EINSTEIN’S BRAIN, QUANTUM MIND

EINSTEIN’S BRAIN, QUANTUM MIND                                                12.9.08

Keywords:  Einstein, Quantum, Richard Feynman, Wolfgang Pauli, Pauli exclusion principle, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, CBT, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, REBT, Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, Bohr, Heisenberg, John Boccio, Swarthmore College, creativity, intuition, synchronicity, chromodynamic, supersymmetry, quantum loop gravity, string theory.

            For some time I have been querying myself:  how can individual ego be of a different spacetime than other egos?  Conversely:  how can individual mind be connected to other minds? 

            Lately, these questions have been sharpened by my study of physics.  It strikes me (Aha!) that ego exists in a macro universe ruled by Einstein’s general law of relativity but mind exists in a quantum universe of entanglement which allows us to speak with one another. 

            Why differentiate?  A couple of days ago in a seminar the issue of Alzheimer’s Disease was discussed from a number of different perspectives, one of which was the brain and the other being the mind.  In a conversation I had with the presenter I broached the subject of how we each of us have a different spacetime frame from everyone else, that we carry this frame around with us, and that this accounts for our having such an individualized perspective.  On the connectivity side, we each of us can speak with one another, share dreams, and even communicate across space and time at superluminous, faster than light (FTL) speeds that can be accounted for by invoking quantum entanglement as a connectivity principle.  Why not call this Einstein’s Brain, Quantum Mind?

            True, the present-day order of physics continues to grapple with the discontinuity between the macro and the micro universe.  Different hypotheses are salient and a few (million) more are receding.  Why review string theory and super symmetry here?  Or even lapse into quantum loop gravity for that matter?  Let’s keep it simple for the rest of us psychologists—we have a brain that exists in the macro universe which is receptive to quantum connectivity.

            Many psychologists revere determinism.  That would be the causal universe of Freud.  This trends toward CBT and REBT—Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy; note the emphasis on behavior.  Behavior occurs in this world, not the next.  The next world has always reminded me of heaven and hell, the afterlife, Buddhism and karma and reincarnation, the transmigration of souls.  Yet afterlife might be reframed to include the multiverse, multidimensional strata and substrata, and quantum foam. 

            That which can be explained can be determined, and that which cannot—well the Feynmanian wave has not yet collapsed.  Feynman utilized equations that ascribed to non-determinate infinite probability.  Well, not strictly infinite probability, merely the construct that a quantum particle follows every line of probability and every path it might take prior to popping into existence when the wave of probability collapses.  The collapsing wave is a good metaphor for decision-making.  Of all the decisions one might make, the one we make occurs when the wave collapses, or, when we collapse the wave.  If one wants to believe in the principle of free will, and desires to make free will one of the considerations of what it takes to be human, this also satisfies this condition.  So quantum, Feynmanian probability makes us human and the seat of consciousness.

            That skews us to the quantum mind side of things, but it also brings us into “reality.”  Reality might be a construct that we can refer to as “existence” while the quantum mind appears to inhabit “preexistence.”  Potential, preexist, probability—all describe quantum mind.  It is the opposite of rational, logical, causal, and determinist.  Wait, could that be the sound of Jung’s synchronicity? 

            Jung and quantum mind—well let’s think.  Synchronicity was developed by Jung in collaboration with Wolfgang Pauli.  Pauli suggested that, to quote Wikipedia: “The Pauli exclusion principle is a quantum mechanical principle formulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1925. It states that no two identical fermions may occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. A more rigorous statement of this principle is that, for two identical fermions, the total wave function is anti-symmetric. For electrons in a single atom, it states that no two electrons can have the same four quantum numbers, that is, if n, l, and m_l are the same, m_s must be different such that the electrons have opposite spins.”  This is a basic concept in quantum chromomechanics.  Let us ask what this might have to do with Jung.  Pauli and Jung were in deep discussions for many years during one of the most fertile periods of Pauli’s and Jung’s theoretical development.  That is, Pauli was developing the exclusion principle and Jung the principle of synchronicity.  They write to each other for many years and a convergence of physics and psychology emerges.

            Jung had previously entered the world of physics in his article “On Psychic Energy” so he was predisposed to consider psyche from the standpoint of physics.  This attitude bore more fruit when he and Pauli synchronistically came into a relationship through the medium of another Jungian analyst.  Much of this relationship is well known and does not need further adumbration.  The point—Jung and Pauli share the concept of quantum mind.  Synchronicity, an acausal connecting principle, falls into the category of arational, acausal, wholistic, and intuitive.  Intuition, something I explored more fully in  “Intuition and Creativity,” bespeaks a high correlation with creativity.  What if creativity/intuition bespeaks a high correlation with the collapsing wave?  Reality is created by the willful collapsing of the wave by the creative psyche. 

            The artist, to paraphrase, creates reality.  There might be somewhat of a crossover between creation and procreation, especially if one views the works of Apolinaire, the cubist theoretician and poet from a slightly less than askance perspective, which throws a bit of light on the atmosphere in which Freud and Jung developed.  Nonetheless, the act of creation brings new life into the world.  What if that life exists in potentia in another world?  That might fit the definition I am proposing of creativity and the collapsing wave. 

            We are skimming here, which might be taken as surreal or superficial, yet Apolinaire, Freud, Picasso, Jung, and Pauli all have something in common—the act of creation.  My approach is to add Einstein so as to throw a light on psyche which coexists in both “our” world and the netherworld. 

