What's going on, and why am I here?
- Where do we come from? - What do quantum physics--
- Immense quantum mechanical isotopes. - Physics of possibility.
Quantum mechanics allows--
Supreme mind.
- Brain is capable of millions-- - A neural net.
- Cascade of biochemical-- - An emotional response--
Molecules--
The brain does not know the difference between...
what it sees in its environment and what it remembers.
We are running the holodeck.
Whatever way we observe the world around us--
So how can you continue to see the world as real...
if the self that is determining it to be real is intangible?
Are all realities existing simultaneously?
Is there a possibility...
that all potentials exist side by side?
Have you ever seen yourself through the eyes of someone else that you have become...
and looked at yourself through the eyes of the ultimate observer?
Who are we?
Where do we come from, what should we do...
and where are we going?
Why are we here? Well, that is the ultimate question, isn't it?
What is reality?
What I thought was unreal, now for me...
seems in some ways to be more real than what I think to be real...
which seems now more to be unreal.
You can't explain it, um...
and anybody who gets too lost in try--
anybody who spends too much time trying to explain it...
is likely to get lost forever down the rabbit hole of mysteriousness.
I think the more you look at quantum physics...
the more mysterious and wondrous it becomes.
Quantum physics...
very succinctly speaking...
is a physics of possibilities.
These are questions--
These are addressing questions, um, of how the world feels to us...
of-of whether there's a difference between the way the world feels to us...
and the way it really is.
Have you ever thought about what thoughts are made of?
I think some of the things we're seeing with the children today...
is a sign that the culture is in the wrong paradigm...
and not appreciating the power of thought.
Every age, every generation has its built-in assumptions--
That the world is flat, or that the world is round, et cetera.
There are hundreds of hidden assumptions...
things we take for granted, that may or may not be true.
Of course, in the vast majority of cases, historically, these things aren't true.
So presumably, if history is any guide...
much about what we take for granted about the world simply isn't true.
But we're locked into these precepts without even knowing it oftentimes.
That's a paradigm.
Modern materialism...
strips people of the need to feel responsible...
and often enough, so does religion.
But I think if you take quantum mechanics seriously enough...
it puts the responsibility squarely in your lap.
And it doesn't give answers that are clear-cut...
and comforting.
It says, yes, the world is a very big place. It's very mysterious.
Mechanism is not the answer, but I'm not gonna tell you what the answer is...
because you're old enough to decide for yourself.
Is everyone a mystery?
Is everyone an enigma?
They most certainly are.
Asking yourself these deeper questions opens up new ways of being in the world.
It brings in a breath of fresh air.
It makes life more joyful.
The real trick to life is not to be in the know...
but be in the mystery.
Why do we keep re-creating the same reality?
Why do we keep having the same relationships?
Why do we keep getting the samejobs...
over and over again?
In this infinite sea of potentials that exist around us...
how come we keep re-creating the same realities?
Isn't it amazing that we have options and potentials that exist...
but we're unaware of them?
Is it possible that we're so conditioned to our daily lives...
so conditioned to the way we create our lives...
that we buy the idea that we have no control at all?
We've been conditioned to believe...
that the external world is more real than the internal world.
This new model of science says just the opposite--
It says what's happening within us will create what's happening outside of us.
There's a physical reality that is absolutely rock-solid...
and yet... it only--
If you wanna put it this way, it only comes into existence...
when it bumps up against some other piece of physical reality.
That other piece may be us, and of course, we're partial to those moments...
but it doesn't have to be either.
You know, it could be just some incidental rock comes flying along...
and interacts with this fuzzy mass of stuff...
and sure enough, it provokes it into a particular state of existence.
There were philosophers in the past that said, ''Look, if I kick a rock...
''and I hurt my toe, that's real.
''I feel that. It feels real. It's vivid.
And that means that it's reality.''
But it's still an experience, and it's still this person's perception of it being real.
Scientific experiments have shown that if we take a person and, uh...
hook their brains up to certain PET scans or computer technology...
and ask them to look at a certain object...
and they watch, certain areas of the brain light up.
And then they've asked them to close their eyes...
and now imagine that same object.
And when they imagine that same object...
it produced the same areas of the brain to light up...
as if they were actually visually looking at it.
So it caused scientists to back up and ask this question.
So who sees then? Does the brain see? Or do the eyes see?
And what is reality? Is reality what we're seeing with our brain...
or is reality what we're seeing with our eyes?
And the truth is is that the brain does not know the difference...
between what it sees in its environment and what it remembers...
because the same specific neural nets are then firing.
So then it asks the question: What is reality?
We're bombarded by huge amounts of information...
and it's coming into our body, and we're processing it--
coming in through our sense organs, and it's percolating up and up...
- and at each step we're eliminating information.
And finally, what is bubbling up to consciousness is...
the one that's the most self-serving.
The brain processes 400 billion bits of information a second...
but we're only aware of 2,000 of those.
But our awareness of those 2,000 bits of information...
arejust about the environment, our body and about time.
We're living in a world where all we see is the tip of the iceberg--
the classical tip of an immense quantum mechanical iceberg.
- Hey, wow! You got a lot of shots to develop? - No.
Oh, bummer. Well, I'll catch you later.
If the brain is processing 400 billion bits of information...
and our awareness is only on 2,000--
- that means reality's happening in the brain all the time.
It's receiving that information, and yet we haven't integrated it.
The eyes are like the lens.
But the tape that's really seeing is the back of the brain.
It's called the visual cortex. It's right back here.
It's like this camera and its tape.
Did you know that the brain imprints what it has the ability to see?
This is important.
For example:
This camera is seeing a lot more around me...
than what is here...
because it is-- has no objection and no judgment.
The only movie that's playing in the brain...
is what we have the ability to see.
So is it possible our eyes, our cameras...
see more than what our brain...
has the ability to consciously project?
Well, the way our brain is wired up...
we only see what we believe is possible.
Um, we match patterns that already...
uh, exist within ourselves through conditioning.
So, a wonderful story that I believe is true...
is that when the Indians-- the Native American Indians...
on the Caribbean Islands saw Columbus's ships approaching...
they couldn't see them at all.
