A multidisciplinary approach is employed to study informational processes that may occur on subliminal physical (quantum) and subliminal cognitive (unconscious) levels, with a focus on assessing how these processes may be influenced by and in turn exert influence on human concepts and perceptions of information and reality. The unconscious is studied through the concepts developed by Carl Jung. In the study of quantum phenomena, the Copenhagen Interpretation is employed. In the study of depth psychology, archetypes are found to be possible cognitive structures that deal with organising information within the mind. It is suggested that archetypes may have the ability to indirectly but definitively influence aspects of behaviour in and perceptions of reality. It is also suggested that this influence may extend to our innate science forming abilities, thus compromising the notion of scientific objectivity. It is shown that a shift in world views within the physics community may be occurring that places emphasis on information as the fundamental foundation of physical reality. A correlation between Jungian concepts and fundamental concepts in Quantum Physics is highlighted. This correlation is shown to be informational in nature, suggesting that through a study grounded in Information Science, concepts in disparate subjects may be linked. The preliminary research conducted in this investigation shows that while human intervention on both a physical and psychic level may be disruptive to the extent of rendering certain aspects of reality unknowable, the concepts of the Collective Unconscious and Quantum Physics can nonetheless be united to form a deeper understanding regarding the informational structure of universal reality. As a result, it is suggested that this could help towards the formulation of a unified and universal theory of information.
A multidisciplinary approach is employed to study informational processes that may occur on subliminal physical (quantum) and subliminal cognitive (unconscious) levels, with a focus on assessing how these processes may be influenced by and in turn exert influence on human concepts and perceptions of information and reality. The unconscious is studied through the concepts developed by Carl Jung. In the study of quantum phenomena, the Copenhagen Interpretation is employed. In the study of depth psychology, archetypes are found to be possible cognitive structures that deal with organising information within the mind. It is suggested that archetypes may have the ability to indirectly but definitively influence aspects of behaviour in and perceptions of reality. It is also suggested that this influence may extend to our innate science forming abilities, thus compromising the notion of scientific objectivity. It is shown that a shift in world views within the physics community may be occurring that places emphasis on information as the fundamental foundation of physical reality. A correlation between Jungian concepts and fundamental concepts in Quantum Physics is highlighted. This correlation is shown to be informational in nature, suggesting that through a study grounded in Information Science, concepts in disparate subjects may be linked. The preliminary research conducted in this investigation shows that while human intervention on both a physical and psychic level may be disruptive to the extent of rendering certain aspects of reality unknowable, the concepts of the Collective Unconscious and Quantum Physics can nonetheless be united to form a deeper understanding regarding the informational structure of universal reality. As a result, it is suggested that this could help towards the formulation of a unified and universal theory of information.
Most interpretations of quantum theory fail to provide a fundamental, complete, self-consistent account of nature describing physical reality itself, as opposed to merely yielding predictions about results of experiments and observations. A paradigm providing a self-consistent foundation for quantum theory and a description of the reality it refers to, generalized to a worldview, is a Quantum Paradigm, where ‘paradigm' is defined as structure of experiential reality. We assert that the fundamental obstruction in the quest for a quantum paradigm is the assumption of objectivity. The subject-object distinction, drawn within experience, has within the natural sciences degenerated into a dichotomy-an absolute split into separate realms-with scientists adopting the classical paradigm where the object pole of experience ("objective reality") can be studied independently from the subject pole ("the experiencer"), with a presupposition that this procedure yields a fundamental description of nature. In fact, the subjective is often eliminated altogether as a fundamental category, and reduced to an epiphenomenon of objective processes. We claim this objectivity assumption precludes a full comprehension and a paradox-free formulation of quantum theory. By challenging this presupposition, i.e. leaving the question open, a coherent understanding of quantum nature falls naturally into place, providing appropriate foundation for quantum theory and an associated world-view. The resulting Quantum Paradigm is "realist" in the sense that it provides a description of what is actually happening: namely the arena of all happening is Mind or Consciousness-from which mind and matter, subject and object, individual and collective, and time and space co-dependently arise. The subject matter of quantum theory then becomes the fundamental mind-function of distinction ("measurement"), resulting in information and its statistical correlations. The message of quantum mechanics is surprising: the basic components of objects-the particles, electrons, quarks, etc.-cannot be thought of as ‘self-existent'. The reality that they, and hence all objects, are components of is ‘empirical reality', of experience."The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine."-James Jeans Anomalous phenomena such as ESP and psychokinesis, collective consciousness, and synchronicity that are considered impossible in the context of the classical paradigm, fit naturally in, and can in turn provide evidence for the Quantum Paradigm. Spirituality and science are shown to be complementary approaches referring to the same reality, Mind, while each discipline retains its integrity. The Quantum Paradigm can be intellectually comprehended, as well as embodied: one can live in quantum reality. A good metaphor for this is "life as a dream": with no "real" objects as distinguished from experienced objects. Experience is "empty" of self-nature in the Buddhist sense, with everything interconnected and co-dependently arising. Experiencing the world by "embodying the Quantum Paradigm" is transformative, healing, and an antidote to alienation resulting from embodying the classical paradigm. Embodying the Quantum Paradigm and living in the Oneness of all creation can help humanity-increasingly lost in the materialism and individualism reinforced by our embodiment of the classical paradigm-and restore intimate connection and harmony with Spirit, Nature and fellow humans; we need such a transformation to survive and thrive in our technological society.