            Einstein places us in a causal universe of laws which ensconce the ego as a relative frame to other egos.  It is the ultimate act of individuality to have an ego.  All reality is viewed from within the frame of the ego and all other reality, and other egos remain relative to that ego.  “I” carry around with “me” a frame of reality.  Out of that frame comes a light cone of probable action.  Action occurs at or slower than the speed of light.  “My” light cone differs from all others.  We don’t notice the difference between “our” and “other” lightcones because we humans share a virtually identical light cone; we live on the planet Earth.  Yet this explanatory principle of physics also accounts for the individuality of the ego and how ego relates causally and rationally to other egos in a deterministic universe.  

            I would never deny the existence of a deterministic universe—I just don’t exclude the possibility of other acausal non-deterministic ones.  This is where I require a quantum universe.  We don’t necessarily require a multiverse, which quantum physics cannot exclude logically.  We just don’t have to have such a messy concept which makes it possible to conceive of every possible wave collapsing to form a different pathway and thereby a different set of probability resulting in an infinite number of universes—the multiverse.  To keep it simple, we only need potential action, not reified infinite action, to account for what I am referring to as the quantum mind.

            The quantum mind, as differentiated from the mind of Einstein, is a mind of relationship, rather than a mind of relativity.  Quantum mind relates everything.  Einstein relates everything relatively.  Quantum mind considers the alternatives while Einstein’s brain considers the macrouniverse that we all believe we live in.  There are many who consider this world of Einstein to be limited.  However, psychology has had difficulty bringing them into the fold.  To consider these perspectives valid, I am invoking quantum mind. 

            Quantum mind does not require acceptance of every different perspective, no matter how we think it might be difficult to apprehend, prove, or suggest.  Quantum mind provides a perspective upon which to rest our perception of these hypothetical constructs.  They might exist in a quantum universe and if so would follow extremely explicit mathematical constructs.  Quantum physics does not accept any deviance from its mathematical constructs.  There is no discussion here.  To include what many would consider far out in the big tent of quantum mind requires subservience to what many believe to be laws of physics.  In other words, by extrapolating into questionable reality, different ideas can be put up against the hard facts of mathematical quantum mechanics or chromodynamic constructs. 

            I am not the one to do this.  I am no quantum mathematician—just ask Dr. John Boccio who taught the class at the Lifelong Learning Center of Swarthmore College in Einstein and also a course in quantum physics to us amateurs.  But I took away from Dr. Boccio the ideas generated in the magic era of Bohr, Pauli, and Heisenberg.  They are mighty and clear.  To bring into their purview psychological ideas, you have to work mighty hard.  That is why I have been so possessed.  What-if questions bombard me.  Analytical psychology accepts the need for non-specific solutions.  Freudian psychology pins everything down.  Both have a place in psychology.  Their children propagate into the future.  It is time for some accounting for both sides now.

THE UNCONSCIOUS AS A QUANTUM PROCESS

 

The other night I had a disturbing dream:  I am sitting at one of 3-4 tables, four to a table.  The king sitting at one of the other tables proclaims:  “and now we will celebrate the thrush” and everyone understands this to be a formal ceremony.  We remain seated as the hall is suddenly flooded with individuals wearing black stocking-cap masks who slit everyone’s throats as we sit there dispassionately awaiting our fate.  I see my vision change as my falls over suddenly, apparently as my own throat is slit, but I feel no pain.

 

A few days later the financial rescue plan of $700bn was proclaimed and the financial collapse of capitalism 2008 began.  I always connected the dream with the free-fall of the market—my dreams are often premonitory.  But now I am conversant with 21^st century physics—early 21^st century—and its roots so I made a different sort of connection of dream with reality.

 

Given that dreams reveal in symbol and narrative reality on very different plateaus; and given that these range from the petty to the profane, the sacred to the pagan, just how do dreams connect with everything?  The deeper question lies in the nature of intuition because dreams are one voice through which intuition expresses itself.

 

It occurs to me that one elegant hypothesis might be to rule out whether or not intuition functions in a quantum multiverse in multidimensions.  Take for instance my disturbing dream.  If dreams like these are synchronistic they will honor events but not according to the law of Humpty Dumpty—entropy.  Time being relative indicates no dream is stuck in time.  Prescience can accompany intuitive leaps, precognition, or synchronicity.  The simplest hypothesis in physics is that of Feynman—a subatomic particle may take any and ALL of the infinitely varied paths no matter the level of probability, until the probability wave collapses—then the probability of the particle becomes one:  P = 1.  A second theorem of quantum chromo dynamics establishes that of entanglement—particles may be entangled with one another and any change in one changes the other taking no time—it is not causal but occurs at FTL speed where FTL stands for Faster Than Light.  Known also as superluminousity, FTL entanglement might be the vehicle of intuition, synchronicity, and dreams of the fall of the king—in this case—King George W. Bush.  Very civilized, but lethal.

 

The big dream often affects many people and C.G. Jung advised us to tell others whenever we had one because many psyches contribute to this expression of the collective unconscious.  So the collective unconscious might be a quantum phenomenon according to this line of reasoning.  The collective unconscious is an expression of the quantum-entangled Psyche.  Psyche with a capital “P” would encompass eternity.  It is timeless.  Prophets speak in these terms.  Historians of any profession see events as interconnected and repetitive.  Why should the sages of psychology think differently?