Because it was so...
unlike anything they had ever seen before, they couldn't see it.
When Columbus's armada landed in the Caribbean...
none of the natives were able to see the ships...
even though they existed on the horizon.
The reason that they never saw the ships was because...
they had no knowledge in their brains, or no experience, that clipper ships existed.
So the shaman starts to notice that there's ripples out in the ocean, but he sees no ship...
but he starts to wonder what's causing the effect.
So every day he goes out and looks and looks and looks.
And after a period of time, he's able to see the ships.
And once he sees the ships, he tells everybody else that ships exist out there.
Because everybody trusted and believed in him, they saw them also.
We create reality. We're reality-producing machines.
We create the effects of reality all the time.
We always perceive something after reflection in the mirror of memory.
As far as whether or not we're just living in a big holodeck or not...
it's a question we don't necessarily have a good answer to.
I think this is a big philosophical problem we have to deal with...
in terms of what science can say about our world...
because we are always the observer in science.
So we are still always constrained...
by what is ultimately coming into the human brain...
that allows us to see and perceive the things we do.
So it is conceivable that all of this really is just a great illusion...
that we have no way of really getting outside of to see what is really out there.
Your brain doesn't know the difference between what's taking place out there...
and what's taking place in here.
There is no ''out there'' out there independent of what's going on in here.
You okay? I heard you scream earlier. Was it another dream?
- You were an Indian...
watching Columbus's ship materialize out of thin air.
Wow.
And this medicine man kept hitting you.
Cool. That's--
Hey, maybe it was a past life or a parallel reality...
or a future life.
Get real.
Or maybe that dream was trying to tell you the truth.
I guess it just depends on what you think is real.
Maybe you should try different anxiety pills.
My pills are fine, okay? Thank you.
Well, I have to go get dressed.
Mmm. I hope you feel better, Amanda.
God, Amanda. You can be such an asshole.
There actually are choices in the direction ofhow a life can go...
that are contingent upon small-level quantum effects...
not being washed out.
First of all, let's talk about the subatomic world...
and then we'll talk about what it's telling us about reality.
The first thing I wanna tell you about the subatomic world...
is it's totally a fantasy created by mad physicists trying to figure out...
what the heck is goin' on when they do these little experiments.
By little experiments, I mean big energy in little spaces in little pieces of time.
It gets pretty nutty at that realm of things...
and so subatomic physics was invented to try to figure that all out.
We need a new science down there, and it's called quantum physics...
and it is subject to a whole range of debatable hypotheses...
thoughts, feelings, intuitions as to what the heck is really going on.
Matter is not what we have long thought it to be.
Uh-- To the scientists, matter has always been thought of as sort of the ultimate...
in that which is static and predictable.
Within all the atoms and molecules, all the space within them...
the particles take up an insignificant amount of the--
of the volume of an atom or molecule, the fundamental particles.
The rest of it is vacuum.
What seems to happen is that particles appear and disappear all the time.
So where do they go when they're not here?
Now, that question is tricky.
I'm gonna give you two answers-- Answer number one:
They go into an alternative universe...
where the people in that universe are asking the same question...
about those particles when they come into our universe.
They say, ''Where do they go?''
There's a great mystery called the mystery of the direction of time.
There's a certain sense in which the fundamental laws of physics that we have...
don't make any interesting distinctions, say, between past and future.
Um, for example, it's a puzzle from the standpoint of the fundamental laws of physics...
why we should be able to...
um, remember the past, um...
and not have the same kind of epistemic access to the future.
It's a puzzle from the standpoint of these laws...
why we should think something like by acting now...
we can affect the future but not the past.
These things-- that we have a different kind of epistemic access to the past and future...
that we have a different kind of control by acting now...
over the future than we do over the past...
these things are so fundamental to the way we experience the world...
that, um-- um--
that it seems to me, not to be curious about them is to be...
you know, three-quarters of the way to being dead.
Wanna shoot some hoops?
Now, you don't have to be like that.
Come on and play.
Look. He likes you.
Don't you have time for a little one-on-one?
How long has it been since you played?
Come on. You got the ball. Take a shot.
No, no, no, milady. Not from there. It's out-of-bounds.
You gotta be on the court to be in play.
Welcome to Duke Reginald's Court of Unending Possibilities.
- Court rules-- Gotta sink the last one.
- That hurt. - It never touched you.
- Right. - And it's not solid.
This ball is mostly empty.
In fact, the universe is mostly empty.
We like to think of space as empty and matter as solid.
But in fact, there is essentially nothing to matter whatsoever.
It's completely insubstantial.
Take a look at an atom.
We think of it as a kind ofhard ball.
Then we say, ''Oh, well, not really.
''It's this little tiny point of really dense matter right at the center...
''surrounded by a kind of fluffy probability cloud of electrons...
popping in and out of existence. ''
But then it turns out that that's not even right.
Even the nucleus, which we think of as so dense...
pops in and out of existence just as readily as the electrons do.
The most solid thing you can say about all this insubstantial matter...
is that it's more like a thought--
it's like a concentrated bit of information.
What makes up things are not more things...
but what makes up things are ideas, concepts, information.
And like I said, it never touches.
Those electrons build up a charge...
and push the other electrons away before they touch.
So nobody touches nothin'.
Come on. Put your stuff down. Nobody's gonna take it.
Like I said, this is my court. It's no problem.
- How long has it been? - I'll be late.
It's only in conscious experience that it seems that we move forward in time.
In quantum theory, you can also go backwards in time.
You can always go back in time.
What's the matter? Remember, it's empty.
How do you know this shit?
I read Dr. Quantum comics. Everybody thinks it's just kid stuff, but I know it's real.
That's how I do my magic on the court.
Yeah, I always choose the wonder boy first.
- He's got the weirding way. - Well, Dr. Quantum says everybody's got it.
Everybody's doing it.
Doing it constantly, each and every time you look.
When you ain't lookin', it's like a wave.
When you are lookin', it's like a particle.
When you are not looking, there are waves of possibility.
- When you are looking, there are particles of experience.
Aparticle, which we think of as a solid thing...
really exists in a so-called ''superposition, ''
a spread-out wave of possible locations...
and it's in all of those at once.