Finally, the human mindHuman mind faces its own nature. By extending the information-theoretic paradigmParadigminformation-theoretic and participatory, the informational nature of consciousness is uncovered. This gives rise to the very first formal description of consciousness. In attempts to bridge the chasm between the objective and subjective, scientists and philosophers have opened up to the unspeakable. The nature of consciousness, as has been suggested by ancient Eastern and shamanic traditionsShamanic traditions, is necessarily universal and primal. The notion of spirituality is creeping back into science. Moving towards a more empirical analysis, the enigma of intelligence is discussed, arising in decentralized systems and even in inanimate structures. Then, the surprising therapeutic effects of psychedelicsPsychedelics is discovered, next to a myriad of transcendentalTranscendental planes of being, accessible to pure consciousness. Moreover, peer-reviewedPeer-review studies are appearing in the physics literature describing mind-matter interactions in double-slit quantum experiments—a long suspected connection by many pioneers of quantum mechanicsQuantum mechanics. As the cracks in the current edifice of science continually grow, the new information-theoreticInformation-theoretic paradigm is embraced. Beginning with an information ontology, a radicalParticipatory ontology participatory ontologyOntologyparticipatory is hinted at. In essence, the human mindHuman mind is witnessing the most radical paradigm shiftParadigm shift in its own history. The well-served and previously glorious materialistic and reductionistic scientific worldviewWorldviewmaterialistic and reductionistic scientific is yielding to a novel scientific conception of subjective consciousness and objective realityObjective reality—and their unexpected intimate kinship. Level of mathematical formality: low.
In this chapter, I offer some personal reflections about the nature of reality, shaped by my work as a quantum physicist, my experimentation with psychedelic drugs during the 1960s, and my more recent studies of modern cognitive science. Traditionally, questions about the essential nature of reality are asked by philosophers. In the twentieth century, these questions were asked for the first time by scientists as well. During the first three decades of the century, the exploration of the atomic and subatomic world brought physicists in contact with a strange and unexpected reality that shattered the foundations of their worldview and forced them to think in entirely new ways. Quantum physics showed scientists “a new reality,” and from that time on, the nature of reality became a popular subject of discussion not only in philosophy but also in science. In recent decades, cognitive scientists took another radical step in the scientific conception of the nature of reality. They asserted that the features of our ordinary, everyday reality are not features of an independently existing world, but are created in the very process of perception. In a way this generalizes the influence of the act of perception on the perceived object, which was famously analyzed in quantum physics by Werner Heisenberg, to everyday perception. In other words, even our everyday reality is just one of many alternate realities.
Western philosophy and science have a strongly dualistic tradition regarding the mental and physical aspects of reality, which makes it difficult to understand their possible causal relations. In recent debates in cognitive neuroscience it has been common to claim on the basis of neural experiments that conscious experiences are causally inefficacious. At the same time there is much evidence that consciousness does play an important role in guiding behavior. The author explores whether a new way of understanding the causal role of mental states and consciousness could be provided by the ontological interpretation of the quantum theory (Bohm and Hiley, Phys. Rep. 144:323–348, 1987; Bohm and Hiley, The undivided universe: An ontological interpretation of quantum theory. Routledge: London, 1993). This interpretation radically changes our notion of matter by suggesting that a new type of active information plays a causal role at the quantum level of reality. The author thus considers to what extent the alleged causal powers of consciousness involve information, and then moves on to consider whether information in (conscious) mental states can be connected to the information at the level of quantum physics. In this way he sketches how quantum theory might help to throw light upon one of the grand challenges facing the social sciences and the humanities, namely the question of whether consciousness plays any genuine causal role in the physical world.
A number of modern scientists adheres to the point of view that, despite the fact that quantum mechanics does not allow to explain the existence of mental phenomena in the physical world, with the help of its inherent ontological principles and mathematical formalism, it is possible to understand the functioning of consciousness and the unconscious. Based on the analogy between quantum and mental processes, the unconscious can be represented as a superposition of mental states, and consciousness — in the form of decoherence of unconscious experiences. From an evolutionary point of view, consciousness can be considered as a consequence of the accumulation of a sufficient amount of information during the interaction of the organism with the surrounding environment, when the transition from the quantum state of the unconscious to the classical state of consciousness is carried out at the psychic level of being, by analogy with the accumulation of a sufficient amount of information by a quantum system during interaction with the environment, when at the physical level of being the collapse of the wave function. In psychotherapy and psychodiagnostics, one can see an analogy with the measurement process in quantum mechanics and a quantum leap from one mental state to another. However, the analysis of this point of view carried out in the article shows that the parallels between quantum mechanics and psychology today look insufficiently substantiated, since the mathematical model of the psyche, which allows describing human behavior on the basis of the laws of quantum mechanics, has not yet been built, which is why, firstly, the use of quantum-physical terminology in the understanding of mental experience does not rise to the level of scientific theory, remaining a metaphor, and, secondly, quantum psychology has a predictive potential, in contrast to the psychology of the classical type.
Experiments with remote perception and Random Event Generators (REG) performed over the last decades show small but significant anomalous effects. Since these effects seem to be independent of spatial and temporal distance, they appear to be in disagreement with the standard scientific worldview. A very simple explanation of quantum mechanics is presented, rejecting all unjustified claims about the world. A view of mind in agreement with cognitive neuroscience is introduced. It is argued that mind and consciousness are emergent properties of the brain and are understandable without any nonphysical assumptions. A plausible explanation of the results of anomalous experiments, based on the concept of synchronicity, introduced by C.G. Jung and advocated by W. Pauli, is offered. A proof is given that strong correlations should exist between any systems that once interacted. Synchronicity events between parts of the brain and physical objects may be sufficient to explain the results of anomalous experiments. Standard physics is sufficient to understand these phenomena. Motto: It would be most satisfactory if physics and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.