 

To summarize:

1.  Big dreams are manifestations of a collective Psyche of entangled souls.

2.  Intuition functions in a Fenynmanian manner—there are an infinite number of probabilities until the wave collapses.

3.  The collapse represents our present-day reality.

 

This has implications for creativity.  As my dissertation research suggests, there is a robust covariance between creativity and intuition.  A creative act collapses the wave of potential and leads to further wave functions.  I play a note and other notes suggest themselves.  I play the next note, collapsing the wave and new potential notes present themselves.  Until I stop playing.  Or writing, painting, choreographing, designing . . . .  Creativity is also a quantum function, just like intuition.

 

Well, I’m ready to collapse.  The dream—the king represents the monarchy of a system that will potentially fall.  All dreams are potential—not real.  My head falls over—I have a new angle on things.  Unfortunately I am too dead to take advantage of it.  But—I’m not dead!  I’m dreaming.  Therefore—things are collapsing and we must have a new angle on things because if we don’t the Huns are gathering at the gates and civilization as we know it is DOOMED!  Or something like that.  Add your own interpretation.

Now if I could only figure out what Thrush means.  Maybe Thrush is short for my old advisor, Ranny Thrush.  So is Ranny is behind this mess!?  

MCCAIN AND OBAMA—CAN THEY COLLAPSE THE WAVE?

Can John McCain or Barack Obama master their fate?  Can they collapse the wave?  Both presumptive presidential candidates are the product and the shaper of their times.  Each has a vision and a campaign to project that vision onto present-day socio-political-economic events.  How much are they chosen to play these forces and how much can they shape them?

 Thinking about this, a “man of action” like John McCain will actually be a man of reaction.  So many of the threats he perceives result from his having been raised to think of war as service, a positive force for change, and yet a reaction to threats—real or perceived—to the security of the nation and all its special interests.  McCain is reacting to what surrounds him.  He is not a leader but a politician.  He asks everyone for advice and changes tactics on the fly.  Because of this, a negativity pervades his campaign that seeks to suppress difference, dialog, the vote, and to promote special interests.  We know what he is against far more than what he is for.  He is focused and secure relative to challenges to US authority.  He is unfocused and insecure about managing change and diversity, deferring instead to a laissez-faire market economy.  This comes from an uncreative judgmental, opinionated, and reflexive mentality.  How does this differ from the approach of Barack Obama?

A broad world-view or weltanschauung projects itself onto the cosmology of interactive forces in a dynamic flux of variants and force in the personality of Barack Obama.  There is little emotion, divisive opinionating, or reflexive reaction in the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.  A product of his time, Obama appears to enjoy being “plugged in.”  He is aware of and takes advantage of electronic media because it comprises his universe.  Obama reflects upon the energies of these interactive variables, attempts to order them in unique ways, then strips the abstraction from the conceptual fabric to reveal a clear structure, simply and clearly explicated.  The ideas are complex—their expression is not.

 By showing the public how quickly he and his campaign staff reflect, reshape, and recreate the attacks made upon him the style as well as the substance of the leadership potential Obama possesses are revealed.  The most refreshing thing to me as a political junky and a psychologist is the direct way Obama answers questions.  I can see the thought processes, the logic, the options considered, the stress on understanding, out of which emerges a nuanced and subtle approach to the multi-leveled attempts by the opposition to shape his responses.

It is more than reactivity because all of his responses come from a well thought out sub-structure alloyed with a penchant for clearly communicating what is on his mind.  This is the difficulty opponents have with him.  By understanding the pokes and jabs he feints and thrusts with authority.  Like the Jedi Knights of Lucas-lore, Obama intuitively grasps the largest situations and can move fluidly within this cosmic array in an intelligent manner.

 

In so doing, Barack belies his multi-cultural heritage and his life-experience in the Far East, Kansas, and Hawaii through his dual African-American eyes in the truest sense of the word. Obama is a first-generation African-American.  But, this sensibility is wedded to a Harvard Law education and a University of Chicago professorial focus on the American constitution.

 

If anyone can perform on the highest level with the greatest depth it is Barack Obama.  He thinks in the present with concepts birthed in the cauldron of the genesis of American democracy.  If anything, Obama is a clear counterpart to the wisdom expressed in McCain’s candidacy.  Both have merit.  Both Obama and McCain can perceive the future.  McCain represents a history of independence that has propelled the US into the 21^st century with a focus on domination.  Obama reflects the diversity of his time and the control over electronic media that will be the future heritage of our maturing nation, making it again a leader by example.  Both men are collapsing the wave of probability proclaimed by the quantum theorists to be the mechanics of creation.  It is up to the forces to redistribute themselves—but through whose eyes?

MIND SHAPES PROBABILITY

mind shapes probability

It’s been awhile since the last entry.  Life has intervened.  Time is ever-shifting, a metaphor and a fact.  We are all in a bubble.  Somewhere, sometime, different bubbles intersect and then we share a coherent spacetime with another.  Like the traveler in Einstein’s train, we are moving and not moving at the same time.  When time stands still we may be moving faster than we ever have, or so slowly it seems the event horizon stretches to beyond the blue horizon.

