I was walking in the street. After a few moments, an automobile halted by my side and some men came out of it. They took me in the automobile by force and then they transferred me in to a prison that was located out of the city. They tied my feet with rope and then one of them held me and another began to thrust a needle in the sole of my feet. At once I began to shout and woke up. When I awoke, I saw that my brother was tapping the sole of my foot with a ball-point pen. It appears that I had never seen any part of this dream before the penpoint tap. This entire dream appears to be the result of the penpoint tap.

Could you please answer this question: What phenomenon causes the difference between the time passing in the dream world and real world? Where can I find more information about this subject?

Answer: The story of the dream you told me is a surprisingly familiar one. The first account of such a "squeezed time" dream (where a blow is delivered to the sleeping person an instant before waking such as the pen-point strike you describe) was reported by Alfred Maury (1817-1892) [Maury, L.F.A. Le someil et les rêves. Paris: Didier et Cie., 1861]. I described this dream in my book, THE DREAMING UNIVERSE, pp 83-85. While there does not seem to be any conclusive theory of such dreams, Maury believed that the whole dream with all of its intricate and lengthy narrative parts, was a flash in the brain that occurred in the interval between the blow and his awakening. He thus came to the conclusion that dreams are very short in actual time with many events squeezed together into that short time interval. Of course we know of stories that supposedly when a person is dying, his whole life flashes before him at the moment of death.

Philosopher Norman Malcolm argues that this is not a conclusive result. The length of time being determined only comes from the description after the fact of the dream. Hence the dreamer may be distorting the history and creating the dream story at the moment he awoke, but because of the way the brain operates, especially upon waking, he believes the story to be a recall of a dream that took place earlier. The major problem in determining the time factor is the reliability of the dreamer him- or herself! The only way we find out about the dream is after the fact. We cannot get inside of the dreamer's brain and watch the dream as it unfolds in spite of all of the neuro-correlates. The dream report may be a grossly amplified story of a flashing of events. During REM periods, such flashes may occur very briefly, perhaps for only a second or two, with varying intensities or brightness. Consequently, most of the REM period may not be visual but may be a process of attempting to correlate the visual information with memory--in other words a kind of thinking or data correlation process. When dreamers are awakened during such a REM period, by an outside stimulus, for example, they are more likely to be awakened during the thinking process and then attempt to remember the visual flash.

But then how do we explain the dream report, and the many cases where upon being awakened by a physical stimulus no such recall occurs? It could just be, for example, that during a fifteen minute REM period, there is a greater likelihood of having short and incident-dense dreams while in five minute REM periods there may be less possibility to have such dreams. In the short REM case, fewer recalls of a "squeezed time" dream would occur. And in fact since few flash dreams occur during such a short REM period, there would be fewer accounts of such dreams. Any external stimuli introduced during the thinking process would also not result in a "squeezed time dream" experience recall.

However, if the stimulus was presented during a flash dream or when it was just about to occur, which would be a rarer case, the whole dream may have indeed passed during the short interval between the penpoint strike and awakening. That would explain the relation between the time awareness of the external stimuli and the dream and would explain your and Maury's dreams.

Finally there is the possibility that the tapping of the pen on the foot of the dreamer caused the dream to occur shortly before the tapping by acting backward through time. There is some evidence that a story or history can only be experienced as it happens if the final act of the story is determined. In quantum physics experiments where the history becomes determined after the final act and can be changed by the final act are called "delayed choice experiments." Backward through time projection or referrals have been reported by Ben Libet who carried out neurophysiological experiments on subjects who had their cortical regions exposed. Libet showed that brain stimulus events could induce or suppress the subject's recall of an experience that happened as much as a half-second before the brain stimulus was applied.

For more information about this phenomenon, see my books MIND INTO MATTER and THE DREAMING UNIVERSE.

Posted September 18, 2001

The following is an email I sent to some friends and readers earlier this week. I would like to share it with you now as we consider the events unfolding nationally and globally.

The War on Violence: Think About It

Like the "war on drugs" that president Reagan declared two or more decades ago, President Bush has declared a "war on violence." Like that previous war, which continues with no end in sight, this war will continue as well. We can’t stop drugs using the warfare vision, can we stop massive acts of violence in the same vision? Think about it.