The instance you check on it...
it snaps intojust one of those possible positions.
Quantum superposition implies that...
a particle can be in two or more places or states simultaneously.
And this is a very bizarre concept, and one of the hallmarks of the quantum world.
Superheroes use superposition...
with the world being potential strips of reality until we choose.
Heroes choose what they want--
being in many places at once, experiencing many possibilities all at once...
and then collapsing on the one.
The question is, how far down the rabbit hole do you wanna go?
Nice shot.
How can a system or an object be in two or more states at the same time?
It's very easy-- Instead of thinking of things as things.
We all have a habit of thinking that everything around us is already a thing...
existing without my input, without my choice.
You have to banish that kind of thinking.
Instead, you really have to recognize...
that even the material world around us--
the chairs, the tables, the rooms, the carpet-- camera included--
all of these are nothing but possible movements of consciousness.
And I'm choosing moment to moment out of those movements...
to bring my actual experience into manifestation.
This is the only radical thinking that you need to do.
But it is so radical-- It's so difficult...
because our tendency is that the world is already out there...
independent of my experience.
It is not. Quantum physics has been so clear about it.
Heisenberg himself, codiscoverer of quantum physics...
said atoms are not things, they're only tendencies.
So, instead of thinking of things...
you have to think of possibilities.
They're all possibilities of consciousness.
You now can see in numerous labs around the United States...
objects that are large enough to be seen by the naked eye...
and they are in two places simultaneously.
- You can actually take a photograph of that.
Now, I suppose if you showed a photograph, they'd say, ''Oh. Great.
''Here's this nice blob of colored light, and I see there's...
''a bit of it over here and another bit-- So you've got a picture of two dots.
What's the big deal?''
You say, ''Look right in the chamber. You can see it right there.''
''I see two things there.'' ''No, no. That's not two things--
That's one thing. It's the same thing in two places.''
I'm not sure that people's jaw would drop about it...
because I think--
I don't think people really believe it.
And I don't mean that people say, ''Oh, you're lying,'' or ''Oh, the scientists are confused.''
I-I think it is so mysterious that you can't even understand how amazing it is.
And then, furthermore, you've seen Star Trek and whatnot.
''Beam me up, Scotty.'' So it all seems sort of...
''Oh, well, what does that really mean?''
But you've gotta really stop and think about what that means--
That it's the same object and it's in two places at once.
When people tinker in the lab, and they get angry about things, and they have lunch...
and they go home and they lead their lives...
just as though nothing utterly astounding is happening...
because that's how you have to go about it--
And yet, there's this completely amazing magic...
sitting right in front of your eyes.
Quantum physics calculates only possibilities...
but if we accept this, then the question immediately comes...
who, what, chooses among these possibilities...
to bring the actual event of experience?
So we directly, immediately see that consciousness must be involved.
The observer cannot be ignored.
We know what an observer does from a point of view of quantum physics...
but we don't know who or what the observer actually is.
Doesn't mean we haven't tried to find an answer. We've looked.
We've gone inside of your head. We've gone into every orifice you have...
to find something called an observer.
And there's nobody home. There's nobody in the brain.
There's nobody in the cortical regions of the brain.
There's nobody in the subcortical regions or the limbic regions of the brain.
There's nobody there called an observer.
And yet, we all have this experience of being something called an observer...
observing the world out there.
Is this the observer...
and which is so intricate to understanding...
the wacky, weird world...
of quantum particles and how they react?
Is this then the observer?
In my modeling, the observer is the spirit...
inside the four-layer biobodysuit.
And so, it's like the ghost in the machine.
It is the consciousness that's driving the vehicle...
and it is observing the surround.
The four layers of the biobodysuit have all kinds of sensory systems...
to pick up signatures from the surround.
Aw. Good boy.
Where the hell are you? I've got a studio full of people...
but, oh, my God.!
There's no photographer.
Where, oh, where can she be?
Aliens? Loch Ness monster?
Or a hot date?
In Washington, D.C., the so-called murder capital of the world...
there was a big experiment in the summer of 1 993...
where 4,000 volunteers came from a hundred countries...
to collectively meditate for long periods of time throughout the day.
It was predicted in advance that with such a sized group...
you would have a 25% drop in violent crime...
as defined by the F.B.I. in Washington that summer.
Well, the chief of police went on television saying that...
''Look. It's gonna take two feet of snow...
to reduce crime by 25% in Washington, D.C. this summer.''
But by the end, the police department became a collaborator and author of this study...
because the results in fact showed a 25% drop in violent crime in Washington, D.C....
which we could predict on the basis of 48 previous studies...
that had already been done on a smaller scale.
This leads naturally to wonder do people--
are people affecting the world of reality that they see?
You betcha they are.
Every single one of us affects the reality that we see...
even if we try to hide from that and play victim.
We all are doin' it.
Just tell me where you are.
Good. But hurry, will ya, please?
- Because these models are giving me a headache. - Ten minutes!
Our subway exhibit comes to us from Japan and Mr. Masaru Emoto.
Mr. Emoto became terribly interested...
in the molecular structure of water and what affects it.
Now, water is the most receptive of the four elements.
Mr. Emoto thought perhaps it would respond to nonphysical events.
So he set up a series of studies, applied mental stimuli...
and photographed it with a dark field microscope.
This first picture is a picture of water from the Fujiwara Dam.
And this picture is the same water...
after receiving a blessing from a Zen Buddhist monk.
Now in this next series of pictures...
Mr. Emoto printed out words, taped them to bottles of distilled water...
and left them out overnight.
This first photograph is the picture of the pure distilled water--
just the essence of itself.
These subsequent photographs, as you can see, are each different.
This is the ''Chi of Love.''
And we move along here to ''Thank You. ''
And you can see where he taped that, uh, to this bottle here.
But if you read Japanese, you already knew that.
Now, Mr. Emoto speaks of the thought or intent...
being the driving force in all of this.
The science of how that actually affects the molecules is unknown...
except to the water molecules, of course.
And it's really fascinating when you keep in mind...
that 90% of our bodies are water.
Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
If thoughts can do that to water...
imagine what our thoughts can do to us.