 The questions I have raised in this blog are speculative and limited.  Mathematics is the new language of science.  Rolled-up dimensions in a super-symmetric Calabi-Tau three-fold cannot be observed.  So I content myself with star gazing.  Luckily there is no dearth of images downloaded from earth-bound and satellite observation platforms (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/).  I can almost make out in the rain bands of our hurricanes patterns similar to galaxies shaped by forces I can only imagine.  My mind wants to see correlations between rain bands and an ego sending energy out into multidimensional spacetime.  Will the force of mind coalesce into droplets of intense focused consciously created reality?  Will what I think collapse waves of quantum energy, creating a world because I can think it?  Was Descartes correct?  This puts a spin on creativity.  Up till now I believed creativity took pre-existing elements and reshaped them into new patterns.  Why stop there? Living in a universe both macro and micro, should not even a whiff of suspicion be given to probability, a kind of Feynmanian exploration of the infinite mathematical chances a subatomic particle can enter/re-enter our universe?

What if mind shapes probability?  Just see any kung fu movie, watch any basketball game, listen to any music, look at any painting, photograph, dance, and the It (Das Es—Freud’s concept of the id) is projected onto it. We see what we want to, and the patterns emerge.  Consciousness alerts us to potential intuitively.  Is this mathematical?  It is like saying action consists of organized macroparticles, that we can “play ball” indicates a playful balance between the ball and all the tricks the hitters, runners, fielders, pitchers and catchers can do with it.  How else do you spell “momentum?”  Control is only part of momentum.  Fielding a ball is too complex for simple models—the metaphor forces break-downs when too many variables come into play and analogies no longer describe.  But mathematics may provide a way through if there is a computer fast enough to compute all the variables.  Why is it a great player must first learn to control the forces but must stop thinking to produce the best play?  As if conscious behavior can only take us so far.  To perform on the highest level an athlete or an artist may find themselves a small part of a larger energy that has the momentum to carry them along.  At this point we cannot as shapers of destiny change more than our relation to the forces.  By setting up energy, the actor shapes a continuum.  By riding a wave, a surfboarder becomes the wave.

ISE, BRANE and M-THEORY: ISE: I CHING-SYNCHRONICITY-ENTANGLEMENT

ISE, BRANE and M-THEORY
ISE: I CHING-SYNCHRONICITY-ENTANGLEMENT
By Michael Moss, Ph.D.