I began this essay with the above oxymoronic title to indicate to ourselves how harrowing and irrational such a journey into the depths of hell will be. Violence against violence can serve no one in this case. It won’t stop violence any more than Reagan’s "war on drugs" stopped drug use. Why not? Because the enemy is not just someone "out there" on the other side of the world as we presently believe. The enemy can be found in our own thoughts and fears.

It just may be that bin Laden did not orchestrate the devastation against our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (happiness equating, in our minds, with material gains). Don’t misunderstand me. Whether bin Laden is a "war criminal" or not I leave in the hands of world jurisprudence. He may be as bad as we think him to be. But there is a deeper issue here.

Think about it before you begin to lash out against any who ask you to pause and think. And then think the "unthinkable"---that even now peace is the answer and action based on promoting peace and well-being to all of our neighbors, even if they harbor hatred against us, may be the only weapon we really have.

Many of you have not seen how the other, larger half of us really live in this world. I have seen much of it and I can tell you that we in the "Western" part of the world are living our lives out of balance with the rest of the world. The relatively immense wealth that the few of us worldwide enjoy causes more than misery to others; it takes away their will to live and makes them subject to a vision that life in heaven, at the side of some god of their fantasy, will be much better than this life. And they are most likely correct, no matter what comes to them in the afterlife.

Think about it. Think about how desperate your life would need to become before you would consider such an action as taking your own life and in that action punishing as many people as you can by taking their lives with you. Imagine that while this thought of suicide is unthinkable to you, there are people, perhaps numbering in the thousands and maybe even higher, who think this every day of their lives, as their waking day begins and as it ends at night falling to sleep.

These people live everywhere there is a deep poverty of spirit. They live in America, England, France, Israel, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Africa, China, Tibet, and in many other countries. So what can we do about it? Can we "route them out" while leaving the environments that bred them intact? How can we help?

I admit I have no quick answer; I feel as helpless as many of you do. Yet, I feel in my heart that we need to change the way we think and feel about what life is really about---I mean your life---and that perhaps this nightmare of disaster has been provided to wake us up to a new vision of ourselves and of our neighbors.

Think about this: There is one soul here living through each one of us and what happens to any of us affects all of us. Think about it. Those others out there are all you. They are not just your brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, cousins and strangers, but you. Think with compassion. Don’t make the mistake of believing that those who commit suicidal acts of violence are crazy, mad, or insane. Do not think of them as "terrorists." Think of them as people. Think of them as you in the lowest despair you can imagine.

Ask those who we have entrusted to govern us to also engage in extending the hand of help to others right now, even in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We are prepared to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to go to war. Can we find some way to spend half of that, to begin with, to "go to peace." Please think about it—with your hearts and minds, not with your guts and muscle.

Posted September 1, 2001

Here are a couple of interesting questions sent to me by one of my readers:

Q: You spoke about the quantum models having validity, like different tools for different purposes, I believe. Can you speak to the validity--or uses--of each, including string theory?

A: I can't, specifically, because I don't know enough about string theory. My remark has to do with my extended vision of complementarity, sort of like Bohr had, when he extended complementarity to everything from politics to biology and psychology. All theories are models of what seems to be an endlessness of unknowable reality. Each model generally works within the limited frame of experimental investigation available to scientists. All models attempt to go beyond that framework, and usually they run into difficulties as for example in current cosmological models and even quantum theory models such as parallel universes, the Bohm hidden variable model, or the Copenhagen model. Hence each model has limited validity, and the idea of a TOE (theory of everything) seems to still elude us.

Most likely we will never complete the puzzle because all science models make what seems to me to be a faulty assumption: they assume that anything complex and intelligent can be explained by dumber and simpler parts. For example, that consciousness comes from jumping electrons or something smaller, or that particles are made of simpler particles or strings or anything tinier. It may be the other way around, and that matter evolves out of consciousness as described in ancient Indian wisdom.

Q: Is there a vantage point from which all have validity? Or an overarching model which contains them all?

A: I doubt this. My understanding of things tells me that the universe is not rational. That rationality only appears in models that humans make. God cannot be calculated, and spirituality remains endless and unfathomable, deep and mysterious. We will explore more, go deeper, even clone life, live 200 years or more per individual lifetime, see consciousness exist in computer devices, come up with new ways of probing the mind, reach the outer limits of the solar system and even journey to distant stars. But we will never understand the universe completely and we will continually find surprises.