Absolutely thought alone can completely change the body.
Most people don't affect reality in a consistent, substantial way...
because they don't believe they can.
They write an intention...
and then they erase it, because they think that's silly--
I mean-- I can't do that. And then they write it again, and then they erase it.
So time average, it's a very small effect.
And it really comes down to the fact that they believe they can't do it.
If you accept with every rudiment of your being...
that you will walk on water, will it happen?
Yes, it will.
But you know, it's, uh-- it's like positive thinking.
It's a wonderful idea, positive thinking...
but what it usually means is that I have a little smear of positive thinking...
covering a whole mass of negative thinking.
So thinking positive is not really thinking positive.
It's just disguising the negative thinking that we have.
When we think of things, then we make the reality more concrete than it is...
and that's why we become stuck.
We become stuck in the sameness of reality.
Because if reality is concrete, obviously, I am insignificant. I cannot really change it.
But if reality is my possibility-- possibility of consciousness itself--
then immediately comes the question of how can I change it?
How can I make it better? How can I make it happier?
You see how we are extending the image of ourselves?
In the old thinking, I cannot change anything...
because I don't have any role at all in reality.
Reality is already there. It's material objects moving in their own way...
from deterministic laws...
and mathematics determines what they will do in a given situation.
I, the experiencer, have no role at all.
In the new view, yes, mathematics can give us something.
It gives us the possibilities that all these movements can assume.
But it cannot give us the actual experience that I'll be having in my consciousness.
I choose that experience.
And therefore, literally, I create my own reality.
It may sound like a tremendous, bombastic claim by some New Agey...
without any understanding of physics whatsoever...
but really quantum physics is telling us that.
Hey! How was the shoot?
Sucked.
Your boss called. He's worried about you.
Amanda, I wanna thank you for letting me stay here.
I know I'm a bit much sometimes...
and that it's been tough after Bob and all.
And, um,you'vejust been so wonderful.
I mean, I make a mess and--
Well, I clean up afterwards, but it's not really your style.
Sometimes I think you make me sane.
Me?
The day I make someone sane, they're in trouble.
Anyway, um...
I made you something as a thank-you gift.
Open it.
I went through your pictures and picked my favorite ones.
And it took me forever because there are so many good ones.
This--
That's for all the wonderful photos you will be taking.
- Oh! - I've had a strange day.
Thank you.
What is my life? Why is your life?
What is the purpose oflife?
Where am I going? What happens when I die?
- Why is there anything at all? - What is reality?
It makes you wonder, doesn't it?
If thoughts can do that to water...
imagine what our thoughts can do to us.
These-- - Reality comes down to experiences.
- Is this-- - Successful--
Have you ever thought about what thoughts are made of?.
Is there a substance of thought?
I guess itjust depends on what you think is real.
The world being possible timelines of reality...
until we choose.
Are all realities in the quantum field existing simultaneously?
- My definition of an addiction is something--
- Something that you can't stop. - There are different worlds in which we live.
There's the macroscopic world that we see. There's the world of our cells.
There's the world of our atoms. There's the world of our nuclei.
These are each totally different worlds.
They have their own language. They have their own mathematics.
They're notjust smaller-- Each is totally different.
But they're complementary, because I am my atoms...
but I am also my cells.
I'm also my macroscopic physiology.
It's all true. They're just different levels of truth.
The deepest level of truth uncovered by science and by philosophy...
is the fundamental truth of unity.
At that deepest subnuclear level of our reality...
you and I are literally one--
- I wake up in the morning...
and I consciously create my day the way I want it to happen.
Now, sometimes...
because my mind is examining all the things that I need to get done...
it takes me a little bit to settle down and get to the point...
of where I am actually intentionally creating my day.
But here's the thing. When I create my day...
and out of nowhere little things happen...
that are so unexplainable...
I know that they are the process or the result of my creation.
And the more I do that, the more I build a neural net in my brain...
that I accept that that's possible...
it gives me the power and the incentive to do it the next day.
In addiction, we have a supreme, beautiful opportunity...
to decipher the difference between...
our intangibility of our nobleness of character...
and the day-to-day business ofhow that character is revealed...
in a three-dimensional world through our bodies.
- I hate weddings. - And what we will learn...
is that addiction is...
the feeling of a chemical rush...
that is cascaded through the bodies...
through a whole assortment of glands and ductless glands...
and through the spinal fluid--
a feeling that some would call...
a sexual fantasy.
It only takes one sexual fantasy for a man to have a hard-on.
In other words, it only takes one thought here...
for a man to have an erection in his member.
And yet, there was nothing outside of him that gave him that.
It was what was within him that gave him that.
Hey, Amanda. I-I didn't know you were there.
Guilty.
A wedding?
Come on, Frank!
This is a good assignment, if you'd see it that way.
What's to see?
''I do.'' They did.
Aw, God, Amanda. I mean, y-you live in your past...
and everything with you is about ''what happened.''
You hate churches. You hate weddings. You hate guys.
Now I want you to go scope it out.
Don't need to. I got married there.
I know. I took the pictures, remember?
You got too many memories clouding your vision.
Oh, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda.
You know you're the best technical photographer I have.
And I wanna have some great pictures.
You know what? You need a good Polish wedding.
- And watch out for those good Catholic boys, huh? - You mean the priests?
Come on. Get outta here. - Bye.
When I was younger, um...
I had lots of ideas about what God was.
And now I realize I'm not conscious enough...
to truly understand what that concept means.
That I am at one with the great being that made me and brought me here...
and that formed the galaxies and the universes, et cetera--
how did that get taken out of religion?
It was not hard.
Most of the problems that religion and various philosophical movements...
down through the centuries have produced...
have been errors because that's where they're started--
That God is a distinct separate being from us...
to whom I must offer worship, whom I must cultivate...
humor, please and hope to attain a reward from at the very end of my life.
That is not what God is.
That is a blasphemy.
God is such a broad thing...
um, some parts of which-- most of the parts of which...
that are associated with organized religion...
is something that I sort of recoil at.
It's something I think has done a lot ofharm to the world, done harm to women...
done harm to oppressed peoples, done harm to the World Trade Center.