I have been searching for a proper metaphor. Psychology as a science; that’s one metaphor. Psychology as an art; that’s another. Or as a metaphysical spiritual quest. Or, or, or, . . . And on and on and on. I wrote a dissertation to break ground on this subject. Science got me to the point of realizing that my hypotheses are testable. Through hypothesis testing and statistics, I could state rather significantly (using stat) that creativity and intuition are pretty much the same thing. But now it is time for a further exploration that is more philosophical and ideational, and less scientific and correlational. Not to say I feel we should shy away from being scientific. Just that it is important to include science in a different metaphor that supersedes that of science. What kind of metaphor might that resemble?
Brane Theory: a sensibility built upon a structure suggested by physics. A what-if quest for truth independent of human intelligence. Mind as matter, energy, multiverse, relativity, spacetime, quantum mechanics, string theory, M-theory, brane theory. Putting together eastern mysticism, archaic methodology and Jungian synchronicity. Inclusive of ISE: I Ching-Synchronicity Entanglement.
Let’s define terms. Observe human behavior and we see a highly valid, both internally and externally, modus operandi, which is founded upon a century of psychoanalytic, behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, sociological, and anthropological verities. It is time to look beyond psyche and spirit. To balance all these disparate elements, forces, and values, a setting within something more substantial makes inherent sense to me. I ask, why not set a new way of thinking in a framework suggestive of present-day physics, just as Jung did when he was analyzing Wolfgang Pauli, a major quantum mechanics physicist? Many of Jung’s concepts come from physics, both quantum and relativity physics. Jung uses energy, action at a distance, functionality, and mysticism--ideas current in his generation--in holistic, intuitive patterns. This is why I was originally attracted to Jung’s way of thinking. It resonates with my own way of thinking. But Jung, limited as are we all by the time within which he lived, can only be just so relevant to today’s world. Einstein lived in a relativistic reality and subjected it to the most exquisite analysis to arrive at a mathematically constant symbiosis of where we are relative to where everything else is. Perhaps it is someone else’s turn to attempt to amalgamate current streams of consciousness relevant to ideas framed by current thinking in disparate realms.
Today one of the latest theories in physics has to do with multi-dimensions. String theory or M-Theory posits more than the usual number of dimensions, I.e., more than the 3+1 dimensions. We experience life in a universe that is 4-dimensional: 3-dimensional plus the dimension of time. String theory mathematically posits more than that. We live in a 10 dimensional or an 11 dimensional universe--9 or 10 spatial dimensions plus the dimension of time. The 10 dimensional universe has 4 normal dimensions plus 6 other tiny dimesnions we can’t see. Mtheory wants to say there are branes that are 11 dimensionsl. They are like mem-branes--branes for short. So we live in an 11 dimensional brane, but only see 4 of them--the rest are too tiny, or we don’t know how to see them so we just think of the usual 3+1 dimensions.
Upon reading into physics, I find the metaphor of branes to mean something applicable to psychology. Branes are mathematical examples of physics, but it seems they are similar to brains. A brane is a system of dimensions. There might be more than three dimensions plus the dimension of time in the brane within which we live. A brane can exist, sequestering a set number of dimensions, but influenced by other dimensions that are part of an overall bulk. In the bulk exist branes which follow rules of physics different from our own brane. Think of each person as a brane living in a bulk, influenced by other branes. Each of us lives in our own brane.
Einstein might see this in terms of frames. Each frame is personal and relative to every other frame. Within a frame is a spacetime that is relative to that of another frame. We each of us live in narcissistic, self-centered frames that at lower levels of consciousness relate only selfishly to other branes. But what if our brane is part of a bulk? Then we see other frames relativistically as different but equally valid. What if each frame is contained in a brane and there are different, other dimensional branes to relate to? Then each brane is influenced by forces that interact, connecting the branes, relating them one to another in a relativistic, causal manner.
The brain has segments that interact one with another. Through biochemistry, forces spread throughout the body, coordinated more or less by the central nervous system. Each of these segments relates as a frame to another frame. Complex theory (Jung) breaks down the segments into less conscious, but fully functional psychological points of view. When someone becomes less conscious, that is when a complex assumes control. Whether we call it acting out, passion, psychotic, or unconscious, different points of view/different relativistic universes collide, all within each of us, and something takes control. That center of control might be better conceived as a brane within the brain, following its own laws, in its own dimensions, communicating across the bulk to other branes, influenced by other branes. If a brane is similar to a complex, then the bulk contains all these branes and brains.
What if each brane acts not only relativistically but also through entanglement? Is the bulk somehow coordinated itself so that everything within the bulk is not only interacting relative to everything else in the bulk but is also acting at a distance? That is my surmise. Other ways of describing such “spooky action at a distance” as Einstein once described it include ancient psychological manners of thinking. Let’s include the eastern way of thinking in this mix, specifically the I Ching. According to the I Ching everything is related, not causally, but simultaneously. By using the three coins or the 50 yarrow-stalks to see what the current orientation of the universe happens to be, and by asking a question of the oracle to see how that relates to our particular orientation, people are relating across the bulk, seeing other branes, and relating to how other people relate to the bulk. This is the first principle.
A different principle, that of sychronicity, describes I Chingness in a 20th c. psychological way. Think of synchronicity as acausal and you can see how Jung was influenced by Pauli. Quantum theory describes action at a distance, i.e., entanglement, which I somehow correlates with synchronicity. Something over there is connected to something over here and somehow interacts simultaneously with that something over here. A mother wakes up with a dream of her dieing mother and finds out her mother passed away at the time of the dream. A brane over there acausally relates to a brane over here. Or if two or more coincidences appear to have a meaningful connection, Jung said that was a synchronistic event. The event puts more than one event together. One frame and another and another relate simultaneously “at a distance.” They come from different perspectives, but each, valid internally, is valid externally as well. Frames are part of a whole brane and interact across the bulk with other frames and branes. We, that is, the frame within our brane, have relatively different perspectives and time values from that of other frames in the brane. We are relatively heavy, full of energy, and affect other frames synchronistically.
The third prototype, entanglement, furthers discussion in the sense that what occurred simultaneously in one frame continues to connect, even if found across the bulk in different frames. There is an acausal, quantum connection. Entangled particles interact instantaneously as if they are the same particle. They might have started I the same place at the same time, but drifted apart until they cannot causally communicate because they are farther apart than the distance covered by the speed of light. A change to one particle changes the other faster than the speed of light. Sounds like the I Ching and synchronicity to me. All things relate to all other things are different reflections of the same thing, something described by myself as ISE--I Ching-Synchronicity-Entanglement--not just causally, acausally, and simultaneously.
As a psychologist, I observe this every day. When I go to work, every person operates or functions within their own frame. Each frame relates to every other frame relativistically. I have a point of view which if I express it verbally or nonverbal can mysteriously form within the mind of another person so that they can relate to my point of view. Granted, most of this is one narcissistic person talking to another, but relatively, each person has a frame of mind, literally existing in spacetime relative to every other frame of mind, frame of reference, FRAME. My work consists of helping people talk to each other, helping different parts of each person to talk to each other, and to help all of these relate not just relativistically, but quantumly, and synchronistically. Call it meaning making, creative, or intuitive, if I am in tune with another person, I can tune them up. We can get on the same page, speak the same language, see through each other’s eyes, step into each others’ shoes. My spirit and their spirit have spiritual intercourse. My culture and their culture can either have a culture war or a culture peace. We can conflict, resolve conflicts, be stubborn and resist change, or be change agents. Call it what you will, this psychological action at a distance is similar to multidimensionality, branes, and the bulk. If I think about it mathematically, a simple equation emerges from the chaos of existence: M-theory.
As I understand M-theory, in its present manifestation, everything is vibrating. Overtones of vibrations form matter, energy, spirit, and mind. Physicists might shudder to see how distorted I am making M-theory’s clarity of mathematical reality, but M-theory does not seem to me less than all inclusive both of spacetime, quantum reality, and what we humans call religion. Leaving God out of the equation is both unpsychological and unrealistic. We can’t see God, but we can see God’s effects. Moving on, God is the ultimate spiritual principle that includes omniscience, omnipotence, and ultimate reality. Dead or alive, God speaks. It is not to diminish God that I bring up such essence. God is a perfectly ordinary way of perceiving our world from the perspective of the entirety of existence. We hang our hat on God. God is. Why avoid an externally and internally valid principle of action at a distance? Einstein pointed out that the old man, the ultimate principality of the soul, was the relative nature of existence. But God belongs to all of us, no matter the name of God, and the here and now, the afterlife, includes the multiverse. God is there for a reason but the meaning of God appears to have something more to do with the descriptive nature of the concept. No one can tell a scientist that God can be proved. No religious person can tell me anything more than it is a question of faith. No psychologist can state that behavior, insight, and dynamic forces interact according to laws we understand. In fact, the limitations of all of the above is driving me in my own search for meaning, a quest I have been on for some time, energized by exploration into mysteries of personality, art, and being a part of something bigger than myself. If that’s not Godlike, or natural, then what is it?
For me, it is natural to think big. Everything relates to everything else. Everything is realative. How it does so is an unending source of wonder. How I feel has more to do with the exceptional friends I have, the music that I play, the compositions that I write, and the beyond thought experience of being plugged in when I abandon my ego to relate artistically to another, and another, and a group of others. Then I can see the connection. Then I can do something that expresses the whole and the whole talks back. If we are a part of an entity, then the entity contains everything in it not just in a physical way but in a mental way. We are all mental. Not just crazy mental, but mindful mental. And that mind is best described by M-theory, ISE, and will be described better in the future after we distance ourselves a bit more from the caves, from primordial unconsciousness, from believing we should physically, emotionally, and demogogically control others. It might take more work, but we can do it. We can all plug in, entangle, synchronize.