Posted August 1, 2001

I am presenting the following reader's question just as it was written to me:

Q: Hello, I had a brief question on your view on reincarnation. I was born normal then had accident then suffered brain damage. The brain does not register much although once smart. I was a normal person walking across the street and got hit by bicyclist then faculties went blank like the person disappeared and something else is there just a few signals and blankness. How can this happen to a person to just be made blank what is the point of this? Just because I had accident I don't get to have a mind? It could have been just a bump on the head with a few symptoms but no it wiped the whole thing out. Like I was there then I was gone nothing left. I just didn't think this could happen now I have to be like this every day, just blank. Anyway the condition will not get much better. There was a whole person there now they're gone. So just wonder if there is rebirth and how can I just be a normal human being again like everyone else with normal human intelligence and head that isn't brain damaged. A regular human head isn't that a given? Wonder if rebirth will take place and how I can get the "standard issue" brain again like had originally. Also if die with dementia what can happen. Know these are odd questions. Wanted to get Buddhist perspective. Any opinion is helpful.

A: I understand you were "normal" and now there are these blank periods. I can tell you that practicing mindfulness can help you. This involves meditation, just sitting and letting everything pass. Or walking and paying attention to whatever you can focus on, such as your feet on the ground or your arm swing, or the position of your head as you move. When you realize you are missing something during the periods of blankness, are you aware that you are aware of the missing?

My point in all of this is that "you" are not your body's nervous system or brain as I think you now are aware. That essential "you" was not born and will not die. Hence "you" will continue. Just how the sense of "I"--the bodymind awareness--arises in individuals remains a deep mystery. I only know that the personal "I" sense depends a lot on the function of the body and that when the body no longer reflects body awareness to the impersonal "I" the impersonal "I" is freer to roam. Most so-called "normal" people usually live under the illusion that the bodymind "I" is the only "I" they have. When injury occurs, it is necessary to realize that the injured body is not you! You are the prime mover of that body but don't think you are that body.

If you have time to read, take a look at Ram Dass's new book, Still Here. After suffering a stroke he had this to say:

"After the stroke I was in the hospital, and the doctors were referring to me as a 'stroke victim.' They were thinking of me as a brain. I said to them, 'I’m sorry, but what I am is not a material thing.' They all looked at me as if I was crazy.

"In order to bear the stroke, I really had to shift my identity from my ego to my soul, to another plane of consciousness. This is a funny thing, because I also get to honor my body now, but not by identifying with it. The soul watches and honors the body. And the soul doesn’t get strokes."

It appears to me that your intelligence hasn't changed but that your ability to remember things, particularly things that arise on a short time scale, was hampered by the injury. I am not sure about dementia. I assume it means neurological damage particularly evident in the aging brain. Is your "body-you" diagnosed with this? As far as I know, the essential "I" does not suffer from dementia nor any body degeneration. Hence that "I" will pass unencumbered rejoining the soul it has always been.

Posted July 1, 2001

Here is another question from my readers. I think you'll be intrigued by my answer.

Q: In your books, particularly The Spiritual Universe, The Dreaming Universe, and in Mind into Matter you wrote about how an observer's intent works in the world and how it alters an observed event. How does one go about using intent in the macro environment and what happens when another individual, looking at the same event, intends to observe a contrary outcome?

A: Good question! I think the answer lies in:

1. the environment that includes the object observed,
2. how massive the object is, and
3. how often or rapidly you can make the observations.

Let me expand on the above. The thing being observed may be in contact with more than your gaze. In this case it may be buffeted about by the observations of many others, in which case your ability to "intend" the object will not work very well. Nearly every large thing in the world is in contact with many other things. For example, a coffee cup is in contact with the air, the coffee in it, and the continual changes brought on by sound vibrations in the room, and I'm sure many other things as well. Hence it is very hard to muster enough "intent" to juggle it.

Also as the mass of the thing being observed gets large, the effect of "intent" has little impact. The bigger the mass the more often you need to make the observations so that your vigilance results in changing the probabilities significantly.

So where does that leave us? It points to the efficacy of observations of small objects that are close enough to be affected by your "gaze" and not affected by the "gaze" of others. That means primarily your brain and nervous system. Hence in that world within your body your intent can work very well. Also if you are in contact and intimate with another, this can also work well.

When two or more individuals "gaze" at an object with different intents, the effect on the object will largely be determined by the frequency of observations of each observer. The one who gazes more intently meaning more frequently, will drive the object with greater success. If everyone gazes with equal frequency the effect of intent "washes out" and the object will tend to move randomly like bubbles and air molecules do.

