You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter
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| Chapter Eight The Quantum Mind Reality can be a bit of a moving target—literally. We’re used to thinking of reality as something fixed and certain, but as you’ll soon see in this chapter, the way we’ve always been taught to see it isn’t the way it really is. And if you’re going to learn how to be your own placebo by using your mind to affect matter, it’s vital that you understand the true nature of reality, how mind and matter are related, and how reality can shift—because if you don’t know how and why those shifts occur, you won’t be able to direct any outcomes according to your intentions. Before we dive into the quantum universe, let’s take a look at where our ideas about reality came from and where they’ve brought us so far. Thanks to René Descartes and Sir Isaac Newton, for centuries the study of the universe was divided into two categories matter and mind. The study of matter (the material world) was declared the realm of science, because for the most part, the laws of the universe that govern the objective outer world could be calculated and therefore predicted. But the inner realm of the mind was considered too unpredictable and complicated, so it was therefore left to the auspices of religion. Overtime, matter and mind became separate entities, and dualism was born. Newtonian physics (also known as classical physics) deals with the mechanics of how objects function in space and time, including their interactions with each other in the material, physical world. Because of Newton’s laws, we can measure and predict what path planets take around the sun, how quickly an apple accelerates when it falls from a tree, and how long it takes to go from Seattle to New York by plane. Newtonian physics is about the predictable. It looks at the universe as if it functioned like an enormous machine or a huge timepiece. But classical physics has its limitations when it comes to the study of energy, the actions of the immaterial world beyond space and time, and the behavior of atoms (the building blocks of everything in the physical universe. That realm belongs to quantum physics. And it turns out that this very tiny subatomic world of electrons and photons doesn’t behave anything like the much larger world of planets, apples, and airplanes that we’re more familiar with. When quantum physicists began to look at the smaller and smaller aspects of an atom, like what makes up the nucleus, the closer they looked, the less distinct and clear the atom became, until eventually it 179 just completely disappeared. Atoms, they tell us, appear to be percent empty space But that space isn’t really empty. It’s actually filled with energy. More specifically, it’s made up of avast array of energy frequencies that form a kind of invisible, interconnected field of information. So if every atom is percent energy or information, that means that our known universe and every thing in it—no matter how solid that matter may appear to us—is essentially just energy and information. That’s a scientific fact. Atoms do contain a smattering of matter, but when the quantum physicists tried to study it, they discovered something really strange: Subatomic matter in the quantum world doesn’t behave anything at all like the matter we’re used to dealing with. Instead of adhering to the laws of Newtonian physics, it appears somewhat chaotic and unpredictable, completely disregarding the boundaries of time and space. In fact, on the subatomic quantum level, matter is a momentary phenomenon. It’s here one moment, and then it disappears. It exists only as a tendency, a probability, or a possibility. In the quantum, there are no absolute physical things. That wasn’t the only strange discovery that scientists made about the quantum universe. They also found that when they observed particles of subatomic matter, they could affect or change their behavior. The reason they’re here and gone (and then here and gone again all the time) is that all of these particles actually exist simultaneously in an infinite array of possibilities or probabilities within the invisible and infinite quantum field of energy. It’s only when an observer focuses attention on anyone location of anyone electron that the electron actually appears in that place. Look away, and the subatomic matter disappears back into energy. So according to this observer effect,” physical matter can’t exist or manifest until we observe it—until we notice it and give it our attention. And when we’re no longer paying attention to it, it vanishes, going back from whence it came. So matter is constantly transforming, oscillating between manifesting into matter and disappearing into energy (about times per second, as a matter of fact. And so because the human mind (as the observer) is then intimately connected to the behavior and appearance of matter, you could say that mind over matter is a quantum reality. Another way to look at it is this In the tiny world of the quantum, the subjective mind has an effect on objective reality. Your mind can become matter that is, you can make your mind matter. Since subatomic matter makes up everything we can see and touch and experience in our macro world, then in a sense we—along with 180 everything in our world—are also doing this disappearing and reappearing act all the time. And so if subatomic particles exist in an infinite number of possible places simultaneously, then in someway, so do we. And just as these particles go from existing everywhere simultaneously (wave, or energy) to existing precisely where the observer looks for them at the moment the observer is paying attention (particle, or matter, we’re also potentially capable of collapsing an infinite number of potential realities into physical existence. In other words, if you can imagine a particular future event that you want to experience in your life, that reality already exists as a possibility somewhere in the quantum field—beyond this space and time—just waiting for you to observe it. If your mind (through your thoughts and feelings) can affect when and where an electron appears out of nowhere, then theoretically, you should be able to influence the appearance of any number of possibilities that you can imagine. From a quantum perspective, if you observed yourself in a particular new future that was different from your past, expected that reality to occur, and then emotionally embraced the outcome, you’d be—for a moment—living in that future reality, and you’d be conditioning your body to believe it was in that future in the present moment. So the quantum model, which states that all possibilities exist in this moment, gives us permission to choose anew future and observe it into reality. And because the entire universe is made of atoms, with more than percent of an atom being energy or possibility, that means that there’s a lot of potentials out there that you and I might be missing. However, this also means that you create by default as well. If you, as the quantum observer, look at your life from the same level of mind everyday, then according to the quantum model of reality, you’re causing infinite possibilities to collapse into the same patterns of information day in and day out. Those patterns, which you call your life, never change, so they never allow you to effect change. So the mental rehearsal I talked about earlier is certainly not idle daydreaming or wishful thinking. It is, in a very real sense, the way you can intentionally manifest your desired reality, including a life without pain or disease. By focusing more on what you do want and lesson what you don’t want, you can call into existence whatever you desire and simultaneously fade away what you don’t want by no longer giving it your attention. Where you place your attention is where you place your energy. Once you fix your attention or your awareness or your mind on possibility, you place your energy there as well. As a result, you’re affecting matter with your attention or observation. The placebo effect is 181 |