Are we living in a psychic universe?

Recently, I have been looking at “Atom and Archetype, The Pauli/Jung Letters 1932—1958.” Revolving around archetype and physics, the two develop a way into the psyche that proceeds through what Pauli refers to as microphysics, the physics of subatomic particles, more generally known today as quantum physics or quantum mechanics. Pauli founded several significant principles of quantum physics, and he is well on his way to inscribing his signature into the book of archetypal, analytical psychology in this tome. The most interesting aspect is the concentration almost exclusively on the intuitive nature, rather than the physical nature, when they approach the subject of psyche. Pauli goes toward Jung and Jung develops wonderful ideas, the most radical of which being that of synchronicity. They deliberately eschew a focus on the microphysics which is Pauli’s area of expertise. This concentration on alchemy, psychopomp, constellation of the archetypes, figures in dreams representing the self—radioactivity (Pauli)—the light and the dark animus, and other dream figures, most significantly Pauli’s stranger does not elucidate the calculus of the quantum world. They elaborate more on the development of alchemy, astrology, and ignore 20th c. science. This is both a shame and an opening. It is a shame because a great opportunity is missed to ground the psyche in the known experimental world of quantum mechanics and all that follows, and it is an opening because others are given the roadmap to follow so as to explore this unknown territory.
What is elevated is less experiment and more intuition. The logical nature of science is reduced to metaphor. Radioactivity becomes the 20th c. metaphor, just like the steam engine, the circulation of the alchemists, and the conjunctions of the planets were metaphorical expressions of projected psyche. What is left out is a hypothetical deductive approach to the confluence of psyche and physics, what Jung refers to as psychoid. Energy becomes psychic energy. But psychic energy does not have more than an allegorical relationship to energy equaling mass times the speed of light squared (Einstein), or quantum energy. This is what needs to be explored in the 21st c. The temptation is to make more metaphors. The goal ought to be to ground psychology—the study of psyche—in physics, and to relate physics to psychology.
Thankfully, Jung and Pauli make amazing progress in the area of analytic psychology. Jung completes an experiment utilizing astrology to support the concept of synchronicity which still holds up, partially due to Pauli’s suggestions along the way for an experimental design and statistical analysis that remains internally and externally valid and reliable according to the rules of scientific investigation. As a cornerstone for further study, the synchronicity analysis is remarkable. My own work in creativity and intuition follows this model—statistically, intuition covaries with creativity to a very high degree of significance. If you’re interested, refer to my doctoral dissertation (Moss, 1991, University of Wisconsin-Madison). The movement now ought to be, from my perspective, toward further supporting synchronicity in the realm of science, specifically by following the rules of the mind as they relate to extremely clear rules of quantum mechanics. Number should become a portal to consciousness. Perhaps Einstein’s Old One is really a mathematician.