Posted June 1, 2001

The following are some questions readers have sent me recently. I thought I’d share my answers here.

Q: Can you define for me a "quantum event"?

A: A quantum event occurs whenever an act of knowing/perception occurs. Usually this takes place when the world presents a scenario of possibilities to consciousness. This presentation continually arises--thus new possibilities are constantly presenting themselves to us. When the quantum event occurs, one of the possibilities is realized while the others are not. Thus the idea you create your reality arises. Before the event, reality consists of overlapping possibilities that taken together are paradoxical and the source of all of our creativity. When the event of consciousness occurs the paradox is resolved and suddenly a single possibility jumps into existence. This takes place whenever you have an idea, for example, or when you suddenly see something new. The world we all see out there has largely been determined by the previous acts of awareness or previous quantum events. However, nothing is frozen in time, so as long as no one puts mind to the world, new possibilities will continually arise. Once anyone puts a mind to it, so that a quantum event occurs, then everyone else will begin to see that event as reality and begin to assume that that event exists out there independently of anyone's consciousness. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There is no out there out there until an in here takes place.

Q: How does group consciousness effect a quantum event?

A: Anyone can be the source of a quantum event. There is only one mind presenting itself in many bodies. Commonality simply means that agreement in that one mind to see in one direction has occurred. While this is powerful and certainly responsible for many impressive occurrences in life such as the current remarkable basketball team play of the Los Angeles Lakers coached by the former Zen philosopher coach of the Chicago Bulls, Phil Jackson, it also can lead to mass hysteria, fear, fashion trends, and keeping up with the Jones's as well as Fascism and blind obedience.

Q: Would you say that your answers above are correct from a quantum scientific literal viewpoint?

A: When it comes to literal science, nothing you or I would say about consciousness or mind can be counted on. We are using the powerful metaphor of quantum physics applied to human consciousness. I believe that above I have stated the quantum view accurately based on current scientific thinking. However, there are other interpretations ranging from parallel worlds in which consciousness enters into every possibility as expressed above to quantum physics has nothing to do with mind.

Posted April 1, 2001

Hi readers and fans of Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, also known as Captain Quantum,

I thought it might be appropriate to open this Bulletin Board to a discussion group format. In other words, let this be the opportunity for you to send in to me any questions or comments you might have regarding my work or my teaching. From time to time I’ll respond to the questions that I feel I can offer insight to and if I don’t, it means I don’t know an answer or I simply don’t have a reply or that no reply is even required. So I thought I would start it off with a question that from time recurs during my workshops, seminars, and lectures.

Q: We seem to be living in a time of acceleration. Many people are talking about our changing times and describe them as unprecedented. Are we in the middle of a shift? Is global consciousness changing?

A: First of all, we’re always in a shift. Things are always changing. Secondly, there are large global changes occurring on a vast time scale, probably hundreds of thousands of years which science is just beginning to have some understanding of. It’s massive when one looks at changes in even tens of years, but we’re talking now about changes in thousands of years and looking for patterns in those changes. It’s remarkable that science has been able to go that far. Yes, there are clear indications that there are cycles and changes, and that these changes have patterns. It seems evident from a certain perspective that these larger changes effect the smaller regions, people and nations, attitudes and beliefs, and all sorts of structures. There seems to be a shifting going on at the local level, at the popular level, at the level of days and hours and minutes and seconds. There are changes going on at the yearly level, and there are large global changes, even universal changes occurring.

What’s happened is: In a very short period of time of only one hundred years there’s been a remarkable quantum leap, a huge jump that’s effected every institution from the most primitive to the most esoteric.

These changes will continue to occur and they will continue to accelerate. The major accelerant, that which is making the acceleration take place, is our technology today. Technology has been created to speed up thinking processes. The speeding up of thinking processes is creating an even greater acceleration in the development of technology. This process is cyclical and is going to continue. There’s no point in hiding or fighting it or trying to go back to the good old days. What’s going to be happening is brand new, exciting, emerging, and transformative. It is new ways of thinking, new ways of being, new ways of spiritual practice, new ways of evoking magic, even shamanic magic in a technical world. All of this is happening, is developing, is continuing to happen. There’s no end in sight.

Now its your turn what’s on your mind? Let me hear from you. And please enjoy this. Have fun with your questions.

Best Wishes,

Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D. AKA Captain Quantum Have Brains / Will Travel San Francisco