And yet, and the same point...
we have the epitome of a great science.
The closest science has ever come...
to explaining Jesus' interpretation that...
the mustard seed was larger than the kingdom ofheaven...
and the only science that can fit into that analogy is quantum physics.
Now, we have--
we have great technology...
from antigravity magnets...
and magnetic fields-- zero-point energy--
We have all that, and we still have this ugly, superstitious...
backwater concept of God.
People fall into line very readily when they're threatened...
by these cosmic sentences of everlasting punishment.
But this is not how God is.
And once you start to question the traditional images, caricatures of God...
people feel you are an agnostic or an atheist...
or a subverter of the social order.
God must be greater than the greatest of human weaknesses...
and indeed...
the greatness of human skill.
That God must even transcend our most remarkable...
to emulate nature in its absolute splendor.
How can any man or woman sin against such a greatness of mind?
How can any one little carbon unit...
on Earth in the backwaters of...
indeed, the Milky Way, the boondocks...
betray God Almighty?
That is impossible.
The height of arrogance is the height of control...
of those who create God in their own image.
- I now present to you...
- Mr. and Mrs. Richard ''Buck'' Filipowski.
Brain, when it fires its thoughts...
is likened unto the landscape of a thundercloud.
And the synaptic cleft is the sky between...
- the storm and the Earth-- the Earth receptor sight.
And you see this foreboding dark cloud...
boiling in the sky...
and you see electrical impulses moving through it...
veins of electric light...
and then you see it hit the ground.
- The brain looks like a thunderstorm--
when it is presenting a coherent thought.
- So no one is ever seeing the thought.
What they do see in neurophysics...
is that they see a storm raging...
around different quadrants of the brain.
- Those are areas that are mapped in the body...
and what a person must be responding to--
a holographic image--
rage, murder, hate...
compassion, love.
The brain does not know the difference between...
what it sees in its environment and what it remembers...
because the same specific neural nets are then firing.
The brain is made up of tiny nerve cells called ''neurons. ''
These neurons have tiny branches that reach out...
and connect to other neurons to form a neural net.
Each place where they connect is incubated into a thought or a memory.
Now, the brain builds up all its concepts by the law of associative memory.
For example, ideas, thoughts and feelings...
are all constructed and interconnected in this neural net...
- and all have a possible relationship with one another.
The concept and the feeling oflove, for instance...
is stored in this vast neural net.
But we build the concept oflove from many other different ideas.
- Some people have love connected to disappointment.
When they think about love, they experience the memory of pain...
sorrow, anger and even rage.
Rage may be linked to hurt, which may be linked to a person...
which then is connected back to love.
We build up models of how we see the world outside of us.
And the more information that we have, the more we refine our model one way or another.
And what we ultimately do is tell ourselves a story...
about what the outside world is.
Any information that we process, any information that we take in from the environment...
is always colored by the experiences that we've had...
and an emotional response that we're having to what we're bringing in.
Who is in the driver's seat when we control our emotions or we respond to our emotions?
We know physiologically that nerve cells that fire together wire together.
If you practice something over and over, those nerve cells have a long-term relationship.
If you get angry on a daily basis, if you get frustrated on a daily basis...
if you suffer on a daily basis...
if you give reason for the victimization in your life...
you're rewiring and reintegrating that neural net on a daily basis...
and that neural net now has a long-term relationship...
with all those other nerve cells called an ''identity.''
We also know that nerve cells that don't fire together no longer wire together.
They lose their long-term relationship...
because every time we interrupt...
the thought process that produces a chemical response in the body--
every time we interrupt it, those nerve cells that are connected to each other...
start breaking the long-term relationship.
When we start interrupting and observing...
not by stimulus and response and that automatic reaction...
but by observing the effects it takes...
then we are no longer the body-mind conscious emotional person...
that's responding to its environment as if it is automatic.
Does that mean emotions are good or emotions are bad?
No, emotions are designed so that it reinforces chemically...
something into long-term memory.
That's why we have them.
All emotion is is holographically imprinted chemicals.
The most sophisticated pharmacy in the universe is in here.
There's a part of the brain called the hypothalamus...
and the hypothalamus is like a little mini factory...
and it is a place that assembles certain chemicals...
that matches certain emotions that we experience.
And those particular chemicals are called ''peptides. ''
They're small-chain amino acid sequences.
The body's basically a carbon unit...
that makes about 20 different amino acids altogether...
to formulate its physical structure.
The body is a protein-producing machine.
In the hypothalamus, we take small-chain proteins called peptides...
and we assemble them into certain neuropeptides or neurohormones...
that match the emotional states that we experience on a daily basis.
So there's chemicals for anger, and there's chemicals for sadness...
and there's chemicals for victimization.
There's chemicals for lust. There's a chemical that matches...
every emotional state that we experience.
And the moment that we experience that emotional state in our body or in our brain...
that hypothalamus will immediately assemble the peptide...
and then releases it through the pituitary into the bloodstream.
The moment it makes it into the bloodstream...
it finds its way to different centers or different parts of the body.
Now, every single cell in the body...
- has these receptors on the outside.
Now one cell can have thousands of receptors...
studding its surface, kind of opening up to the outside world.
And when a peptide docks on a cell...
it literally, uh, like a key going into a lock...
sits on the receptor surface and attaches to it...
and kind of moves the receptor...
and kind oflike a doorbell buzzing, sends a signal into the cell.
- It's party time!
What happens in adulthood...
is that most of us who've had our glitches along the way...
are operating in an emotionally detached place...
or we're operating as if today were yesterday.
- What is it? - Mixed.
In either the disconnected place...
or the overly emotional reactive place...
because they've gone to an earlier time in reality...
the person is not operating as an integrated whole.
Along the outside of the cell...
are these billions of receptor sites...
that are really just receivers of incoming information.
A receptor that has a peptide sitting in it, um...
changes the cell in many ways.
It sets off a whole cascade ofbiochemical events...
some of which wind up with changes in the actual nucleus of the cell.
- Hi.
When I grow up, I want to become a photographer just like you.
- Oh? - Got any tips?
- Take lots of pictures. - Thanks!