Brain/Mind/Collapsing Waves-R

Brain/Mind/Collapsing Waves-R
Where is my mind? Organs (heart, stomach), seat of consciousness (pineal gland), parts of or all of the brain, brain and central nervous system (CNS), embodied or disembodied in an aura—too may options. Too many philosophers. Not enough science. Too much religion—not enough spirit. Too black and white—no color, no emotion, too much emotion. So—everything is relative. Mind and the hologram. Memory is a hologram. . . really, REALLY loose.
A part of me craves order, a part disorder, a part chaos. Something about life and death. Where am I going with all of this?
Let’s change the subtext. I dismiss causality. Causality is a useful construct—no more. Causality produces pollution—we really ought to consider cleaning up our act before we destroy the only platform our life-form currently inhabits.
Life is not conscious, but some life forms appear to be more conscious than others. Until the Turing solution has been attained by a non-organic machine—read computer—we seem to be talking to ourselves. What if we can sense others at a distance, something described by Einstein when countering Bohr’s quantum theory of entanglement, calling it “spooky.” The Old One does not throw dice he believed. But quantum mechanics uses mathematical models that perfectly describe “spooky action at a distance.” Entanglement, the physical principle of spookiness, actually resolves one of psychologist C.G. Jung’s hypotheses, that of synchronicity.
Synchronicity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity) was born out of Jung’s interaction with a major player in the early gestation of quantum theory, the progenitor of the exclusion principle, Wolfgang Pauli (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle). Pauli was analyzed by C.G. Jung. His dreams are a fundamental element in part of Jung’s Collected Works, “Psychology and Alchemy” as well as “The Analysis of Dreams.” Their commonality lay in the quizzical equivalence of quantum physics and depth psychology and gestated Jung’s & Pauli’s principle of synchronicity.
Jung analyzes Pauli’s dream of the cosmological clock in a metaphorical/symbolic rather than in acausal manner. This an appropriate response to the unconscious of causal quantum theorist Wolfgang Pauli to take. Jung develops an acausal theory of personality—psychological type—using the acausal principle of synchronicity that might be considered a direct extension of quantum theory to describe the intuitive function.
To sum up the theory of psychological type (http://www.xs4all.nl/~lange01/L-R/pdfs/uk-b-jungsynchronicity.pdf) (Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types), there are two logical and judgmental orientations to reality—Thinking and Feeling, two acausal perceptual psychological orientations to reality that are not judgmental—Sensation and Intuition, along with external-extraverted or internal-introverted attitudes. Much research, measurement, and hypothesis testing examines scientific principles of psychological type. My doctoral dissertation (Intuition and Creativity, Moss, 1991) supports covariation of Intuition and creativity. Using the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI), the Singer-Loomis Inventory of Personality (SLIP), and a test of creativity by Davis (Multidimensional Analysis of a Personality-Based Test of Creative Potential, Gary A. Davis, Michael J. Subkoviak, Journal of Educational Measurement, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring, 1975), pp. 37-43), on a large population, my research extends Jung’s theory—if you are intuitive you tend to be creative, and vice versa.
Taking it a step further, synchronicity describes phenomena revealed in the pre-psychological theory of astrology in Jung’s clearly significant study. Astrology—being utilized by intuitive people to ascribe personality variables and potential action to alignment of celestial objects—supports synchronicity. To define it, Jung states synchronicity is not causal, not deterministic—sound familiar? Quantum mechanics is not causal. It is not deterministic. If synchronicity is defined as “an acausal meaningful event,” it lifts pure chance to a level including meaning. Jung and Pauli—synchronicity and the exclusion principle—both emerge from principles of physics and are mathematically verifiable.
Let me take this reasoning a step farther. Spacetime is the universe our body and our brains occupy. Our individuality can be explained by the individual frame occupied by each brain. Your spacetime and mine coexist but are relative to one another. We communicate through the mind.
Mind and matter, mind and logic, mind and acausal meaningful “coincidence:” is mind a quantum apperception of a brain situated in spacetime? Following the hypothetical-deductive model, the null hypotheses would be:
mind does not function according to quantum states.
Mind does not collapse probability waves as described clearly by Feynman.
Brain is not an organ specifically organized to collapse probability waves, inducing mind.
We are not all connected by entanglement.
We cannot apperceive non-local events across superluminous and extreme distances as they occur.
We cannot apperceive events before they occur.
Time does not strictly follow the arrow of time as apperceived by the mind in the form of dreams, visions, psychotic states, paranoid delusions, schizophrenic experience of living dead, communication through teeth of messages from people on Mars, or seers and prophets cannot see into the future.
If the null hypotheses can be proved, none of the above hypotheses stand. It seems to me that it is time to take this project on.
To put it directly, I posit the following revolutionary principle: brain collapses waves inducing mind. Further, if the brain didn’t exist, the mind would have had to invent it.
I am building: there can be a substantive theory of quantum mind. What would it mean as a theory of psychology? Can a theory of quantum psychology make sense in practice? Could it make predictions? Could these predictions be verified? THAT is when things get interesting.

