20. SCIENCE AND HUMAN
POSSIBILITY

WE’VE CONSTRUCTED THIS EDIFICE CALLED WESTERN SCIENCE, THAT HAPPENS TO BE GOOD AT A FEW THINGS LIKE CT IMAGING OR GUIDING SATELLITES OR DESIGNING NUCLEAR REACTORS, BUT IT DOESN’T MEAN WE REALLY UNDERSTAND THE WORLD AT ALL.
– Brian Arthur

On the last morning before we all departed Pari, I had breakfast with Jeffrey Tollaksen, chair of the Physics, Computational Sciences, and Engineering Department at Chapman University, and his wife, Jayne. We talked about the work he and Yakir were coleading at Chapman on the reformulation of quantum mechanics, which was beginning to provide a very different picture of the nature of time. The Economist characterized this body of work by saying, “The good news is reality exists. The bad is it’s even stranger than people thought.”

I told them of my continuing exploration of extraordinary human functioning, particularly the capacity, individually and collectively, for accessing tacit knowing, leading to the emergence of new realities – discovery, creation, renewal, and transformation.

It turned out that Jeff knew all of the people who had helped guide me over the years, including Willis Harman of Stanford Research Institute; Larry Dossey, a medical doctor I had met in the 1980s; Rupert Sheldrake, a British biologist I had worked with in London during the Shell years; and Francisco Varela, a professor of cognitive science at the École Polytechnique in Paris, whose work Jeff knew very well.

We talked at length about the frontier scientists who had followed in Bohm’s footsteps, developing Bohm’s theories and proving new ones. Jeff also told me about one of Bohm’s colleagues whom he knew very well, Brian Josephson, the Welsh physicist who had become a Nobel Prize laureate at thirty-three years of age. Josephson was one of the better-known scientists who had studied the practical effects of Bell’s Theorem of quantum nonlocality. He was now a retired professor at the University of Cambridge where he served as head of the Mind-Matter Unification Project in the Theory of Condensed Matter research group.

Josephson, Jeff said, had adopted the guiding principle, nullius in verba (take nobody’s word), saying that if scientists as a whole denounce an idea, that should not necessarily be taken as proof that the idea is wrong; rather, one should examine carefully the grounds for that opinion and judge how well it stands up to detailed scrutiny. Josephson had written specifically on the work of Bell, demonstrating the existence of direct interconnections between spatially separated effects. Josephson’s thesis was that Bell’s Theorem may be put to use in very real, concrete, and practical terms. The existence of remote influences is suggested directly by experiments on phenomena such as telepathy (the direct connection of one mind with another) and psychokinesis (the direct influence of mind on matter), both of which are examples of extraordinary human functioning.

Jeff said both of these phenomena are often disregarded by orthodox science, but that the recent publications of important studies are causing these scientists to rethink their position. He suggested that I begin my further inquiry by contacting Robert G. Jahn, the Dean Emeritus of Princeton School of Engineering. He said he knew Bob Jahn well; that there was no more respected authority in the field than him; and that, in fact, he and Jayne had recently been in contact with Jahn and his research colleague, Brenda Dunne. Jeff gave me Jahn’s coordinates, and that’s where I began my final stage of exploring the state that Bohm, Varela, and all the others had described to me – “the state where we can connect deeply with others and doors open.”

I left Pari after my breakfast conversation with Jeff and Jayne and drove to Florence where I spent the night before my flight home. I sat in my hotel room, reflecting on all that had occurred during the past several days. I committed to revisiting all my old research notes and books that informed my conviction that we live in an interconnected world and to contact Bob Jahn and Brenda Dunne – both of which I did immediately upon returning to my home in Vermont.

As I reflected on my experience in Pari, I was struck by the quality of conversation we had enjoyed there. Here was a collection of the most advanced minds in science; yet their presentations on some of the most complex and perplexing issues in modern physics were full of passion and expression – lyrical, like beautiful music, as Andrew had said. I was reminded of what Brian had said to us at Xerox PARC: “I’ve seen many, many things that I could not explain by … rational means.” He said of science: “We don’t know anything fundamental … it’s a conceit to say science understands. It doesn’t. It starts with a few magical unknowns. It starts with the unknown and labels part of it and knots a few strings below that and then hangs on to these strings – but they’re not suspended from anything.”

I found while going through my notes that Brian had commented on the evolution of complexity theory as a different way of seeing and conducting scientific inquiry:

Complexity theory is really a movement of the sciences. Standard sciences tend to see the world as mechanistic. That sort of science puts things under a finer and finer microscope. In biology the investigations go from classifying organisms to functions of organisms, then organs themselves, then cells, and then organelles, right down to protein and enzymes, metabolic pathways, and DNA. This is finer and finer reductionist thinking. The movement that started complexity looks in the other direction. It’s asking: How do things assemble themselves? How do patterns emerge from these interacting elements? Complexity is looking at interacting elements and asking how they form patterns and how the patterns unfold. It’s important to point out that the patterns may never be finished. They’re open-ended. In standard science this hits some things that most scientists have a negative reaction to. Science doesn’t like perpetual novelty.

That day at Xerox PARC, Brian had said:

If you drill down deep enough into any subject, you get into philosophy. But philosophy is our way of coming to grips with the unknown. Philosophy isn’t about the known. Philosophy is about the unknown. Philosophy is like scouts that we send out to explore new territory.

The point I want to make with all of this is we’ve constructed this edifice called Western science, that happens to be good at a few things like CT imaging or guiding satellites or designing nuclear reactors, but it doesn’t mean we really understand the world at all. The only people who think we do are people who don’t understand science. People like Bohm or Einstein, who really do understand science, will tell you that there is a thin layer of what we do understand, but down below or above it we don’t know what we’re in.

The Pari conversation had been imbued with the principle that “science was not certainty.” Basil and others told me that Bohm was opposed to viewing science with certainty – that Bohm always spoke with humility and that his whole way of approaching anything, including life itself, was with wonder and full openness to any possibility. Basil said, “Bohm didn’t give me answers; he just empowered me and opened the doors for me. He always empowered the listener to go on a journey of discovery.”

One of the subjects that had run throughout my conversation with Bohm in London was what he called “the general fielding of all mankind.” He said we are all connected and operate within living fields of thought and perception. “You can influence the field by your intention and way of being.”

Just before returning to London in 1989, I had met Rupert Sheldrake, a British biologist who taught me much more about field theory. Rupert and Bohm met a number of times and often corresponded. Rupert felt their views of how the universe works were entirely compatible – for example, his idea of field consciousness, like Bohm’s, suggested a continuum of nonlocal intelligence, permeating space and time. Rupert calls our “extended mind” a part of our biological nature.

Rupert’s work suggests that the human capacity to enter into continuous subtle exchange with minds around us is shared with other species and that this feature of our mind is rooted in our evolutionary ancestry. His book, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, tells of his analysis of dogs and cats that appear to know with uncanny accuracy when their owners are on their way home – no matter what the circumstances: whether at odd hours, unscheduled times, or after short or long absences. The cases strongly suggest that the animals are responding to their owner’s intention to return home – an example of the “field phenomena” that led me to explore the scientific work done on remote viewing.