Each cell is definitely alive...
and, uh, each cell has a consciousness...
particularly if we define consciousness...
as the point of view of an observer.
There is always the perspective of the cell.
In fact, the cell is...
the smallest unit of consciousness in the body.
I'm hungry!
- We've commandeered an entire serving platter.
Yeah! Keep it coming. Keep it coming. Yeah.
- Delicious. - Oh, yeah. Oh.
Well, my definition of an addiction is something really simple:
something that you can't stop.
Don't make me suffer please. Oh, I hurt!
We bring to ourselves situations that will fulfill...
the biochemical craving of the cells of our body...
by creating situations that meet our chemical needs.
It always happens to me.
- Every day! - Why me?
And the addict will always need a little bit more...
in order to get a rush or a high of what they're looking for chemically.
Don't tell me to calm down! You're always bossing me around.
So my definition really means that if you can't control your emotional state...
you must be addicted to it.
Oh, I knew this was gonna happen.
That's not what we agreed upon.! You're not going to screw me--
Why don't you read the contract?
- You won't do anything, so I will. - No, no, ma'am.
Don't dip your half-eaten shrimp back into the cocktail sauce.
Screw you and your health codes! I am the bride's sister.
I'll stick my ass in the cocktail sauce if I damn well please.
What are you standing there for? Get out and serve. Make sure everybody has a full platter.
Fun, fun, fun.! Listen, Steven.
You won't do anything about it, so--
I want to be a photographer just like you.
So how can anyone really say they're in love with a specific person...
for example?
They're only in love with the anticipation...
of the emotions they're addicted to.
Because the same person could fall out of favor the next week by not complying.
My goodness, doesn't that change the landscape...
of our emotional outlook on personal needs and identities?
- Amanda!
- How can you not fucking see?
No! No, no, no, no.
You got the-- the punch line wrong.
It's a-- It's a photographer's joke.
Go on about your, uh--
- Uh, music?
Are-- Are you okay?
Well, I--
I saw that groom fucking some girl!
Uh, when?
Just now!
I was with the, uh-- the groom--
Hey, I can read lips!
Uh, I'm sorry. Uh, I was with the groom just now.
Yeah, he loves Paulette.
- Where?
Polacks-- They all look the same in a tux.
You're not Polish, are-- Uh, hi.
- Thanks. Here.
This-- This'll help.
- Oh, thank you. - No problem.
That was in my mouth. Forget it.
So, what's your name?
- Elliot. Hi. - Yeah.
- It's a-- - I'm Amanda.
Hey, Amanda. I should've asked you what your name--
- You photograph a lot of weddings? - Yeah. I hate it.
I'm doing the thing again with my hands. I'm sorry.
We are emotions and emotions are us.
Again I can't separate emotions.
When you consider that, um...
every aspect of your digestion...
every sphincter that opens and closes...
every group of cells that come in for nourishment...
and then moves out to, um...
heal something or repair something--
Those are all under the influence of the molecules of emotion.
I mean, it's this total buzz.
So you ask if emotions are bad.
Emotions are not bad. They're life.
They color the richness of our experience. It's our addiction that's the problem.
The thing that most people don't realize is that...
when they understand that they are addicted to emotions--
- Another drink? - it's notjust psychological.
It's biochemical. Think about this.
Heroin uses the same receptor mechanisms on the cells...
that our emotional chemicals use.
It's easy to see then that if we can be addicted to heroin...
then we can be addicted to any neural peptide, any emotion.
- To the groom! - To the groom.
Whoo!
- What's up, guys? - What's up, man?
- Hello. - What do we need?
- Some foxes. - Who put out.
Yeah, baby!
Cheers.
So--
The relevant search command that's going on...
is related to finding a certain emotional state.
I mean, we can't even direct our eyes...
without having an emotional aspect to it.
Oh. Oh, gosh.
She wouldn't fall for me.
Oh, mama! Whoo!
What the hell are you waitin'for?
Come on, ya little pussies! Geez! I can't believe you guys!
What are you-- Ooh.! Come on. Come on. Just get the hell out of the way.
Hi there, honey!
Come on, baby. You know you want it.
Oh, don't give me that look.
Now...
what about people who are addicted to sex?
Whoa!
- Whew.! - Hello there, big boy.
Is there a rocket in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
¶ The lights are on ¶
¶But you're not home ¶
¶ Your mind is not your own ¶
- Yeow! - ¶ Your heart sweats ¶
¶ Your body shakes ¶
¶ Your kiss is what it takes ¶
¶ You can't sleep, oh ¶
¶ You can't eat ¶
¶ There's no doubt you're in deep ¶
¶ Your throat is tight You can't breathe ¶
¶Another kiss is all you need ¶
¶ Whoa,you like to think ¶
¶ That you're immune to the stuff ¶
- ¶ Oh,yeah ¶
¶It's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough ¶
¶ You know you're gonna have to face it You're addicted to love ¶
¶ You see the signs but you can't read ¶
¶ You're running at a different speed ¶
- ¶ Your heart beats in double time ¶ - Snap out of it! Over here!
¶Another kiss and you'll be mine ¶
¶A one-track mind You can't be saved ¶
¶ Oblivion is all you crave ¶
¶If there's some ¶
- I want to hear some-- - Hold on.
Would you not touch anything? That's very expensive equipment. All right?
¶ Whoa,you like to think ¶
¶ That you're immune to the stuff ¶
¶ Oh, yeah ¶
I want to hear some polka music, okay?
These people want to hear some polka music. You can't have a Polish wedding...
- without polka music.! - ¶ Might as well face it You're addicted to love ¶
¶ Might as well face it You're-- ¶¶
No! Would you leave it alone? Keep your--
How can you have a Polish wedding without any-- Polish music?
- Get your-- hands off my equipment!
- Like I said before...
it ain't a Polish wedding without a polka!
Our mind literally creates our body.
So it all starts in the cell. The cell is a protein-producing machine...
but it gets its signal from the brain.
One of the things about receptors is they change in their sensitivity.
If a given receptor for a given drug or internal juice...
is being bombarded for a long time at a high intensity...
it will literally shrink up.
There will be less of them.
Or it will be hooked up in such a way...
that it is desensitized or downregulated.