“Black Hole/White Hole” and Continuous Creation
You know what a black hole is if you’re aware of physics in the 20th/21st c. Think heavy; so heavy light bends because space-time distorts. At the intense power of gravity induced by a black hole, light gets sucked in--as does any matter--and even though photons continue to go in a straight line, the space-time continuum becomes more like a big, sucking sound that deforms the line so photons go around in a circle and can’t get out. No light=>blackness.
For some time physicists Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose considered the option of what happens in the very center of the tearing vortex of a super massive black hole (BH). After some development, they developed the concept of the suspension of the laws of the universe as we know it—in the formation of a “singularity.” In July, 2004, the $5 bet Hawking and Kip Thorne of Caltech made w/ another prominent physicist, John Preskill, also of Caltech, had to be conceded when Hawking changed his position about Hawking radiation and the inability of a black hole to emit information, thus reinstating the laws of physics, even in what he once described as a singularity. Black holes are modeled after string theory, and a black hole has become a “giant tangle of strings (New Scientist, 14 July, 2004).” In fact, the Hawking radiation emitted by this “fuzzball” does contain information about the insides of a black hole (New Scientist print edition, 13 March, 2004).
What does this mean? Einstein’s precious insights do not require abandonment in the infinity of a singularity. Consider the BH without a singularity. Matter/photons become stripped of their structure and thus entropy is increased, unlike like what must have occurred in the big bang. The miracle of extremely higher entropy makes possible the viability of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. So black holes increase entropy.
But nothing escapes, so through Hawking radiation some energy is released, increasing entropy in the surround of the BH. However, something else is going on and it is not subtle. Mammoth charged particles spit out the poles of the rapidly revolving BH which smash into earth’s atmosphere—they have been traced to super massive black holes that drive the heart of our galaxy, as well as companion galaxies in Andromeda. Called gamma “rays,” only a large multiple of the gravitational fields wielded by millions of stars devoured by black holes in the center of a galaxy could generate such highly charged particles. Further, great jets of energy escape from the poles of galactic centers’ very cold black holes. Why can such energy of such high entropy charge space around them? And what is the effect of this output from what has been described as the most supremely efficient machine in the universe? Star formation. Energy so huge creates stars. High entropy reproduces new stars by the release of high entropic energy from a BH. What do I mean-high entropy?
The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that organization of matter can be described mathematically. The higher the organization the higher the entropy. Life is disordered compared with the simplicity found when all matter becomes similar to all other matter. So when a highly organized, but from the standpoint of entropy chaotic, object falls into a BH, it gains entropy as not only its composition disorganizes when the molecules separate in the intense tidal forces which rip them apart, the molecules then lose their electrons as they ionize, the nucleus of the atom rips apart, breaking into subatomic particles—quarks, mesons, bosons, muons, antiparticles—down to quantum interactive subatomic particles of increasingly intense energy as they approach the planck length at the center of the BH. Entropy increases. (See link for more complete explanation of entropy: http://www.entropylaw.com/) But do they get out?
Forgive me for being speculative, but here’s where the amateur physicist in me begins to stretch out. You may break out into a sweat as I destroy mathematical verity as we know it. But I’m having fun. In fact, how I arrived at these concepts was artistically driven.
Last year (2006—2007) I composed “Black Hole,” a musical realization of what I thought happens when someone falls into a BH. An 8-movement piece, I start out with a ¾ waltz—think Richard Strauss in the approach to the Space station in “2001, A Space Odyssey.” In the 2nd movement we engage in 6/8 to double it up, then multiply meter in the Indian tabla tradition to a fast 4/4 as we accelerate in movement III into a free piece in movement IV within the event horizon beyond which nothing escapes—not even photons. Crazy energy liberated by the disintegration of matter increases the degree of involvement in multi-dimensional phenomena described by string theory. I surmise the following: stripped-down subatomic particles near what would be the singularity accelerate to the 11th dimension—the 11 dimensions are posited by a branch of superstring theory called M theory. My creative leap states in the hypothetical-deductive language (which aims to disprove what is posited and if it cannot be statistically disproved—the hypothesis stands—because the null hypothesis failed) the following null hypotheses:
I. there is no a white hole in the place a singularity once was said to occupy;
II. there is not enough energy to raise subatomic particles obeying laws of quantum physics to increase multidimensionality to the 11th dimension;
III. the laws governing spacetime are not relativized in the 11th dimension;
IV. in the 11th dimension spacetime does not disappear;
V. 11th dimensional strings are not bound by gravity: a) gravitons, b) loop quantum gravity;
VI. Strings occupying 11 dimensions are not transparent to gravity;
VII. Strings are not expelled at FTL superluminous speeds (i.e., FTL: faster than light) along polar lines of force of the spinning BH;
VIII. energy does not collapse quantum particles at increasing distances from the event horizon;
IX. matter is not converted from energy according to the laws of physics as promulgated by Einstein as quantum particles condense at the highest vibrational energies of superstrings;
X. Spacetime is not reversed;
XI. Low entropic strings do not reenter the galactic quadrant.
Musically, this solves a problem I had--it was depressing to fall into a BH and get torn apart without a creative process restoring this energy to the universe. So I developed a theory—the 11 hypotheses above—and came up with a hopeful synthesis. In the final movement—after quantum foam—the themes are played backwards—IIIIII—and layered one on top of the other in an Ivesian counterpositional deconstruction ending in a final declarative chord. Instead of death and disintegration there is death and rebirth—on a cosmological scale. I call this continuous creation.
Naturally, not being a mathematician or a physicist, data cannot be processed by myself to disprove any or all of the above null hypotheses, but as a composer I’ve achieve my purpose—I hope you like “Black Hole.”
“Black Hole” is performed by Louisa Strous Boiman (violin), Ralph Denzer (trumpet, keyboard), Dan Scholnick (tabla), and myself, Michael Moss (tenor and soprano saxophones, Bb clarinet, bass clarinet, khean (from Thailand)—the group PRO VISO. It is to be available soon on 4th Stream Records.

Free Life Communication: Web 2.0

I’m naming my blog after the ‘70s NYC (New York City) musicians’ cooperative I became president of because the spirit of creative collaboration and the lowering of entropy through the creative use of minimal resources liberated/freed the maximum amount of positive energy. Through the music we communicated a message that you needed positive energy to create a new healing message so as to heal old wounds and make people whole. My objective with this blog is to throw out ideas and to invite comment that is positive and constructive to initiate debate over thoughts and reflections on a wide range of topics. We will communicate and liberate energy that will delimit life. Thus Free, Life, Communication: FLC, the coop, was founded by NYC musicians wanting to play “the music,” not to make money, but to explore new compositional and expressive concepts. It evolved as an organization, then suffered a decline; in its the time the loft jazz movement expanded until loft jazz in NYC produced several loft jazz festivals. Many “unknown” artists found a platform to explore areas that were non-commercial, and known artists were able to expand their concepts. I was able to produce a number of records as a part of a larger “indie” movement on my own record label—4th Stream Records, and founded my own publishing company—ERG Publishing Company. Now I want to reproduce the feeling of involvement but this time through the larger medium of public participation made possible by the net. So, if anything stimulates reflection and creative process overtakes mundane productivity as a result of anything I write—join the movement! And comment!