So the same amount of drug or internal juice...
will elicit a much smaller response.
If we're bombarding the cell with the same attitude and the same chemistry...
over and over again on a daily basis...
when that cell finally decides to divide...
when it produces a sister cell or a daughter cell...
that next cell will have more receptor sites...
for those particular emotional neuropeptides...
and less receptor sites...
for vitamins, minerals, nutrients, fluid exchange...
or even the release of waste products or toxins.
Now, all aging is the result of improper protein production.
What happens when we age?
Our skin gets-- loses elasticity.
Well, elastin is a protein.
What happens to our enzymes? We don't digest as well.
What happens to our synovial fluid?
Those are proteins that become brittle and stiff.
What happens to our bones? They become thin.
So all aging is a result of improper protein production.
So then the question arises...
does it really matter what we eat?
And does nutrition really have an effect...
if the cell doesn't even have the receptor sites...
after 20 years of emotional abuse...
to even receive, or to let in...
the nutrients that are necessary for its health?
Okay, guys. It's time for a course correction...
on our trajectory, along the path of our adventure.
And that course correction is the movement to a new paradigm...
just an expansion of the old--
just as the universe is larger than we thought it was in our modeling.
And it's always larger than we think it is.
I hate you.
You idiot!
You suck! Look at you!
You're fat! You're ugly!
You are worth nothing! You're getting old!
I hate you!
It makes you wonder, doesn't it?
If thoughts can do that to water...
imagine what our thoughts can do to us.
No one has ever came along...
and ever given you sufficient, intelligent knowledge...
about your beautiful self--
how you work from the inside out.
Why do you have addictions? Because you have nothing better.
You have dreamt of nothing better...
because no one has ever taught you how to dream better.
Do I think that you are bad? I don't think you're bad.
Do I think you're good? I don't think you're good either.
I think you're God.
In general, the field of psychiatry really doesn't...
allow for enough...
freedom of action on people's part...
meaning an awful lot of problems-- not all of them, to be sure...
but an awful lot of problems that get labeled as psychological problems...
really amount to people making rotten choices.
And they ought to be instructed to make different ones.
Can I--
um, borrow some toothpaste?
Thanks.
When I talk about ''we''disappearing...
I don't mean that we physically disappear.
What I mean is that we move out of the area of the brain...
that has to do with our personality...
that has to do with our association to people, our association to places...
our association to things and times and events.
We don't exist in the associative centers in our brain...
that reaffirms our identity and reaffirms our personality.
For the average person in the world who lives life...
and considers their life boring or uninspiring...
it's because they've made no attempt...
to gain knowledge and information that will inspire them.
They're so hypnotized by their environment...
through the media, through television...
through people living and creating ideals...
that everybody struggles to become...
that no one can actually become...
in terms of physical appearance...
and definitions of beauty and valor...
that are all illusions...
that most people surrender and live their life in mediocracy.
And they may live that life and the soul may never really--
their desire may never really rise to the surface...
so they may want to be something else.
But if it does rise to the surface...
and, uh, they ask themselves if there is something more--
Or, why am I here? What is the purpose of life?
Where am I going? What happens when I die?
They start to ask those questions.
They start to flirt and interact with the perception...
that they may be having a nervous breakdown...
and in reality, what they're doing is that their old concepts...
ofhow they viewed their life and the world start to fall apart.
We're in completely new territory in our brain...
and because we're in completely new territory...
we're rewiring the brain...
literally reconnecting to a new concept.
Then ultimately it changes us from the inside out.
If I change my mind, will I change my choices?
If I change my choices, will my life change?
Why can't I change? What am I addicted to?
What will I lose that I'm chemically attached to...
and what person, place, thing, time or event...
that I'm chemically attached to that I don't want to lose...
because I may have to experience the chemical withdrawal from that?
Hence the human drama.
Amanda, it's Bob, and I'm just calling to say...
I hope that you can come tonight.
I really want to see you. I, uh, really want to talk to ya.
I know we can work things out.
What's the only planet in the Milky Way...
that has habitation that is steeped...
in enormous subjugation of religion?
You know why that is?
It's because people have set up right and wrong.
If I do this, I'm going to get punished by God.
If I do the other thing, I'm going to get rewarded.
This is a really poor description...
that tries to map out a path in life for us to follow...
but with deplorable results.
Because there really is no such thing as good or bad.
We're judging things far too superficially that way.
Does that mean you're in favor of sin and licentiousness and depravity? No.
It simply means that you need to improve...
your expression and understanding of what you're dealing with here.
There are things that I do, and I know they'll evolve me.
There are other things that will not evolve me.
But it's not good or bad. There's no God waiting to punish you...
because you did one or the other.
There is no God condemning people.
Everyone is gods.
At the same time, God is, um--
is this sort of placeholder name...
for those parts of our experience of the world...
which are somehow transcendent, somehow sublime.
I have no idea what God is.
Yet I have an experience that God is.
There is something very real about this presence called God...
although I have no idea how to define God...
to see God as a person or a thing.
I can't-- I can't seem to do it.
It's kind of like asking a human being to explain what God is...
is similar to asking a fish to explain the water in which the fish swims.
God is a superposition of all the spirit from all things.
You are a God in the making...
and you have to walk this path.
But someday,you have to love the abstract...
as much as you love the condition of addiction.
The only way that I will ever be great to myself...
is not what I do to my body...
but what I do to my mind.
So if we're consciously designing our destiny...
and if we're consciously, from a spiritual standpoint...
throwing in with the idea...
that our thoughts can affect our reality or affect our life...
'cause reality equals life...
then I have this little pact that I have when I create my day.
I say, ''I'm taking this time to create my day...
''and I'm infecting the quantum field.
''Now, if in fact the observer's watching me the whole time that I'm doing this...
''and there is a spiritual aspect to myself...
''then show me a sign today that you paid attention...
''to any one of these things that I created...
''and bring them in a way that I won't expect...
''so I'm as surprised at my ability to be able to experience these things...
and make it so that I have no doubt that it's come from you.''
So the brain is capable of millions of different things...
that people just really should learn...
how incredible they actually are and how incredible their minds actually are...
and that not only do they have this unbelievable thing within their head...
that can do so many things for them and can help us learn and can actually change and adapt...
it can make us something better than what we actually are...
and it can actually help us to transcend ourselves--
There may be some way that it can actually take us...
to a higher level of our existence...
where we can actually understand the world in a deeper way...
where we can understand our relationship to things and people in a deeper way...
and we can ultimately make more meaning for ourselves in our world.
We can show that there's a spiritual part of our brain...
but it's a part that we all can have access to and it's something that we can all do.
We have to formulate what we want...
and be so concentrated on it and so focused on it...
and have so much of our awareness of it...
that we lose track of ourselves.
We lose track of time.
We lose track of our identity.
And the moment we become so involved in that experience...
that we lose track of ourselves, we lose track of time...
that picture is the only picture that's real.
And everybody's had that experience...
when they've made up their mind that they've wanted something.
That's quantum physics in action.
That's manifesting reality. That's the observer in full effect.
Your consciousness influences others around you.
It influences material properties.
It influences your future.
You are cocreating your future.
Show me a sign today that you paid attention...
to any one of these things that I created...
and bring them in a way that I won't expect...
so I'm as surprised at my ability to be able to experience these things...
and make it so that I have no doubt that it's come from you.
Do we really know each other?
What is my life?
Consciousness of religion is something fundamental.
Have you ever seen yourself...
through the eyes of someone else that you have become?
What an initiation.
Have you ever stopped for a moment and looked at yourself...
through the eyes of the ultimate observer?
I am much more than I think I am.
I can be much more even than that.
I can influence my environment, the people.
I can influence space itself.
I can influence the future.
I am responsible for all those things.
I and the surround are not separate.
They're part of one.
I'm connected to it all.
I'm not alone.
Knowing that there's this interconnectedness of the universe...
that we are all interconnected and that we are connected to the universe...
at its fundamental level...
I think is as good an explanation for spirituality as there is.
It is my belief that our purpose here...
is to develop our gifts of intentionality...
and learn how to be effective creators.
We are here to be creators.
We are here to infiltrate space...
with ideas and mansions of thought.
We are here to make something of this life.
To acknowledge the quantum self...
to acknowledge the place where we really have choice...
to acknowledge mind--
When that shift of perspective takes place...
we say that somebody has been enlightened.
Quantum mechanics allows for the intangible...
phenomenon of freedom...
to be woven into human nature.
Quantum physics, very succinctly speaking...
is a physics of possibilities.
It opens fundamentally the question of whose possibilities...
and who chooses from these possibilities...
to give us the actual event of experience.
The only answer that is satisfactory both logically and meaningfully...
is the answer that consciousness is the ground of all being.
We must pursue knowledge...
without any interference of our addictions...
and if we can do that, we will manifest knowledge in reality...
and our bodies will experience it...
in new ways, in new chemistry, in new holograms...
new elsewheres of thought...
beyond our wildest dreams.
All of us one day will reach the level of the avatars...
that we have read about in history--
the Buddhas and theJesus.
Welcome to the kingdom ofheaven...
withoutjudgment, without hate...
without testing, without anything.
That we simply are has allowed this reality we call real...
from the power of intangibility...
to pull out of inertness, action-- chaos--
and hold it into its form...
and we call it matter.
How can we measure the effects?
We get to live our life and see then if somewhere in our lives...
something's changed.
And then if it has changed...
we become the scientists to our life...
which is the whole reason why we're here.
Don'tjust take it at face value.
Test it out and see whether it's true.
- Hey, you're back. - I'm back.
- So you never answered my question. - What question?
How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?
Ponder that for a while.
My name's David Albert. Um...
I, uh, got a Ph.D. in theoretical physics.
I studied biochemistry at Rutgers University...
and then went to chiropractic college...
at Life University in Atlanta, Georgia.
My postgraduate training is in anatomy and physiology...
neurochemistry, neurophysiology and genetics.
I study quantum physics. I sometimes teach it.
I have written a book on quantum physics and many books...
explicating the meaning of quantum physics.
After my Ph.D. from Harvard, I went to CERN...
a European laboratory for particle research...
and then joined faculty at Stanford.
And my work there has been the development of unified quantum field theories.
I have about a hundred publications in this area, but perhaps I'm best known...
for the discovery of supersymmetric flipped SU5...
grand unified field theory.
I make my living as an anesthesiologist...
and every day as I put my patients to sleep...
I kind of wonder where they go and why they're there in the first place.
That's one of the reasons that attracted me...
to anesthesia and the study of consciousness.
My name is Miceal Ledwith...
and for most of my life I was a professor of theology.
I'm Dr. Daniel Monti. I'm a physician...
with specialty training in psychiatry and human behavior.
I'm on the full-time faculty at theJefferson Medical College.
I actually got very interested in studying...
this whole topic of the brain and spirituality...
because it had to do with the questions I was asking since I was a child...
about reality and how we understood truth and what was real.
As I grew up and as I realized that...
while spirituality was, in some senses...
a very important part of trying to find those answers...
science also was a very crucial part.
I was ultimately looking for some way...
ofbringing those two forces together.
Well, my name is Candace Pert...
and I'm a professor at Georgetown in the medical school.
Here we are actually filming great thinkers.
Everyone in this room is a great thinker...
now that we got 'em thinking.
That's always a trick, isn't it?
I should make it clear that I'm a graduate student in physics.
I'm not a full-fledged theoretical physicist yet.
Uh, but if fortune smiles on me...
and I continue to work like a dog on my problem sets and exams and whatnot...
eventually what I hope to do with this is--
is to apply fundamental quantum theory...
to quantum information processing.
So I decided, well, if I gave up being department chairman...
and if I gave up all my professional committees...
and I gave up all my government committees, I would have a block of time...
that I could put to work.
Of course I gave up all my power positions...
but you have to sacrifice something.
I had to keep my day job because my family needed to be fed.
I presume that you're asking me how a scientist can sound this wacko...
because I must be sounding wacko.
It's really an interesting question. If you study science long enough...
and seriously enough and dig deeply enough...
if you don't come out feeling wacko about it...
you haven't understood a thing.